If you’re a live music fan like I am, you would have enjoyed the past two weekends, with the live music presentations by artists performing from their homes.
Last weekend was the presentation of artists organized by Lady Gaga, with the three main American networks contributing stories related to COVID-19.
Then this past weekend, the Canadian version of this event was held with all Canadian artists and stories, and the bonus was the event raised money for Canadian food banks.
The performances were kind of a throwback to the MTV “Unplugged” series of concerts from a couple of decades ago, like Eric Clapton’s famous concert that produced a great live album.
A comment I saw online about the American event said they should do this more often, as the performances were spare and not over-produced as the TV concerts often are, such as for award shows (the Grammy Awards, American Music Awards, and the Junos as examples).
I can agree with this, as the performances showed very clearly what the performer’s talents are without embellishment, and involved them playing an instrument and not singing to a music track or to electronically-produced music. It’s live and in person — the best way to hear it.
From the American event, there were a few good performances, such as when members of the Rolling Stones did “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.
The final song was definitely worth waiting for, as Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli reprised their song, The Prayer, that Celine has on her Christmas album. They were joined by Lady Gaga and John Legend, and it was really, really good.
Similarly, in the Canadian event, the final song was very nice, with most of the evening’s performers singing together “Lean On Me”.
Throughout the evening, some of the performances I enjoyed included the combination of Michael Bublé and the Bare Naked Ladies on a song accompanied by a young lady I don’t know, and Bryan Adams had a good performance also.
Burton Cummings played an all-too-short version of one of his classic tunes from his Guess Who days, “Share the Land”, and Jann Arden did a nice job with one of her songs as well.
With the two live events, using remote broadcasting and Zoom technology, we were treated to some very honest acoustic performances by a wide variety of singers, plus there were some good stories from both Canada and the U.S. about how people have been coping through this whole pandemic situation.
