Chris Isaak Touched Mah Woman

[music | Social Distortion - Like an Outlaw (for You)]

Back to the Bank of America Pavilion for Chris Isaak this time. Another one that I would have loved to see and didn't. It felt nice to be on the relatively young end of a crowd, too.

It just took me minutes to find the name "Anna Nalick", who opened for Chris. It's not surprising I didn't remember her name, I might not remember much of her music tomorrow. Don't take that as a negative thing, it's not that she and the band weren't talented and on top of it. It's just that I felt as if I'd heard much of it before in Sheryl Crow songs, Natalie heard a lot of Jewel, and basically she said it was like half a Lilith Fair, which is a good assessment. I'm being unfair, she was very good, just probably won't get much play among my industropunkmetalgothcore playlist I tend towards.

I have no doubt that her CD will be in my collection by weeks end, but I might tend to prune it as I do with much of the above-mentioned artists, since they don't mix with my general playlists.

The Chris Isaak part was pretty much what I'd hope one would expect. Lots of Elvis energy and lots of Roy Orbison legacy sound (They played songs from both), which I love, plus a Mike Ness-ness that I've always associated with Chris Isaak for some reason. He was on stage, then in the crowd, then hauling ASS back to the other side of the stage, energy and pulling the audience in and having a lot of fun.

This being the tour for his Best Of: CD, there was a lot of mix from his entire career. Which is good, because I haven't shows up, he tends to get kicked out, I don't really know why.

Natalie did get touched, that can't go without saying. I guess it's a deal with him that if you buy from the merch table, he'll sign whatever at the end, which is especially cool. So she bought a photo and got that signed and a handshake. He seems really genuine about wanting to be with the fans, and run through the audience, and sign stuff, and just perform in general. I think that as we catch bands after they've been around for a long time, it might be even more, well, sincere isn't the word, but they're not as burned out or jaded anymore? I think it's because at a certain point you know that everyone in that venue is a fanatic about your music and you want to do it for them. The photo will make a good piece in the Collage 'o Tickets that is growing and growing.

I need to rant about ticket purchasing /AGAIN/. Not releasing decent seats when your shit goes "on sale" is not a good policy, you hear me "livenation" (ClearChannel)? This is almost as shitty as TicketMaster's new "Anything but the worst seats are now Auctioned, so pay up assholes". We spend thousands on tickets, but will not spend hundreds PER ticket, which will result in us going to fewer shows. This show was NOT a sell-out, you could buy tickets at the window, yet we ended up about 10 rows from the back, with dozens and dozens of empty seats directly in front of us. Not just "some party didn't show up", greater than half of our row was empty, and I think there were only 6 or 10 of 30 + seats filled a couple rows ahead. However, the first 20 rows or so went on sale way after the "on sale" date. That just sucks. Something tells me the scalpers had their way with them before the general public, if history is any guide. How many industries survive this long when they are universally hated by both their customers and their suppliers (the artists)? It's a complete rip-off on both sides of the transaction and I hate it. I don't even buy tickets, I make Natalie do it because I would end up smashing stuff.