October 13, 2004 CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Guitars and Amps: Campaign Tools By JON PARELES
http://www.nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - Energize the base or court the undecided? There was no question which strategy prevailed at the all-star Vote for Change concert on Monday night at the MCI Center here.
After a week of six simultaneous tours through battleground states to benefit the Democratic voter-mobilization group America Coming Together, Bruce Springsteen and 12 other headliners converged for a sold-out arena concert that was telecast live on the Sundance cable channel. While Senator John Kerry was mentioned exactly once during the five-and-a-half-hour event, by Mr. Springsteen, and Michael Stipe of R.E.M. wore a Kerry T-shirt, the musicians pitched their songs and comments to spur committed anti-Bush voters to the polls. It was also a show of solidarity as bands traded guest singers and fused onstage.
Songs can do double duty at benefit concerts: as musical events and as statements for the cause. Often performers simply trot out hits to keep donors entertained. But at the Vote for Change concert, hits were incidental. Only one band, Pearl Jam, played a specifically anti-Bush song, "Bushleaguer"; John Mellencamp and R.E.M. skipped songs they wrote to protest the war in Iraq. But all of them had searched their repertories for songs about war and peace, freedom, populism, principle and the meaning of America. Sometimes all that mattered was a song's title, as when Kenneth Edmonds, or Babyface, sang "Change the World," actually a love song.
The musicians didn't cede faith, patriotism or righteousness to Republicans. Mr. Mellencamp started the concert singing about Jesus, while Mr. Springsteen began his set with a solo 12-string-guitar version of "The Star-Spangled Banner." It wasn't a demolition of the anthem like Jimi Hendrix's version; it was an affirmation and a meditation, resonating as sound and symbol.
Some musicians looked back to 1960's protests. Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Keb' Mo' revived Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," changing "a thousand" to "a million people in the street." For the finale of a Pearl Jam set full of power-chorded wrath, Eddie Vedder sang Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" with a bitter voice and a baleful, unwavering gaze. (Mr. Vedder also sparked R.E.M.'s set when he joined that band for "Begin the Begin.") John Fogerty, backed by the E Street Band, paired his new song comparing Iraq to Vietnam, "Déjà Vu (All Over Again)," with a furious Creedence Clearwater Revival song from the Vietnam era, "Fortunate Son."
But there was more to this show than earnestness. The Dave Matthews Band turned the dire musings of songs like "Don't Drink the Water" into funk that had the audience dancing, and the hip-hop group Jurassic 5 had the overwhelmingly white audience shouting old-school hip-hop responses. James Taylor sang the kindly aphorisms of "Secret o' Life," then cheerfully contradicted his song's advice about not trying too hard, at least during the campaign. The Dixie Chicks, who have faced country-radio boycotts for their political statements, were by turns wry and vehement: "We must put an end to mad cowboy disease," said the singer Natalie Maines before the group charged into "Truth No. 2."
Mr. Springsteen's set summed up the concert. With his E Street Band chiming through the songs like a chrome-plated battering ram, he sang about ordinary people who were bruised but not beaten: "Born in the U.S.A.," "Badlands" and the song adopted by the Kerry campaign, "No Surrender." Then, in "Mary's Place," he turned himself into a television preacher, exhorting viewers to turn up the volume, take off their clothes, touch the screen and chant "Halliburton" to be healed.
Musicians, even the million-selling ones on the Vote for Change bill, play their best when they feel like underdogs with a sense of mission. The Vote for Change concert gave them just that, and spurred performances that were even better as music than as propaganda.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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