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Monday, February 8, 2010

Notes On The Superbowl Half-Time Show

Before the Superbowl fades away into a distant memory, I thought I'd provide some quick notes on the halftime show with The Who.

1) The staging was fabulous. Whoever designed the elaborate staging should be getting more recognition because it was really unique and inpressive. It's hard to believe that it was put together in 4 minutes and even harder to believe that it actually worked having such a short setup time, though they reportedly used 600 volunteers to get the job done.

2) The entire stadium singing along was so cool. Everyone singing "It's only teenage wasteland," and "Won't get fooled again," gave me chills from all the energy. There's been some really great halftime performances before, but I don't remember anything that dramatic (of course, I'm a big Who fan).

3) No fake crowd this time. One of the things that ruined the previous halftime shows for me was the fake crowds in front of the stage with obviously staged enthusiasm. This time the staging was too big for that, and thankfully it was in the dark so it was even more like a real concert.

4) The Who played pretty well. They're a great live band that gathered steam as they went along. Roger Daltrey was in the best voice I've heard him in for a long time as he hit all the notes even though he has to strain to do it any more. My God, these guys can still rock hard in their mid-60's! "Hope I die before I get old," indeed.

5) Zac Starkey is a great drummer. That's Ringo's kid playing drums and he's all too overlooked. Zac is the best drummer The Who has had since Keith Moon died. Of course, it helps when your father is a world-class legend (who is vastly under-rated himself). Word is that Zac even took lessons from Moonie when he was kid, so it appears he was destined for this.

In a related note, I thought that Carrie Underwood's rendition of the nation anthem was really great, despite the clunker of a last note. She has some real pipes and a lot of guts to go out there by herself without backing musicians in front of 106 million people. I wasn't a fan before, but I am now. Her producer Mark Bright raved about her in a recent interview for my upcoming book The Music Producer's Handbook. Now I know why. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

1 comment:

getitinwriting said...

Interesting....was just talking with a friend about Zak. He's a fantastic drummer, and his being tutored by his godfather Keith explains why his style is more Keith than Ringo. It's an interesting dichotomy that his facial expressions are so complacent. (My friend remarked that he had a serious case of Nigel Tuffnel hair...)

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