Ryan Adams leaves a message on Jim DeRogatis' answering machine in response to DeRo's review of Adams' recent Chicago show. An ILM thread discussing the message includes a response from Adams to the message's public posting (about 2/3 down the page currently).

I'm no particular Adams fan, but I sort of respect the crowd-baiting he displays in DeRogatis' review (to say nothing of the gleeful Replacements-bashing at the Minneapolis show), and I very much like "Buy me a video camera so I can make a movie called 'I Am Trying to Bore You to Death.'" Matter of fact, and maybe it's the late hour, but it sort of makes me think back to that "Summer of '69" thing and kind of respect it. Yeah, when some unoriginal dumbass heckler is annoying everyone, call him on his shit. Maybe it'll make other people think twice about doing it next time.

Or even better--and are you listening here, people?--maybe it'll encourage people to show up to Ryan Adams shows and interact with him as equals, as co-participants in this weird living theater psychodrama he's going for, and really talk back, really grab the mic and destroy that artist shit. It's theater, and that's kind of cool.

Plus, it's hard for me to argue with some of the points raised in that answering machine message. I mean, yeah, someone who's riding Jeff Tweedy's jock probably has basic critical problems beyond "contrived" stage antics. Adams is right--if DeRogatis is admitting in his own review that the fans really liked what Adams is doing, and the only real objection you can have to Adams' onstage antics is that they're disrespectful to fans, where exactly is the problem?

Pity I can't stand his music.

Oh yes, and I'm still oddly allergic to ILM, but "If Ryan Adams ever got mad about anything I'd written about him I'd just ask if he wanted to start a band with me." is pretty funny.

UPDATE: Fluxblog today has an MP3 version of the phonecall for those of you that aren't RealPlayer fans. Matthew titles said file "Ryan Adams Whining Into Jim DeRogatis' Answering Machine," which is a fair cop. I still think that both Jim and Ryan are getting fucked with / are fucking with here, though. Nothing like a feud to increase sales.
posted by Mike B. at 1:18 AM 0 comments