Bright Eyes singer Conor Oberst is not backing down from the boycott of Arizona.
In a new interview, Outburst Oberst singled out another musician by name, picking on Lady Gaga, who bravely performed in Phoenix last week for the second time on her current tour. Her first time through town she famously asked, "You really think that us dumb fucking pop stars are going to collapse the economy of Arizona?"
Oberst called Gaga "irresponsible" because she brushed off the boycott the Sound Strike and Zack de la Rocha began championing in the wake of SB 1070, a dumb anti-immigrant law blocked by courts before it could take effect.
"It's a real shame for someone like Lady Gaga," he said. "When she does a concert there, she's providing so much money for the state of Arizona, so it's really irresponsible for her to think of it in those terms. She's obviously intelligent and informed enough to engage in certain political positions."
He also had this: "I think that they're short-sighted in the way they're looking at it... Everyone involved is aware that the act of one band not playing in Arizona, or even all of the bands as a musical component of the boycott, is not going to shut down the state government."
We'd like to know more about Oberst's positions, but he, wisely dodged our interview request as his publicist Chloe Walsh of Press Here Publicity describes it she, "failed to change his schedule around to accommodate [our] last minute request to ask him questions about Sound Strike prior to a performance" at Austin's South By Southwest music festival two weeks ago. (Press Here also represents boycotters Jenny Lewis, Mos Def, and Maroon 5.) Shucks. It would have been nice to hear what they taught Conor about the Gadsden Purchase in Prep school.
