Sunday, October 25, 2020

Sunday Music: Good Thing



I like some country (and now country/rock) music, but I'm not a Keith Urban fan, per se. (I'm not anti-Keith Urban either, just purely neutral.) And then somehow, this bit of serendipity showed up on a suggestion list.

After watching it, I'm a big Keith Urban fan. I never get tired of watching this moment, for the same reason some millions of us love watching the auditions on X-Factor or Whoever's Got Talent, when someone walks up on stage cold, and totally crushes a performance this way. It's Susan Boyle blowing the walls off a theater and exploding Simon Cowell's head; it's Marty McFly ripping out a better Johnny B. Goode than Chuck Berry. It's every former little leaguer dream-walking out of the seats, calling his shot, and parking a fastball over the center field bleachers. In Yankee Stadium. (And if you don't root for underdogs and amateurs who do that, I don't know you, and I don't want to.)

A sage once wrote that "luck" is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity.
In short, a guy is lucky who prepares for a million-to-one shot, and then out of nowhere, the opportunity to take it presents itself, and instead of making excuses for not being ready, they rise to the challenge of the moment.

This is exactly that moment for rookie of the minute Rob Joyce.
What were the chances?
Also, mad props to Urban for giving an unknown a shot, risking the guy getting on stage and sucking horrendously, but instead fortuitously picking the right guy at the right moment, and catching lightning in a bottle like this.

Ditto to Urban's bandmates, who rush back onstage, and back the guy up like a brother, because talent recognizes talent.

Enjoy the track, and the moment.
This is what life should be like as often as possible.
"Good Thing" indeed.

12 comments:

Suz said...

That's one birthday he will always remember!!

CJG said...

Good for Keith, and good for Rob! That was amazing! What a class act to give some kid in the audience a shot like that, and to be so encouraging, to boot. I'm sure they'll be telling their grandchildren that story, as they should.

When people go out of their way to be generous to others, they should get credit for it, and I, for one, am so glad you took the opportunity to do so.

Thanks, Aesop. We really need all the positive energy we can find right now.

Chris

SecessionIsTheAnswer said...

Absolutely right Aesop! Kudos to RJ - rockin the axe.

Welcome back by the way, your musical Sunday recommends have been missed.

DW

Night driver said...

"Talent knows Talent".

Sportsball guy I know says (fairly often when talking about other players (and, to be honest, "Playas") "Game knows Game"... If you got "GAME" the other players know "Game".

But, well, yeah Kieth took the gamble and won one.


Night Driver.

red forman said...

Welcome back Brer. You have been missed. If you have never seen Urban live, put that on your bucket list. It is well worth whatever the ticket price - he is simple one of the best performers ever. Also, one of the most decent guys out there. I offer your video as exhibit A.

uninformed said...

So first yup no question the kid knew how to play. That's the good news the bad is I'm not sure when I got so cynical. Let's analyze this situation shall we? First, this isn't some band down at your local Elks club that 100 people came out to see on a random weekend night. Concerts like this require serious planning and execution. The venue boasts a capacity of 9k people with the ability to remove seats to increase general admission tickets. I don't know how many people were there that night but it looked as if might have been a capacity crowd. Concerts these day aren't the loosey goosey $20 a ticket concerts of the past(there are even college level courses about making a concert run right). While not every word and action is 100% scripted most of it is. So let's see we are expected to believe this kid not only got tickets to this concert to be sort of up close to the stage. So close that the head liner could see the small ass signs they were carrying despite the lights in his eyes and he said sure let's bring this kid up on stage make everyone in the audience wait with out entertainment going on and take a chance on this kid not knowing which end of the guitar was up all on the slim chance the kid would be really good? I rank the chances of that at about the same as Aesop letting a random off the street person claiming he has mad med skills try to save the life of a patient. Yeah, one is life and death.... but the other is bread and butter. I'm not saying Mr. Urban personally vetted the kid before the concert but the smart money says some one with his staff or crew did, placed the kid close enough to the stage to plausibly make it look like this was off the cuff,then told Keith to bring the kid up. Otherwise there would be lots of concert youtube footage of wannabe's being brought up on stage and failing miserably.

Aesop said...

So let's grant your premise:

KU and the promoter or his own people have enough time to scout and seed a concert with guys with this level of talent, yet who haven't got any previous professional experience, and they then give their career a boost, solely for the YouTube eyeballs, since they all make their nut the minute the tickets are sold, and before KU and band play a single note.

So now, explain to me how this is not, yet again, a Good Thing.

And BTW, the number of atrocious attempts and face plants on YouTube outnumbers these solid gold moments 10:1 (SWAG, but trust me, I've seen them), it's just that with 8 and 13 hits apiece vs. 5M, you don't find them unless you go to Pg. 187 of the search queue.

BTW, cynicism is easy, requiring no substantiation except gainsaying and Devil's Advocacy, except you have no rationale that explains the effort; so just maybe, don't be quite so quick to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Just saying.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

Dayuum. I like you not a keith urban fan nor hater but that was badass. Watched the other video of when he was brought on stage and how made it even better. Rob's girlfriend thru the challenge out and He rose to the occasion

uninformed said...

Maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I never said the kid wasn't good, I never said Mr Urban bringing him on stage was a bad thing What I said was this was preplanned> I took your word for there being face plants aplenty to be found and did a search for KU bringing someone on stage to perform when they were bad. I didn't get a single hit on that search other than good experiences not bad. I did however find this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt7DvgUtddw&list=RDaXyqA2mPU9M&index=2 with KU talking about the contest they had before the concert to find talent to bring onstage. I am disinclined to believe that that was the only time they had a contest to find talent to bring up. Since it apparently happens with some regularity I say it's SOP. The rationale that explains the effort is self explanatory.Scroll down through the comments on the youtube page of these performances, even your own reaction to that video where you say you weren't a fan but you are now. I have no personal knowledge if KU is a really good guy or not. He or his record company do have pretty good PR people though. To be clear, Mr Urban saying on stage anything about how people get to come perform with him is my substantiation. I didn't attack you or your opinion of KU, yet my self deprecating comment about being cynical about the spontaneity of this element of this concert lead you to believe that I know nothing about the music industry or how public relations works and bonus points for you,you get to give me a little jab at the end. Well played sir, well played

Aesop said...

1) No wrong foot at all.
2) Gainsaying is gainsaying. Yes, maybe it was preplanned. maybe Neptune is made of moldy cheese. Both maybes have the same amount of substantiation. My only request is "Bring the evidence". Supposition is not proof.
3) The face plants aplenty are any eleventy other artists, not Urban, AKAIK. Most such attempts are cringeworthy at best. I'll post another pretty rare exception next week.
4) Your disinclination is your business. It is also not evidence. Where are the eleventy other talented amateur guitarists vids of all these supposed contests? Or even one such vid from the contest in question...? BGT has had a gazillion auditions. They have come up with only one Susan Boyle. That's not an accident.
5) Those comments would turn to vinegar if even one person exposed a fraudulent moment of serendipity for pre-planned shilling.
6) Did KU say that a contest was the only way people get to come up on stage?
7) I make no assumptions about what you know about the music business nor about how PR works. I, OTOH, have only something like 25 years to date working in motion picture, television, commercial, and music video production. I do have some wee appreciation for how The Biz works, and PR, having watched it first-hand. Two observations are salient:
a) You could swing a dead cat around for such a career in its entirety, and never find a Ph.D., nor anyone with an IQ 20 points above average mean, working in the entire industry, from gopher boy to CEO of an entire conglomerate.
b) The confirmation is quote on the entire entertainment industry by no less a luminary than William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride and author and screenplay fixer for about 200 other features: "Nobody knows anything."
This is necessarily true in an industry where both lead talent and executive producer are entry-level jobs.
If anything, Goldman is understating the stupidity and lack of perspicacity in the industry, top to bottom.
In short, the people you think are that clever, aren't.
I could only give you 2000 first-hand examples off the top of my head.
8) Cynicism is easy. Much easier than substantiation. That was not intended as a personal dig, merely a statement of fact. My apologies if Occam's Razor cut your whiskers closer than intended, but the simplest explanation is that this was exactly what it was seen to be. Imagining a clever hoax, with conspirators aplenty, all keeping mum contrary to all human experience in general, and the entertainment biz in particular, lest they tarnish both the moment, and the singer in on it, leads me to think it wasn't anything other than spontaneous. Is it barely possible it was a set-up? Sure.
Just extremely unlikely, particularly in an industry notorious for never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, step on its own junk, with cleats, and which lives and dies on the tell-all expose, not the clever hoodwink.

uninformed said...

Well that was weird. while I was responding to you a page refresh wiped my response and I swear changed to what I was responding. I will not dispute for even a second your analysis of the "brilliance" of folks in the biz. While I found a few to actually be bright(mostly those whose jobs were as radio chief engineers and some of those may actually have baffled me with bs) Neither would I dispute the quality of character of most people (to be clear, not great). There may be other videos of amateur performances from hell, but since the subject was that particular KU concert or KU concerts in general. Keith Urban & 11 year old Lauren Spencer-Smith WOW crowds live in concert in front of 20,000+ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt7DvgUtddw&list=RDaXyqA2mPU9M&index=2)In the first 20 seconds KU tells the audience about the competition held before the concert. Telling everyone means there is no subterfuge If you really intend to shave with that blade then if KU brings people up on stage to either play guitar or sing or whatever on something of a regular basis and it appears that he does, then the simplest answer is the "talent contests" before his concert also take place on a somewhat regular basis. To extend a reasonable supposition farther, if this is generally known, then talented people would come from far and wide with the hopes that this could be or lead to their "big break". Is that "proof", maybe not enough to put a man on death row but every bit good enough to not want to have him as a weekend house guest with your family home.(as I'm not interested in getting my 15 seconds of fame for winning an online disagreement[yeah yeah, Warhol said minutes but times change]please just dump this comment after reading)Btw you're right I am gainsaying the perception of some that this was some serendipitous event, and have proved it to the extent that a reasonable person would accept lol

Aesop said...

Not butthurt either way by either comment.
My experience is that when there's a contest, they promote the hell out of it, they don't hide the fact.

As for your comment getting eaten...
"Forget it, Jake...It's Chinato…, er, Microsoft..."
I regularly dump duplicate comments here, because a lot of people who post end up double- or even triple-posting.
I'm sure the glitch works in reverse as well.
I've similarly had entire post uploads eaten. That hurts.
I pay $0.00/yr for this blog, and I'm getting my money's worth, just like a lot of my readers.