The INQUIRER Top 10 IT rock gigs

IS THERE anything worse than rock stars who appear at
IT conference “parties” and the like?

Well, obviously yes there’s that and that. OK, that’s pretty awful too. Yeah, I grant you that one as well, but generally I mean, it’s not good is it, to hear some twerps plugging in and playing for the Man? Not really rock ‘n’ roll, is it?

Neil Young wrote a song all about the odd phenomenon of selling out through songs on ads, sponsored tours and the like called This Note’s For You, including these coruscating lines:

Ain't singin' for Pepsi
Ain't singin' for Coke
I don't sing for nobody
Makes me look like a joke
This note's for you.

Ain't singin' for Miller
Don't sing for Bud
I won't sing for politicians
Ain't singin' for Spuds
This note's for you.

But for his brothers in the biz, when Megacorp comes calling the only question is “how much?”.

It’s bad enough when it’s some rubbish band but it's also not good when it's somebody you admire up there, crooning some iconic number about love, death and art for a company specialising in data integration software or blade servers. It may even be worse when the gig is good but you’ve still got that queasy feeling because of the setting. You might like the sounds but it’s somehow wrong to see men in Brooks Brothers shirts and name badges loosening the tie and moving in to cut a few shapes with lovely Gina from marketing.

Anyway, I’ve seen a bunch of these things and heard about some others so here are 10 of them because love them or loathe them, as Kylie sang, I just can’t get them out of my head. Now you’ve got that tune in *your* head, haven’t you?

10. Macy Gray. The lady in furs was at her peak back in 2000 when she played a show for EDS at Comdex in sleazy, wonderful Las Vegas. Go on Macy, play your hit, play all your hit, we might have shouted. I’m pretty sure I was there but I have no recollection of the gig she played, nor the Barenaked Ladies who also performed at the same party.

9. BB King. Comdex in Vegas again, probably in the late 1990s and the king of the blues was playing a shack opposite the LVCC, I think for Iomega. This was a hot ticket and the gig was good, although some audience members insisted on making clicking noises with daft giveaways promoting Iomega’s Clik drives. [Heck, I was at one I think, Ed.]

8. Donna Summer. Computer Shopper magazine’s bash was not to be sniffed at when visiting Comdex. In the mid-1990s, Ms Summer dealt the audience of mail-order PC vendors and other liggers a terrific version of I Feel Love.

7. Diana Ross. Computer Shopper and Comdex again in the days of direct sales booms and The Boss (dream on, Bruce Springsteen) turned on the salacious charm to an audience of overweight, middle-aged men perspiring freely.

6. Lou Reed. Usually the model of surly subterranean chic, Reed was not so underground when he performed for AOL last year at a Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Perhaps worried by the sound of Andy Warhol turning in his grave, Reed ranted at his audience of bloggers and similar types. "You got 20 minutes. You wanna talk through it, you can talk through it. I can turn the sound louder and really hurt you," Reed reportedly said. Wow, now we’re really walking on the wild side.

5. Train. Like an idiot I heard this dreadful bunch go through their paces at a Salesforce.com conference in SF last year. I’d go again though, right after I finish putting these heated needles through my retina.

4. Blue Man Group. This mob showed up at, you guessed it, IDF at some point I’ve erased from my memory. You really should have more than a pot of face paint going for you to be a musical star.

3. Ryuichi Sakamoto. In 1996, I sat through the dreadful plinking and plonking of this Japanese "artist" at a free London gig supported by Mitsuibshi/Apricot. The event was only enlivened by copious booze and Mike Magee hurling insults and making rude remarks at the performer, much to the consternation of his adoring fans. [I deny it. I walked out after two minutes of plinking. Give me Netbeui any day of the week. Ed.] The concert may have been the first big concert broadcast live over the internet. A few years later, Mitsubishi pulled out of PCs.

2. Hootie and the Blowfish. The half-decent US rockers played a gig for charity sponsored by Intel in July this year. You can watch it here if you like that sort of thing.

1. Bob Dylan. If you’re going to pay a man to sing for his supper, it might as well be the greatest of them all. Amazon.com celebrated its 10th anniversary a couple of years ago with a luxury private gig for staff, broadcast live on the web and featuring a terrific duet with the beautiful and talented Norah (some say "Snorer’) Jones. The grab of the live stream has subsequently been in great demand. µ