O.K., so let me set the record straight, I’m no musician, I’m no singer, I’m no songwriter in any sense of the word, so I don’t know how it feels when you have to write and record new songs, when you get that urge so bad that you have to share with others what’s floating around in your head, but there is one thing I do know...if you are an artist that has been around for more than 25 years..Nobody, and I mean Nobody wants to hear your “New Stuff” LIVE!!!
I guess most of you are wondering now what this little rant stems from? Here ya go.....
So last weekend I was down on Yonge Street in Toronto at Sunrise Records where The Spoons were scheduled to do an in store performance, here’s where I fully admit a great admiration for The Spoons, the classic line up of Gord, Sandy, Rob and Derrick put out some really great New Wave hits in the early 80’s, and I can still throw on the Greatest hits CD today and listen to it the whole way through. Now, this was probably my bad (Do people still say that?), since I did already know that they had recently wrote, recorded and released a new cd called " Static In Transmission”, they would be playing stuff off of it, but to only play two old school tracks and all the rest was made up of new stuff...come on, give a dog a bone here. I know the hardcore fans that were there (The two large guys both dressed in yellow singing word for word to every new song would fit that category) loved it, but the other 99% of us were there just for the “Hits”.
I’ve have been too many shows over the years where you get the “established” artists that decide to inflict on the crowd 4 or 5 new songs, then throw in a hit here or there . I’ve actually watched an entire audience of almost 20 thousand people sit down for 20 minutes or more while the band run’s through the new stuff, it’s kind of sad.
Back in September of 1995 myself and some friends got tickets to David Bowie’s Outside Tour that he was co-headlining with Nine Inch Nails. When this tour was announced it was a dream line up, how could you go wrong, here you have The Thin White Duke playing alongside Trent Reznor, it was just a very cool idea, then we got the word that Bowie had decided not to do any of his back catalog on this tour, he was only doing one “Classic” song per night and the rest was all new stuff…..oh David, now I’m into new music as much as the next guy, I’ve always considered myself to be pretty forward thinking when it comes to music, up on everything that comes along, but when I decided to go see Bowie (whom I had never seen before) I was looking forward to hearing all the classics…it was not what I or anyone else in attendance expected. Bowie was only 3 or 4 songs into his set and the crowd had started to leave, it wasn’t pretty. Now I stuck around to the end because if I pay money for a show I’m sticking around for the whole show, but for a performer like David Bowie to just play all “New Stuff” was a disastrous choice on his part.
Now I know my little piece won’t have any effect on the big artists that continue to torture us with those new songs show after show, but if I can just get through to one young band that might grow up one day to fill the stadiums of the world and who will just play “The hits”…then my work here is done
Joe Cornelisse-SSGS
