Jon Ronson: An Evening Of Public Shaming, On tour
The writer and broadcaster Jon Ronson’s latest book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, begins as a meditation on the ways social media has snatched the practice of shaming from the conservative press and the people who ran the stocks, and made it a permissible – even respectable – pastime again. Exactly how a largely progressive vigilance surrounding political correctness created a class of rabid part-time prosecutors of a terminally insensitive public is a question that leads Ronson down a fair few dead ends, positioning his study more as an astute conversation-starter than the source of many answers. He begins the UK leg of his book tour this week in that vein, expanding and adding to his previous observations, his neurotic speaking style belying a man most at home dealing with the insidious currents running through modern life.
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Wayne Coyne, Liverpool
From a strange infatuation with Pink Floyd to its ever-expanding international festival of psychedelia, Liverpool has a fair claim to being the UK’s most lysergic city. So it’s fitting that the Sound City festival should boast a keynote speech from the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, who’s been exploring rock’s outer limits for 30 years. He’ll be discussing the band’s experiments with multi-channel sound, including the infamous parking-lot shows at which fans were asked to simultaneously stream music via their car stereos. Coyne’s also courted controversy lately, co-opting Miley Cyrus and Ke$ha into his schemes, and upsetting Erykah Badu after posting their curious video collaboration online. Yet, along the way, he’s created some increasingly out-there music which – appropriately for a trip to Liverpool – includes With A Little Help From My Fwends, a head-spinning remake of Sgt Pepper.
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An Evening With Al Pacino, On tour
Why would a great like Pacino be doing public events like this? Does he need the adulation of his fans? Is he promoting his new movie (Danny Collins, incidentally, in which he plays a reformed rock star)? Or does he have a huge tax bill to pay off? If it’s the latter, that would explain the high ticket prices and bewildering array of VIP packages (£25,000 for the “fly with Pacino” private jet deal). For many, it’ll be enough to be in the same room as him. Of course, he’s got a trove of material to mine, given his staggering back catalogue, his love of theatre and his apparently undiminished passion for acting. The prospect of intimate reflection or revelation is distant with events like these, but it’s promised he’ll go into some of his most famous characters, and if anyone can deliver an anecdote, especially an over-polished one, it’s him.
Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, Tue; Hammersmith Apollo, W6, Fri; touring to 24 May
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