Mr. Followill, Anheuser-Busch is on the Phone

I caught Kings of Leon at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Tuesday, and now I honestly wish I hadn’t.  I wouldn’t be out the $40, my ears wouldn’t have rung for a day and a half, and I’d still have this illusion that the boys from rural eastern Tennessee, well, didn’t suck.

Opening for KoL were the Features, another Tennessee band that the Followill boys must bring on tour with them for amusement value.  Their lead singer channels this ancient, spastic, epileptic and flightless bird channeling Vic Chestnutt and/or Freedy Johnston on the world’s worst combination speed/acid trip.  I’ve had post-binge vomiting spells that were more melodic than some of their songs.

At this point I began to desperately wish that I had bought a lawn ticket, and not a floor ticket (off Craigslist, so last minute beggars couldn’t really be choosers).  I’d have probably been happier at the hapless Columbia Mall than at the concert.  And I hate Columbia.  What the fuck is up with Marylanders and those ridiculous “Choose Civility” bumpter stickers.  I take great pleasure in unleashing furious strings of invective at those fucksticks every time I see one of those stickers.

After what seemed an interminable wait, during which the stars dimmed in the sky, and species waxed and waned, Kings of Leon took the stage…to the strains of Mozart’s Requiem.  Whose idea was that?  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the biggest KoL fan.  I have exactly one of their albums, Aha Shake Heartbreak, which I purchased some years ago and listened to exactly once.  OK, maybe twice.  I just didn’t “get” the album (“grok” for you geeks), and attributed that to my belief that perhaps I had purchased the wrong album.  I’m not really sure why I chose Ass Shaking Fartache over Youth and Young Manhood, but I think it had something to do with the newer album being on sale.

So I’m guilty of not knowing the KoL canon.  I’d heard the song Sex on Fire, and thought it was pretty catchy, but was otherwise largely ignorant of their newer albums or songs.  At first I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but as I listened to the concert I gradually began to realize that the band had lost something in their transition from the nu-Southern wunderkinds to arena rock stalwarts.  Their songs, never deeply personal or terribly emotionally mature, seemed altogether empty in the vast expanses of Merriweather Post.  They didn’t want for volume, but I didn’t see anything particularly compelling about their performance that would make an “outsider” immediately purchase all (or any of) their albums after the show.  The band was playing to the cult of true believers who knew every song.  I can see how they lacked “connectivity” with the audience at the Reading Festival last month.  British fans can spot poseurs when they see them.

The low point of the concert came with the song Use Somebody.  I was already annoyed at the juxtaposition of live & recorded footage on the massive video screens behind the stage to create meta music video nonsense.  If I wanted to watch an evening of music videos, I could do that from the comfort of my couch.  All the soaring aerial shots of skyscrapers and Koyaanisquatsi-esque streaming taillights on the highway just pushed me over the edge.  Could this really be from their music video? (Sadly, I later confirmed that the shots were lifted straight from the Use Somebody video).  If this wasn’t the most calculated and insincere piece of crap version of a pretty questionable song…I was stunned.  The superimposition of the fat Followill’s face on the giant video screen didn’t help, either.

I have to give it to these guys….they’re pushing a lot of albums, and selling out arenas wherever they go, much to the chagrin and puzzlement of music critics.  They’re also well ahead on the path to starring in a beer commercial than Eric Clapton or Steve Windwood was at the same point in either of their careers.  Ten years in, Clapton had been through the Yardbirds, the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek & the Dominos.  While he clearly had the bulk of his best work behind him, he still produced gems like 461 Ocean Boulevard and his marvelous cover of JJ Cale’s Cocaine before signing on as a pitchman for Michelob.