Miers on Music by Jeff Miers

Signing off from Jazz Fest

 

Above is a short video from my bike ride home after the final day of the 2010 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In New Orleans (and especially during the big festivals like Jazz Fest, Mardi Gras, French Quarter Fest and the like), brass bands of every kind and configuration are a common sight. Not a bad way to end the four-day extravaganza of music and culture that constituted this festival's second and final week.

I logged most of my hours during the last week seeing music, soaking up the culture and spending some much needed time with my friends and family, so I didn't blog quite as much as I'd hoped to at the outset. To make up for lost time, I'll attempt a quick recap of some of the most memorable sets, out of countless performances I caught at the fest proper and in various corners of the weird, beautiful and irreplaceable city of New Orleans:

And the show goes on...

John Boutte performs at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on Friday. Photo by Susan Poag / The Times-Picayune.

As a million gallons of oil inch toward the Gulf Coast and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin finishes out the last days of his term, the show at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival goes on.

New Orleans knows how to party in the face of natural (and man-made) catastrophes, and nowhere was that more evident than out at the festival grounds on Friday, teeming with crowds and jam-packed with musical institutions and curiosities.

Bonaroo 2009 lineup

The lineup for this year's Bonaroo festival, held across four days on a farm in Manchester, Tennessee, has been announced. It's pretty interesting, too. The Festival takes place between June 11 and 14. Please share your thoughts on this year's roster, and memories of years past.

• Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
• Phish (2 shows)
• Beastie Boys
• Nine Inch Nails
• David Byrne
• Wilco
• Al Green
• Snoop Dogg
• Elvis Costello Solo
• Erykah Badu
• Paul Oakenfold
• Ben Harper and Relentless7
• The Mars Volta
• TV on the Radio
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Gov't Mule
• Andrew Bird
• Band of Horses
• Merle Haggard
• MGMT
• moe.
• The Decemberists
• Girl Talk
• Bon Iver
• Bela Fleck & Toumani Diabate
• Rodrigo y Gabriela
• Galactic
• The Del McCoury band
• of Montreal
• Allen Toussaint
• Coheed & Cambria
• Booker T & the DBTs
• David Grisman Quintet
• Lucinda Williams
• Animal Collective
• Gomez
• Neko Case
• Down
• Jenny Lewis
• Santogold
• Robert Earl Keen
• Citizen Cope
• Femi Kuti and the Positive Force
• The Ting Tings
• Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
• Kaki King
• Grizzly Bear
• King Sunny Ade
• Okkervil River
• St. Vincent
• Zac Brown Band
• Raphael Saadiq
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
• Crystal Castles
• Tift Merritt
• Brett Dennen
• Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue
•Toubab Krewe
•People Under The Stairs
•Alejandro Escovedo
•Vieux Farka Toure
•Elvis Perkins in Dearland
•Cherryholmes
•Yeasayer
•Todd Snider
•Chairlift
•Portugal. The Man.
•The SteelDrivers
•Midnite
•The Knux
•The Low Anthem
•Delta Spirit
•A.A. Bondy
•The Lovell Sisters
•Alberta Cross

Rod rocks (mostly)

Rod Stewart's recent appearance inside HSBC Arena was a mostly splendid affair, as the rooster-haired one strutted about the stage surrounded by a killer band, digging deep into his back catalog for some truly transcendent numbers, and balancing them against some that were - well, less so.

Stewart seems to have beaten the throat cancer that nearly silenced one of the truly great rock voices a few years back. At HSBC Arena, his singing voice was in fine, fine form.

Many of you wrote to ask for a complete set list, so here it is, to the best of my memory. (My full review of the show can be found at www.buffalonews.com).

First set:

Tonight I'm Yours
You Wear It Well
Lost In You
Reason To Believe
Infatuation
(I Know) I'm Losing You
(drums)
Father and Son
I Don't Want To Talk About it
This Old Heart of Mine
Havin' A Party
Piece Of My Heart (the Rod-ettes)
Hot Legs
Every Picture tells A Story
Cut Across Shorty
Dirty Old Town
(Intermission)

Second Set:

The First Cut Is the Deepest
Tonight's the Night
You're In My Heart
Fooled Around and Fell In Love
Have You Ever Seen the Rain?
Forever Young
Downtown Train
It's A Heartache
Young Turks
Rhythm Of My Heart
Encore:
Maggie May

Police on my back

Apparently, that slot opening the Grammys is a good one. The Police announced their first tour in more than 20 years the Monday following a pretty darned smokin' version of the perennial "Roxanne" at the top of the Grammy television broadcast. Sadly, no Buffalo date showed up on the itinerary - yet, that is.

The July 22nd show at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto went on sale last Saturday morning. It sold out in 3 minutes. That's something in the area of 20,000 ducats purchased in 180 seconds. With remarkable prescience, the band sensed a BIG DEMAND, and slapped a second show in that venue, slated for July 22nd, on sale by 10:15 a.m. Those tickets went in something like 10 minutes. So the Police sold nearly 40,000 tickets in less than half an hour.

Many of you have written inquiring about the possibility of a Buffalo date being added. Though there is a little bit of wiggle room around the Toronto dates, it seems doubtful that Sting, Stewart and Andy will be hitting the Nickel City. We are, after all, still considered a secondary concert market, which is tough to interpret as anything other than an insult. Several letters asked my opinion on what can be done to rectify this lack of Police date. No clue, really. Petitions have worked in the past with other bands, however. That's up to you.

Of course, with a top ticket price of $225 per seat, for the best spots  - no, that's not a typo - the gods of tour-routing might have deemed Buffalo a market unable to support such extravagance.

I'd love your thoughts on what seems to be an incredibly inflated ticket price. The Police reunion is sure to be a great show. But at what price greatness? Say you and your significant other wanted to make a date of the Police concert. Even if you only bought one beer each during the gig, you're looking at $500 for the night. Want a commemorative t-shirt or two? Make it $600. Time was, that kind of money could cover a good portion of your summer concert budget.

Is it worth it? Rock music used to present itself as "the people's music". Now, unless those "people" are in Donal Trump's tax bracket, that wouldn't seem to be the case.

How much is too much?