Monday, October 27, 2014

Oh, Say, Can You Sing?

In case you were not privy to either the "performance" of the National Anthem at last night's World Series Game 5, or to any of the subsequent replays on Embarrassment TV, here's a quick summary.

Someone named Aaron Lewis, a member of the rock group "Staind" (the lack of an "e" apparently represents a lack of something beginning with E, presumably "excellence"), was asked to sing the Star-Spangled Banner before the game.  He messed the words up fairly radically, becoming a BFTA (Buffoon for the Ages) for the rest of his life.  In his anointment as a BFTA, he joins the huge Chicago Bears defensive player Lamarr Houston, who made a tackle in a game his team was losing by 25 points.  He then celebrated his having done what he is paid to do, by jumping high in the air in self-celebration at finally having done his job, and landed on legs whose knees were not designed for that kind of stress.  He limped badly off the field and is having an MRI today.  But I digress.

Back to the Anthem.  Generally, when there are position pieces written on our glorious SSB, they're about how terribly hard to sing it is, and why don't we get a new one, or use a different song, wah, wah, wah.  Well, I'm not going down that route.

No, my tack is not about the song, but the singer.  Forgive me, but there is a very reasonable analogy here to a lot of what many of us think is the wrong direction of our country.  Instead of improving the singing, they whine, let's just make it easier for everyone by changing the song.

Poppycock and balderdash.  First, let's ask ourselves what Aaron Lewis was doing out there in the first place.  He is a rock entertainer, and the SSB is not a rock song, it is our National Anthem and is a formal piece of music (in its current role, despite the tune's origin).  When sung for the public in a formal event, like baseball games and certainly the World Series, it should be done by -- let's say it clearly -- singers.  Singers are people trained to know how to sing, which includes "knowing the right words and notes."  Having a good voice is also a prerequisite; knowing that the SSB is in 3/4, not 4/4, is probably good too.

What happened last night is the natural, expected outcome of a terribly flawed process for selecting singers of the SSB.  It appears -- there's no logic, so just guessing here -- to be that singers are selected by a lobbying process, wherein agents of the current "music" industry line up outside the door of the harried home team PR office to get publicity for their client.  In the case of last night, you ended up with someone who couldn't be bothered to point toward the scoreboard screen (where, hopefully, the words were), or take off his sunglasses so he could see them or, for that matter, learn them in the first place.

How about, O ye in charge, we get off this whole "And now, please rise for our National Anthem, which will be 'sung' by X-time Grammy-winning celebrity Etaoin Shrdlu, whose tenth album, 'My Kitten is Dead and I Don't Know How I Should Feel' is available for download ..." thing.  Please, please, ask a singer to sing.  Our armed forces have many in their ranks, most of whom are actually disciplined enough to know the words and the music.  Our music conservatories are loaded with people who can sing the song.  Our opera companies have nothing but people who can sing the song.  [And somewhere I have to write that it's just fine (though not for a national broadcast) for, say, a 13-year-old girl with a remarkable, precocious talent to sing at a game, that's the exception that should not divert from the point. as long as they can actually do the right notes and understand whom it's about (hint -- not the 13-year-old girl)].

May we please disassociate ourselves from any connection between today's recording entertainers and actual singing?  May we please decide that the song is actually what is important -- in fact, it is our country which is more important -- and stop letting the performer be the spectacle?  Because it inevitably leads to the "other" kind of spectacle, as it was last night.

It's not a rock song.  It's our National Anthem.  Let us treat it as such and save the public performances for voices suitable for it.

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Disclaimer -- I have had the proud experience of singing our National Anthem before many major-league baseball games in my lifetime and in my career.  I am equally proud to say that in every single case, whether before 15,000 people or 50,000, with or without stadium-organ accompaniment, I sang it quickly, professionally, and with due respect for the song and for the nation it represents.  This only amplifies my contempt for the teams who invite incompetent singers, and for those performers who use the performance as self-aggrandizement or to sell their albums.  I feel a right to voice my opinion.

Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton 


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