A feat of endurance and performance that in terms
of magnitude puts to shame every other major musical act, pretty
much ever.
I’m writing this, per usual, on planes to and from New
York City.
I hate the city.
The concrete canyons, trash piled higher than you are tall,
dudes with exposed socks and earbuds, ladies in all black
everywhere, traffic traffic more traffic.
It’s all bitter, no sweet.
But you can direct flight it from anywhere in North America –
and people who matter, at least in my industry, for whatever fucked
up reason, tend to be based in the general vicinity of NYC – so
it’s inevitable, like high tide killing every east coast sandbar,
death, taxes, and Trump electoral college math.
I buried the lede though.
I just got back from Vancouver.
Vancouver is actually a great city, although I didn’t see all
that much of it beyond the stadium where mankind’s last, best
scream into the yawning void that is the AI overlord future
performed the last show of a stadium tour that was only a “tour” in
the most banal sense possible – the fucking thing grossed over $2
Billion US dollars, a mind-bendingly shocking number that is not
only insane on its face but also in relative terms, in that it is
basically $1 billion USD more than second place.
Taylor Alison Swift is a psychotically insane force of nature
that makes one question previously taken for granted realities in
ways that are impossible to explain to humans who have not
experienced her mind-blowing auteurism in person.
I should mention – Mrs. Rocks is a real-life, hardcore, balls to
the wall, Swiftie.
Don’t fuck with Taylor in our
house.
You will not survive.
Your heart will be ripped from your chest, your eyes clawed out,
and your tongue fed to the wildlife in the nature preserve beyond
the backyard.
I asked Mrs. Rocks the other day how many TS concerts she had
attended in her lifetime.
She wasn’t sure.
A lot.
Vancouver was her third Eras Tour show.
But there were many more.
From the beginning.
Back when TS had bouncy curls and sang about things like screen
doors banging in a country night, before the whole Kanye thing
awakened some wild beast inside her and rocket-fueled her thirst to
dominate the global music industry.
Back when TS played regular arenas, before Scooter Braun bought
her masters and inspired her to embark on a multi-era revenge
mission that would make Inigo Montoya proud.
Thank you Amy, indeed.
As for me, Vancouver was my first ever TS show.
I don’t know what to tell you.
The stadium was sold out.
60,000-ish people stood for three and a half hours and sang
every. damn. word. of. every. damn. song.
At the top of their lungs.
I’ve been to multiple games at the NFL stadium that holds the
decibel world record, including a game that sent the team that
plays there to the Super Bowl a couple of years ago on a long field
goal as time expired.
Vancouver made my ears rattle and hum in ways I’d never
experienced, anywhere, ever.
And TS takes no breaks.
There were no intermissions.
At most, there were 30 seconds of musical interludes now and
then as she changed costumes in, under and around the massive
stage.
And while no one will confuse her dance prowess with say, B.
Spears, TS moves nonstop, all over the stage, both in and out of
scripted choreography, all the while singing and engaging an
absolutely batshit with ecstasy crowd.
It was a feat of endurance and performance that in terms of
magnitude puts to shame every other major musical act, pretty much
ever.
And Vancouver embraced the whole experience.
There were TS-themed displays everywhere, including at the
iconic Capilano suspension bridge, which turned its entire park
over to TS quotes and motifs.
Per various sources, the Eras Tour pumped over $150 million into
the Vancouver local economy, at least some of which was from Mrs.
Rocks and I – in addition to a great hotel room at L’Hermitage, we
enjoyed a fantastic meal at Dovetail, which should be high on your
culinary list if you find yourself in the Pacific Northwest (not
sponsored posts, btw).
All that being said, I’m sure by this point the core lords among
the ever-friendly BG audience are wondering what the hell any of
this has to do with surfing and writing me off forever.
This would be all the dudes who right now are thinking, “Rocks
rides soft tops and orders ED pills in bulk from forhim.com.”
Wrong on both fronts – I’ve got plenty of E and no issues with
the D – but I digress.
Here’s how it relates to surfing – yes TS is a multi-billion
dollar industry, and yes she has single-handedly rewritten the
rules of pop superstardom by taking over her music in unprecedented
ways (for those of you not in the know, she has been re-recording
every album Scooter Braun purchased and releasing the Taylor’s
Version (TV) of the same, exact fucking album, thereby
cannibalizing – very effectively – the album sales of Scooter’s
portfolio), and yes she had her own production company do a deal
directly with a movie theater chain to distribute her Eras Tour
film rather than work with a movie studio, and yes she
self-published a book that was available exclusively only through
Target (not Amazon) this past Black Friday and yet still rated as
the highest-selling book of the year, and yes she has more Album of
the Year Grammy’s than any artist ever, and yes she is the most
prolific singer-songwriter in history – like if Joan Baez, Bob
Dylan, Melissa Etheridge and the Beatles all got together and made
a mutant songwriting savant baby – and yes Time magazine has named
her person of the year multiple times ….
And yet she did all of that by absolutely motherfucking catering
to her core audience.
Taylor Alison Swift did not go chase Metallica fans, and Beyonce
fans, and Cold Play fans, and name any other band on earth’s
fans.
TS did it by making her own music, being fully authentic to
whatever songwriting vibe was in her head at any given time, and
going full bore 100% all in with her Swiftie tribe.
Not once did she ever say, “you know what, I think there are a
bunch of old Pink Floyd fans up in Massachusetts – I should write
an album for them, I’m sure they’ll become big fans of mine.”
She has been the Easter egg queen since the beginning but has
only ramped up the riddles over time, feeding the insatiable
appetite of Swifties for clues and clowning about whatever hidden
thing might be around that next blind corner in the TS
universe.
So what does this have to do with surfing, you ask?
The most famous and arguably most talented and energetic human
on earth, the only one I’ve ever seen live in person who made me
think, “you know what, maybe AI won’t take over the earth, because
right here in front of me is a rockstar genius who has put together
a portfolio and an iconic track record that can’t be duplicated by
Chat-whatever-GPT” – that person did it all by engaging her core
audience to the maximum possible limit of engagement!
Open your goddamn eyes, WSL
people!
Surfers want surfing, in great waves, where the commentators can
use words like “consequence” without irony.
The answer is right in front of you.
Or at least it was, until that last night in Vancouver.
A night Mrs. Rocks and I will never forget.
