Crib Notes

By Michael Gerber

For the second time in a row, Ryan Adams has walked off an Atlanta stage to a chorus of boos. In October 2007 Adams didn’t play an encore to his two set, 20-song performance at the Fox Theatre. Apparently, this wasn’t enough and a captivating show ended prematurely. On Friday, Oct. 18, he barely made it through about 12 songs and a second set wasn’t even mentioned.

Five songs in he started complaining that his voice wasn’t singing like he wanted it to. His stage banter was entirely made up of emotionless apologies about him being sick and the effect on his voice. “I’m doing a disservice to the band and the audience,” he said. But the apologies were unnecessary. His Carolina twang was replaced by a raspy rocker struggling to get his words out. The quivering melancholy was replaced by rough frustration, which conveyed his desperation just as effectively. The imperfections actually gave this amphitheater show a level of intimacy. In fact, the missed notes made it appropriately painful, and the sad songs were sadder. And all his songs are sad. “I sound like the guy from the Goo-Goo Dolls,” the self-deprecations continued. Well, that’s another way of seeing it.

From the audience’s perspective, “Wonderwall,” “The Sun Also Sets,” and “Come Pick Me Up” left us feeling amazed and somewhat awkward. Yes, awkward. It’s something more than a good tune when a man exposes his insecurities with sincerity, musicianship and songs with equal levels of intensity. It was puzzling when he followed these moments with emotionally detached excuses that seemed bogus, or at least made us think he was overreacting (or overacting as some suspicious audience members speculated).

The Cardinals ripped through “Shakedown On 9th Street” with the amateurish gusto that make it an unrestrained bare bones rock song. And then he gave his last apology and called it a night.

Adams seemed to be experiencing a different concert. And more than the usual divide between musician and audience. He was stuck, trapped in a world that required perfection. He was unable to see the enjoyment of others because of this. His trick is that he’s usually able to channel his eccentricities into traditional country rock ballads. Or to put it bluntly, he turns his craziness into something beautiful and familiar. In concert, the band took his songs further than they reach in the recorded versions. They explore adjunct terrain in well-crafted jams that give the audience something more than a track downloaded off of iTunes ever could. In a certain sense, this was a more in-your-face view of his madness, both for good and bad.

Adams gave us a too-brief view of his world last Friday. Or another, more cynical person might say he made his money and then did the bare minimum required to go home with it. This is harsh, but it brings up an interesting question: What does the artist owe the paying customer? In a capitalist system, the entertainer-spectator relationship is inherently producer-consumer, as in we’re paying for a service, to be entertained. “Did I get my money’s worth?” the consumer asks. “How much do I need to give to earn my money?” the producer asks.

It would be ideal to separate these two worlds, but when you pay hard earned currency for a ticket, it’s impossible. One way to see it is that it’s the artist’s responsibility to separate the two worlds. Adams had clearly ignored the monetary aspect and decided he would put on a perfect show or nothing at all. Giving the audience their money’s worth would not be enough. Even though the audience would have settled for a more instrumental focused evening, the music was not meeting his standards so he called it quits..

So either he’s an asshole or an artist. The girl sitting next to me called him a “bitch.” As in, “we paid, I’m enjoying the show, now don’t stop entertaining us because of your so-called problems you whiney little bitch.” I tend to be an Adams apologist and say he can’t help himself. The price of enjoying his art is that we’re going to get nights like last Friday.

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Tags: Ryan Adams, the Cardinals, Verzon Wireless Amphitheatre.