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MUSIC REVIEW
Courtney Love stumbled, complained and stripped through a bad show at 9:30 Club


By David Malitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Imagine a Hole concert that doubles as a complete Courtney Love meltdown. Not too hard to do. Now imagine it being 10 times more disastrous than that -- we're talking one incomplete song after another, offensive and rambling stage banter, exhibitionism, a mass exodus of paying customers. Now imagine it being nearly three hours long. You can start to get a picture of the epic train wreck that was Hole's Sunday night show at the 9:30 Club.

Maybe you watched her recent episode of VH1's "Behind the Music" and thought, "Hey, Courtney's finally getting her act together!" If you were at Sunday's show, you would have thought, "Hey, Courtney is somehow more messed up than ever!" It was an astonishingly and agonizingly awful performance that had a few fleeting moments of redeeming musical value. Song titles, lyrics, guitar chords -- Love remembered only some of them, and infrequently.

But what, really, would have been the best-case musical scenario? A competent re-creation of songs more than a decade old, played by Love and her latest hired hands? Is that what people wanted to see -- Courtney karaoke versions of '90s MTV buzz clips? Maybe. But probably not. Perhaps a bit more professionalism would have been nice, but in 2010 you pay your $45 hoping for the Courtney Love Experience, knowing she's a recovering addict and constant tabloid fodder for, among other things, losing custody of her daughter with the late Kurt Cobain. And Sunday night was an experience like no other.

It's safe to say the people yelling "Bull[expletive]! This is bull[expletive]!" didn't feel that their $45 was well spent. There were more than a handful of patrons shouting and cursing at the endlessly controversial, occasionally coherent 45-year-old rock cliche. Many more simply headed for the exits. Three-quarters-filled at the start, the club was no more than a quarter packed by the excruciating end.

She took the stage nearly an hour past the advertised 9:30 start time, smoking a cigarette and rambling about how she was late because, allegedly, she had just been hanging out with a senator friend. (She left the friend's identity a mystery.)

She also introduced an assistant, Lisa, who was onstage for the entire show filming Love on an iPhone. Not on the side of the stage. Not filming a few songs. The entire show, onstage, often directly in front of Love.

The singer naturally played to the camera more than her fans. She preened, she constantly sang in its direction, she looked like she was trying to seduce it. Love and Lisa huddled before, during and after songs, conferring about what angles to shoot, as if they were Peter Bogdanovich and Laszlo Kovacs.

When one fan near the front complained that Lisa was being obstructive, Love snapped, "[Expletive] you; she's with me."

The between-song chatter was more like a monologue. Ten minutes without playing a song? Sure, let's do that a few times. She talked about her courting style ("I never chase") and being anorexic and bulimic; quizzed fans on the meaning of her late husband Kurt Cobain's lyrics; twice mentioned how The Washington Post hated her new album "Nobody's Daughter"; and name-dropped a "TMZ" episode's worth of celebrities, from Trent Reznor to Diablo Cody to George Clooney, even Douglas Fairbanks.

It's not as if disaster has been the norm on this tour. A Newark Star-Ledger review of Friday's show in Montclair, N.J., said: "Courtney Love didn't screw up any of her guitar parts. She didn't forget any of her choruses. She never lost her place in the set, or looked disoriented during a song. . . . Courtney Love exaggerates her filth." Her New York shows were succinct, hour-long affairs.

When Love did get around to singing, her voice sounded as if something had died in her throat. Love has a blood-curdling howl, by far her most effective asset as a performer. She should have used it more on Sunday. During the choruses of "Miss World" and "Violet" -- two of her best and most popular songs -- she turned the microphone to the crowd and didn't bother singing. Other times she skipped lines in order to cough or take a sip of water or just . . . not sing. Of the nearly 30 songs (or song fragments), not even a handful were completed without some minor disaster.

Love took a request for "Rock Star" despite admitting that she didn't remember how to play it. She stumbled through half the song without strumming one correct chord. She played a new song, "Pretty Your Whole Life." It was bad. Half an hour later, she played it again. It was worse.

Love eventually decided to have some of her fans join her onstage. She started plucking some from the crowd and they simply sat off to the side. "Do you really like rock music?" she asked one young woman. "Because you're African American. That would be like me being into Lil Wayne." She wasn't joking. One fan came onstage with a poster and asked Love to sign it. "No interaction! Go sit over there."

Before the encore, one of Love's handlers told the remaining faithful that they would have to be loud, because there was someone who was waiting to have sex with Love and it would take lots of applause to get her to delay that appointment. Sure enough, Love did reemerge, this time wearing a skin-colored see-through top, sans bra. It would have been blurred out on TV, even on E!

She quickly became self-conscious and asked the audience for a bra. One came flying onto the stage, and Love removed her top to put it on. She did this at the back corner of the stage, so we could only see her bare back. She then repeatedly talked about how the bra was too big for her.

The encore contained a Rolling Stones cover, a Leonard Cohen cover and back-to-back originals "Car Crash" and "Awful." Was this irony or were we well past that?

Most of her backing band had retired for the night by this point, leaving Love and guitarist Micko Larkin alone onstage. Before closer "Northern Star," she ripped off the bra. Obviously. It's actually somewhat surprising she didn't play Nirvana's "Pennyroyal Tea" while topless.

"This is a really weird show," Love had said a bit earlier in perhaps the understatement of the night. "I can't tell if it's really terrible."

Courtney, let me tell you something. In just the past year and a half, I've been to about 400 shows. I've seen some really terrible ones. And this was the most terrible. No question. But the vast majority of those 400 shows, I went there, I saw it and almost immediately forgot I was there. I'll never forget this night with Courtney Love, no matter how much I may want to. And isn't that really what she's always wanted?

Sad on a human level.

On a musical level, it shows everything that's wrong with "music" over the past 15-20 years.

I wonder what RS cover did she play.

This is pretty sad - What would Kurt think?

Gigs like this can be fun. At least it sounds memorable.

Down In The Hole

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Munichhilton
Down In The Hole

Heh heh - nice one!

Having sex with Courtney Love would be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway.

i feel sorry for the folks that forked over fourty five bucks to see and hear her crap.

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sweetcharmedlife
Having sex with Courtney Love would be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway.

hehe, nice visual! It's so much easier to make fun of women than it is men.

She should tour with Ron Wood!

Love her or loathe her, she's never dull.

her is a idea , a tour with courtney love ,with amy winehouse opening for her and then at the end of the night amy can join courtney on stage for some duets or hairpulling cat fights

Sad story, not what I would call hilarious.

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CindyC
I wonder what RS cover did she play.

"Booby Tuesday"

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The Greek
her is a idea , a tour with courtney love ,with amy winehouse opening for her and then at the end of the night amy can join courtney on stage for some duets or hairpulling cat fights

A personal fantasy of yours Greek?

"It's just some friends of mine and they're busting down the door"

the headline for this article should be "courtney love: what else is new?".
if plácido domingo had a concert like this, then yes, that would be news.

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sweetcharmedlife

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The Greek
her is a idea , a tour with courtney love ,with amy winehouse opening for her and then at the end of the night amy can join courtney on stage for some duets or hairpulling cat fights

A personal fantasy of yours Greek?

i think then you could justify the $45 ticket .

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dcba
She should tour with Ron Wood!

now, that would be entertaining.

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The Greek

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sweetcharmedlife

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The Greek
her is a idea , a tour with courtney love ,with amy winehouse opening for her and then at the end of the night amy can join courtney on stage for some duets or hairpulling cat fights

A personal fantasy of yours Greek?

i think then you could justify the $45 ticket .

I;ve paid more for less.

With a voice like that I don't mind having s.x with with Courtney she also may scratch my back............









__________________________

The review was indeed hilarious. Very well written, I loved it!

nicos, you can't say sex?

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NICOS
With a voice like that I don't mind having s.x with with Courtney she also may scratch my back............

Just a Marianne wannabe with no particular talent. She wouldn't be of interest if it weren't for Kurt. Just a media grabbing attention seeker. Quite sad really.

NickB

You can't always get what you want.....

www.myspace.com/thesonkings

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UGot2Rollme
Love eventually decided to have some of her fans join her onstage. She started plucking some from the crowd and they simply sat off to the side. "Do you really like rock music?" she asked one young woman. "Because you're African American. That would be like me being into Lil Wayne." She wasn't joking. One fan came onstage with a poster and asked Love to sign it. "No interaction! Go sit over there."

If the Stones ever decide to offer "onstage seating" again, it should be a bit more like this!

Love Stripping? D-I-S-G-U-S-T-I-N-G!!

"Well my heavy throbbers itchin' just to lay a solid rhythm down"

in seattle papers they call her the widow cobain. it's like a car accident. it's awful. it's sad. it's beyond sad. it's sick. it's beyond sick. it's not punk it's not spectacle it's a sad commentary on what u become when u totally buy into the cheapest explitative iconography and live some kind of weirdly entitled junkie ethos or something. wow. sad. like a traffic accident you dont want to look but u do. i heard her on dr. drew's loveline show and she sounded like the most awfully self centered seductive infant. she made one great album tho. how many bands do not??? live thru this was damn good record. hate to say it in the face of the awful mess she's been ever since, the extrapolating mess she's been ever since. and peeps tell me well kurt wrote all that when i tell them i like that album. well i dunno maybe. but that was a good, near great rock and roll album. it really was. this thing she is now. i don't know. i totally dropped her a long time ago because of this exact nonsense. i mean she's sick have mercy i keep telling myself.

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Marhsall
Love Stripping? D-I-S-G-U-S-T-I-N-G!!

exactamente

i'd download a torrent of this one!