by Awesoman » Fri Dec 14, 2012 7:10 pm
I thought McCartney's performance, and the entire concert itself, was a mixed bag. Kind of an odd song selection for him to perform. Paul always seems to manage missing the point of these benefit concerts by playing the wrong material (during the Concert For New York he spent half his setlist plugging his then-new album, Driving Rain). "Ninteen-Hundred & Eighty-Five", while a fine album cut, is not exactly a song I'd bring out for a benefit concert like this. And "My Valentine"?! Really, Paul?
Fortunately, things picked up during the second half of his performance when he brought out "Blackbird". Then came the oddest collaboration of the night: Paul fronting Nirvana! I'm really not sure how I felt about this jam session; McCartney is really the *last* person I'd expect to replace Kurt Cobain. I'm just glad they didn't attempt to perform "Lithium" or something. If anything, this performance managed to losen Paul's voice up as he sounded really good during "I've Got A Feeling". "Live & Let Die", yet another fairly odd choice for this particular concert, at least managed to literally light up the venue...only for the momentum to come crashing to a halt when Alicia Keys closed the evening. I was really hoping a lot of the performers of the evening would get together to send the whole thing home.
Overall it was a rather strange concert. Kind of hard to watch all my music heroes get old. Clapton's still got it but the Who, whom kicked a lot of ass during Concert For New York, were sluggish and wobbly this time around. And the Rolling Stones...they played a B-grade tune like "You've Got Me Rocking" in favor of the most obvious choice of song, "Gimme Shelter"????? ...the hell?