Matt’s Monday Rant: The Rolling Stones Super Bowl Appearance

The Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger, pictured right) and Super Bowl entertainment, two wrongs don’t make a right. Super Bowl entertainment is like a John Grisham novel, it has no redeeming artistic value but it makes many feel like participants in mainstream pop culture and gives them something to talk about at the water cooler. Yesterday was a similar joke with a slightly revised punchline. The Stones were half-time entertainment for Super Bowl XL. The Stones, man!! They used to be cool, right? They used to scare parents (who are now great, great grandparents). Now, they’re halftime entertainment. I’ll admit that I watched, like one might look at car accident – it’s not good, but you just can’t look away. The entertainment factor increased when Pam asked if I thought they “would use the five-second delay if Mick breaks his hip and falls.” She knows I’m a sucker for the broken hip misnomer – most people don’t fall and break their hip, they break their hip then fall. I then started to think about the Stones and the last good album they put out. I’ll be generous say Tattoo You, but that was 1981 – TWENTY-FIVE years ago. They already had a hall of fame career at that point. Forming in over forty years ago, they seemed like a sick joke at the half time show. I’ll admit that the sound crew wasn’t helping, but that’s not an excuse for the Metamucil rock show. At least Jerome “The Bus” Bettis knows when to retire. I know it is the rock life cycle from rebellion to mainstream commodity, but why participate?