(no subject)

On the way to see Tim Easton and Jay Farrar tonight, I talked about seeing Easton open for the Cowboy Junkies. His set, just him and an upright bassist, was easily the highlight of the night. This is pretty common for me, I said--I'm always liking openers more than headliners.

Well, it was true again tonight. Easton played solo--the first time I've seen him all alone--and I got a better view of his acoustic guitar playing than I've had before. He's just an amazing guitarist. And he has great, gripping songs, and he was comfortable and joking with the audience. The friends who were with me liked the set a lot too--one of them bought a four-track vinyl/CD collection of live tracks, and we listened to the CD on the way back.

I love Jay Farrar, but after the warmth and skill of the opener, he was kind of anticlimactic. There was a certain sameness to the songs, and a detachedness--one song after another, with little ado. Marc Spencer, the multi-instrumentalist he tours with, was virtuosic as ever, but by the end of the show, the song running through my head was still Easton's "I'll Take You Home".

(no subject)

Slate has a piece on Billboard's new digital download chart. Beyoncé's new single was #1 this week with 1,500 downloads--a number so small it's hardly worth printing. The most interesting speculation in the article:

Billboard says that Apple, the most aggressive player in this market so far, is selling an average of 500,000 tracks a week. If that's true, and it takes just 1,500 sales to be No. 1, then the variety of tracks that people are downloading must be extremely broad--particularly compared with, say, the variety of tracks that make up a typical Top 40 station's play list.