Meltdown Follow-up

I got an email from Zia that had a quote about her impression of some of the reviews of Meltdown, including what was said here at slabtown.net. I'm reprinting it here with her permission, and will follow it up with some comments of my own.

"The show with David Bowie was one of the coolest and best shows we've ever done and anyone that thinks otherwise doesn't get what Meltdown or The Dandy Warhols is all about. Does everyone understand that it's a week long arts festival in a theatre with seating. Of course we didn't play a rock show. We played free form experimental versions of three of our songs. It was an incredible experience that I don't think the journalists understood or appreciated. Any fan of ours who wasn't there really missed out on something rare and special."
Zia McCabe

Now my comments on those. And no, this isn't a rebuttal of any sort, and it isn't meant as ass-kissing (though it will sound like it).

I have heard the Meltdown show now, including Bowies set and the encore with the Dandys, which I will put up for download as soon as I get around to it, and as I have said a few times vaguely in the past few weeks (mostly on the dandysrule2 mailing list), in hindsight, the set is appearing to have been a very, very cool experience. And not only for the band.

First off, I think that I would feel the same as Zia if I had been part of it. That is a once-in-a-lifetime chance! Even if you opened for him on a world tour, it would never be the same vibe and same feel. What was overlooked by many, including me a few times, was that it was a full art festival. Not just a set of 23 concerts on 23 days or anything like that. And, the band did what they do the best: They were themselves.

Now, I was hard on it at first, and in the first few hours after the show, this was based on two basic groups: Die hard bowie fans who were totally there for Bowie and media reviews. These early reviews treated the show as a concert, and were not happy with the non-concert performance of the DW set. And they let it be known. Hell, one person even went as far as to comment about how Brian Eno was behind them during the set and he fell asleep. Anyway, based on this early review, I jumped on the "It was not good apparently" bandwagon.

But hindsight is always 20/20, and it is obvious now that the band didn't fail. They just didn't do what people thought was supposed to happen. I know I always said it, but the band did exactly what they wanted to do, which is that they did what they wanted. Fuck the people who came there for the wrong reasons.

There will still be the part of me that thinks that they would have been better off playing a blistering set that we know they could have done. We know they could have blown the doors off the media and the celebs in attendance, and it could have boosted their career a lot. But they don't need that, and it would have been boosting themselves for the wrong reasons.

Looking back on the show, I wish I had been able to go (I had a ticket to the show, but wasn't able to make it to it, so I sold it to someone who could make it, and who loved the show), as it was a historic event for the band, and something that we might never see again. So, while the choice might have been made for better or worse, at least it was unique and what they wanted.

Justin McGrotty