For Your Weekend Listening Pleasure: Ryan Adams Wants You To Shut the Eff Up and Listen

Couldn't sleep a few cold nights ago and spent a few wee small hours looking for something to listen to -- something, ya know, just right. One things leads to another leads to another, and next thing I know it's June 17, 2005, and we're back at the Gypsy Tea...

By Robert Wilonsky

December 30, 2010

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Couldn't sleep a few cold nights ago and spent a few wee small hours looking for something to listen to -- something, ya know, just right. One things leads to another leads to another, and next thing I know it's June 17, 2005, and we're back at the Gypsy Tea Room for Ryan Adams and the Cardinals' extraordinary set(s). You know which one. Sure you do. You were there. You and everyone else who tells that story about how Adams stopped playing the beautiful "Please Do Not Let Me Go" because some dudes up front just would not shut up. (And why this doesn't happen more in Dallas ...)

"You guys pay all this money to run your fucking mouth and ruin it for everybody else?" he said in a tone of voice somewhere between furious and resigned. (You remember. You were there. Well, Grimes was anyhow.) "It's like everywhere we go -- it's like, nothing's sacred. 'I'm gonna go to the rock show and pay $30 to ruin everybody else's time because I'm a big fat fucking moron.'" At which point he told the audience: Handle it yourselves, 'cause I won't. "I won't fight the audience, but ya know what? You can. You can. You can. ... Fuck it. It's like going to a museum to look at paintings and watching a guy piss up a rope." At which point he walked off and took a breather. You remember, right?

OK, so maybe you don't. Maybe you missed it. No need now. That tantrum's well-documented. So too is an astonishing set -- one that's probably better than the October '07 SMU show to which we linked back on January 29, our very first regularly scheduled FYWLP. (It certainly sounds better -- this is a soundboard keepsake.) Funny thing is, as pissed as he got, Adams still played all the hits -- chief among 'em a clenched-fist take on "Shakedown on 9th Street," that "Wonderwall" cover and a version of "Come Pick Me Up" that reminds me why it's still my favorite Adams composition among an ever-growing list.

We'll do another one of these tomorrow. Hell, maybe 10 of 'em. You need something to listen to tomorrow night, right? Right.

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