Vancouver Sun- Rock, rap and 150 million reasons to listen - Printable Version
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Vancouver Sun- Rock, rap and 150 million reasons to listen - NegPhil - 07-18-2008
Rock, rap and 150 million reasons to listen
Kevin Chong, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, July 18, 2008
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VANCOUVER - Nine Inch Nails, the Tragically Hip, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Coldplay, Jay-Z. Put on one stage, the headlining acts at this weekend's Pemberton Festival have the kind of head-scratching incongruity you'd expect from one of those '80s all-star charity songs where the pouffy-haired pop diva trades lines with the grizzled country star before being joined in the chorus by the blues singer and the guy who sang the theme to Footloose.
Of course, these acts are playing separately, so there's no reason to fear We Are the World redux.
What all these Pemberton acts have in common, aside from the fact that they're all male, is that they've sold many, many records (or whatever they're now called in the age of digital downloading).
In fact, these five acts combined have moved more than 150 million albums.
No doubt each act has a sizable audience, but should we expect much overlap? After all, the starring cast spans several disparate subgenres of rock music and stretches into the rap world. Will Nine Inch Nails fans and Tom Petty fans get along at the campsite, much less watch the other band's sets?
Obviously, some fans will simply head to the beer gardens. But, for many others, the festival-going experience is as much about going outside one's musical comfort zone as it is about lining up to use a port-a-john.
One Pemberton headliner, Jay-Z, already has experience facing a wary crowd. When he was announced as the starring act at Glastonbury, a British rock festival, earlier this year, Noel Gallagher of Oasis echoed the opinion of many fans when he expressed his displeasure with the decision.
"I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury," he told a reporter. "It's wrong. Jay-Z's got no chance."
When Jay-Z finally stepped onstage at Glastonbury in June, he met the criticism head on. After a video with Gallagher's remarks were played, Jay-Z started his set with a tauntingly bad cover of Oasis's biggest song, Wonderwall, before segueing into one of his own hits, 99 Problems.
The rapper's warm reception - British music chain HMV reported a 500-per-cent increase in his record sales - proved Gallagher wrong.
Like Jay-Z, the other headliners performing at Pemberton can draw on previous experience in festival settings.
Friday night's top act, Nine Inch Nails, has played at Lollapalooza and the 1994 edition of Woodstock.
The industrial rock band from Ohio, featuring sole official member Trent Reznor and backing musicians, will be playing material from two full-length albums it released this year, Ghosts I-IV and The Slip. (Both were made available as free downloads from their official website, as well as physical CDs.) You can expect a visually dazzling stage presentation with elaborate lighting and video projections.
Since the Tragically Hip released its first full-length album, 1989's Up to Here, the Kingston, Ont., group, led by idiosyncratic singer Gord Downie, has become Canada's unofficial house band.
The Hip, who play second to last on Saturday, helped introduced the rock festival to Canadian audiences with Another Roadside Attraction, a series of cross-country summer concerts that ran from 1993 to 1997 and featured acts like Midnight Oil, Wilco and Ashley MacIsaac.
The band, which won the Governor General's Performing Arts Award earlier this year, is two years removed from its last album, World Container. Based on set lists from recent performances at festivals in Ottawa and Charlottetown, expect them to play old favourites like Courage, New Orleans Is Sinking and Ahead by a Century.
Saturday night's closing band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, probably won't be intimidated by the crowd at Pemberton. In February, these veteran rockers played on what's probably the biggest stage of all, the half-time show at Super Bowl XLII, which has an estimated worldwide viewership of a billion people.
Since that performance, Petty, a one-time Traveling Wilbury, has spent time supporting an album he recorded with Mudcrutch, the band he belonged to before he formed the Heartbreakers.
Look for Petty to sing hits that span his 30-year recording career, from American Girl, which appeared on the Heartbreakers' eponymous debut album in 1997, to Free Fallin', from his 1989 solo album, Full Moon Fever, to Last DJ from his band's most recent album of same name.
On Sunday, Jay-Z will perform with a live band, giving his music a rock edge geared to an outdoor venue. These days, Jay-Z's fame as a rapper might be eclipsed by his recent marriage to singer Beyonce Knowles and his success as a record executive, NBA owner and menswear designer.
Almost five years ago, the rapper actually declared his retirement from music with a show at Madison Square Garden. The Brooklyn-born performer has released two studio albums since his short-lived break, including a concept album named after and inspired by the 2007 film American Gangster.
But Jay-Z still seems able to deliver onstage. In a review of his Glastonbury performance, London Times reviewer Pete Paphides described a "seismic cheer" that followed a new verse in Blue Magic about George W. Bush, as an image of Barack Obama was projected onstage.
"For a second you could have sworn that the world had changed a little bit, just like it did after Bob Dylan went electric at Newport in 1965," he wrote. "Yes, it was really that thrilling."
Look for Jay-Z to win over rock fans this weekend.
The festival closes with Coldplay, a British band that specializes in swooning, emotive alternative rock that feels ready-made for movie soundtracks.
Like Jay-Z, lead singer Chris Martin's music career is sometimes overshadowed by a high-profile spouse - in Martin's case, actress Gwyneth Paltrow.
The band's fourth album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, was released last month and sold more than 300,000 copies in its first week in the U.K. alone.
The high-minded group (it has refused to license its music for commercials and has supported anti-poverty campaigns) will most likely mix tracks from its new album with big hits like Yellow, Fix You and The Scientist.
With more than 50 bands onstage over three days, there's something for every rock fan at the Pemberton Festival. There may also be something to irritate everyone. Some may use the weekend as an opportunity to broaden their music tastes. Of course, others may just skip seeing a headliner because lines for the port-a-johns are shorter.
Re: Vancouver Sun- Rock, rap and 150 million reasons to listen - sullivand - 07-18-2008
NegPhil Wrote:One Pemberton headliner, Jay-Z, already has experience facing a wary crowd. When he was announced as the starring act at Glastonbury, a British rock festival, earlier this year, Noel Gallagher of Oasis echoed the opinion of many fans when he expressed his displeasure with the decision.Thanks for posting this. I hadn't tuned into the Jay-Z at Glastonbury story. Went and looked it up on youtube. Great stuff:
"I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury," he told a reporter. "It's wrong. Jay-Z's got no chance."
When Jay-Z finally stepped onstage at Glastonbury in June, he met the criticism head on. After a video with Gallagher's remarks were played, Jay-Z started his set with a tauntingly bad cover of Oasis's biggest song, Wonderwall, before segueing into one of his own hits, 99 Problems.
The rapper's warm reception - British music chain HMV reported a 500-per-cent increase in his record sales - proved Gallagher wrong.
[youtube]mrDIOVXx-y8[/youtube]
Re: Vancouver Sun- Rock, rap and 150 million reasons to listen - laliber - 07-18-2008
a little BinB (in the bground ) :thumb:
Re: Vancouver Sun- Rock, rap and 150 million reasons to listen - tigerthelion - 07-19-2008
Jay-Z is garbage!