phxated_wyman… devotes some three pages of digital real estate relating his almost astonishingly uninteresting adventures trying to avoid paying for parking at the Paul McCartney concert at Jobing Arena last Sunday.

This may be the most boring lede of any story I’ve read recently:

I’m one of those people who prides himself on never paying for parking. Toss me anywhere, anytime, and I’ll find a reasonably safe spot to stow my car while I attend to whatever business I’m there for.

Parking is often a mess at the arena and stadium in Glendale; it’s a huge drag for music fans.

Cizmar is writing about something different: going from place to place in the areas surrounding the venues in an unsuccessful search for a free spot, griping like an elderly snowbird about his rights being violated along the way.

In the end, like a pompous yuppie, he vows not to patronize the Westgate mall any more:

First, let me start by saying that I’ve patronized Westgate businesses before. Two weeks ago, in fact, I bought a $23 Cleveland Indians hat at the complex before a game at Camelback Ranch. That’s the last dime anyone at Westgate will get from me.

Is this really the state of rock criticism in Phoenix? His piece on the show itself was kinda … blojobby, too. Here’s the lede of that one:

After nearly a half century in the spotlight, it’s surprising to see Paul McCartney do much of anything new. How about two new things in a single night, as McCartney did while kicking off his Up and Coming Tour with a stellar sold-out show at Jobing.com Arena? Maybe I’m amazed.

The former Beatle managed to play two classic songs live for the first time on American soil in Glendale. Those songs weren’t Monkberrian obscurities, either. One was “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” a hit from the Beatles studio-only years — the Beatles’ last real concert was four years before the band’s split, so a few such songs exist. The other was Wings’ “Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five,” the closing track on the group’s epic Band on the Run album. Wings toured extensively, making the fact that the song’s live debut came more than 35 years after it was released something of a surprise.

Now, think about it for a second. Just about every time anyone has toured, ever, in the history of the world, they do songs they haven’t done before.

It’s one of the most tired PR angles around. Why is this remotely interesting, much less amazing?

For someone like McCartney, it’s an even stupider thing to say. Why?

Because McCartney has toured the U.S. five, maybe six times in the forty years since he left the Beatles. (I’ve seen him four times, if I’m remembering correctly.) He’s probably played fewer than one-tenth as many shows as, say Bob Dylan has, for example, over that same period.

Given a fairly consistent setlist for each outing, McCartney could have played nothing but all different new Beatles songs alone on each of his previous U.S. tours and still have news ones in his pocket for Cizmar to get all tingly over last weekend.