Peter has known FOTB (Friend of the Blog) Mr. C since he was broadcasting on WTUR in Medford. Now he can be heard Saturdays from 12-2 on LuxuriaMusic.com
Having a Las Vegas over/under connected to the length of your song may not be the most comforting entry into performance, much less singing the National Anthem on solo piano at the Super Bowl. That’s what Alicia Keys was faced with this year, and alone she bravely soldiered on trying to summon some dignity from the whole affair.
Thirty years earlier, Marvin Gaye was introduced at the NBA All Star Game to much less fanfare. With a click track in the background giving a pulse loosely based on his mega-hit, “Sexual Healing,” Gaye strode evenly to the mike. Head skewed slightly upward, dressed impeccably in a grey double-breasted suit, with eyes sheathed in opaque, impenetrable sunglasses, Gaye began to sing. Introspective, gallant and seemingly spontaneous, he began an interpretation as graceful as the athletes lined up in attendance, who smiled and swayed as he sang. Bombs didn’t burst in the background and U.S. soldiers weren’t standing by. Alone at center stage, Marvin Gaye transformed the potential bombast of the song into a gently parsed hymn - our National Anthem sung as an extremely personal, resolute reflection, part sublime sadness and part quiet triumph.
Great music on TV seems divided into two camps: The Beatles and Rolling Stones on Ed Sullivan, or several Elvis Presley appearances (though a very good argument can be made about the music in his case), which were hugely anticipated Events, where song was almost secondary to just the appearance. Then there’s the unexpected: Howling Wolf on Shindig [1] or this: Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All Star game. Here, by mid-song the crowd (and many of us viewing), experienced a collective, unmanufactured thrill, a tingle of disbelief…and this became the real event, the transformative, riveting power of great art. There is something happening here–a pure expression of complex emotion consolidated, into two and a half minutes of song.
–Mr. C
For the full story of how this anthem came to be, check out out Pete Croatto’s piece on Grantland.com
[1] Ed note: This blog has been up for only a few months, and we have already linked to this INCREDIBLE video three times. If you haven’t ever seen this… well… just watch it already!