This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Ladies and gentlemen, The Vulture is leaving the building. After five years writing this column and covering pop music, I'm taking a gig elsewhere within this newspaper, a job where I'll get to mingle with Utahns throughout the state rather than just those who belly up to the bar at one of my favorite watering holes. The "Culture Vulture" column will continue under new ownership. In the meantime, indulge me in a brief bout of reflection. The five years I've spent doing this column and covering music have been full of highlights, enough that the reams of hate-mail that occasionally come from, say, Clay Aiken's fan club, don't really bring me down.
Many highlights were interviews with some of my favorite artists - Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic from Nirvana, Ani DiFranco, Del McCoury, Elvis's guitar player Scotty Moore - and many more were concerts I've been lucky enough to review: Fugazi, Prince, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson. Seeing the right artist at the right venue on the right night can be a magical thing, as any hard-core music fan can tell you, and you can leave a big arena or small club feeling a lot better about the world than you did before the show started.
Of course, it works the other way as well. Some trends that have taken hold in the music industry and among music fans are enough to make a grown man cry, and some concerts can make you feel dead inside as much as others can make you feel alive.
Here, then, because The Vulture just loves lists, is a brief rundown of my pet peeves and petty annoyances after five years of constant concert attendance:
l Guys who take their shirts off at a club. I know you're hot, sweaty and want to show off the six-pack abs, but does the rest of the crowd need to go home covered in your sweat, too? No, we don't, so stop it.
l Women who flash their breasts at concerts. Granted, female empowerment includes the freedom to flash whomever you like, but when you see a teenage girl goaded into it by a bunch of adolescent boys and a Korn roadie with a camera, it's depressing. Might we suggest keeping your shirt on and extending your middle finger to the camera the next time around?
l Security guards on a power trip. It doesn't matter if you're at a club or an arena, there always seems to be some meathead security guard who thinks his $8 an hour entitles him to treat the concertgoers like dirt. Bear this in mind: Without those kids going to the show, you're just a putz who lifts a lot of weights and waxes nostalgic about your high school football days.
l Service charges. Isn't it about time someone at Ticketmaster or Smith's Tix included an explanation of the extra $5 to $8 tacked onto every ticket they sell? When a $20 ticket is really a $27 ticket, something's awry.
l Lip-synching acts and the people that support them. For me, the true test of an artist is how they pull off their music in a live environment. When people such as Britney Spears and Janet Jackson so obviously lip-synch to recorded tracks in their concerts, and their fans don't seem to mind judging by ticket sales, we're one step closer to music being a pure commercial commodity rather than art. Very depressing.
l American Idol." Some people point to the stratospheric ratings of this karaoke game show as evidence that we're are paying more attention to music. I point to "American Idol" as, in the words of comic Bill Hicks, a scourge "let loose upon the Earth to lower the standards." He was speaking of Madonna, Rick Astley and George Michael in the early '90s, but Hicks didn't live to see how much worse it could get.
With that, I'll bid you adieu.