Concert Review - 121212 The Concert for Sandy Relief

Normally I don't write concert reviews for shows I wasn't physically at. No, I was not in New York City at Madison Square Garden last night for what was arguably one of the touchstone moments in music history of the 21st century, the 121212 concert for Sandy relief. It didn't matter that I wasn't there, because how and more importantly, who I experienced the concert with was almost better than actually being there. This was all thanks to the power of the dual screen television experience of a live event and Twitter.

There had been buzz all day long on 12/12/12 about the concert, with heavy emphasis placed on a "Nirvana reunion" fronted by Sir Paul McCartney. More on that later. As the show began, it was immediately clear this was going to be something special.

Opening in the most apropos way possible for a benefit concert for hurricane victims in New York and New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed an absolutely spine tingling set of songs, with all the passion and professionalism they could muster. it would be news if they played at less than 110% on a normal night, but the combination of the meaning of the night and the home town crowd clearly brought even more out from The Boss and the stage full of musicians."My City of Ruins" gained a renewed sense of personal meaning and was one of the most touching moments of the set. But things got particularly crazy when Jon Bon Jovi joined Springsteen for "Born to Run," veritably living out the fantasy of just about any music fan from New Jersey; performing a duet with Bruce.

Next up was Roger Waters, who delivered several pieces from The Wall, including the live coda to "Another Brick in The Wall, Part 2", featuring projected imagery and names departed souls from his recently concluded tour of that legendary album. There were three big surprises during Waters' set. The inclusion of "Money" from Dark Side of the Moon was all at once unexpected and deliciously ironic, because of its underlying meaning of greed. Next was an incredible rendition of "Us and Them" also from DSoTM. To put it in perspective (and unless I am completely off in my research) these songs haven't been played live by Roger Waters since 2008 and they were most assuredly not in the set list of The Wall Tour. The finale saw Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder join Waters for "Comfortably Numb." The result was proof that Eddie Vedder needs to immediately get into a studio with an acoustic guitar and record an album of Pink Floyd covers in his own inimitable style. It was that good.

Next up was, Adam Sandler and Paul Shaffer, performing a Sandyized reworking of Leonard Cohen's classic, "Hallelujah" (that song from Shrek for those unfortunately still not familiar with Cohen). Starting off as a bit of fun, it got progressively snarkier as the song progressed. The live audience loved it and while some on Twitter didn't quite appreciate Sandler's new lyrics, at least the official Twitter feed of Leonard Cohen's Old Ideas world tour took it in the spirit it was intended:

If we had to guess who would be singing Hallelujah at the #121212concert, we wouldn't have guessed Adam Sandler. But we dig it! #screwsandy
— Leonard Cohen Tour (@LeonardOnTour) December 13, 2012

Bon Jovi took the stage next, with Jon Bon Jovi running throughout the MSG crowd as they began, working the audience expertly and likely enjoying the fact he didn't need a squad of security guards/off duty linebackers to protect him. Bruce Springsteen returned the duet favor and joined Bon Jovi for "Who Says You Can't Go Home".

And then Eric Clapton performed. The use a turn of well-worn meme phraseology, one does not simply review Eric Clapton. He played solo acoustic. He played with his band. Clapton is God. The strength of his performance was enough to justify any price put on a future DVD release of the 121212 Concert. The spirit of blues man Robert Johnson was invoked through the performance of "Crossroads" and more than likely his set resulted in yet another new round of young guitar players to go out and buy a Fender Strat to impress the objects of their affections.

At this point, the group of Twitter-enabled music fans watching along with me began speculating what could possibly top what we'd already seen.

The Rolling Stones, fresh off an airplane and in the midst of their 50th anniversary tour mounted the stage and surprised many by opening with "You Got Me Rocking." I for one was ecstatic, as this is a criminally under appreciated neo-classic Stones track. They followed it with "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and in purely Stones style, tore right through the "crossfire hurricane" lyric likely knowing the tough as nails NY/NJ crowd would take it for what it was: Sandy knocked us down but we got right back up. This is New York and New Jersey after all. And then they left the stage. Many on Twitter seemed a bit taken aback that the Stones played a seemingly perfunctory set, but keep in mind they have two mega-concerts of their own in New York this weekend and quite frankly, the fact the 121212 people got the Rolling Stones on their stage for even two songs is no mean feat.

After back-to-back showstoppers, Alicia Keys sat down at a piano and played a pair of songs. Just her voice and a piano, she owned that crowd and it was stellar. This theme would be repeated later in the concert by Chris Martin.

The Who was up next and their live performance was vastly improved over their Super Bowl XLIV set. Late drummer Keith Moon joined in via the magic of video and a tight backing group. As the dinner gong was ringing, I didn't get to catch all of The Who or Kanye West's set, which resulted in the creation of @KanyesSkirt by a quick thinking Tweeter, and managed to surpass 1,000 followers before the night was over.

One of The Bronx' favorite sons, Billy Joel proceeded to remind the two billion plus members of the TV audience that he is as synonymous with New York as Springsteen is with Jersey. His band was playing so in the pocket you would think they have been playing residency gigs for the past 30 years without a break.

Coldplay's Chris Martin followed Joel and essentially was busking to Madison Square Garden. Martin and an acoustic guitar, that's it, as he balladeered an impassioned rendition of "Viva La Vida." One of the biggest surprises of the night then occurred when he was joined by Michael Stipe of REM for "Losing My Religion," which begs the question of why don't these two get together and do a small venue acoustic tour just for fun or even better to raise money for charity.

The concert ran considerably longer than originally planned (not a bad thing) and the members of Twitter I was interacting with throughout the show were positively jumping by the time Sir Paul McCartney came on stage. We are all still recovering from our collective whiplash after Macca stormed through one of the heaviest renditions of "Helter Skelter" he has likely performed. There were many interesting song selections from all the artists during the concert, showing major thought and effort were clearly being made by the artists and producers throughout the 121212 concert.

The big moment which everyone had been waiting for finally arrived, as Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear joined Sir Paul on stage. This was something to behold.



A new song, from a Beatle and the living members of Nirvana. Yes, this was completely worth the wait to hear.

This review began with the statement that it didn't matter that I wasn't physically at the concert, because of how and who I experienced the #121212Concert with. This was an event for a very deserving cause, filled with wall to wall memorable performances, but what I will take away from nearly seven hours of TV viewing and simultaneous live tweeting is the feeling I had after the concert was done. Thanks to Twitter, I'd connected with old friends and made new ones. I tweeted about what I was seeing, but more importantly I interacted with those "around me" who were experiencing the same thing.

Minutes after the music faded, I felt that same rush of adrenaline one gets when they've been to a great live concert. I wasn't anywhere near New York, yet I felt like I'd just been there, hanging out with a huge group of friends and new acquaintances, and we were all sitting there in our seats as the house lights came up as we tried to make sense of what we'd just collectively witnessed. I am far from new to Twitter and have participated in more live tweeted events both music and TV related than I can count, but there was something truly magical about the 121212 Concert. There was an overwhelming desire to go grab late night cheesecake and coffee with this group of music fans and bask in the afterglow of an incredible concert. Or shawarma. I'm still not sure what shawarma is, but I definitely would have had some with whomever would have tagged along. Yes, it was that much fun to dual screen the 121212 Concert and major props to those I conversed with during it. You know who you are.

The 121212 Concert for Sandy Relief will be released as an album download on December 18th. As of this writing, the track list hasn't been revealed, but I feel confident the producers will include the key moments in the 24-song set. You can pre-order it here and while it is a rough time of year in still reeling economy, if you can help support the people and neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Sandy, please do.

And for the Reddit-enabled crowd...

tl;dr The 121212 Concert was incredible, made even better by watching and tweeting during it. Support the relief efforts.

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