I prefer to relish my teenager memories of bands like Van Halen and The Police and I am somewhat luke warm on the idea of seeing 55-year-olds fill up an arena to make a buck on their dusty brand name long after they have passed their prime.  While I probably would do the same thing if I was them and, if they can sell tickets, they should but I am not necessarily going to line up to see Genesis play Dodger Stadium.  I never really liked Genesis to begin with but I will probably make an exception for The Police.

So, I was trying to figure out something witty to say about the Van Halen debacle.  The term “Theatre of the Absurd” came to mind but, I must admit, I really didn’t know what that term meant.  So, like I do for just about everything these days, I checked it out on Wikipedia (even a former boss of mine has a Wikipedia entry which is kind of creepy).  I didn’t realize just how good of a term it was to describe Van Halen (and a lot of other things too, by the way), until I read this (and slightly modified it for my purposes):

In practice, [Van Halen] departs from realistic characters, situations and all of the associated theatrical conventions. Time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid, and even basic causality frequently breaks down. Meaningless plots, repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like moods. There is a fine line, however, between the careful and artful use of chaos and non-realistic elements and true, meaningless chaos. While many of the [rock bands] described by this title seem to be quite random and meaningless on the surface, an underlying structure and meaning is usually found in the midst of the chaos.

I think I would rather go watch one of these plays than to see a Van Halen reunion show with the now “rational” David Lee Roth and Wolfgang Van Halen on bass while pappa Van Halen passes out.  It would cost to much to go and see it just for the laugh. 

As usually happens with us, we get interested in a documentary topic and then watch too many documentaries on said topic which, in turn, relieves us of our interest.  This happened to us a few years ago with surfing films.  We first watched Stacy Peralta’s Dogtown and Z-Boys followed in rapid succession by Riding Giants and Step into Liquid.  Then, we figured we were done with surf films for a while.  We did watch the fictional Lords of Dogtown which was based on the same events as Dogtown and Z-Boys and was disappointing given our newfound expertise on the topic of 1970s era surf culture in Southern California.
 

That brings me back to The Clash.  We rented The Essential Clash thinking incorrectly that it was a documentary.  In fact, it was a series of live performances with a little bit of interviews and such; however, not being a die-hard fan of the band, it left me wanting more information (this is coming from the guy who after seeing the Doors movie with Val Kilmer I bought The Best of the Doors CD and read No One Here Gets Out Alive…that was in the days before the World Wide Web).  I read the Wikipedia entry on The Clash which was interesting but we found out that there was a documentary called The Clash: Westway to the World.  Westway is a series of interviews with the members of the band and follows their history from the beginning to break-up but I felt that the movie was missing a narrator to fill in the blanks between the band interviews.  Title screens before each major topic helped but it would have been great to have more intermediary commentary.

What always amazes me about stories of popular bands, especially bands like The Clash which are later deemed to be “great”, is that their greatness seems to be so situational.  Not taking anything from their talent but I don’t think that The Clash is any more or less talented than any other band of their era.  They just happened to strike a chord (right time, right place and kind of, yes, random).  It always seems like they were successful in spite of themselves and that was definitely the case with The Clash. Fame, like everything else, is basically random.  You have to believe that any one of the hundreds of garage bands with bad lead singers from that, or any, time could have been the great band that The Clash became and that there was a large amount of luck that resulted in their success.   

That being said, their music is great.  I decided to listen to some Clash while writing this for inspiration and you can definitely tell how influential London Calling was.  You can hear in some of the reggae and funk material the beginning of the crossover bands that came later, like The Police.  It also strikes me as funny just how tame bands like The Clash, The Police and The Sex Pistols were in comparison to modern day punk and certainly the really hard core underground punk that I used to listen to in high school.  For its time, though, bands like The Clash were revolutionaries and saw themselves as such even though you can catch a few disco influenced beats in their songs here and there.  I added Train in Vain to my “Great Songs” playlist on my iPod and probably will spend more time listening to The Clash in the future.

The Disney Hall was designed by Frank Gehry and I just don’t understand why his designs are so popular.  Stardom in architecture is apparently directly related to the degree of wierdness.  I also don’t like Gehry because his silly designs made my three years at Loyola Law School, also designed by Gehry, that much more like a bad dream.  The Disney Hall is the new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic but it also hosts other events, like Sting’s concert.  Not being much of a classical music fan (generally, that kind of music makes me want to kill myself while Green Day relaxes me…go figure), I had never been to the Disney Hall before but I do have to say that as stupid as the exterior design is, the interior is very cool and the accoustics are amazing.

The Disney Hall is a long way from Hollywood Park where I first saw Sting live on the Synchronicity Tour with Berlin, The Fixx and the Thompson Twins on September 8, 1983.  I was a HUGE fan of The Police in high school and they still rank among my favorite bands of all times.  I have remained a fan of Sting ever since he started his solo career after The Police broke up in the late 80s, having seen him live a half-dozen times or so. 

However, Sting was not at the Disney Hall to rock out (although he did play “Message in a Bottle” and “Fields of Gold” during the encore).  Instead, he played most songs from his new album entitled Songs from the Labyrinth, a collaboration with modern day lutenist Edin Karamazov on a collection of songs from John Dowland who was a was a 16th century English, possibly Irish-born composer, singer, and lutenist.  No, I have to say that I had no idea who John Downland was and I didn’t even really know what a lute was until I read the program for the concert (it’s kind of like a guitar).  Anyway, John Dowland seems like he was kind of a moody singer-songwriter who would have been comfortable in today’s coffee houses in Seattle.  Sting not only performed the music but also read excerpts from letters written by Dowland and provided some historical context as well.  The music was very interesting, as was the story behind it, and Sting’s unique voice certainly lent itself to both the music and the setting.  I’m even thinking of buying the CD.  Buying CDs seems so 1995 but I checked and only a few songs are available on iTunes.

I’m not sure that I realized I was going to a classical music concert (nor, I’m sure, did my brother and his wife who bought us the tickets) but I probably never would have thought to go had it not been for such a generous and thoughtful gift.