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MAYHEM AND CONFLICT AT THE HALL OF FAME!!!
Posted by Chris Stein at 3/16/2006 09:07:00 PM
MAYHEM AND CONFLICT AT THE HALL OF FAME!!! AHHHH!!!! BLONDIE AND SEX PISTOLS GO CRAZY!!!! ETC!!!
first i love it all...
second what we have here are some valuable life lessons, for me the most intense about the chaos of media... i have seen so many versions of the events of the other evening its mind bending and my main reaction is 'what the fucking fuck happens to the real news?' now any one who is interested in an exercise in futility, google the hall of fame deal and check all the various nasty and friendly reports of what was perhaps three minutes worth of activity then watch the actual thing on this coming tuesday and maybe it will blow your mind to the extent mine is... the New York Times provided a really good account of what went down as far as i'm concerned... but generally in this case the media seems to be like an absurd game of telephone with its garbling of facts... you gotta believe me i've seen some really weirdass misquotes, reports etc etc... what is left of the 'real news' after the media gets done with it?
now i wanted to get this up on the site days ago but we have been doing rounds of press; radio and tv spots hyping the tour and talking about the HOF event... the one thing i've been saying to the press is "...if you want to know why we didnt want to work with this guy just watch the video." hopefully frankies antics wont be cut from the show and all of you will get to see it as well (there are clips on the web of it all)... i dont know really what the hell he thought he was doing but when i have a chance to be on tv in front of millions of people as well as a huge cross section of the music industry, i try my best not to act like a whining cranky eight year old... sadly its how i remember him... i thought debbie handled it as well as she could... i didnt really hear what was going on, debbie had left the podium and come over to me and we spent a few seconds debating if she should go back and thank paul, leigh and kev whose names had been left out by both of us, at that moment frank started speaking and she returned... from my position i couldnt hear much and when i later saw it on CNN i was amazed and amused... i sort of feel bad for nigel cause i dont think franks outburst was at all planned, nigel is a dignified cat and in spite of our differences i cant help but like him... i thought frank begging debbie to play was totally insincere, his tone was just mocking and i think he was more interested in being mean to debbie than in actually playing... if frank and nigel hadnt tried to sue us we might have considered having them play...
again the media: that this small non-event was inflated to the proportion of... god knows... the germans invading poland, whatever, its nuts...
the event was really quite draining in spite of what a cool deal it was to be a part of... i was very glad when it was over... playing in front of a crowd thats composed of some of the greatest musicians in the world, guys from the industry who have spent the last 40 and more years listening to every major act as well as producing them... its pretty daunting and any of the screwups in the show are due to intimidation and stress factors...
many high points as well... after getting the awards the 'inductees' would go back for a full blown press conference... barb and i watched the Sabbath conf which was really funny, on the marx brothers side... Ozzy looks great... Elvis C. was very gracious and told me that he had many of the same reactions i did, tension with one of his band mates, his wife having to keep him in his claustrophobic seat etc... there were times i just couldnt make sitting at the table and had to hang in the 'green room' with the troops... i was really touched by Shirleys speech... we sort of tied with the pistols without trying... Jan Wenner had a great moment reading the infamous "letter" that was originally put up on their site, funny, we all of course had wondered how they would deal with the whole thing, to me just the reading and his telling them that "the awards would be in Cleveland if they wanted them to have or smash to bits..." seemed a better solution than i had anticipated anyone would come up with
so watch the thing on tuesday night on VH1, hopefully we wont come off too awful... most of us anyway
then the tickets are going on sale for the blondie/new cars tour... i haven't heard them yet but debbie says they sound good... so regardless of your sentiments about the cars, we will be in most major and various lesser US markets this summer, for those of you who think its a great idea, well good you'll have a better time than those of you who hate it but show up anyway... i gotta pay the rent too
baby Val is starting to walk, Akira got to go to the HOF sound check for a bit...
i also saw a rough cut of our BBC documentary which they are threatening to have done by the end of the month... its pretty cool a lot more personal than some of the previous things... i'm still looking to get a full length thing going sometime, this will be an hour tv show though... more on it later, i'm looking forward to you all seeing it
so there's a lot going on right now... i survived the last week nicely thank you
later
i'm starting to get messages about the HOF...
we are musicians... we should not be forced to work with people we dont want to work with... i'm very pleased to be in the hall of fame but i would be much more pleased if i had been voted in by fans... if you want to complain write to the sex pistols
more than that i am hoping that the US upcoming tour is a success and we are able to bring it over to the UK and Europe...
we had intended to stop for a while after the last UK leg but all of this hall of fame stuff came up and we are gonna do this next thing now...
Debbie and I intend to keep working on music together and trying to expand... we both would like to be able to do more improvised forms of music than are possible in the blondie situation
anyway david bowie did like seven 'farewell' tours so i'm not discounting anything
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