Keen and heard

Pity the concert reviewer. Long nights, bad sound, no drinking and low pay.

Take, for instance, the Birmingham News’ review of Robert Earl Keen, who performed Thursday at Zydeco on Southside.

Well, you can’t really. The apparently unedited, unapproved review was pulled from the newspaper Web site before people could see it earlier today.

Except, we found a copy, reprinted here for your convenience.

Update: The published version appeared April 8. Ah, the wonders of proper editing.

The reviewer concentrates more on upbraiding the audience for its rudeness than on Keen’s singing, playing, set list or style. In fact, those in attendance are referred to as “dreadful” and “selfish.” He adds that they are “cap-wearers” and “boors” more interested in snapping camphone pics of themselves than the artist.

While we agree that audiences nowadays could use remedial lessons in common courtesy, we prefer our music reviews to actually review music.

The reporter who filed the review also wrote a feature story on Keen in the March 31 edition. Ironically, Keen talked about how lucky he was to have a limited following: “The upside of being unmarketable, he says, is that audiences come to his concerts because they want to, not because concert promoters have convinced them to. ‘You had free will to find me on your own. You were destined,’ Keen says.”

Here’s the review in full …

Dreadful selfish crowd

It was entirely appropriate that the mostly college-aged crowd knew all the words to Robert Earl Keen’s song that goes, “I am guilty of a dreadful selfish crime.”

Because many in this crowd — not everyone of course — but many were there to sing along with a few songs they knew and then spend the rest of the time talking to their buddies. Keen didn’t disappoint them of course. He sang his concert classics “Five Pound Bass,” “That Buckin’ Song,” “Gringo Honeymoon,” and, of course, the anthemic “The Road Goes on Forever.”

But those in the audience who wanted to hear Keen’s more introspective and nuanced songs were out of luck because many of the cap-wearers in the crowd thought those songs were breaks for them to catch up on whatever it was they needed to catch up on.

Think I’m overstating about the boors in the crowd? More people used their camera phones to take pictures of themselves than used them to take pictures of Keen. In a few of the shots, Keen might have been a speck in the background.

And when Keen sang the newer songs from last year’s album, “What I Really Mean,” or played his acoustic set, that was some people’s queue that there was a beer calling their names. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Zydeco is a bar. But then when the songs they came for began, they seemed to think they had reserved seats and came pushing their way back to non-existent spots on the floor somewhere near where they were before.

Really, people. Did you pay $20 bucks to chat up that girl, shoot the bull with your buddy and take group photos? You could have done that somewhere else, and it would have been much cheaper.

Paul Isom

Posted: Friday, April 7, 2006, 6:30 pm, in Grab Bag.
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