Thursday, July 3, 2008
Free Nelson Mandela From His Birthday Party
I watched a packaged presentation of the Nelson Mandela Birthday concert broadcast this week on VH1 and VH1 Soul. A few months ago, VH1 showed the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony basically in real time as though you would be there. This program by contrast was a weird hash up of clips from the recent concert in London's Hyde Park, which was also a benefit for the Mandela sponsored AIDS charity which features his prison number 46664 for its name.
The Well-Executed Buffet does not frequently slag and bash, but I am hard pressed to find much of anything redeeming about the concert or its television presentation.
The hosts for the audience are Will and Jada Smith. Are they really that well loved in Britain? When he performed one of his G-rated raps, he had thousands of Londoners totally pumped up and a great many in the audience knew his lyrics. Jada came out on the catwalk to join him about half way through with this really obnoxious spastic dance. I'm not one to make fun of how folks dance, but goodness, if anyone other than wife of Will had come out there, she would have been squashed by big black t-shirt guys who should have turned her over to authorities to charge her with bad taste.
British broadcaster Dave Barry mentioned on one of his stand ups that Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sheryl Crowe, and Sharon Osborne all had sent Nelson birthday cards. Sharon Osborne?
Most all of the music on this program sucked. Leona Lewis, as disposable as just about everything that was every released by Mariah Carey. And Josh Groban is a pretty sorry case fora pop singer as well. There was the one of the few programmatic moments in the show where they teamed him up with a South African popstar for a banal anthem.
Amy Winehouse was there and actually performed. They showed the rehab song and another number and she lead the vocals on the Free Nelson Mandela opener. Who thought any of this was a very good idea? Apparently Eminem was to appear on this show as well. It is a strange world we live in.
Or then there was the combination of Freddie Mercury's bandmates (Brian May with his quintessential white guy blown out Afro) with Paul Rogers. Why didn't they just come out and call this pairing what it obviously is--Bad Queen. After a couple a Queen covers (or would they be half covers with another vocalist) it was Bad Co time for All Right Now. Please. Is my radio stuck on KGON?
Even the eighties were represented. Simple Minds performed. Jim Kerr, the former Mr. Chrissie Hynde did his Breakfast Club song. This dude is in his forties and he looks now much like a lot of us do with a high thirties inch waist line. Still it was slightly stirring to see the intensity of this crowd screaming on how one should not forget about me.
U2 didn't perform, but Bono and Edge sent a tape of them performing Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday, the song he wrote to try to get the King holiday passed. They looked like they were in someone's guest bedroom. Bono's arena voice and the Edge on acoustic seemingly out of place. And at the end Bono tried to do a bit of word play on Happy Birthday to you too from U2.
Mandela is a great and important figure of the past century. It seems disrespectful to me for Will Smith to call him out as the Birthday Boy on his 90th. Or that Smith's timing on this show seemed too well synchronized with product promotional placement for his new movie Hancock. I am glad for the fact that this concert may have raised some money and maybe some consciousness but there at the cost of some respect and dignity. But if this is the way the English want to party, who am I to stop them.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:47 PM
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