Adams: "I got a plan."
I saw Ryan Adams and the Cardinals open for Oasis (!) in 2008 (!!!) but I only caught part of their set from across a basketball arena and anyway it was not an especially memorable experience. But I quite enjoyed the talky, sloppy Adams solo show — and opener Jason Isbell — that I review in today’s Washington Post.
I saw Aimee Mann play the Birchmere last night, and thought of the first time I saw her there, in 2000. She and her husband Michael Penn were touring together. Since neither of them (she told us then) felt adept at stage banter, they brought along a comedian to handle that part of the show for them. That was my introduction to Patton Oswalt.
Maybe Adams could hire a banter surrogate.
My esteemed colleague Catherine McCarthy was at the show with me. She covered an Adams concert from this tour in Baltimore about six weeks ago. That’s here, if you want it.
I thought Ryan’s “banter” made the night- maybe because of the parts that gave scathing commentary on concertgoers like the drunken bastard in front of me who kept requesting songs, or maybe because it’s the closest I’ll get to seeing Mitch Hedberg perform (for the record, DRA is a million times more Hedbergian than Oswaldish).