The inevitable barrage of cheap slag pieces complaining about said tour, that’s what. This time it’s the Rolling Stones, of course. Yes, they’re pushing sixty. Yes, they’re touring again. Yes, they’ll make millions doing it. And yes, again, somehow this just pisses some people off.

Case in point: I just read this piece from the New York Times. With essentially no exceptions, it is more or less exactly the same piece that’s run somewhere every time the Stones have toured since about 1975. Columns like this are as tired and boring as they say the Stones are, if not moreso. It’s a knee-jerk response calculated to resonate with the inevitable hipper-than-thou types who find the Stones repugnant because they’re not the cutting edge of cool anymore. I read the same bit in 1989, and again in 1994 — and went on to enjoy the Stones tours both years, as did thousands of other people.

The only shocking thing about this particular piece is the author. Neal Pollack is a regular contributor to Dave Eggers’ McSweeneys.Net online literary magazine, and typically his pieces are interesting and well-considered. This is a flaccid retread of something a hundred men and women have written before, and it takes us nowhere new. So he’s got his panties in a wad that Jagger, et. al., will pocket millions by playing this tour, and he feels it Important to insist that they “have nothing to do with Rock and Roll.” Whatever, man. I hope the NYT check was big. What are you now, the Comic Book Guy? |*|