Encore Reunion Re-Retirement Long Goodbye Tour, Round Two

Hey, wait a minute: didn’t we bid adieu to the Dyson DC41 in a much-ballyhooed farewell appearance last November? Weren’t we the ones who said “sell out on top”? Didn’t we say we wouldn’t “let it dribble out the door into bargain-bin dotage” like a “a once-ferocious rock band gumming their way through a limp Vegas pantomime of their golden oldies”?

Yeah. So? The kneejerk dismay for multiple goodbye/breakup/farewell/reunion tours is played out. The Who played their first farewell tour in 1982. Who are we to tell Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey they should’ve just stayed home for the last 30 years? If you love LCD Soundsystem, why would you get upset that they’re playing again, five years after their big farewell extravaganza?

If you thrilled to Sleater-Kinney’s “final” shows in 2005, do those feelings not count anymore because of their awesome 2015 comeback album? Would a real fan of Motley Crue (we can’t remember how to do umlauts on this computer) really object if they broke their supposedly ironclad contract that they’ll never play any more shows?

We know, we know, the farewell/reunion/farewell cycle supposedly somehow stains everything your favorite band stands for, reducing them to mere “showbiz”. Hate to break it to you, but they were always showbiz. And playing shows is, in many cases, the only business these people can get paid for. Nobody’s buying the new album (or the old albums, or any albums at all anymore, really). But you can’t pirate your way into a live show or torrent a t-shirt (yet). If you were sitting on a pile of songs that thousands of people would pay to hear you sing, you’d find it hard to stay off the road, too.

Besides, no tour bus can roll into your mind and trample your memories. If you want to pretend that Eminem stopped rapping in 2005, or that Ian Astbury never joined the Doors, or that the Velvet Underground didn’t stumble through several '90s false re-starts, guess what? Nobody’s stopping you.

We see a grain of sense in the objection that once the stars physically cannot do their thing anymore, they should hang it up. If Chuck Berry’s rickety knees can’t duckwalk, if Bob Dylan’s ravaged vocal cords can’t croak out a melody, you’ve got a right to be disappointed. But that’s not an issue for the Dyson DC41. It can still wail, can still shred, can still kick ass at cleaning floors. So line up and get your tickets now for what will surely be the Dyson DC41’s very last final appearance ever!