First Dixie Chicks, now Pearl Jam
 

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...cert_walkout_4

DENVER - Dozens of fans walked out of a Pearl Jam concert after lead singer Eddie Vedder (news) took a mask of President Bush (news - web sites) and impaled it on a microphone stand.



Several concertgoers booed and shouted Tuesday night for Vedder to shut up as he told the crowd he was against the war and Bush. He impaled the mask during the encore of the band's opening show of a U.S. tour.


"It was like he decapitated someone in a primal ritual and stuck their head on a stick," fan Keith Zimmerman said.


Vedder used a Bush mask in Australia and Japan to perform the song "Bushleaguer," from the band's latest album, "Riot Act." The song's lyrics say, "He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer."


During the show, Vedder said: "Just to clarify... we support the troops."


"We're just confused on how wanting to bring them back safely all of a sudden becomes non-support," he said. "We love them. They're not the ones who make the foreign policy .... Let's hope for the best and speak our opinions."


Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.


The Dixie Chicks (news - web sites) were the target of boycotts and bans after their lead singer made anti-Bush statements on a London stage last month.

-------------------------------------------------------------

My opinion:
Hey, this is America We have the right to have views.

This has been discussed rather extensively in the War Forum.

Oh, I did a search an nothing came up.
Sorry.

How make news out of non-news....

Let's see....the Pepsi Center seats up to 20,000 people for a concert. Let's assume with Pearl Jam that the concert was at least a close to sell out....some odd 17,500 tickets sold.

So "dozens" of concert goers..let's assume a lesser number of dozens, otherwise the news would have said "a hundred" or "Hundreds."

So let's see....36 people out of 17,500 walk out of the show in protest...that's what? .21% of the concert goers left in disgust.

I've seen more people walk out a movie before...

This is not news, folks...this is propaganda. Pure and simple.

This is America and you can say whats on your mind. I'm tired of people or the media overblowing things when people come out and bash bush, this is a free country and is vedder wants to bash him them let him. I'm a supporter of Bush, but i think we should not be calling this a war. A war would be somthing like ww1 ww2 and the korean war.. If the guy wants to bash him let him..This is a free country.

BIG DEAL

"I just wanna say one thing before the next song. We know about all what’s going on with the world these days. We all know what’s going on. We know some of what’s going on. We know what they tell us. We know some of what we found out on our own. You got a minute for this? Because it won’t even take that.

I talked with some guy, a guy who flew helicopters in Vietnam. I figured he knows more about this than a lot of people. He was over there. He probably knows more than a lot of our representatives, who were never over there. This guy’s got his **** together to this day. But he’s been thru this experience that he carries with him. I asked him what do you feel about this? He says ?did someone just say shut up? (boos). I don’t know if you heard about this thing called Freedom of Speech, man. It’s worth thinking about it, because it’s going away. In the last year of being able to use it, we’re sure as **** gonna use it, and I’m not gonna apologize. All I wanted to tell you was what this guy passed on to me ? he said it just upsets me. I’ve been there, I’ve seen that, I’ve seen the ugliness, I’ve sent he chaos, I’ve lived with what you have to live with afterward. He just doesn’t feel like we’ve evolved at all in 20 years.

And he mentioned Carl Sagan, who said we’re on the brink of forever, you and me, all of us, this country, this whole world. We’re all on the brink of forever. So we should come together, get this **** happening in a good way, so we can make it on to better days. It’s evolution, baby."

After the song:

Just to clarify - I was afraid with what was said before - we support the troops. (cheers). Our problem is certainly not with anybody over there doing something that not too many of us would do right now, not for these reasons. So to the families and those people how know those folks and are related to those folks and are married to those folks, we send our support.

We’re just confused on how wanting to bring them back safely all of a sudden becomes non-support. We love them, we support them. Our problem, they’re not the ones who make the foreign policy. They’re just doing their job. Let’s hope for the best and speak our opinions."

All right, this song’s off the last record. It’s a quiet one. A scud. A weapon of mass illumination. This song is called Thumbing My Way.

Vedder comes out wearing a Bush mask, which he then puts on a microphone stand like a severed head. At one point he either jabs the mask with the mike stand, or puts it on the floor and stomps on it (trying to clarify)

Good for him.

I went to the show last night, and he mentioned something about it briefly, but he didn't do anything even remotely offensive.

I think that some people like to be easily offended. I think it gives them a sense of havng more morality than other people and makes them feel better about themselves. People should quit being such uptight pricks all the time.

People using their right to free speech should be a non story, but unfortunately there are people who make mountains out of molehills

I don't see why this is a shock. Since the beginning Pearl Jam have had their causes (pro-abortion, Ticketmaster, etc.). This is just another to add to the list.

IMO, I don't think this compares to the Dixie Chicks member's comment. I'm not up on my contemporary country (give me Johnny Cash or George Jones anyday over the stuff on the radio), but are the Dixie Chicks seen as a group that regularly airs its political views? That may have come to a surprise as some. Also, the DC comment showed a disregard for their sales and fan base (which may be comendable, but is also dumb from a commercial standpoint). I'd figure that Pearl Jam's audience is more in tune with their anti-war stance and wouldn't be offended.

The way the media covers s**t like this makes me sick. They should be champions of free speech, yet everytime someone famous excercises this right (dixie chicks, bush, peter arnett, Michael Moorer, etc. etc.) it gets way blown out of proportion and makes them out to be enemies. -rolleyes-

Stuff like that's why my B.A. in Journalism is worthless to me. I'd rather work in a sweatshop than in the media.

Who's fault is it that it gets blown out of proportion? Eddie Veder wanted to get his message out and that's exactly what he did. How is this the media's fault? Is it the media's fault that they get made out to be enemies? What about the female basketball player that would turn her back to the flag during the anthem? It's not only famous people.

They made a big deal out of it, when only a few dozen left. They made it sound like his protest met with disapproval with most of the fans (and clearly many read the article this way, look at the "fans jam exits" thread title in the war forum).

It's all about wording. They should have led the story with his comments- all of them the ones about supporting the troops too (rather than putting them at the end), and then mentioned that a few dozens fans left in disgust.

Leading with the fans leaving puts a negative spin on the story. The lead of the story influences how the reader interprets the rest of the story, that's the whole point of the lead sentence.

I've just noticed a lot of spin like this put on any stories of this nature, and it makes me sick. There's a notion of a liberal bias in the media, but most who've worked in the media will tell you this isn't the case. Sure maybe the majority of reporters are liberal (even that's a stretch), and maybe even editors. But who has the most power in determining the content of the newspapers? The publisher. And who are the majority of publishers (owners)? Rich, conservative businessmen who own several other businesses in addition to their paper(s). This was even true of the small paper I worked at in Morgantown, WV. The publisher clearly made it known when something was published that went against his beliefs,and the editors would make sure nothing like that got published again. It's a joke.

Good points. I just looked at it a little different.

This happened during the encore, right?

"Dozens" of people leaving during the encore sounds a little low, actually. At most big cocerts I've been to, about 5-10% of the audience leaves during the encore just so they can avoid the rush in the parking lot.

The "article" sounds like a big load of crap.

C'mon.. it's Pearl Jam.. they need to do SOMETHING so people will remeber who they are.

:thumbsup:

Everyone's on high alert for ANYONE expressing a view other than "support the troops". IIRC, on the last tour they wouldn't stop talking about Ralph Nader, I wonder how many people walked out then. :lol:

Exactly, good for them for making a political statement....something they've never, ever done before! :rolleyes:

Heck, I'm listening to "Country" Joe and the Fish''s Feelin' Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag as I type this. Folks would have thought Dixie Chicks too conservative for most in those days! My times have changed!

Madonna's also had to censor her new video. Are they going after System of a Down, John Cougar Mellencamp, Green Day, Midnight Oil, Chumbawamba, etc., etc. next who are pushing out new protest songs too? I think the media is getting ridiculously *untrue* to it's supposed "liberal" reputation now! Let it go man! They probably see Ozzy Ozbourne's biting off a head of bat tame by comparison just because it's apolitical (never mind that it's killing a living creature).

Though I'm not much for most country music, I'm going to see if there's anything the Dixie Chicks that I might like. They might be wise to make a Linda Ronstadt "Mad Love" album-like transition to more of a rock and roll style and they'll get back another audience again.

The thing that gets me is those "fans" who walked out were supposedly shocked that Vedder would make a political statement. That is akin to a DC Talk "fan" going to a concert and being shocked the band would make a statement about christianity.

I had the misfortune of seeing Ted Nugent open for Kiss in 2000 and in between every song he made racist comments, relentlessly bashed democrats, and topped it off by wearing a confederate flag shirt with an indian headress. It's funny that the media never ran any stories about that!

That is akin to a Ted Nugent "fan" going to a concert and being shocked that he was big washed-up redneck a-hole. :D

(edited to add that I wasn't dissing dubya, just taking a cheap shot at Nugent using dubya's wording. Looking at the post again, it sort of came off that way, and it was not my intention at all. He said he went to see Kiss, anyway, but I thought I'd best just clarify. But I did hear about Ted's on-stage idiocy, and if I were Kiss I would've been embarassed to have been associated with the jerk.)

I still have no use for either of them.

This makes more sense than anything posted in the 6 page thread about this in the war forum.

Thanks. This is just one of my theories about why people are such uptight pricks nowadays.

:)

Pearl jam is/are zeolous liberal and this is typical of EV. I heard Eddie V. say on Stern that if someone were liberal they would NOT be in Pearl Jam.

I strongly dislike Pearl Jam. I also don't agree with many things Vedder believes ('cept for his taking on Ticketmaster). But this story is so stupid. Duh, he doesn't like Bush? Big surprise and big whoop. I love some political bands like Gang of Four, but don't believe in almost everything they espouse. Get over it.

Funny, I also think this is pretty much dead-on.......if you're talking about Pearl Jam.

"I might be a millionaire rock star, but I haven't forgotten my roots! I'm gonna show how in-touch I am with the common man by supporting Ralph Nader, who has widespread appeal among average Americans!"

"Now that I've accumulated a small fortune [and every man, woman, and child on earth has seen the clip for 'Jeremy' approximately 6 trillion times], I've decided that I don't like music videos either!"

"Artist" / activists are always good for a nice chuckle in my book. The irony is, clearly, that they try to present themselves as "questioning Authority" and being "anti-Establishment" - then they proceed to adopt all the positions you'd expect them to. They "conform" by being so predictably "non-conformist," you might say. Sorry, being a rock star who bashes Bush (supports PETA, endorses Nader, whatever) is about as gutsy as addressing the NAACP and praising "affirmative action." Like people have already pointed out, it was hardly the case that fans were "jamming" the exits.

And please, people, could we maybe ease up on the paranoid ramblings about the suppression of "free speech"? Vedder has every right to speak his mind, just as fans have the right to get offended and split. You might argue that the fans overreacted (I think the dc Talk / Christianity analogy was fitting), but to accuse them of attacking "free speech" completely ignores that they are exercising their right to disagree.