A serious disappointment

I had forgotten that I was going to post about Ryan Adams until Denise reminded me of the gig. Christie and I went last night, and by the end of the night I was ready to throttle him and demand my money back.

The night started off with a guy who Ryan Adams produces, called something I can't remember, which was vaguely like Jesse Malik. He was good, except for the fact that he put on a cheesy voice to sing. Ryan Adams didn't come on until 10:25pm and then he didn't announce anything or say hello, just walked on and started singing. 'Beautiful Sorta' was the first song, which was ok, and then there were two crap songs I didn't recognise, followed by two more songs I didn't recognise which were ok, and a completely slowed down version of 'To Be Young' which was pretty crappy. It wasn't until the seventh song, 'Please Do Not Let Me Go' that things started to pick up a bit. There was a bit of banter going on, with some strange ramblings, but overall he was pretty sane until the interval, when he decided that he was going to take ten minutes "To have a cigarette" after which he would come back and play until they kicked us out of the club. Sounded good, but whatever he had in the interval was definitely not of the nicotine variety. He was pretty rambling before, but after the break he stopped in the middle of songs and started again, threatened to punch someone in the crowd, went on about America and the bombings with sound effects, had a ramble about marajuana, swore more in three sentences than anyone I have known, and finally made a derogatory comment about his female bassist. She looked as though she was about to walk off the stage and shove the bass up his arse, and the front of the crowd (who had heard precisely what he'd said, as opposed to us at the back who didn't catch it) started booing in her defence. There were a lot of shouts of "Shut up and play some music" which would have been good advice, if only he'd taken it. There were only a few songs that I recognised, along with a few that were actually really good, in amongst the dross and the insults. Christie and I left before the end, so God knows what happened after we left. I wouldn't have been surprised if Ryan Adams had challenged half the crowd to a fist fight and the police had turned up.....

Recommendations: keep listening to the songs, don't bother with the live show....