Review: The Perez Hilton Presents Tour

As an obsessive jazz fan, I'm accustomed to seeing shockingly meager audiences. Even so, I was horrified when I stepped inside the Beaumont Club Wednesday. Less than one hundred people were on hand for the free and well-publicized Perez Hilton Presents Tour stop.

Did I mention it was free?

It wasn't as if the spectacularly successful gossip blogger put together an esoteric bill of avant-garde jazz artists. Even with headliner Ida Maria dropping off the tour, Hilton offered an appealing lineup.

Good times were there for the taking.

While he's undeniably lightweight, Eric Hutchinson is likable enough. A spontaneous song in which he mocked the size of the audience was genuinely funny.

I loved the first three minutes of the exuberant showing by Natalie Portman's Shaved Head but the joke became tired in a hurry. By the time they played their signature song I'd lost the will to live. But that's just me. The other 87 people in the club were digging it.

Semi Precious Weapons looked and sounded almost exactly like this. I laughed with them, not at them. Yet I just didn't have the heart to stick around for Ladyhawke. And the free energy drinks I was pounding had my stomach in knots.

What's to be learned from this fiasco?

Are Hilton's readers not music fans? (That's a safe assumption.)

Is an association with the gossip blogger a career killer? (Maybe. I saw a couple hundred people sing along to all of Hutchinson's songs at a 2008 gig. That number was reduced to a couple dozen young women Wednesday.)

Would most people rather sit at home rather than go out to see a free show consisting of unfamiliar acts? (Apparently so.)

Are Hilton's curatorial skills questionable? (I don't think so. While they lack star power, all four bands still on the tour are true to Hilton's unique sensibility.)

Thanks for trying, Perez. Let me know if you'd like me to recommend a few jazz acts for your next tour.

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"A Jay-Z song was on!" I'm under the spell of Miley Cyrus' latest hit. (Tip via C.H.)

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Farewell, Arthur Ferrante.

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I didn't have an app to verify what my ears were telling me, but I'm almost certain that the pre-show music at a recent Mars Volta concert was an old Renaissance album.

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Kansas City Click: I can't wait to hear these immortal words again at the Midland Theater on Thursday: "Our name is Motorhead and we play rock'n'roll."

Missouri is on the classic rock bill Friday at Starlight Theater.

"The Show" on Saturday is Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh at the Scottish Rite Temple.

On Sunday, Booker T. plays Knuckleheads.

(Original image of Semi Precious Weapons by There Stands the Glass.)