Saturday Night Live (NOT!)
Monday October 25, 2004 – 11:42 amI saw Ashlee Simpson crash and burn live the other night on SNL, and TiVo’ed it too. Having no life, it was pretty much the highlight of my Saturday, I couldn’t stop talking about it yesterday to whomever would listen! Thought she’d do a hoe-down indeed. Well, I think I’m over the novelty of it now but you know, you just don’t see enough of that stuff on TV these days. It’s the kind of thing SNL was really made for: to surprise and shock you, to make you laugh and make a mockery of the establishment. Too bad it wasn’t intentional! It was one of those beautiful zen moments where the whole fabric of our plastic manufactured corporate pablum-pukin’ reality is torn aside and we get to see the man behind the curtain… the Truth. Such a beautiful thing. I loved it, and I can’t feel sorry for our poor little poptart princess. She’s making bajillions of dollars doing whatever it is she does, and if she isn’t being paid to show us her real talent, she might as well earn her money some other way! By suffering through the disdain that such a massive screwup will surely generate for the rest of her… career. I just wish all her 12-year old fans could’ve stayed up late enough to witness that shit!!
Eh. You know, it takes all kinds. You have to have some plastic out there if you’re really gonna appreciate that which is natural and beautiful without any sugar-coating. That is, people like ME!!! Ha ha. Oh I know it’s cruel but how can I resist the temptation to twist the little barbiedoll’s misfortune into a plug for my own work? Some reviewers have said my voice seems a tad wobbly and off-pitch at times on my records… you know why that is? Because it’s my real voice. We never "tuned" it, we just recorded it and what you hear is exactly what came out of my mouth in the studio. Well, double-tracked sometimes, and harmonized out the ass! But you get the idea. And when I’m singing live, there is no question, there’s no way on earth that what you’re seeing and hearing is anything more or less than what I appear to be doing: playing and singing live. For better or for worse, that’s the real me. I’ve screwed up, I’ve laughed about it, I’ve started songs over, stopped songs in the middle, started songs in the wrong key. I’ve let out really loud belches onstage. Heheh… at least I never FARTED!! Not that I’ll admit to anyway, bwahaha!!
I was chatting with my pal Matthew at the time of Ashlee’s fuckup… I had seen her first song and didn’t pay too much attention to that. I remember thinking… "Eh, this isn’t my cup of tea at all. But man, is she singing that live? Boy, she’s an extraordiarily good singer! Hoo-wee! No wobbles, projecting that shit up to the rafters… boy howdy. That’s why girls like that make the big bucks I guess." See, I like to believe that people are who they say they are, that famous people who make millions of dollars are just that talented and really do deserve all that publicity.
Anyway, for the second song I wasn’t exactly watching it, my eyes weren’t on the screen at first, until I heard the singing stop and looked up. I thought her mike was just fucking up, like maybe a battery had died or something. I watched for a sec and saw her jumping around in confusion, and then slinking offstage. That’s when it hit me… OH MY GOD!! MATTHEW, TURN ON THE TV NOW!!!!! And when they cut to commercial I ran the TiVo’ed footage back and figured out what happened. Amazing!! Hilarious!! Oh god. Okay, but shit happens, let’s just move on and let her complete her performance when they come back from commercial. But no, it wasn’t to be, I waited ’til the end of the program and they never did let her finish. She came on at the end and blamed her band for the fuckup… at first I was all indignant thinking, goddamn, she’s blaming her band, what a liar! But upon further inspection of the tape, and from reading what others have had to say about it, it’s possible she wasn’t exactly lying when she said that. If it was the drummer’s job to give a signal to the person manning the CD player or whatever it was that held the vocal track, and the drummer gave the wrong signal, causing the vocal-starter-upper-person to screw up and play the wrong song, well then maybe it was the drummer’s fault to begin with. And if the band kicked in playing the wrong song, instead of starting over with the proper 2nd number, well then, the band really did play the wrong song. So I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt on that one.
Heheh… anyway… that was lots of fun. Hooray for Saturday Night Live, they should do that every week. :-)
October 25th, 2004 at 10:40 pm
I’m a total Ashlee fan now!! She performed LIVE-LIVE tonight (=last night) on the Radio Music Awards and I gotta hand it to her: she’s taking her knocks like a champ. Not that she has any choice, but still. She sang live, it was pretty horrible and I just loved it!! I’m a fan of bad music you know. I love horrible singers, the worse the better. So although she’s not the greatest singer I’ve ever heard, she’s not the worst either, so that’s not good but oh well. If she gets much better I won’t like her at all. Heheh.
Seriously though, this whole lipsynch scandal can only be a good thing for the music business in general. It raises the bar, the audience has spoken. They’re saying that they won’t necessarily accept lipsynching, that it’s not an okay thing for any singer to do: Ashlee had to come up with an excuse as to why she did it, she said she’d lost her voice due to "a horrible case of acid reflux" (too much information Ash!). So yeah, the people are saying they prefer singers that can really sing, imagine that! Wow!! I’m psyched.
October 26th, 2004 at 6:04 am
it must have not filtered down to her tweener fans yet because my daughter didn’t mention anything about it yesterday, and usually i hear ALL the dirt on the pop stars. like sk8er boy is so last year. and chad michael murphy rules.
October 26th, 2004 at 6:24 am
The first song she played sounded awful,you could totally hear the guide track more than her own live singing.
she was on a radio show yesterday saying that she lost her voice right before the show.(why did’nt she say that on SNL)it was funny cause she was talking a mile a minute forever and she sounded just fine,the next day.there was a drum track playing to,and the guy could not stop it.
October 26th, 2004 at 8:26 am
so edith, you’re not going to go all jewel on us and try the poptart/autotune route? ;)
October 26th, 2004 at 10:01 am
From the mouth of Simpsons’
From her site:
How do I get rid of all those videos.
10/24/2004 8:35:08 PM - by Ashlee Simpson
Ok you people know the internet, I’m going to get rid of all these videos posted on other websites, how do i delete them?
Mwhahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
October 26th, 2004 at 12:57 pm
I wouldn’t believe it Matt… people were playing some games with Javascript to rewrite their usernames so their posts would look like they were written by Ashlee. Would be funny but… oh well.
October 26th, 2004 at 1:10 pm
since we’re in access hollywood territory (or is it celebrity justice?), here’s my fantasy. someone drops a copy of "cars and parties" on kd lang, who then reaps a hit of "constant craving" proportions out of it. our girl edith, while not forgetting her loyal fans, does become fabulously wealthy and becomes known as song doctor to the stars. linda perry is SO pissed! then who, in a career crisis rivaling whitney for pathos (after all, it was her pushy dad’s fault), should hear about the drag city chanteuse (heard that word in the exp interview), but, yup, you know who…
October 26th, 2004 at 1:40 pm
Well, the community aspect of her site is down now….
October 26th, 2004 at 7:39 pm
So, I missed the Radio Music Awards performance. Is it available online anywhere? Cruelly curious.
October 26th, 2004 at 9:05 pm
I haven’t seen one yet Lucie but I’ll post a comment here if I find one. It’s not on that lipsync.us site, which seems to have all the other video variations.
October 27th, 2004 at 8:55 am
I think this will be a definite learning experience for Simpson.
First, I think it’ll teach her the value of grace under pressure. Leaving the stage when something goes wrong tends to be particularly bad form. Things are usually set up in the performances to keep this from happening, but the upshot is that people don’t know how to deal with the uncertain.
And I think the experience will teach her the value of not bitching out those around you in public. Usually, one would consider it unprofessional to put the blame on someone sitting next to you in a public forum. Accept it, move on, and later on the finger-pointing begins.
Lastly, I think she’ll realize it’s easier for a public to forgive a person who’s having a bad day but still goes in to do the job than someone who’s having a bad day but compensates by faking it. Or maybe I’m too idealistic. :)
October 28th, 2004 at 5:36 am
the real tragedy here is that ashlee (or britney … or christina … or ?) aren’t particularly attractive. i mean, that’s what it’s all about, right? these Entertainments, i mean.
October 28th, 2004 at 12:34 pm
On another forum, I read an interesting anecdote… it was about Superdrag’s John Davis breaking two strings at the same time while playing a lead, and without missing a beat, he "just skipped to two other strings and played those notes way up the neck."
Using this example, this poster than went on to say that because Ms. Simpson wasn’t a veteran of the club scene, she never learned how to deal with things when they go wrong… which is something that is inherently wrong with all these manufactured acts.
October 28th, 2004 at 12:54 pm
that’s good information. though i never saw Royal Trux back in the day, i heard *stories*. basically that, given their aesthetic, nothing *could* go wrong short of Complete Sound System Failure (and i doubt even that would’ve stopped them).