I enjoy live music and have certainly paid to see my fair share of shows.  Summer festivals, arena acts, small clubs, dive bars, it’s all pretty much fair game, but I have to say something about the way Ticketmaster is hurting everyone.  This is not a new story, and I’m sure it will come as no surprise to many readers.  Let me start with an example.

One of my all-time favorites, Skinny Puppy, is touring this Fall and I received an alert about the ticket on-sale date from Ticketmaster.  This is good.  I go to their site to buy tickets for the show, face value $24.  This is acceptable.  I request two tickets for Angie and I.  An $8.50 Convenience Charge along with a $1 Building Facility Charge  is assessed per ticket.  This, this is unacceptable.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this, and it is not the first time that I have made the choice to get my tickets at the box office, regardless of the inconvenience.  Everyone hates to pay more for things, but this goes beyond that.  My problem is with the way this continues to hurt artists and venues.  I urge you, don’t pay 40% more than the price set by the promoters and performers.  To try to combat this, other outlets are trying to offer more reasonable convenience charges, but a $5 fee per ticket isn’t much better.  Go to the box office, I’ll meet you there.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard stars Jeremy Piven playing basically an Earth 2 version of Ari Gold named Don Ready who is a mercenary car salesman. Ready inhabits a world full of characters from a typical Will Ferrell movie in that they exist purely to try to make the audience laugh and in no way resemble real people. In fact, I thought The Goods felt like a movie written for Will Ferrell until he showed up in it. It turns out he produced the film which explains a lot.

The movie has many genuine laughs in it and is funnier than the commercials suggest. If you liked the lesser Will Ferrell flicks, this movie may be perfect for you. Personally as often as the movie made me laugh, it still felt hollow. It aspires to nothing beyond the quick laugh and that’s fine… But it’s just your typical low brow comedy. I found it amazing how many laughs they could milk from well placed F-bombs. The Goods is nowhere near as good as The Hangover or the first 90 minutes of Funny People.

Will Ferrell’s cameo would have stolen the movie had it been restricted to his first appearance, but he comes back later for a less funny scene or two.

The Goods comes in at just about 90 minutes long, but it feels like a long 90 minutes. I recommend you catch it on DVD if you think it might be your thing.

As you may have experienced this summer, the weather has been odd.  With two hail storms, and some record setting cold days, this has not been what you’d call an ideal summer.  Yesterday there was an “end of days” type rain storm.  Pete and I were lucky enough to be driving in it.  Forced to pull over due to major flash flooding and zero visibility, we used the time to come up with what we would call our post about this glorious rain.  We couldn’t narrow it down.  So instead, enjoy some photography with potential headlines.  If you don’t get any of the references….look it up!

Drown the Wicked

Genesis 9:12a I may do some damage here and there

What do you call it when it rains chickens and ducks?

It's Sometimes Sunny in Philadelphia

You'll think I'm dead, but I sail away...

Thursday night, July 30th, Christy and I went to the Face 2 Face tour of Billy Joel and Elton John at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. This is cool for two reasons: 1) neither of us had been to Citizens Bank Park before (not being baseball fans of any caliber) and 2) we were going to see a show with arguably the two biggest and best piano men in rock and roll history. I had been worried earlier in the week, as Billy Joel had been struck with the flu, forcing the cancellation of two dates in upstate NY. Elton was well, but the design of the sets, with both men playing on each other’s songs at the front and back of the show, made it next to impossible for it just to become an Elton John show. So, I worried that Billy would not be well for Philadelphia. No cancellation notices came through, so we went.

Citizens Bank Park is nice. I don’t need to tell the rest of the MLD crew that. They already know, being Philadelphia Phillies fans. It’s so nice, I actually wondered about going to games there in the future, and sitting in the 400s (which is where our tickets were, above home plate, directly across from the stage), so that if I get bored with farming (whoops, I mean BASEBALL) I can look out on a really impressive view of Philadelphia proper, and thrill to the fact that I don’t have to be in Camden to see that view. Oh… wait, this is a concert review. Right…

Elton and Billy have done this sort of package thing before, and I attended, back in 96 when it was the Heart and Soul tour. There was fire, there was gusto, there was two men who still had full heads of hair, and a Veterans Stadium jam-packed with fans all the way to the 700 level. Fast forward to now, and only Elton still has hair (plugs/hair transplants for Reg, still going strong, and looking good!), and… well, it was sort of a repeat of that 13 years-in-the-past concert, with a few notable exceptions: Billy has no hair to speak of now, except of the facial variety, Billy’s longtime drummer, Liberty DeVitto was NOT on this tour, and Elton… just didn’t seem into it. That’s okay, most of the stadium didn’t seem really into it, either. Whether it was because it was still daylight through the entire Elton John set, or he was dreading having to play the only songs Philadelphia seems to know from his catalog (which are, for the record: Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting, Crocodile Rock, Rocket Man, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me, I’m Still Standing and, yes, Philadelphia Freedom), Elton played a solid, professional and very distant set.

Billy Joel on the other hand, started out slow, and I feared the show would suck completely. I mean, the man HAD just come off 72 hours of doctor-ordered rest from a bout with the flu. Angry Young Man felt more like Tired Old Geezer in the way Billy played it, but cripes, only one song later, during Big Shot, Billy hit his stride. His between song banter hadn’t changed too much since last I’d seen him live at the Wachovia center, though he did keep it fresh for the CBP. He also gave a shout out to his daugther, Alexa Ray Joel, who was going to be playing her own show at the Tin Angel, the night after. He looked really proud to have his daughter “continue in the family business”. Even though he seemed to be just hanging on in some of his songs, Billy kicked out the piano jams with his band. It was almost a disappointment when Elton John came back for some more dueling pianos action at the end, but lo and behold, Elton finally looked like he was ENJOYING himself at the end of the concert. Go figure!

A couple of weird notes:

• Two “ain’t gonna see the sunny side of 45” blondes behind us at the show, with their obnoxious kids, kept yakking their way through most of Elton John’s set, sending the one gal’s husband repeatedly for beers. The kids themselves gave us such eloquent food for thought as this: “This song is SOOO long!” and after only one song into Elton John’s set, “All these songs sound the same.” My favorite of these mooks, though, is this brilliant line, from the blond-headed mullet wearing kid with the Phillies shirt on: “This is SOOO not the studio version. This is DEFINITELY the live version of this song.” Really? At a concert, which is LIVE, there’s the LIVE version? You don’t say, Aristotle?!

• During the last part of the show, when EJ rejoined Billy on stage, Billy had a fly swatter in his hand, that he was beating himself with, while playing one handed, and would get up from the piano during songs and walk away for bits. Antibiotics a little strong, Billy?

• Christy and I got lost searching for our car, and walked through all the surrounding parking lots, until I remembered the movable landmark of a Winnebago, which finally led us back to our car after about 30 minutes of searching. I can only chalk this up to my training with ComedySportzPhilly, and call it a callback.

Even after all this time, I still love Billy Joel. Even after being knocked down by the flu, the man can still get up and give a rock-n-roll show worth your ticket price. Tell your grandparents to try that on for size!

End verdicts: Elton John: dislike. Billy Joel: like! Mook morons behind us: dislike! View of the city: like! Sitting at the ballpark watching rock and roll with my wife: like!

Overall: Like!

Yours truly,

Lydonlistens

What a disappointment.  When Marvel first started promoting their 70th Anniversary (despite more dubious math) I was very excited.  I knew some cool things (like The Marvels Project) were planned, but what immediately came to mind was the prospect of another set of Anniversary covers in the same style as the 25th Anniversary books I have such fond memories of.  A few months back, these “frame” style covers were confirmed and the artwork was revealed.  The frame is honestly a great image by Jim Cheung and works as a fitting homage to the original.

A few weeks later, we started to see some of the specific cover artwork that was to be used.  While they were pretty hit or miss for me, there are definitely some that I would like to own.  At the same time we started seeing these, Marvel also revealed a set of regular covers for the same books, meaning these would be variants of some nature.  Disappointing, but I assumed the best and these would be what are called 50/50 variants, meaning an equal number of each cover would ship to stores.

As August is the pinnacle of the 70th Anniversary celebration, this is the month we’ll finally be seeing these books on the shelves.  Next Wednesday is the first comic book day of the month and the first of these issues will ship Amazing Spider-Man 601 (which should be a lot of fun, 600 was great), Black Panther 7, Exiles 5, Hulk 13, and Invincible Iron Man 16.  Well, I just learned that the “frame” cover is an incentive variant, so it well ship in some < 50/50 ratio.  This means the books will carry a higher price tag at most stores (Midtown Comics has them listed at $7 before their typical 15% discount) and will be more difficult to find.

So I think I’m out for these.  I’m assuming stores are going to have issues getting them, keeping them in stock and pricing them.  Couple that with the fact that I’m not even that crazy about the artwork (I think I just really preferred the portrait style of the originals) and it’s just not worth it at all.  Part of what was so great and memorable about the 25th Anniversary books was that they were on every title in the publishing line, every single one.  It was a complete set that looked great on the shelves at the time.  I realize 1986 was a time before cover variants and incentives and collector speculation ravaged the hobby I love, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed.  The custom MLD variants help though!