Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot broke the news that Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are probably headlining this year’s edition of Lollapalooza on his blog, and the comment-section posturers were out in full force, hoping to let people know that they were, in fact, anonymously better than everyone else. To wit: “I paid $2 to see Radiohead in concert once back when I lived in NYC.”; “The secret sale tickets sold out in something like 13 minutes this morning. No wonder you missed it.”; and “Great! Can’t wait to spend over $200 to hear these normally great bands sound abnormally mediocre thanks to generic festival audio mixing! Yeepee!” But my favorite comment has to be the one that was in response to someone trying to make a feeble joke about Radiohead’s first big hit–you know, the one that they released when they were merely a bunch of 120 Minutes also-rans:
@ Jeff:
“Sweet! I sure hope they play Creep…I love that jam!”you are the exact person I don’t want to see at this show. FYI – they’ve banned it from their repitore – thank god …
Posted by: Phife | Mar 7, 2008 12:14:16 PM
This comment may be the ultimate example of Internet humorlessness, seeing as how it combines the following:
• Snobbery!
• Pedantry!
• Incorrect pedantry! (Dude should have checked Wikipedia: “After mid 1998 they did not play the song live at all until the final encore of their hometown concert at South Park in Headington in Oxford in 2001, when they played it in a seemingly impromptu decision after an equipment failure on the keyboard near the start of ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’. Since then they have played it 15 more times (including a performance of the song as they headlined V Festival 2006).”
• Misspellings!
Really, if it had a gratuitous self-link I would try to bronze it as an example of Everything Irksome About Internet Music Discussion In 2008. Do you think this guy has a blog?
Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails to headline Lollapalooza ’08 [Turn It Up]
Yeah, they played it the last time they played Coachella (’04?). FWIW, the crowd seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.
I now have a lifetime goal. To be the guy who is eternally the exact person people like “Phife” don’t want to see at any given show. Look for me at Coachella. I’ll be the one in a Rocklahoma shirt, yelling at Beth Gibbons to take of her top, and give me some port-a-john Portishead.
Also, how did “Phife” decide on his name? Was “Pras” taken?
it’s obviously phife dog from a tribe called quest. a duh.
Ooh, it has a “is this really news?” comment and a “someone else already posted this” comment, making it an example of Everything Irksome About Blog Commentating too.
these … great bands
I’ll let you have Radiohead, even though I think at some point Thom stopped in his local Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of “How to start taking yourself far too seriously, become ‘experimental’, and pose as if you’re embarrassed by your earlier, more straight-ahead work, even if, considered objectively, it is much better music” by Diamond, Horowitz, and Yauch.
But anyway, if calling Nine Inch Nails a “great band” is snobbery, I’d hate to see lowest common denominator.
if you’re posting on absurd commenting now, you should check out my work on jambase.com over the last few weeks. man firing up folks over there is like blasting bearded burnout fish in a tiny, tiny barrel. and the barrel has a phish logo on the side. and the fish are already disoriented from years of psychotropic substance abuse.
True fact: I would be the pedant in that thread, except I don’t know off hand how many times they’ve played Creep on the last few tours, and wouldn’t look it up.
I’d just mention that, you know. They have. And I’ve got bootlegs to prove it.
In general: I guess I don’t mind if the Chicago show was Lollapalooza. I’d still go. But it would make me even more glad that I got pit tickets for the St. Louis show, which won’t be some truncated festival set.
Jambase.com’s commenters are the worst, but they blow away even Pollstar in the amount of tourdate information they have.
Well, to be fair, we could change Wikipedia right now to say they’ve played Creep any number of times since 2001….
First!
I saw Radiohead (with Belly, maybe?) when Creep was all the rage. All of the mellow kids tired to get thier mosh on when those crunchy guitars came in. I’d never ever seen 150 people all simultaneously tumble to the floor like dominoes before, but it happened, and it was hilarious.
It’s a pretty great song live and do fratboys still go to radiohead anymore anyways?
This is a hilarious — I ran into that entry in Kot’s blog and read all those comments you’re writing about before reading this post, and I thought *all* of the same things you did — christ, what a bunch of assholes. The Creep comment was clearly tongue-in-cheek. And even if it wasn’t, so fucking what?
@drjimmy11: Did you just call License to Ill better than Paul’s Boutique?!
YOU ARE THE EXACT PERSON I DON’T WANT TO DISCUSS THE BEASTIE BOYS BACK CATALOG WITH.