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I'm not saying profit is bad, or business is bad (although retailers ARE bad, imo, if they sell their items above MSRP), but if someone came on here and announced that they were going to buy some Wilco tickets during the presale with the intention of scalping them, how do you think this board would respond to that?

Concert tickets are limited in number and availability, too.

Not sure why this is hard to understand. Both are flippers. Both actively seek out supply for the purposes of reselling at a profit. Therefore, both end up reducing the supply which is available at MSRP, and creating a new supply stream at MSRP+. The only difference is that the broker works on a much larger scale.

And how do they create the scarcity? See the underlined portion of your post.

Right. It's no worse than what ticket brokers do.

That's the norm for his tours, but this time, in addition to his own tour dates, he's going to fly to Detroit (if I recall) mid-tour, do one Stooges show, then fly back to meet up with his own band and carry on with his tour. I drove 5.5 hours on Sunday and then had band practice that same night. I can't imagine doing a much harder version of that 51 times in a row. I'm not certain I'd survive. I wish I was able to see this tour, but other obligations (which turned out to be a blast) got in the way. Watt's new album is excellent. Very Beefheart-ian in some ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go9aks4aujM

Wow, doesn't feel like a year yet.

Yeah, Jeff Lynn is to blame for those particular tracks, but the problem is bigger than just him. Music is recorded very differently now than in the past, as we all know, but drum recording might be the most different from the way it was in the past. In the past, you might have three mics for the whole drumset. Now, it's not uncommon to have three mics on each drum. The problem mostly boils down to the fact that we're not limited by the number of tracks and processing options, so drums often end up really slick and unnatural sounding. I also give drum makers some of the blame. A l

Agreed. This is true for just about every band. Listen to Ringo on "Free as a Bird"/"Real Love" and compare his drum sound to the drum sound on any Beatles track. Listen to any pre 1980 vs. post 1980 Zappa drum track. Listen to Neil Peart on Fly By Night and then listen to anything he's done in the last 20 years.

Nice interview, but it left me with the feeling they're going to screw this thing up. Hope I'm wrong about that.

Same thing happened to me with a Led Zeppelin song. I walked into a music instrument store and for once Stairway to Heaven was playing over the house stereo, rather than from some burnout in the store trying out guitars and playing a bad version. I came in mid-solo and didn't know what song it was, even though I've heard the song hundreds of times. Lots of great group interplay going on during that solo that I might never have noticed had I not walked in at a random point in the song.

Three years can make big difference in what people are willing to do. Also, the process of touring, and the hundreds of other things that go along with it, can be very different from band to band. Maybe Iron and Wine's style of touring offered something more to Leroy's liking than Wilco's style of touring. Or maybe Leroy needed some money so he put aside his distaste for touring and took the job.

The Last Waltz came on Palladia last night. My wife said "I hate this jam band shit." I had to explain to her that The Band is about as opposite of jam band as you can get, and that they rarely have a solo that goes on for more than a few seconds. They've also been credited as one of the reasons the early so-called jam bands (Cream, Grateful Dead, etc.) broke up or changed their focus (temporarily) to more consise, vocal based tunes. I can see how one would think of The Band as a jam band, though, since their songs are constantly being covered and jammed on by every shitty band out there.

Dusty Springfield - Wishin' and Hopin' Heard it Saturday in the car. I had never really paid close attention to this song. The use of harmony vocals in this tune is brilliant. Rather than bringing in the harmony vocals during the chorus, they are most prominent during the end of the phrase that leads into the chorus, and then they go away (or are much less prominent). Much more creative and effective than if they had done the safe/obvious thing. What I once thought of as a nice, fun song, I now consider a pop masterpiece.

Bwaa! Guess Suites and I don't know shit about U2.

In my opinion, the bold portion is the bigger infraction. Botching the name of a U2 song means you haven't fact checked. Using "tunes" twice in a row like that means you're a bad writer and have a limited vocabulary.

Man, something about those '60s and '70s bass players and the great, dry sounds they got. It's a beautiful thing.

Now THAT is fucking hilarious.

This is how Jerry knew death was preferable to jamming with Hagar. Jerry was always willing to try anything once.

One where Stipe goes "whoa, whoa whooooooaaaaa" over a generic soft rock backing track. One where Stipe does a spoken word piece over some atonal noise and Patti Smith grunting. And one that went in one ear and out the other. To be fair to REM, I have heard clips from albums that I thought were bad, but then the album turned out to be great, and I have heard clips from other albums that I thought were good and the album turned out to be terrible.

I wasn't judging the album, I was judging the clips that NPR chose to play.

I'll go on record right now, and come out and admit it. I have never heard Paris 1919. Will remedy that soon.

A drummer I admire told me after a show several years ago that he dug my "slick drum fills." I think I was in my Tony Williams phase then. Not that I sound or sounded anything like him. Compared to him my drum fills sound like a toddler smashing a rattle against a tonka truck.