Re: Salt Lake City setlist back to worse
Date: November 23, 2005 22:45
J.J.Flash Wrote:
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i recently tried an experiment. i made
> up a post about hating paul mccartney to see the
> response.
No, JJ, you implicitly stated that McCartney should have been assassinated, that Mark David Chapman shot the wrong Beatle. That goes far beyond hating McCartney the person, or McCartney's music and it goes far beyond positing an argument of any kind that can be respected. And while I appreciate your explanation that you were only joking, that doesn't mean people should provide license for such expressions.
Ironically, your experiment was precisely an example of what T&A is talking about: you were all for attacking the person, McCartney, in that statement rather than offer an argument about your dislike of his music. Rhetorically speaking, it's called an ad hominen logical fallacy: attacking the person, in an effort to defeat an argument. Calling for someone's murder couldn't be a much clearer example of attacking the person, not the argument.
On the setlist topic. I would love to see more variety and to see the band take more risks (who wasn't happy with the knowledge that they played Sway, regardless of how well they executed the playing of the song?), but at the same time my expectations for this tour were set when I saw the list of cities that they were going to: this isn't the Licks tour where they play 3 nights in Chicago, 3 in Boston,3 in NY, 3 in Paris, or London, etc., in three different settings with three different setlists and audiences to cater to.
No, this is a (largely) stadium tour (in spirit) that's taking the band to the proverbial sticks: they're playing one-nighters in Moncton, Ottawa, Buffalo, Albany, Hershey, Calgary, Fresno, and Salt Lake City, among other smaller markets, that for the most part weren't on the Licks tour, and they're catering to those local markets (fans) with a hits-heavy warhorse setlist that doesn't need to change that much to get the job done. It's the stones equivilent of of franchising the band, almost like taking a Broadway musical to the 'burbs after a successful run in New York.
As for the ABB component of the setlist, I also agree that it'd be great to hear 5-6 songs from it every night. However, people too quickly forget that the Stones aren't touring to promote the album; rather, they made the album to justify the tour. They're set to make 100 Million pounds each from this tour (from what I've heard) and the album sales won't come close to that kind of revenue for the four band members, so I'm not expecting them to be pushing the album through the playlist. So we should expect 3-4 songs in a setlist, tops.
All in all, they're right on course for what they seem to be attempting: they're introducing numbers that can surprise and delight even the most knowlegeable fan, for example: Sway, All Down The Line, Get Off Of My Cloud, It Won't Take Long, She's So Cold, Dead Flowers, As Tears Go By, Sweet Virginia, and Ruby Tuesday; and they're playing the hits that folks in Portland and Calgary and other cities haven't had the chance to hear in quite some time.
In brief, I think Mick said it best when he said . . .
You can't always get what you want, but . . . sometimes . . . you get what you need.
p.s. on a personal note, on the Chapman reference part of the pain in reading that the first time comes from recalling how devastating a loss that was. Lennon didn't kill himself with drugs, or drive into a wall, and he seemed poised to make a creative comeback after a substantial hiatus, so to recall that event in so callous a way is, to me a very sad thing. I understand that you didn't mean to be cold or hurtful, but somethings (like the death of our heroes) are very sensitive things.
Cheers