Sad, Sad Ian Brown

Oh so very long ago the glorious Stone Roses came to being. Popular at the time of the Happy Mondays, New Order, Soup Dragons, you know, the eat-E-and-anything-else-you-can-get-your-hands-on kind of music where the new drugs and new music went together like peanut butter and chocolate. But isn't it always like that? The 1960's = heroin and acid with the drug loving music of The Dead and Doors. 1970's = poppers, qualudes, and coke, nothing goes better with disco right? You get the picture. Back to topic, Ian Brown. Once the brilliant lead singer of the Stone Roses, he changed the face of music in the late 80's. Songs like Sally Cinnamon, I Wanna Be Adored, Elephant Stone, and Fool's Gold got even the biggest lunk headed frat boy on the floor dancing. Once the band broke up, had several disputes over contracts, song rights, and all that other jazz, Ian embarked upon a solo career. He's done some marginal work here and there, most of which I like he has done in collaboration with the UNKLE project. Thought it would be worth the $28 to see what he's still got left at the Great American Music Hall this past Tuesday night. Bad decision.

Midway through the third song a drunken fan charged the stage to do something, of which wasn't clear. Hug or mug, don't know. What did happen resulted in Ian Brown being knocked to the ground. It was completely surreal, looking upon the stage thinking "Did that really just happen?". Sure enough it did. Ian got up and started to literally kick the living daylights out of the fan near passed out on the stage. He was then joined by the rest of the band and the GAMH security guards to break it up. They did and as they were carting off the bloodied fan, Ian started in a security guy. The band again joined him and using brute force, took him out. At one point Ian Brown had taken his microphone by the chord and hammering it into the guy's head. The guy, also bloodied, was eventually carried off stage and 20 minutes later the show started up again. We all felt uneasy and downright dazed and confused. Should we be enjoying this? What happened exactly? My peeps eventually left before the show was over and I thought to stay for a few more songs. I made it another 5 minutes or so and had enough when Ian Brown whipped his microphone down in frustration with the sound crew for the 8th time.

Point of the story? I should have just left the Stone Roses when the decided to leave us, in the early 1990's. What I saw? A shell of a man who had mush between his ears from years of abuse and no ability to hold a note. Attempting to listen to some of their work today left me feeling bothered and brought back thoughts of the evening gone wrong. Next time perhaps I should just leave well enough alone and leave the 80's in the 80's. Well, with the exception of Misty's PNYEP of course! That frickin' rocked!