A matter of priorities

This is going to be an off-the-cuff post, prompted by my disgust at a recent bit of Spam I just received from Lucas and company.

I've been subscribing to "The Homing Beacon," the official Star Wars e-mail newsletter, since — no lie — issue one. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there used to be actual news content in the Beacon; especially when George was making the prequel trilogy.

Sadly, those days died long ago. For the better part of a couple years, THB has been nothing more than a place for George & Co. to shill new Star Wars-themed Beanie Babies, or whatever the latest bit of Saga-related merchandising is.

This week, THB hit a new low — at least for this reporter.

In news, we designate the most important item in a news story, or laid out on the page, as the "lead." In a story, the lead is the most important bit of information that appears in the story, or the item that will impact the most number of people. We use a similar ethic ethos when choosing the lead story to go at the top of the page; what is going to affect the most readers. The question "what's the lead going to be?" is a question that I wrestle with every single time that write the most trivial of stories up to those times when I've acted as news editor for that day.

I don't own this, or much of anything else,
so don't bother sueing me, George.

So it was a great offense to me when THB's lead story in the wake of Celebration V was "Celebration V Merch Now At StarWarsShop!" I'm long since used to this sort of behavior from Lucas Inc., but what set me off the way the "real" news of George announcing that the Saga would be coming to BluRay next fall was buried "below the fold," as we say — you had to scroll down past the hawking of Yoda hats and similar dreck to find it. In news terms, this is worse than burying the lead. It is putting a car advertisement in place of an interview with the mayor on what his administration plans to accomplish this year.

Now, from an advertising standpoint, I understand this; the merch is here now, rotting in the warehouse. Likely, George's minions have just begun the work of compiling the material that will appear on the BluRay versions. So from a strictly business standpoint, the Celebration V chotskies are "now," with the BluRay announcement a distant "then."

But from a "news" standpoint, this is laughable and offensive at the same time. People have been clambering for the movies to be released on high-def DVDs since the HD-DVD/BluRay format wars of a few years ago. The movies are the single most important facet of Lucas' Empire — in my mind, they are Star Wars. That the long-awaited BluRay box is on the way was the single most important piece of real information to emerge from Celebration V.

I long for the days when we used to be able to get stuff like this from starwars.com. I loved getting new bits about making the new trilogies, or the frequent behind-the-scenes stuff about making the original trilogies. Not just archival photos; real articles and web documentaries.

Sadly, those days seem to be past. These days, starwars.com and the Beacon are all about product releases, and interviews with 'celebrity' fans. Don't getta me wronga — I'm glad that x bass player from y up-and-coming band grooved on Return of the Jedi when it came out. But I can only read so many such articles before acute boredom starts to set in.

I know. So they missed the lead? Big deal. And you'd be right. I guess what bothered me the most was that they had a bit of news that actually excited me, that woke up the slumbering Star Wars fan in me for just a moment. I haven't been interested in Star Wars for a while now; I've been busy with The Beatles and Apple Inc. of late, and haven't had much of a reason to find the goings-on in the Star Wars mythos remotely interesting — until now.

The BluRay release poses interesting questions; what archival stuff are they going to put on it? Are they going to include the "THX" versions as well? Is George going to go back and tinker with the films yet again? And is this just going to be "quickie" release, the first of a series of "new" BluRay editions, each just different enough from the last to justify a buying these films yet again for the upteenth time?

The first part of this question is genuinely interesting. You can cram a lot of stuff on a BluRay disc, and George has got a lot of stuff to use. As a teaser, he showed a long-documented scene from Return of the Jedi of Luke assembling his lightsaber at Ben's house (That little tidbit didn't make it onto THB either, BTW, although it is at least mentioned in this news item on starwars.com).

I liked Empire of Dreams, but it doesn't get a lot of repeated viewings — unlike the bonus material in the Extended Lord of the Rings DVDs, which I practically have memorized (can anyone say "bring the partridge?"). Heck, the stuff on The Phantom Menace DVD would be a step in the right direction. Say what you will about Episode I, it was the single best DVD release today as far as being a total package. The other two prequels were sadly lacking in extra features (none more so that Attack of the Clones), and to have a single disc of extra features for the entire Original Trilogy was kind of insulting.

Personally, I'd love to see the inclusion of From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga, or something similar. George has got to have miles of behind-the-scenes footage and unreleased scenes that he's been sitting on for just such an occasion. Surely, this is that occasion.

The cynic in me is ready for George to use this release as a way to hype something new; say the live-action TV series we haven't been hearing much about lately. He's done that before, with several past releases: the plugs for video games on Episodes I and III, for example. And it would be very in keeping with Lucasfilm Inc. to use the weight of the Saga to drive interest in a new game for the PS3, or something similar.

But the optimist in me is trying to stay, well, optimistic. George has talked in the past about doing a "pulling out all the stops" box set of the Star Wars movies. A 10- or 12-disc set with lots of new goodies would go a long way toward regaining the confidence and, dare I say it, interest of fans like me. Like as not, we'll get six movie and a max of two discs of mediocre special features, with the promise of the better set yet to come "when he has time."

George has come through in the past — Revenge of the Sith may not have been what fans had envisioned in the early 80s when we first learned of the falling out of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. But I think you have be pretty picky indeed to have walked away from that movie thinking that he didn't deliver on everything that was expected of him.

So, in the end, it's going to be up to George; is he going to try to keep milking us for another twenty years, stringing us along with weak reissue after weak reissue? Maybe. But he might also come through in the end, and give every fan — not just the hardcore collectors — something they genuinely want.

Time will tell. But in the mean time, I have greata faith in the boy. We shall see.

Fresh resolve

I used to read.

I used to read books compulsively, as easy as breathing. When I was a teenager, I picked up a fresh book before the next one was cool. It was a wonderful time — I had friends like Heinlein, Tolkien, Adams and Vonnegut, not to mention a brace of science fiction and fantasy greats.

Later, after I married, I let my wife suggest some books to e. I Read Rice, Irving and a few others. After college, I tackled Tolstoy, and tried (and failed) to follow it up with Dostoyevsky.

I fell in love with Lewis, and spent several years pouring over his books. I also got caught up in some popular bestsellers; Rowling and Meyers come to mind.

Gradually, though, my reading became a special occasion rather than a way of life. I read when I wanted to share something someone else was reading, or I nibbled at books in a hot bath. But I didn't devour books anymore. I left several books half-finished. Finally, even the books I would classify as "easy reads" seemed too formidable for me.

I blame the Internet.

The same perfectly-made tool that's allowing me to post this on the World Wide Web has made it far too easy for me to take the Internet with me wherever I go. As a result, I use it — very likely much more than I should.

As a consequence, I've been feeling a little part of me slowly dying. I haven't been aware of it for long, but it's similar to what I felt when I noticed that my love of music was mostly dead. A disquieting sense that something that I used to like about myself, something important, was withering and dying. And, growing by degrees, a sense that I didn't want it to.

The pebble that started the avalanche was a post on News, Weather & Sports by one of my mentors, Neil Peart of Rush. He was talking about time machines of all sorts — cars, songs, photos; things that take you back in time, or make you aware of the passage of it. One of Neil's time machines of choice is are books, and he illustrated the point with a fat stack of nine books represented his reading list for 10 days one February. He talked in glowing terms about the worlds that lurked behind the spine of each book, waiting to be discovered, its contours mapped out individually inside your mind. And he alluded to notion that, if there really was a heaven, it might just consist of endless time by the fire, with nothing to do but turn pages.

I was inspired and intimidated at the same time.

Inspired because I immediately wanted to started checking books off my reading list. Intimidated because reading has always been kind of an effort for me, and the stack of books he was going to take down in 10 days would have taken me two months of vacation time. Maybe more.

It's not my reading speed, which is serviceable, if not spectacular. It's because often when I'm reading, there's always the restless notion that I should be elsewhere, doing something else. Usually, it gets the best of me, and I wind up doing just that. Add to this my regrettable tendency to get stalled halfway through a book, walk away, and usually never return, and you wind up with a person that doesn't get a lot of books finished.

The last time I had a good read was more than a year ago, when I literally had nothing else to do. Then, I did read nine books, but it took me a  little longer than ten days. I was flat on my back, recovering (or trying to recover) from a ruptured disc. Reading seemed like an excellent use of my time. And it was, but after four months, I eventually had to get better, and go back to work.

And that's a good thing, as far as it goes. But Neil's picture made me realize that it was time to get back to work in another way. And finally, two days ago, I yielded to the impulse.

I started by dusting off my Goodreads account, which I hadn't updated since finishing The Book of Mormon in October. My "currently reading" section had five books, four of them quite cold. I decided to pull those for the time being, and start with some new fare. And since I think the fact that I try to take down so many books at once is also to blame, I have decided to try to limit what I read at any given time.

At my wife's suggestion, I've decided to break my literary fast with something light, enjoyable, but with that hint of the fantastic I enjoy so much The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Also, there's a borrowed copy of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn. Then there's the Phil Yancey ebook Prayer that I started a few weeks ago. And, of course, my copy of the Wesley Study Bible that I will never officially finish, but can't bring myself to take off the "currently reading" shelf. Because, like, you know, I'm currently reading it.

So that makes, ah, four books. Well, that's one less than five.

I'll keep you posted on my progress, dear readers. Until then, happy reading.

Maybe I'm Amazed

I'm just a few hours back from the McCartney show. I'm tired, my throat is sore, and I don't think I have it in me to distill three hours of once-in-a-lifetime experience into a few paragraphs of pithy commentary. But here goes.

In the back of my mind, I was worried that this show would not, could not possibly, live up to the experience I had seeing the great man in 1993. Then I was awed at the idea of seeing actual Beatle in the actual flesh. Since then, I have been inordinately blessed to have seen both living Beatles in concert one time each. So when Paul walked casually onto the stage last night, I didn't have the surge of "Oh my God, that's really him" that I did in 1993.

There was also the fact that I had accidentally seen the first five songs in the set lists from another venue, so I had a pretty good idea what was in store early on. And, as it happens, the early part of the show was weighted with largely post-Beatles material, which I don't have nearly the emotional attachment to. Also, there was the lady sitting near me, who had decided to favor us all by wearing a generous slathering of her favorite perfume; a thick, sickly and cheap-smelling floral that kept intruding on my consciousness for the first 30 minutes or so of the show.

When all these factors are taken into consideration, I think I can be forgiven for the fact that I was 10 songs into the concert before the feel of the thing began to take me over. The emotional reactions I wrote of in my last post first reared their head during an especially playful version of  "Let 'Em In." The interaction between the band; the way the drummer kept flicking his head to the left, the center and the right, the exact same way every time, as he drilled his way steadily through the song's military-inspired snare part; and just the whimsical nature of the song, hooked me, and pulled me into the show.

After that, I seldom left.

Oh, to be sure, there were minor annoyances; the beer vendor who bellowed "Ice Cold Beer!" three feet from my face as I was trying to enjoy the epic pyrotechnic excitement that was "Live and Let Die" (jolted from my concentration on the song, I bellowed "Shut up!" back at him nearly as loud). And there was the steady stream of people who opted to spend the concert plying their own special trade route between the concession stand, their seats, and the bathroom. Ordinarily, I would have never have noticed this last bit but for the fact that the steps leading down from our section crossed in front of our seats, and we had a steady stream of heads briefly crossing in front of our field of view.

But these were all minor trifles, and easily ignored, in comparison of what we got to witness. The delight I felt at "Let 'Em In" increased more and more during the next two hours, until by the time we reached the second encore, my wife and I were both in a more-or-less permanent state of slack-jawed amazement. The surprises, the "you've got to be kidding me" moments came regularly; "A Day In The Life," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" (which he's almost never done live), "I've Got A Feeling," "Day Tripper," "Helter Skelter" — the arrival of each left me stunned, except for "Helter Skelter," which, instead, triggered a burst of maniacal laughter.

The most moving moment for me was "Two Of Us." The Let It Be album has been growing on me lately, and this track, which opens that album, has always reminded me of John and Paul's early friendship as Liverpool teens. A close second, and one of my wife's favorite moments, was his intimate and sweeping rendition of Something, which was a beautiful, touching and genuine tribute to George Harrison.

When we reached Hey Jude, the I felt the sadness set in. This number has long been a staple closing number of McCartney shows, so I knew we were close to the end. I knew going into this night that, all things taken into consideration, I would likely never be in the same room with Sir Paul again. I dutifully sang along with the roughly 20,000-strong crowd until the bitter end. Then, as he waved from the stage and took his bows with the rest of the band, I said a quiet "Goodbye, Paul."

Thankfully, Sir Paul takes not one, but two curtain calls in his show, and my mood had lifted considerably by the second one, when Paul's simple, beautifully done version of "Yesterday" was answered a few seconds later with the raucous machine gun guitar opening of "Helter Skelter." When the band followed this with the "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise," it was yet another treat in a long night of treats, and it felt like an acceptable, and even fitting, way to end the evening.

Then the band bounced off of one of the chords from "Pepper," and into "The End" from Abbey Road — long one of my favorite tracks from my favorite album. And with that, any reluctance I had to say goodbye to Paul, and to the evening, disappeared.

Paul traded guitar leads with the other two band members until the band crashed into the soft piano ostinato, and I watched, stunned into motionless, as he sang the lines "And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make." If he had asked me how I wanted him to end the show, I would not have dared to think of this.

And then, the song was over. Paul took his bows, told us he would see us next time, and was gone, leaving my wife and I, jaws open, shaking our heads at each other in amazement.

The show I saw seventeen years ago stood at the top of the heap of the dozens of shows I've seen during my life. Until last night, that is.

I walked out of the Bridgestone Arena last night convinced, as I am now, that I will probably never see a better concert for the rest of my life.

And you know what? I think I'm okay with that.

…you get what you need

The year was 1990, or thereabouts. I had been married for a few years, and was busy trudging along the singularly unwise career path of the professional musician. My guiding stars musically (then as now), were Rush and The Beatles. Having the passions of youth, I held both bands in a near-religious esteem; particularly The Beatles, whom I'd been raised on. So when I heard that Paul McCartney was going on tour for the first time in ten years to support his Flowers In The Dirt CD, and would be playing a substantial amount of live Beatles material for the first time since he walked off the rooftop of 3 Savile Row in early 1969, I was frantic to go.

Word eventually came to me that he would be playing at an arena about a four-hour drive from my doorstep. This concert took place in the less-than-halcyon days before the Internet, when getting concert tickets involved standing in long lines, or waiting in interminable phone queues for the next available operator. Just finding out the date and time the seats would go on sale wasn't easy to come by. And so it was that, by the time we found out about it, it came with the word that seats were going for $200-$400 apiece. And just like that, the dream of seeing an actual Beatle in the flesh — one of my heroes — popped like a soap bubble.

Bitterness naturally ensued. I wasted a couple years hating the circumstances that had deprived me of this holy experience (and even McCartney himself a little — did he really need that much money?). I bought the 2-disc CD of the tour when it was released (in fact, I'm listening to it as I type this), but didn't listen to it much. The wound was still too fresh, and it only made me remember what had nearly been within my grasp.

It is surprising to me how quickly that wound healed when I finally secured tickets to a subsequent Memphis appearance by the Great Man some three years later. This time, the tickets were $35 — a hefty sum for concert tickets then, but one I considered, then as now, to be altogether reasonable.

I am delighted to report that the concert, when it occurred, was all that I had needed it to be. It began with the inevitable excitement I felt as McCartney casually strolled onto the sun-soaked stage (it would be dark when we finished three hours later), carrying the same Hofner bass he'd used with The Beatles, and ripped into "Drive My Car." Not only was he doing Beatles songs, he was opening with one! It was one of the first of a happy, hazy jumble of memories of that show —things like the mist rolling slowly down the sides of the Liberty Bowl during "Michelle;" joining with 60,000 people as we sang "Hey Jude;" the ripple of excitement I felt during the opening of "Paperback Writer," and, in pride of place, the massive, fireworks-fueled percussion kick during "Live and Let Die," which raises the hair on the back of my neck every time I think about it.

In fact, my adreneline-soaked emotional reactions are really what I treasure about that show. Because ultimately, what makes a concert special isn't what you see or hear in that tiny march of minutes, it's your emotional reactions to what you're experiencing. It wasn't the mists of "Michelle" that stands out in my mind — it was the relaxed, serene joy I felt at that instant. It was a phenomena that the late Spaulding Gray called "a perfect moment."

Needless to say, that show was replete with perfect moments, and it still stands as one of the high points of my life. Because the show happened as I was winding up my baccalaureate studies, and because of the utter perfection of the experience, I often refer to the concert as 'my graduation present from God.'

Sometimes — though not often — I'm even joking when I say it.

Flash forward 17 years.

I learned a few months ago that Sir James Paul McCartney was coming to Nashville, my concert city of preference, and the closest he had ever come to the home of your humble author. After coming down from the ceiling, I told several people that I didn't care what seats I had; I just "wanted to be in the building." I said this a lot over the weeks leading up to tickets going on sale, almost like a mantra. Every time I said it, thought, there was also an always-unspoken second part — "... but I also want really good seats."

At the same time, my daughter was equally excited about seeing one of her musical idols, one Adam Lambert. Naturally, the pre-sale for that show went on sale on that same day in early June as the McCartney show. The thankless task of juggling Ticketmaster orders fell to my wife, and she had a very tense morning indeed. I say thankless, because after finding out the location of our seats, the first words out of my mouth weren't "Brava," "Good show," or even "I love you." What I said was, and I quote, "Wow - we're really far back there, aren't we?"

And to be fair, there are only a few hundred people — at most a thousand — who can say they are farther from the stage than we are. That doesn't matter; this is among the more ungrateful things I've ever said in a long history of saying ungrateful things. It wasn't until that moment that I realized the existence of the unspoken second part of the mantra "…but I also want really good seats."

It continued to be a very tense morning; I had to convince my wife that I was, indeed, very thankful to have tickets, and very grateful for her efforts. Thankfully, she believed me, eventually. She then turned to getting tickets to Adam Lambert. We had planned to go as a family, in part so that we could experience the show, but also in part because we wanted to watch our daughter enjoying the show. And after many mighty struggles with the ticket gods, and some timely assistance from a friend, we were able to obtain two, individual tickets.

Elsewhere, other battles were raging. My best friend and musical partner in crime was having problems with McCartney tickets of his own. We had long known that we wouldn't be sitting together this trip because we needed three tickets each, and the limit was four tickets per sale. So sadly, we wouldn't be sitting together. But he came very close to not being able to get tickets at all; it is only because of a friend's generosity that he and his wife were able to obtain seats, but that is a tale for another time.

By noon, it was over. No, we did not have great seats to Paul McCartney. We did not even have good seats. But we had seats.

I would not be able to watch my daughter seeing one of her musical heroes. But she would get to see him.

My best friend and I would not be able to sit together and share the experience of seeing one of our musical heroes, as we had 17 years earlier. But we were each going.

Since that day in June, I've had a snatch of a Rolling Stones song in my head — ironic, for a lifelong Beatles fan like me.

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.

We leave for Nashville in a few hours. Look for a full report soon.