Youth can be boring too

The Who's performance at last year's Super Bowl was so lackluster that I remarked at the time that it would kill the six year run of classic rock artists (Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Who). Sure enough, this year the organizers turned to one of the darlings of the modern musical sphere: The Black-Eyed Peas.

There were touches of the MTV-produced days. More emphasis on dancing/production than on the musical performance. Unannounced guest stars. Younger, hipper music. The only problem: It was just as boring to me as others found the classic rock acts.

Please, I am not being an old fart who believes my music was better (although there is truth in that statement). I have always been more about the music than the production. Guest artists are fine if there is a point to it. And though I don't like hip-hop, the BEP do perform a catchy mix of genres.

The real problem is that they tried to do so much that the show was unfocused. You only have 12 minutes--make them count. Was that really Slash? They could have trotted out any tall skinny guy with a top hat and Les Paul. He was only on stage for a half-minute and added nothing other than a guitar riff that could have come from the back-up tape. And when did Usher become a back-up dancer?

They should have just done most of their three best party songs with one ballad thrown in the middle. By trying to do so much, it just fell flat.

The biggest crime, however, was the sound mixing. Couldn't they get whoever does sound for the band (and who knows their songs) to mix? They did? Well, that was embarrassing. From the opening notes, the sound was wrong and it never really improved. With the improvements in broadcast sound technology, it's not as if they were trying to mix for the Ed Sullivan Show. They have the equipment; the humans operating it were incompetent. I would like to hear more about what happened there.

Their performance is getting mixed reviews. It will be interesting to see what they do in the future. Can't they just find some performers who are well-liked (a youth act this year, a classic rock act the next) who will just give a good tight musical performance and leave it at that? Is that too much to ask?