Five times awful rock audiences improved live recordings

Few things in life bum me out more than having a show by a band I love ruined by a jerky audience. (Looking at you, dude who loudly sang along with every Bonnie "Prince" Billy song at Logan Square Auditorium. You too, drunk bros who heckled Cloud Cult at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds last summer. And don't get me started on every crowd with whom I've seen Wilco.) I have to admit, though, that sometimes a poorly behaved audience can help to create some memorable music moments. Most of the time that doesn't become evident until after the fact, but when it does it can be something kind of special. Here are a handful of occasions when boorish, clueless or just plain inexplicable crowd conduct yielded historic (or at least momentarily pretty cool) results.

Antagonistic New Yorkers at a Lou Reed show

Take No Prisoners is the rare concert album that puts as much emphasis on the banter as it does the music, and for good reason. This is a perfect pairing of Lou Reed and a hometown New York City crowd circa 1978. Both are cranky, combative and ready to start swinging at a moment’s notice, but only one has quick wits and a microphone. The running narrative of the album reveals that Lou showed up late for the set, giving the crowd plenty of time to get drunk and resentful. New Yorkers, if you aren’t aware, don’t have a reputation for dealing with disappointment quietly.

There are too many incredible interactions for me to enumerate here, but a few highlights include Lou threatening to stop singing until everybody shuts up (the crowd calls his bluff), Lou demonstrating to a heckler how easily he can be drowned out with guitar feedback, and Lou pre-emptively quoting Yeats at the interlopers: “‘The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with a passion and intensity.’ Now you figure out where I am.”

The best part is that most of this isn’t between-song banter - Lou’s fighting the crowd right smack in the middle of his songs, and neither he nor his band ever misses a beat. Heck, the opening track alone, a splendidly greasy, eight-minute rendition of “Sweet Jane,” yields a tour's worth of memorable quotes:

• “You ever put a quarter in those machines, man? Y’know, like the bear that plays basketball… I guess they never put a quarter in me, huh?”
• “Where were you on the list when they called you for Vietnam?”
• “We’re just here to make out. You bend over, we’ll put the head in. You don’t like it, then we’ll talk about it.”
• “Fuck Radio Ethiopia, man, I’m Radio Brooklyn. I ain’t no snob, man.”
• “If you write as good as you talk, nobody reads you.”
• And of course, a vicious “SHUT UP, YOU!” wedged seamlessly into the “Villains always blink their eyes” segment.

Some of the annoyance is doubtless genuine, but at the same time Lou clearly relishes the back-and-forth and the songs crackle with nervous energy. Any which way, it makes for some compelling listening.

Stage-diving Nazi punk at an SNFU show

In 1991 venerable Canadian punks SNFU put out their purported farewell album Last of the Big Time Suspenders, a mix of rarities and live cuts that serves as a solid document of what turned out to be the band’s mid-life rather than its finale. Near the end of their atypically anthemic cover of Eddie Money’s outlaw ballad “Gimme Some Water,” lead singer Ken Chinn stops singing for a beat to point out “That asshole jumping off the stage is wearing a swastika on his t-shirt, obviously too young to understand the serious connotations of such a fuckin’ stupid thing.” There’s a brief pause while the audience begins to buzz, then Chinn launches right back into the chorus. The electricity of the moment is undeniable. You almost feel sorry for the dimwitted Nazi kid getting his ass handed to him so succinctly, but mostly you just want to cheer on Ken Chinn’s righteous indignation.

Unruly Englishmen at the Isle of Wight Festival

The infamous 1970 Isle of Wight Festival has long been a standard-bearer for badly behaved audiences. Reports vary on what exactly caused the crowd's discontent and on exactly how ugly the scene really was, but by most accounts a bunch of angry young Brits made life miserable for everyone assembled for good chunks of the festival. The crowd was especially hard on several acts who had the temerity not to rock. Joni Mitchell famously told the audience they were “acting like tourists” before breaking down in tears and leaving the stage.

Kris Kristofferson took a different tack, responding to the deafening boos with his trademark laconic acidity. Kristofferson sounds both exasperated and amused as he assures the crowd that nothing short of rifle fire will stay his musicians from making their appointed rounds. His band, playing what was only their fourth gig, then ambles into a particularly low-key rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee.” There aren’t many contexts where Kristofferson’s classic sketch of lost love and misspent youth could be taken as an act of passive-aggressive defiance, but that’s absolutely what it is here. Punctuated by the songwriter’s parting bird-flip to the crowd, it’s a perfect rebuttal to a bunch of ingrates.

Ironic loudmouths at Built to Spill shows

Built to Spill is the kind of band that tends to take a little time between songs, largely because they’re top-flight musicians who care about sounding their best on every number. Unfortunately, plenty of concert goers interpret pauses in the set as an invitation to yell out song requests, and anyone who’s been to a show in the past four decades knows that means someone’s gonna yell out “Freebird.” During their 2001 tour, the band opted to respond to that ubiquitous holler by going ahead and playing “Freebird.” And not just a tease or a sarcastic nod - the whole damn song, note for note. As a guy who unabashedly loves both Built to Spill and “Freebird,” getting to see that live stands as an all-time highlight of my concert-going career.

Devil Girl at a Rolling Stones show

I don’t know how close to the stage the young lady captured on the Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! album could have been standing, but her voice comes through clearly enough that she almost seems to have a mic of her own. And what a voice it is: flat, toneless, devoid of passion yet somehow frighteningly insistent. “Paint it black,” she drones. “‘Paint it black. Paint it black, you devil. Paint it black.” 



Now, you might think she’s just requesting her favorite Rolling Stones song, but there’s a grim imperative in her delivery that convinces me that she’s actually demanding that the devil (which could be any of the Stones, but I presume to be Mick Jagger because c’mon) paint the intangible “it” black. The Stones pay her no mind, although they do break into a spectacularly inspired rendition of “Sympathy for the Devil.” Her spooky doggedness is perfectly in keeping with what was simultaneously one of the band's darkest and brightest periods. (The performances captured on Get Yer Ya-Yas Out took place just weeks before the Stones' fateful Altamont concert.) The woman is never heard from again. I understand some fan journal tracked her down a while back, but I'd rather not learn the details of her real-life existence. As a mystery interloper on a classic performance, she’s one of my favorite people ever.

Recent Viewings: "Semi-Tough"

Less than two minutes into its run time, Semi-Tough showed me something I’ve never seen in a feature film before. Unfortunately, that something was Brian Denehey’s bare ass, which honestly didn’t rank very high on my cinematic must-see list. That was far from the last surprise Semi-Tough had in store for me. Over the next hour and forty-odd minutes, I bore witness to such peculiarities as Robert Preston crawling around an office on all fours, Kris Kristofferson attempting to pass himself off as a comedic lead and Burt Reynolds offering sexual favors to German chanteuse Lotte Lenya in exchange for her not shoving her fingers up his nose.

You might reasonably assume that a film packed with this much weirdness and Denehey flesh would be interesting, if not entertaining. I sorely wish that were so, but Semi-Tough pulls of the rare feat of being bizarre and boring at the same time. I imagine the filmmakers pitching the suits a movie that “does for football what M.A.S.H. did for the Army.” That might be a noble aim, if not for the fact that M.A.S.H. contained considerably more football than does Semi-Tough.

Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson star as Billy Clyde and Shake, pro football’s most dominant running back and receiver, respectively. Now, I understand that professional athletes had longer careers back in the day, but both leads were a ripe old 41 when Semi-Tough hit theaters in 1977. The 2002 Raiders notwithstanding, buying these two well-kept but visibly middle-aged dudes as the cream of the NFL (or at least its fictional, licensing-fee-free equivalent) requires considerable suspension of disbelief.

Anyhow, the boys’ “Miami” squad is on the brink of a Super Bowl appearance when the film opens. We’re treated to an introductory blur of locker room shenanigans, team owner Robert Preston’s comic blustering and Kris and Burt’s stunt doubles in some brief on-field action. We also get brief glimpses of the stereotypes who fill out the team – a couple of jive-talking black dudes; a preening, barefoot placekicker from Eastern Europe; and Denehey’s violent, borderline retarded lineman. Usually this type of set-up would foreshadow hijinx to come, but there’s surprisingly little payoff to any of these caricatures.

Next up, we meet the owner’s comely daughter Barbara Jane (Jill Clayburgh), childhood pal and current roommate of Billy Clyde and Shake. As Barbara Jane explains to her dad, she’s not sleeping with either of them, so there’s nothing weird about their living arrangement (Dad somewhat creepily replies that he’d be more comfortable with it if she really were boffing one of the guys). We leave the rest of the team behind as this trio tools around town while engaging in inane conversations that were presumably intended as witty repartee.

So far, so good, or at least not so bad. We seem to be settling into the rhythms of a dumb football comedy with a potential romantic triangle subplot. And then things take a turn for the weird, as the film’s middle third inexplicably veers into a broad satire of the New Age self-improvement fad of the late ‘70s. Turns out Shake has recently discovered himself (or “got it,” in the parlance of the film) with the help of oily guru Bert Convy, whose primary path to enlightenment involves repeatedly calling his pupils “assholes.” As Billy Clyde and Barbara Jane make separate efforts to understand their friend’s conversion and “get it” themselves, Semi-Tough tumbles into a series of grotesqueries of wacky ‘70s soul-seekers indulging in treatments with goofy names like “pelfing.” This is where we’re treated to the sights of esteemed song and dance man Robert Preston trying to find his inner child by “creeping” around his office like an infant, and of Kurt Weill muse Lotte Lenya hamming it up as a sadistic massage therapist. 1977 made sensible people do some strange things.

Hey, remember football? It’s a movie about football. We will indeed return to the gridiron before movie’s end, but first we’ll have to follow up the interminable New Age sequence with some slightly less painful romantic comedy. Somewhere in amongst the pelfing and the assholes, Shake and Barbara Jane get engaged, which forces Billy Clyde to realize that he’s always kind of hoped it would be him who eventually hooked up with the boss’s daughter. From here on out, “Semi-Tough” becomes pretty standard rom-com fare, with a ‘70s-sized helping of existential angst on the side. This final third is a bit easier to take, partially because of the lowered expectations of what went before, and partially because of Clayburgh’s effervescent performance. Throughout the film, she’s much better than Semi-Tough deserves. Blandly obnoxious as they may be, Shake and Billy Clyde at least have good taste in women.

And then, out of nowhere, it’s a football movie again. The boys from Miami suddenly remember there’s a Super Bowl to be played, so we get a few minutes of pre-game build-up (including one of the film’s few truly funny moments, a media interview in which Billy Clyde swaps self-help tips with “Dallas” team captain Carl Weathers), followed by the inevitable Big Game. The execution of this sequence is as lackluster as everything that went before it, with Billy Clyde playing miserably in the first half, then rebounding in the third quarter to lead the team to a remarkably tension-free come-from-behind victory. “Miami” brings home the trophy, but that’s really just an afterthought to the big closing piece – the wedding of Shake and Barbara Jane. Will she stick with Kristofferson’s New Age Adonis or yield to Reynolds’ cowboy charms? I’m not going to tell you, because you shouldn’t care any more than I did while watching the damned movie.

A football comedy that’s nearly devoid of football and comedy, Semi-Tough ranks among the low points in Michael Ritchie’s spotty career as a director of sports movies. Sure, the man helmed the original Bad News Bears, but his subsequent track record includes Wildcats, The Scout and the Robert Redford skiing epic Downhill Racer. Perhaps the film’s only redeeming quality, other than strong acting by Clayburgh, is how much it made me appreciate Norm MacDonald’s spot-on Burt Reynolds impression. His whole “Celebrity Jeopardy” character from SNL could have been cribbed from Burt’s performance in this movie. As ever, Burt’s reasonably charming here, but it remains unfathomable that this beefy, greasy guy was once a romantic lead, let alone the definitive sex symbol for an entire generation. But like I said, 1977 made sensible people do some strange things.

- Ira Brooker