Gray hair, prayer, enough acoustic performances to fill a coffeehouse bill several times over: This was not your little sister's MTV.
Nearly two weeks after Eva Longoria made a Hurricane Katrina quip at the bling-bling-boasting MTV Video Music Awards, the cable network dressed down Saturday night to present a nearly four-and-a-half hour block of bleakness seeking donations of time, money and even clothing for the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast.
ReAct Now: Music & Relief, simulcast on VH1 and CMT, was one of three all-star telethons to air over the weekend. Chris Rock, Alicia Keys, Neil Young, Usher and Aaron Neville were among those to pull double duty, appearing on the MTV show, as well as those airing on BET and/or the big six broadcast networks. (Rock and Keys put in face time on all three.)
"This tragedy has hit the part of the country where our music began," Usher said in a taped segment that opened ReAct Now.
The historical preface helped set up a night that spanned genres and demographics--from American Idol Kelly Clarkson to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame songwriter Allen Toussaint ("Lady Marmalade," "Working in a Coal Mine"). Though diverse, the acts, with few exceptions, shared a common tone: Somber.
The men of Maroon 5 might have talked about "lifting your spirits a little bit," but from Trent Reznor's dirge-like "Hurt," to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' dirge-like "Under the Bridge," it was a night for feel-bad song. Melissa Etheridge even wrote a new ballad for the sad occasion: The a cappella-rendered "Four Days."
Notably, the more upbeat performances invariably were turned in by artists who hail from the hurricane-ravaged states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Complete news coverage, ways you can help, message boards, moreToussaint, once trapped in the flood waters that deluged New Orleans, turned in a sweet and smooth "With You in Mind." Louisiana's own Buckwheat Zydeco, like Toussaint, one of several senior citizens who crashed MTV's air space, wailed away on his accordion on "I'm Gonna Love You Anyway"--a "happy song," he called it. Up-and-comer Marc Broussard, another Louisiana native, offered an impassioned, angry version of "Home," augmented with a snippet of Randy Newman's "Louisiana, 1927": "Six feet of in the streets of Evangeline...They're trying to wash us away." The Radiators, a New Orleans rock band currently without a New Orleans, cranked out "Last Getaway."
On Saturday night, home base for the Radiators was Los Angeles, a staging area for the telethon along with New York and Nashville. Additionally, touring acts such as Paul McCartney, Elton John, U2 and the Rolling Stones sent in performances from the road.
The show, aired simultaneously on VH1 and CMT, took shape without a host. When introductions or pleas for donations were needed, actors and comics such as Rock, Jon Stewart and Dennis Quaid, who built his career as a leading man largely on the New Orleans-set The Big Easy, did the honors.
Rock slipped in jibe about how rich people who'd benefited from tax breaks over the last five years--the era of the George W. Bush presidency--should kick back in at least 2 percent of their savings to the hurricane-relief effort.
As controversial statements go, it wasn't--especially when compared to Kanye West's "George Bush doesn't care about black people" declaration on NBC's A Concert for Hurricane Relief on Sept. 2. Not even West tried to top the remark. On ReAct Now, he performed "Touch the Sky" sans commentary.
If West muzzled himself, others tiptoed into the fray. Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, appearing via a concert in Canada, said donations from private citizens were all well and good, but "personally we feel that our government should be the ones who take care of this situation." John Mellencamp, on stage in Colorado, said the hurricane aftermath showed the "lack of dignity" afforded the nation's poor. Asked the rocker: "If you can't take care of the poor people, then the rest of us are sunk, right?"
In a taped segment, in which the government's hurricane response was deigned, per Ludacris, "slow, lethargic, pathetic," Samuel L. Jackson said, "Somebody made a mistake, and nobody's been big enough to stand up and say we made a mistake."
But on a night where MTV just didn't have its heart into sparking a Britney-kisses-Madonna firestorm, the segment closed on a conciliatory note, with acts, such as country singer Trent Willmon, suggesting that now was not the time for finger-pointing.
Ultimately, the telethon was marked not by its politics, but by its moments--Mississippi-born rapper David Banner reciting a prayer; Eminem calling in by phone to note a $200,000 donation to the American Red Cross; and Flea being Flea.
"Help the human beings," the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist declared. "It's time!"