This Week: Thursday, June 29th, 2017
The Great Wall Of Trump: If you need a job, buy a shovel and go to San Diego where construction on the Border Wall begins in September. Symbolically, this is one of the worst ideas the US has ever had, it is antithetical to everything that the country stands for. It has only been a coupla hundred years since cowardly Europeans invaded the country, stole it from the barrel of a gun, and killed off most of the population. If Trump wants to worry about immigration he should start with himself. He is the Music Man, spouting his we’ve got big trouble right here in the USA nonsense.
Concerts: Has Bono grown old? Until the encore, it sure hit me as though U2 were saving the energy for “Elevation” and not running on all cylinders. By the end of the show the massive use of backup tapes was obvious and a band whose saving grace was their live shows had blown it big time. How soon before the Greatest Hits tour? These guys have made $63M on two weeks, I guess they aren’t going anywhere soon (Grade: B-)
More Concerts: I just got a ticket for Liam Gallagher at Terminal 5 -yeah, I know but what can you do?
Old Music: Heavy duty Pitbull as we get into fighting trim for the main event, the MSG gig on Friday at MSG. It sounds a touch old fashioned right now but still, a whole lotta fun. Shame about Enrique Iglesias.
New Music: The new DJ Khaled is already a hit machine, and the hits are good, the Rihanna song is terrific, so is the Justin Bieber. But when it isn’t good, you wonder what his story is at all. For an album with so much width, it doesn’t have as much depth, Chance The Rapper loses his infallibility, Jay-Z and Beyonce chose an astonishingly lame track for the first duet since “Drunk In Love” and… I guess Nas is OK. Still, the taste of commercial conceptualizing is overwhelming and his fucked up and tedious “We’re the best music” needs to maybach the hell outta here. Grade: B-
Literature: The late great Mick Farren and former NME editor Roy Carr really weren’t at their best on “Elvis: The Illustrated Record”. The Illustrated part is great but the mid-70s albums are seriously underestimated, their review of “King Creole” is nonsense, they can’t balance out the movie soundtracks quite accurately and while they are pretty good at the big stuff, the 68 Special, the early slew of Sun Records single, they lose their way so often that it doesn’t feel like a complete vision of Presley. I love both writers immensely but this ain’t the goods. Of course, the book at the time was a serious study of Presley’s recorded career while it wasn’t firmed up, they made the place where the conversation began. I just think they got it wrong too often. Grade: B-
Sports: Phil Jackson was fired as New York Knicks team president. I think he did two things wrong: 1 -after the disastrous first year he should have got his hands and into the trenches, instead he kept his distance and 2-he became a difficult old man and lost the team, each and every team he put together fell apart. Maybe he was in it for the paycheck.
More Sports: The Yanks won and are back in first, the Mets won and aren’t within a mile of first.
