Comments on: things the thirty-year-old j.d. would tell the twenty-year-old j.d. in 1997, I

By: John B.

John B. — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 20:42:53 +0000

I was taught that the art of music lies in knowing when not to play.

Yes–and I think one could make an analogy between that and commenting on blogs by comparing and contrasting my first comment on this thread with yours.

By: Diggers Realm

Diggers Realm — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 10:11:07 +0000

Around The Blogosphere And Open Trackback #37: Server Outage Edition…

The “Server Outage” edition in the continuing saga of interesting and thought provoking news from around the web. After this weeks server outage I’m going to roundup some stories I, and you, may have missed. This is a long one……

By: j.d.

j.d. — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 05:16:20 +0000

I was taught that the art of music lies in knowing when not to play.

By: John B.

John B. — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:55:41 +0000

I’ve had a similar maturation of judgment, too, and precisely about Blues Traveller. The first time I saw them was on Letterman; they performed “But Anyway.” Popper was so heavy that he sat in a chair to perform, but their performance had a ferocity to it that seemed out of all proportion to the fact that the frontman was sitting down. I was impressed, and I still like that song. But the beginning of the end, I think, was when I read a story in Rolling Stone about a Rolling Stones tour that Blues Traveller was supporting. In the story, Jagger is backstage before a show when someone whom Popper has sent approaches him about the idea of Popper’s joining the Stones onstage for “Honky Tonk Women.” Jagger demurs politely, but after the messenger leaves, he says something like, “He sure plays a lot of notes.” Add to that my later sense, via interviews, that Popper has (or had, back when they were played on the radio more) a rather grand sense of his band’s place in music, and it’s been pretty much downhill for them in my estimation.
There is value in restraint, no?