by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2020 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
I spent the evening on the Fourth of July 2020 watching some interesting programming on KPBS: an early (1985) Ken Burns documentary called The Statue of Liberty (back when Burns still made films of reasonable length — this was just under an hour); a rerun of a local concert special from August 30, 2019 with the San Diego Symphony conducted by Christopher Dragon, focusing on the music of Tchaikovsky; and the centerpiece of the night, the 40th anniversary presentation of A Capitol Fourth. Needless to say, this show was absolutely nothing like any of the 39 previous entries in the series, thanks primarily to the dictatorship of SARS-CoV-2 under which we presently live, in which a sub-microscopic assembly of nucleic acid, proteins and a lipid coat whose only purpose in life is to make more copies of itself has put an end to large public gatherings of virtually all sorts (unless you are Donald Trump, continually calling the faithful to mass rallies and belittling the virus as “Kung Flu” — I don’t know what’s more obnoxious about that name, its racism or its sheer stupidity). The concerts are usually held on the west lawn of the Capitol Mall — and this one was, too, or at least most of it was (there were remote segments from New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and, of all places, Nashville), but the performers were all filmed at different times, and there was no audience present.
In the two songs on which we saw the usual orchestra (the National Symphony of Washington, D.C.) and conductor (Jack Everly, who’s led these concerts since the death of their founder, Erich Kunzel, in 2009) backing singers in the here and now — Mandy Gonzalez on the opening “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Renée Fleming on the (sort-of) closing “God Bless America” — there were only about 10 to 15 musicians, sitting probably more than six feet apart from each other on a huge stage to maintain the now-obligatory “social distancing” (a phrase I especially hate and hope — but don’t expect — to see pass from the language once the SARS-CoV-2 emergency passes and we no longer need it) — though the show was padded out with orchestral performances from the good old days as reminders of what this event used to look like: Richard Rodgers’ “The Carousel Waltz” (well done, though no one —not even Rodgers himself — has ever conducted this music with the mad energy Alfred Newman gave it in the soundtrack to the 1956 Carousel film) from 2015; the last four minutes of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture from 2017; and accompanying Ray Charles on “America, the Beautiful” from 2000. The concert opened with gospel singer Yolanda Adams singing “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” (she did it nicely but giving a singer this good a song this banal practically defines the term “overqualified”), and after Mandy Gonzalez sang the national anthem Andy Grammer, an O.K. country singer, beamed in from Los Angeles with a decent song called “I Will Fight for You.” Then there came the first of three elaborate montages dealing with singers in various musical genres that have appeared on previous shows, this one with soul singers like Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Kool & The Gang (that’s like presenting Beethoven, Mozart and some guy who writes commercial jingles, in that order), Gladys Knight, The Four Tops and Aretha Franklin — and Aretha still soars over the other talents in her field so much she can still stop a show even though she’s been dead for two years.
Then a living soul diva, Patti Labelle, beamed in from Philadelphia in a setting in which either the real Liberty Bell or a mockup of it (and if it’s the real one I had no idea it was so small!) was part of her backdrop to sing her 1980’s hit version of “Over the Rainbow.” Back then I thought she way over-ornamented it (Ray Charles’ 1963 recording from his album Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul remains my favorite non-Judy version), but over the years I’ve warmed to the superb musicianship of her treatment of this song — and the fact that she’s no longer wearing those preposterous wigs that made her look like an upturned lawnmower helps. Then we hears a group calling themselves The Temptations — five Black guys who look like they’re getting on in years but not old enough to have been in the original group (I believe all the originals are dead by now — Otis Williams was the last one to survive and he used to tour with a group of rump Temptations in which the other guys looked one-third to one-half of his age) — did a medley of “Get Ready,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and the inevitable “My Girl,” and they were still appealing even though whoever sang lead on “My Girl” didn’t have the melting sweetness of David Ruffin on the original record. The next performer was Brantley Gilbert, one of my favorite current country singers — I remember buying a CD of his after seeing him on a country-music awards show and noticing he was the only perfomer there using pedal steel guitar, this once-paradigmatic country instrument — and he sang a song called “If You Never Had Heartbreak” that I liked but would have liked better if I could have made out more of the words. One of the problems with making music in the Zoom age is that the sound balances are sometimes way off; Gilbert was done in by the sheer volume of his band, which kept drowning him out. Then came one of the most wrenching and powerful moments of the show: Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “The Impossible Dream” from the musical Man of La Mancha, backed only by a piano player, and turning it from a song whose sheer pretentiousness usually turns me off into a timeless ode to perseverance and pride. In the current pandemic I thought the line, “To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause,” seemed especially relevant.
After “The Impossible Dream” came another montage segment of clips from previous shows, this time of country stars: Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Dierks Bentley, Luke Combs, Reba McIntire and Johnny Cash (who, like Aretha in the soul segment, couldn’t help dominating even from beyond the grave). After that came the most intense, powerful and soulful performance of the night: a nice-looking young blonde country singer named Lauren Alaina came out and tore into Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” and sang a song that on previous Capitol Fourths had turned into a joke (one year it was even done by the Muppets!) and threw herself into it with such scorching intensity I found myself regretting even more than usual that she hadn’t done Woody’s more radical verses. (Dear Lauren Alaina: please record “This Land Is Your Land” and please perform all of it!) After that came a tribute to Afghanistan and Iraq war veteran José Ramos and then Broadway star Kelli O’Hara doing “If I Loved You” from Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s Carousel — she sang it beautifully but it was hard for me to get into it with Alaina’s powerful “This Land Is Your Land” still ringing in my ears. Then they showed Jack Everly and the National Symphony Orchestra’s 2015 rendition of the show’s overture, “The Carousel Waltz,” and after that they went into a tribute to the front-line medical and hospital workers during the pandemic (including people who literally flew hundreds of miles to care for COVID-19 patients in New York City at the height of their pandemic) and then singer Chrissy Metz, star of NBC’s This Is Us and a large woman who’d actually be good casting, physically and vocally, for a biopic of Mama Cass Elliott: she did “I’m Standing Beside You,” yet another ode to the emotional connections between people even in the midst of this crisis that’s forcing us to stay physically apart. Once again, her song was good and well performed, but the sheer righteous soul (words I only rarely use to describe white singers!) of Lauren Alaina was still ringing in my ears.
Then there was a tribute to historically important African-Americans, and after that Vanessa Williams, in addition to her duties co-hosting the show with John Stamos, sang a medley of two songs written or co-written by Stephen Sondheim: “Not While I’m Around” from Sweeney Todd and “Somewhere” from West Side Story (music by Leonard Bernstein but lyrics by Sondheim). Though the lyrics of “Not While I’m Around” fit in with the overall theme of unity in the midst of adversity many of last night’s performers were going for in their song choices, I couldn’t help but wonder who thought a song from a musical about serial murder and cannibalism was appropriately inspirational for this occasion. Then came the third montage sequence, this time dealing with (real or alleged) rock performers: Neil Diamond (no!), Little Richard (wop-bop-a-loo-bop yeah!), The Beach Boys (definitely yes — indeed I remember their last A Capitol Fourth appearance, in which they got to sing six songs, a very long set for this concert, and they were in superb late form), Jimmy Buffett (I like him as a novelty act but he ain’t rock ’n’ roll!), Huey Lewis and the News (pop-rock), Gloria Estefan (great, but not rock!) and Kenny Loggins (borderline). Afterwards came a performance by a genuine rock legend, John Fogerty, lead singer and principal songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival, playing in a band with three of his kids — his daughter has long straight blonde hair and looks like she beamed in from a whole other family, but his two sons look amazingly like he did at their age and one of them was playing the iconic Hofner violin bass Paul McCartney played with the Beatles. They did “Centerfield” (with John Fogerty playing an odd-shaped guitar that looks like it was made from a baseball bat) and “Proud Mary” (I’ve loved this song ever since I first heard the Creedence version, from their landmark second album Bayou Country, but I guess I’ve got spoiled from hearing Tina Turner’s version so often that even though he wrote it, Fogerty’s just doesn’t pack the same punch).
The show started to peter out after Fogerty’s songs, with the snippet of the 1812 Overture taken from the 2017 concert (though the chyrons assured us that the fireworks display we were getting was live … at least on the East Coast, since just over the words “Live Fireworks” we saw “Pre-Recorded” in a different font, yet one more reminder that to the Atlantic-centric media mavens on the East Coast, we on the West Coast still suck hind tit and always will) and the U.S. Army Band and Herald Trumpets shown doing a patriotic medley — George M. Cohan’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” George Gershwin’s “Strike Up the Band” — an ironic song choice since it was written for a 1927 musical that was basically the Wag the Dog of its day, a sharp satire on militarism and war fever —and Cohan’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag” — from 2017. The only new footage was Renée Fleming singing “God Bless America” with a few members of the National Symphony sitting properly socially distant from each other. Then after the patriotic medley we did get two new songs, country star Trace Adkins doing “God Save the Queen” — oops, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” — and Yolanda Adams, backed by four disappointed high-school students who had been picked to sing at their graduation ceremony before our viral dictator stopped them from having one, did another nice but banal song, “What the World Needs Now Is Love.” (Then again, she’s not the first great gospel singer who’s had to plow her way through this one: Mahalia Jackson recorded it on her very last album in 1971.) After that came a clip that was totally unfollowable, then or now: Ray Charles belting out his soulful, unsurpassable version of “America, the Beautiful” from 2000, before John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” (probably also a clip from the past) served as the outro music for the closing credits. This edition of A Capitol Fourth was probably as good as it could have been given the circumstances our viral dictator have forced upon us, with incredible performances by Patti Labelle, Brian Stokes Mitchell and especially Lauren Alaima (where has her voice been all my life?) standing out.
