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BIG NEWS! When you read that, imagine my eyes rolling and my fingers waggling on either side of my head in mock enthusiasm. And not because I disapprove of the cause (I most certainly don't), but because the headliners leave me a little nonplused: Experience Music Project held an urgent morning press conference last week to announce that Pearl Jam and R.E.M. will headline a hunger-benefit concert for the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization October 22 at KeyArena. This concert, which also includes a performance by Alanis Morissette, will conclude a week's worth of shows to be held at EMP's Sky Church, and will feature artists like Emmylou Harris, Dave Matthews, the Wallflowers, Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Michael Franti and Spearhead, and several others.
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Oh, I'm so very crabby these days, aren't I? Yes, and please stop sending angry e-mails in defense of Bruce Springsteen. In the last installment of It's My Party, I reported that some famous people were having a debate at Linda's on whether or not the Boss wrote any good songs. On this topic, I couldn't care less--other than to go on record as saying that I like Nebraska, even more now than I did when I first bought the copy I still own. I think Sub Pop's 2000 release Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska is a fine compliment. Some people, however, HATE IT ALL. And I wasn't judging, I was just saying. So leave me alone.
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Someone who has a very high opinion of the Boss, of course, is former Rocket editor Charles Cross, whose biography of Kurt Cobain (recently excerpted in Playboy) has just hit bookstore shelves. This week's New Yorker features a quasi-review of Cross' Heavier Than Heaven by longtime rock critic Robert Christgau. As is usually the case when rock critics review books by other rock critics, Christgau takes up most of the article's space with his own mini-biography of Nirvana and Cobain, giving readers a small taste of what he might have said had he, not Cross, been approved to write the definitive book. As for The Seattle Times review, written by "Grunge Years" expert Mark Lindquist (author of Never Mind Nirvana), Lindquist opines that "Cross's prose style is workmanlike, apparently uninfluenced by the postmodern fiction and journalism so many contemporary nonfiction writers favor, but he gets the job done." He then goes on to say that, as foretold in "In Bloom," Nirvana fans don't read, so they won't buy Cross' book anyway.
