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CNN's Soledad O'Brien scored an interview with Bruce Springsteen, and she used the opportunity to make the obligatory suggestion that there's something wrong with musicians -- rather than televangelists or bodybuilders or exterminators or failed oilmen -- who state their views about politics.

"Yeah," Springsteen responded, "they should let Ann Coulter do it instead."

Regular readers will know that we're all for giving Coulter the what-for -- but also that the wrath of the reasonable really ought to be directed at the hairdos who give her a stage on national TV and the Republicans who do nothing to distance themselves from her when she advocates, say, the assassination of a member of Congress.

Springsteen understands that, as he made perfectly clear in his own version of a Jon-Stewart-on-"Crossfire" moment. Think Progress has the video and the transcript. Here's an excerpt:

O'Brien: There is a whole school of thought, as you well know, that says that musicians -- I mean you see it with the Dixie Chicks -- you know, go play your music and stop.

Springsteen: Well, if you turn it on, present company included, the idiots rambling on on cable television on any given night of the week, and you're saying that musicians shouldn't speak up? It's insane. It's funny.

O'Brien: As a musician though, I'd be curious to know if there is a concern that you start talking about politics; you came out at one point and said, I think in USA Today, listen, the country would be better off if George Bush were replaced as president. Is there a worry where you start getting political and you could alienate your audience?

Springsteen: Well that's called common sense. I don't even see that as politics at this point ... You don't take a country like the United States into a major war on circumstantial evidence. You lose your job for that. That's my opinion, and I have no problem voicing it.

Agendas. Good luck with that!

My thinking is that RP is NOT a news service. It's a music radio station with an online web community given forums and journals where they can exchange ideas, feelings, whatever. A news source it is not, in my opinion.

I guess I'd just like to see us do our homework and make whatever statement we are trying to make without just lazily posting some long article with no context.

wooz(peevedmaybetoostrongawordbut...)urdaddy

Lighten up! I'm just here to ogle nekkid Texans.

That's what I love about RP. We'll fight about anything.

Yeah, I guess I can sort out the context well enough, but I'm really more interested in what our fellow members have to say on these topics than some journalist somewhere I can find on my own.

Some do (or so they say), if it appeals and if they have the time... The context (you seem to miss) is usually the subject/topic of the forum.

I find these long posting of news articles to be one of my pet peeves. Does anybody really read them? I'm interested to know.

I do have to disagree with you on one thing: sometimes people post articles that I might not have seen otherwise (the net is a very large place!) that are interesting or that add value to the discussion.

But, having been reminded by you and others that I have no right to tell anyone here what to do, I just shrug my shoulders and say, if you can't beatem, join em.

I guess I find this lazy. Sure, if I want to read a lengthy email on this topic, I can go to one of the web news services I read daily and do it.

You are not offering any opinion or analysis here. I know where to go for news. Here, I'm interested in how my fellow members interpret the news and what their opinions are on various topics. I don't get the point of a blind post of a news article - what are you trying to say? Why not give a summary of the topic, along with your analysis/opinion, for us to chew on? It's got to be more interesting than some random news article.

There is a new Forum topic called "RP is...". My thinking is that RP is NOT a news service. It's a music radio station with an online web community given forums and journals where they can exchange ideas, feelings, whatever. A news source it is not, in my opinion.

I guess I'd just like to see us do our homework and make whatever statement we are trying to make without just lazily posting some long article with no context.

wooz(peevedmaybetoostrongawordbut...)urdaddy

Sorry to peeve you. Read or not, that is up to you.

I find these long posting of news articles to be one of my pet peeves. Does anybody really read them? I'm interested to know.

Wednesday, 06/14/06

With U.S. ticket sales slow, Chicks head north of border
Concerts may be reset or canceled in some cities

By RYAN UNDERWOOD
Staff Writer


They may not be running for elected office, but the Dixie Chicks appear to be struggling to work out a kind of political map of their own, heading for concert arenas where ticket sales are brisker and the fans may be more forgiving.

The pop-country trio — whose lead singer Natalie Maines set off a firestorm when she criticized President Bush during a 2003 concert in London — announced eight new concert dates in Canada and the Northeast for the first leg of their summer concert tour on Tuesday.




At the same time, at least 12 U.S. sites, concentrated mostly in the South and Midwest, have put ticket sales for shows on hold after they initially went on sale June 3.

Concert dates in cities such as Houston, Jacksonville, Memphis and St. Louis will likely have to be rescheduled or canceled. No cities have been dropped from the tour outright yet, organizers insist.

Ray Waddell, senior editor of touring for Billboard magazine, said while some places were selling only about 5,000 to 6,000 tickets in the first week of sales, tickets in other cities such as Chicago, New York and Philadelphia were selling briskly.

And the group added a second date at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto for late October after its first show there sold out in about eight minutes, Waddell said.

In Nashville, the group has sold more than half of the roughly 14,000 available tickets to its planned Oct. 3 concert at the Gaylord Entertainment Center, said GEC general manager Hugh Lombardi. When the Dixie Chicks played Nashville in 2003, Lombardi said, all the tickets were gobbled up the first weekend of sales.

"The 2003 tour was completely sold out," Waddell said. "It doesn't get much hotter than that."

That North American concert series grossed $60.5 million and landed the group at the No. 8 slot on Pollstar's list of the Top 100 tours of 2003. The Chicks sold a total of 867,000 tickets the first weekend they went on sale for their shows that year.

It was during that tour that lead singer Maines told a London crowd, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Immediately after the remark, many country radio stations stopped playing the trio's songs in protest and album sales plummeted.

The group had kept a low profile for the past three years until coming back onto the music scene this spring with a new album, concert tour and a shot of publicity that included a Time magazine cover and a segment on CBS's "60 Minutes."

The group's latest album, Taking the Long Way, was released May 23 and immediately shot to No. 1 on the charts, where it remains, having sold 526,000 copies in its first week. While strong, that figure is lower than the group's last studio album in 2002, "Home," which also made its debut at No. 1 with 780,000 units sold.

Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert-industry publication Pollstar, said shifting concert dates as the Dixie Chicks are doing isn't that unusual.

"I think the Dixie Chicks are being put under a microscope by the press because of the whole President Bush remark," Bongiovanni said. He points to a Mariah Carey tour in recent years that was scaled back from large arenas to more "intimate" locales after ticket demand fell short of expectations.

Tony Conway, president of Buddy Lee Attractions, a Nashville-based events company that once did work for the Dixie Chicks, said deciding which cities to visit on tour amounts to making a big educated guess.

"People can read into" the Dixie Chicks' tour changes "all they want," he said. "But this happens all the time."

Another factor that Bongiovanni and others said could be influencing ticket and album sales has to do with the group's continuing crossover from country to pop appeal.

For example, the trio's latest single, "Not Ready to Make Nice," charted at No. 23 on Billboard's Pop 100 chart and at No. 36 in the country rankings.

"Lots of country stations are flat-out refusing to play them or take their advertisements," Bongiovanni said, pointing to two major country stations in Atlanta that he said are refusing to accept ads promoting the group's planned Oct. 17 Philips Arena concert.

In Toronto, meanwhile, support for the Dixie Chicks remains as strong as it was when the group came in 2003.

"The support here has been consistent," said Casey Clark, who handles programming for CMT Canada and a Toronto country radio station. "There hasn't been any great surge in demand.

"There also hasn't been any backlash. People know what's going on with it, but really it's been a non-issue as far as the music is concerned." •

"it would seem" are the operative words. As someone suggested, until the full (and true) story comes out, perhaps we should all withhold opinions and therefore avoid the inevitable flame here.