I don’t want a take-back

Last night, the Lad got us free tickets from KALX to see Minnie Driver perform at the Great American. If you’re wondering whether she can sing, I’ll tell you: it is decidedly so. Are her songs interesting at all? Well, outlook does not look good there. Sure, she’s tall, she likes wearing shorts, but can she hook-hook dunk-dunk a hit single? More importantly, will she really work on her music skills or will she just play off her celebrity status? A charmingly catty reference to “Matt, you bastard” suggests the latter, but I say she should use every advantage she can. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and her dog is winning.

Her band included members of such light-the-world-on-fire groups as the Wallflowers and Pete Yorn’s ensemble. I like to imagine that they were at first put off by her Hollywood status, but were eventually won over when she whispered, “I don’t want a Grammy. I just want you to come to California with me.”

After the third melodic, cookie-cutter ballad of a broken heart, I was ready to leave or start drinking, especially with the guy in front of us puppet-jerking along to his own internal white boy rhythm. “Bring me another mai-tai!” I shouted, but garnered only dirty looks from the crowd. Unable to face a possible Harrison Ford or John Cusack reference without a drink in me, I grabbed the Lad and hightailed it out of there. Still, I’m glad I went. Even though I knew it might be horrible, I just had to go see about this girl.