I saw Pearl Jam last night...

The political stances don't bother me so much when it's in their lyrics. It's the speeches that are the problem!
After attending Net Aid, I felt like jumping off a bridge. Indeed it was for a great, great cause, but after a few minutes of driving home the fundraising point, everybody is just dying to hear some music.
Springsteen is one who IMHO has mastered briefly getting his point across without resembling to a babbling fool in Speakers Corner. Cheers,
Spencer

I agree that bands and politics should be separate. I also think that most offenders secretly agree and are simply introducing political speeches into their shows out of desperation, a "Someone has do something" mentality. I heard Sanatana last summer, and he took a brief moment to promote world peace -- but in an apolitical way that was not offensive to anyone. No one booed but not everyone clapped, and all left happy.

Barry309, the Dylan 30th anniversary show is a great disc that I still listen to evey now and again, but Sinaed O"Conner wasn't booed off the stage in tears because she was reading poetry, it was because she had refused to play at one of her own shows until a raised American flag was removed at a venue in our own country.
I'm not a fan of unruly behavior at shows, or booing artists offstage- but she did that one to herself.

I saw PJ's second show in Camden last night. No ex-prisoners in sight and barely a bathroom break for the band during a long & great show. Up there with Radiohead & NIN as one of a handfull of extraordinary arena-scale performances I've seen in the last few years.

My Morning Jacket from Kentucky was also good-- to my ear a synthesis of Allman Bros. Band in its prime, with some perhaps too obvious debts to Mercury Rev.

My Pet Peeve: What is it with the dweeby frat-boy fans who need to get out their cell phones during the best moments of a rock concert and bring their friends on-line with the experience?

Dave