Thursday, May 27, 2004
ANOTHER CELEBRITY GOES INSANE! AND WE GET TO WATCH!: On the off chance you've been with me since the beginning, you might remember the jarring transition Jewel undertook around this time last year from overly earnest folk rocker to Just Another Dance Diva. You might remember I asked how long it would take her to burn out, considering that the new audience she was courting wasn't very interested in her words.
May 22nd was the day Jewel snapped.
Her first show at the Hampton Beach Ballroom Casino was, by all accounts, a solid set that sent everybody home happy; the second show sounds like one for the ages, for all the wrong reasons. Gloria Dion, who subscribes to the South Park maxim that in America, if something sucks you should get your money back, put it thus: "I saw her live in Boston and it was the greatest show I’ve ever been to. I don’t know if she was having a nervous breakdown or what. She told everyone to stop looking at her teeth and look at her breasts." The manager of radio station WERZ, which sponsored the debacle, obviously got an earful. "She said she saw a better audience at a barroom brawl and that all drinkers and smokers were sinners."
Her management, in full defense mode, said that sometimes Jewel slips a bit of cheeky humor into her performances, but it probably would've been nice if she'd slipped some music in, too; in the hour she was on, she only played four or five songs. Instead, she grumbled about Paxil and Zoloft for ten minutes, poked fun at fat folks and people's teeth, and told everybody to shut up after she asked for requests. For her encore, she came out and yodelled for a minute, then walked off. When they left, audience members screamed obscenities at her tour bus.
And that's how you flame out a career...
(Thanks to VH1's Best Week Ever blog for the heads-up)
May 22nd was the day Jewel snapped.
Her first show at the Hampton Beach Ballroom Casino was, by all accounts, a solid set that sent everybody home happy; the second show sounds like one for the ages, for all the wrong reasons. Gloria Dion, who subscribes to the South Park maxim that in America, if something sucks you should get your money back, put it thus: "I saw her live in Boston and it was the greatest show I’ve ever been to. I don’t know if she was having a nervous breakdown or what. She told everyone to stop looking at her teeth and look at her breasts." The manager of radio station WERZ, which sponsored the debacle, obviously got an earful. "She said she saw a better audience at a barroom brawl and that all drinkers and smokers were sinners."
Her management, in full defense mode, said that sometimes Jewel slips a bit of cheeky humor into her performances, but it probably would've been nice if she'd slipped some music in, too; in the hour she was on, she only played four or five songs. Instead, she grumbled about Paxil and Zoloft for ten minutes, poked fun at fat folks and people's teeth, and told everybody to shut up after she asked for requests. For her encore, she came out and yodelled for a minute, then walked off. When they left, audience members screamed obscenities at her tour bus.
And that's how you flame out a career...
(Thanks to VH1's Best Week Ever blog for the heads-up)
|| Eric 4:12 AM#
