"This is probably the best song ever written and here's the best singer in the world, Mr. Richard Ashcroft…"
Chris Martin
Now THIS is IT!!
This was the performance there was the most scuttlebutt about, the one that everybody was talking about, the unexpected moment, and it DELIVERS!
I mean is Richard Ashcroft a star in YOUR book? With his one big hit? But when this lanky dude strides on stage, you feel the charisma of Jim Morrison. It's daytime, which saps the energy, the specialness of seemingly ALL rock and roll. But, suddenly, your heart starts to pulse, your adrenaline starts to pump, you're in heavy ANTICIPATION! And then Richard walks to the front of the stage and starts thrusting his arm in the air and you suddenly FEEL IT! THIS IS ROCK AND ROLL!!!
God, with this introduction, playing as a sideman, Chris Martin rehabilitates himself. Suddenly, instead of being a poser, the dude in the magazines with the movie star wife, he's suddenly a FAN! And that's what we all are. It's the music that counts, not the PERSONALITIES!
And then, Richard starts to SING!
THIS is why the business is tanking in the U.S. Nobody can PLAY, nobody can SING!
Oh, that's an overstatement. But, even though we expect Ashlee and Britney to lip-synch, we also expect major stars to sing to track, to have backup singers covering up their mistakes, their flaws. But this dude, who's been out of the spotlight for YEARS, opens his mouth and this sound starts to waft over the hundreds of thousands in attendance and it's positively MESMERIZING! He sounds JUST AS GOOD AS THE RECORD!!!
This is the Live Aid moment we've been waiting for. This is the experience. Pure MAGIC!
The baton has been passed. From commercial-laden MTV to the WEB! Where you get it how you want it when you want it.
Go to: AOL Live 8
Finally, the clips are in QUICKTIME! The images are rich, in a way that Windows Media can never achieve. You feel somehow THERE!
My only regret is you can't resize the image and get all that rich detail full-screen, which QuickTime 7 allows.
Oh, my browser crashed the first time. And, if you try to replay the same clip you get no image. But if you're willing to just click the button and watch…it brings tears to your eyes.
If MTV were still about music, they'd just add titles to this clip and bang it twice an hour for the next week. And people would buy the CD single, and the iTunes download, they'd play the track at sporting events.
This is how it used to be. When everybody still cared.
Contact Bob Lefsetz | View Lefsetz Letter Archives
NOTE: The views expressed in this editorial do not necessarily reflect the opinion of CelebrityAccess, Encore or its employees.
