Aint No Right

Matz wrote:I'd be excited as hell if I could catch Primus live, one of the last great ones that haven't done anything silly to fuck up their rep....they're a bunch of beasts all of em still. I want you front and center Larry!

Larry B. wrote:On December 6 I'll be attending the Rockout Fest, headlined by Fantômas, Primus and Devo. I'm not incredibly excited by it, but should be fun enough.

creep wrote:sort of a strange lineup. are you going to stay and watch primus? that last band playing must be from chile.

Artemis wrote:I splurged on tickets for a few shows today:

Got tickets for The Jesus And Mary Chain: 30th Anniversary of Psychocandy - May 1st
Primal Scream- May 15
David Byrne's Contemporary Color -June 23

Previously purchased tix for St Vincent - March 3rd

Larry B. wrote:

Artemis wrote:I splurged on tickets for a few shows today:

Got tickets for The Jesus And Mary Chain: 30th Anniversary of Psychocandy - May 1st
Primal Scream- May 15
David Byrne's Contemporary Color -June 23

Previously purchased tix for St Vincent - March 3rd

Wow, very nice.

Sinead O'Connor is going to be playing here in a festival and tickets are going for $10 (the cheapest this country has seen in a looong time,) but for some reason I don't really feel compelled to going.

Plus, this is the picture with which they're advertising her show:



She hasn't looked like that since around 1979.

Leaving Chile for home today. Had most amazing time. Lovely country. Lovely people. VERY handsome men! Most fun gig. Thanks so much to Womad and to the amazing audience. See you again soon I hope. Next stop Australia.

Artemis wrote: Glad you weren't disappointed! Sinead still brings it live.

A few minutes ago on Sinead's Facebook page:

Leaving Chile for home today. Had most amazing time. Lovely country. Lovely people. VERY handsome men! Most fun gig. Thanks so much to Womad and to the amazing audience. See you again soon I hope. Next stop Australia.

farrellgirl99 wrote:I'm going to see Viet Cong in June. That's it so far.

Viet Cong: banned from playing because of their name
The Canadian art rockers have had a show in Ohio cancelled because their name ‘deeply offends’ some people. So what about Gang of Four or the Dead Kennedys?


What’s in a name? Quite a lot if you’re post-punk noise outfit Viet Cong, who have just had one of their shows cancelled in Ohio due to controversy surrounding their moniker. Gig promoter Ivan Krasnov took to the Oberlin ‘Sco Facebook page to apologise for booking an act whose name “deeply offends and hurts Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American communities, both in Oberlin and beyond”. He extended his apology “to anyone hurt or made uncomfortable by the name and its connotations”.

Patrons of the club have been responding to the statement on the club’s page. “This is how I’ve always felt about the band Gang of Four and how they might be offensive to Chinese folks who lost family during the Cultural Revolution”, said one Facebook user, presumably with tongue firmly in cheek. Others asked whether the promoters of the Dionysus Discotheque, where the band was due to play, would have turned away Joy Division or New Order because of the Nazi connotations in those names.

“I cancelled this show after meeting with representatives from the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) who expressed the desire to see this [show] cancelled,” explained Krasnov in a reply on the social networking site. He also posted an emotional open letter to the band written by Sang Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese-American, who objected to a quote in an interview with the Guardian in February regarding the band’s choice of name; Viet Cong apparently presented itself after drummer Mike Wallace made an offhand comment about bassist and vocalist “[Matt] Flegel bouncing around while playing, and ‘kind of shooting his bass like a gun’. I said: ‘All you need is a rice paddy hat and it would be so Viet Cong.’”

“This history of violence is what I am reminded of every time I see Viet Cong’s band name pop up on my news feed,” said Nguyen, who concluded the choice of nomenclature was offensive because it had been “thoughtless”.

The dispute raises interesting questions about what responsibility artists have to the public regarding such choices, and mirrors a debate in comedy about the offensiveness of jokes (somebody somewhere is always likely to be offended, so the argument runs, and if nobody is, then maybe the joke isn’t funny). Looking back to the inchoate days of hardcore, one presumes a band like the Dead Kennedys alighted on their name because it was offensive, which would have been in keeping with many other punk and hardcore bands at the time; by Nguyen’s rationale, it would at least mean they’d thought the process through. The Calgary four-piece were formed out of the detritus of another group, Women, and one could reasonably assume some women would be offended by the generic appropriation of their gender for an all-male troupe. Or taken to its logical conclusion, one could turn it around on the promoters and object to the name Dionysus Discotheque; after all, the Greco-Roman god Dionysus himself sometimes wore a bassaris or fox skin, which would offend the sensibilities of millions, and what’s more, Dionysus rarely if ever drank responsibly.

Viet Cong are not the first band to fall foul of censure; fellow Canadians the New Pornographers were banned from the Calvin College Fieldhouse Complex in Michigan in 2010. The college issued a statement insisting that “the irony of the band’s name was impossible to explain to many”, which presumably means that students thought they were actual pornographers. If the Ohio college was concerned not to offend an ethnic community, then the Michigan college was protecting its own religious community, as an educational institution of the Christian Reformed Church named after John Calvin. One presumes neither institution will be booking Baby Jesus Hitler, Deep Fried Abortion, The Crucifucks or Smother Teresa in the near future.

Matz wrote:you know how to pick em, first Kate Bush now this.... I saw Page/Plant on Roskilde Festival in 95. They toured with african musicians, one of the best shows I've seen