It was a bad night for music.<\/p>\n
It was a great night for Haiti.\u00c2\u00a0 People got to see what was really going on there.\u00c2\u00a0 And in a world where negativity is a no-no, it was great to see the unvarnished reality of destruction depicted.\u00c2\u00a0 Because people should know.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the crime of the century, what people don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 What’s fed to them and is incorrect, reflecting the biases of men and women with agendas, which don’t seem to comport with human decency or rights.<\/p>\n
I’ll tell you it stunned me to see Julia Roberts without makeup.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because I’ve never seen her this way before, she sat next to us at the Hollywood Bowl recently, but the fact that she left her home looking like this.\u00c2\u00a0 This is what rock stars used to specialize in. Reality.<\/p>\n
Seeing the row upon row of actors got my heart pumping, after all, celeb-spotting is our national sport.<\/p>\n
But I was disappointed with so much of the music.<\/p>\n
Alicia Keys might have a hit album, but the song she started off with was enough to make one switch the channel.\u00c2\u00a0 I just fast-forwarded through it.<\/p>\n
Act after act chose the wrong material, even if they delivered it well.<\/p>\n
Then there was Madonna.<\/p>\n
Got to give her props.\u00c2\u00a0 She did the right song, and she exhibited some energy.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not only about death, but rebirth.\u00c2\u00a0 Madge’s performance encapsulated this.<\/p>\n
But HD is not her friend.\u00c2\u00a0 All this talk about Heidi’s surgeries?\u00c2\u00a0 About going too far?\u00c2\u00a0 Did you see Madonna’s face?<\/p>\n
Shakira sang pretty well, but I wish she’d sung in her native language, her lack of facility with English hampered her performance.<\/p>\n
Right song by Sting, but just a bit too precious, just a bit too much about Sting.<\/p>\n
Justin Timberlake?\u00c2\u00a0 On an event like this, why don’t we have the man who wrote "Hallelujah" perform it, Leonard Cohen.<\/p>\n
Jennifer Hudson demonstrated once again that she not only has the pipes, she’s got the ability to interpret, she did a very powerful version of "Let It Be".<\/p>\n
But Jay-Z had star power.\u00c2\u00a0 He was dressed down, flying solely on his charisma.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what was supposed to happen.\u00c2\u00a0 We were supposed to be wowed by the stars.\u00c2\u00a0 But we weren’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Coldplay?\u00c2\u00a0 Give me a break.\u00c2\u00a0 I felt it a bit with Neil Young, but once again, I wish there was a better song.\u00c2\u00a0 As for the Boss…with the catalogue he’s got, he chose this?<\/p>\n
But the winner of the evening, what made me stand up and say THAT’S ROCK AND ROLL, THAT’S MUSIC, was Kid Rock.<\/p>\n
You see when he sang the verse of "Lean On Me", you could hear the bourbon, the nights of hard living in his voice, he was singing from his soul, it wasn’t a performance, it was MUSIC!<\/p>\n
That’s what we need more of.<\/p>\n
Sheryl and Keith Urban acquitted themselves adequately, on this perfect choice, but Robert Ritchie…<\/p>\n
If you want to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk.\u00c2\u00a0 Kid Rock is not breaking new ground in the rock star persona, but he’s delivering full bore on the old paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 We want someone who’s an outsider, not beholden to the rules, who shows up at the very last minute and aces the test.<\/p>\n
If you missed this broadcast, you did not miss much.<\/p>\n
On YouTube, there were some riveting moments, but watching it on the DVR, I couldn’t help but fast-forward.\u00c2\u00a0 Before the days of DVRs, this show would have worked, we’d be forced to watch it in real time, now, or forever lose out.<\/p>\n
But not today.<\/p>\n
I applaud the effort.\u00c2\u00a0 I hope a ton of money was raised.<\/p>\n
But when George Clooney and the rest of the actors possess more charisma than the musicians, when the singers lack that je ne sais quoi, when we just see you singing, when you don’t embody life itself, we know we’ve got a long way to go to recreate the credibility of this industry.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Iovine did it nine years ago, with just the music.\u00c2\u00a0 It was haunting, riveting.\u00c2\u00a0 But that was when writing your own material, having an identity deeper than the being the poster child for some product, was the key to a musical career.\u00c2\u00a0 You had to stand for something.\u00c2\u00a0 We had to look up to you.<\/p>\n
We need those elements again.<\/p>\n
This was like watching the Grammys.<\/p>\n
And you know you can miss the Grammys.<\/p>\n
Hell, who ever leaves the Grammys and says, WHAT A GREAT SHOW!\u00c2\u00a0 Or, DID YOU SEE THAT!\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, it’s WHERE ARE WE GOING TO EAT?<\/p>\n
I’m still waiting for Music’s Greatest Night.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t this evening, and I’ll guarantee it won’t be next Sunday night.\u00c2\u00a0 Because somehow, we’ve lost the essence.\u00c2\u00a0 Music needs to be meaningful and fun, loose yet precise, it’s got to encapsulate all elements of life.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where we can’t help but be drawn in, jump up and dance, wide-eyed and elated.<\/p>\n
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It was a bad night for music. It was a great night for Haiti.\u00c2\u00a0 People got to see what was really going on there.\u00c2\u00a0 And in a world where negativity is a no-no, it was great to see the unvarnished reality of destruction depicted.\u00c2\u00a0 Because people should know.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the crime of the century, what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Ga","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2615,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614\/revisions\/2615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}