Breakfast Rock

Picture this: 10 o'clock in the morning on Saturday. An enormous hotel ballroom with tables full of hundreds of people drinking coffee and eating breakfast quiches. The lights dim. Someone gets on stage in a suit and makes a speech about new product initiatives driving incremental sales. Bar charts are shown up on the big screen. Polite clapping from the audience. The curtains behind the podium open, and Fefe Dobson starts stalking the stage in full regalia -- clown makeup plastered on her face, torn clothing and defiant snarl. Her band leaps around behind her in their black skull-and-crossbones shirts. After the first number, she screams, "How y'all doing tonight?!" No response from the audience. Fefe does another couple of tunes, then exits the stage in a cavalcade of feedback and crashing cymbals. Polite clapping from the audience. Another short speech with some bar charts showing genre sales for the past six quarters.

Next up - the All American Rejects who repeat the same incongruous performance, though their lead singer at least gets the time of day right - "How y'all doing this morning?!"

This past weekend's conference was the World Series for music retailers, rackjobbers and distributors. And these bands were playing their guts out at ten in the fucking morning for a shot at eighteen inches of end-cap at your local Tower Records.

Okay, so that's the biz. But my heart really goes out to these musicians. At the direction of their labels, they packaged up a heavily abbreviated version of their show, performed twelve hours earlier than normal, and did so in front of an audience that gave them less response than they would have gotten from my six-month-old kid. At least he might have pooped or spit up or something rock-and-roll like that. Fefe Dobson was bookended by bar charts for chrissakes. Talk about a tough show.