That’s Entertainment – Paul Weller in New York, 2nd Night
The song was over, but the audience was still singing.
At the second night of Paul Weller’s three-night run of performances at the Irving Plaza in New York, the focus of his musical retrospective was on the music from his band The Style Council. But as he had done the previous night, when the focus was on the music of The Jam, after performing about ten Style Council songs Paul said, “OK, that’s enough with the nostalgia for now”, and continued with amazing performances of his more recent work.
But he wasn’t completely finished with the nostalgia. He repeated a song from The Jam that was one of the high points of the first night, That’s Entertainment. Among the multitude of great songs from The Jam, That’s Entertainment is among their greatest. It is certainly The Jam’s most acclaimed song, coming in at #306 as The Jam’s only appearance on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, it was also the song my brother Kevin had requested to hear by cell phone when performed on the first night, and getting a repeat performance on the second night was an unexpected bonus.
The song is great live, as it has a very easy to join background chorus, which written text cannot do justice to, but is essentially a slowly delivered “la la la la la la-ah“. Now obviously that may not seem like much, but having a club full of enthusiastic fans singing along and hitting their parts with unity and precision is something great to be a part of. When the song concluded, and Paul and the band members took a moment to change instruments, or take a drag from a cigarette, the audience kept on going with an extra, room-filling verse of our “la la la la la la-ah’s“, and in unison, as if well rehearsed, the singing gently faded out to a perfect on-cue stop. By this point Paul had moved from his center stage guitar stool to the piano in preparation for his next song, and he watched and listened to the audience’s bonus ending to his just finished song. When it ended he said, “Awesome, fucking awesome.” It was one of the nicest moments of seeing a performer genuinely enjoy an audience that is likewise genuinely enjoying a performance that I’ve ever seen.
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<p>The show was great but I think you’re being too easy on Sir Paul. My friend flew in from Chicago — and I know many others came from even farther away — specifically to see this so-called Style Council night … only to have the show be essentially the same as any of his solo gigs (we’ve seen Paul live dozens of times and he always does some Jam and Style Council live).</p><p>It’s totally cool when an artist chooses not to do material from their past, but don’t go out of your way to bill something as a special night and then bait and switch your fans. Paul has played New York many times and his gigs — much less three nights — never sell out in 5 minutes … and it was the false advertising that did the trick.</p>
<p>Yeah, I can’t really argue with you too much on that point. I was really looking for him to perform ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down’ last night. And there were some Jam tunes missing from Monday… In The City, Going Underground, Down in the Tube Station at Midnight… would have been nice.</p>
<p>somebody lied to us. possibly paul wasn’t directly to blame, but that’s who we see up there so it doesn’t matter. it’s his fault. i’m not going to fall for it again the next time somebody else says they are going to play old songs for 1 night only.</p><p>i am also of the opinion that it was a great show. i tried to ignore my disappointment and enjoy it, but i would have liked it a lot more if i weren’t deceived. if i see paul weller on any other night i expect to see him play his new stuff, of course; they are good songs and deserve to be heard. considering the crap he pulled, i think he is very fortunate his fans are generally so understanding. but what do we get for that? nothing. what does weller get? adoration and cash. he’s due for a dose of bad karma for this.</p>
<p>Hey Chris,</p><p>The "That’s Entertainment" cellphone recording came out great. I even got to hear a chorus of the "la-la-lahs" as sung by the audience. Awesome. Fucking awesome.</p><p>KC</p>