What a bunch of amazing performances. Jerry Lee Lewis looked great and played better. Norah Jones and Sheryl Crow performed as expected. Kris Kristoferson, not so much. The country singers sounded just like country singers. But it was an amazing special. I’ll be in line to see the movie.
Anybody else?
I didn’t catch much of it, but the Dwight Yoakam/Allison Krause duet was fantastic.
I’m not a country fan, so I wasn’t too wowed – but who was the guitarist who opened the show? He was good!
(And – Kid Rock? WTF?)
Kenny (?) Keith (?) Paisley opened and he was very good. Kid Rock is just an attention whore. Joachim Pheonix played backup for Norah Jones, very brave, if they had his pick-up on.
It’s Brad Paisley (I think. I didn’t see the show.)
Wonderful show. I liked most of what they did with it … showing the man through his music and selected clips from the movie.
As for Kid Rock, his roots go back into country, even though he’s carved out his own niche far from it. There’s quite a long story there.
You must not have seen the same show I did.
For one, Kid Rock needs to fall off the face of the planet, and take that ugly effin hat with him. (I could side-rant about Hank Jr. taking him “as a son” when Hank III is out there making better music every night of the year, but eh.)
For another, the older musicians appeared to be phoning it in. Jerry Lee Lewis could have picked a much better-suited song - I’ve seen fairly recent performances of his where he was giving it his all. I’m a Kris K. fan in general, but he didn’t seem to have much enthusiasm for the night.
The Dwight Yoakam/Allison Krause duet was nice, but nothing to write home about. And U2? Bathroom break.
But hey, it was just a half hour commercial for the movie anyway - which I’m looking forward to. So no biggie.
I thought it was decent.
That Paisley kid was all right.
Jerry Lee and Kid Rock was middling. It was strange, Kid Rock isn’t even on the pop culture radar anymore so why was he included? Jack White should have been there.
Sheryl Crow, who I usually dismiss, really impressed me by doing June’s version of Ring of Fire instead of Johnnys. She did great.
The Yoakham/Krauss duet was great.
Kris and the Foo Fighters were decent. Norah Jones and he were again middling.
I thought the clips from the movie were kind of strange. I would have wanted to them to show scenes from the performances and songs in the movie (well they did with the Jerry Lee clip atleast). The clip of “Jackson” has been on the internet for weeks now. I would have liked to see Phoenix and Witherspoon do it live. (they could even sweeten her voice by laying June’s vocals under it like in the movie)
Over all I enjoyed it.
The Jerry Lee clip was from Great Balls of Fire!, an '89 biopic starring Dennis Quaid, which is why he did that intro.
Yup, Brad Paisley. I thought he was good. The rest of it, as I said – “eh.” Though since it didn’t really pretend to be much other than a one-hour infomercial for the movie, no skin off my nose.
Did they show two clips? Because the one I saw was from Walk the Line, and had Phoenix as Cash in it (standing on the side, watching whoever was playing Jerry Lee).
Great Balls of Fire was a damn good flick, though.
Hm, I was watching from the computer desk in the other room – you may be right. Sorry about that.
Easy mistake to make, with Quaid doing an intro. (Which I thought was a cool touch. From what I remember from when GBoF came out, he and Jerry Lee got along pretty damn well.)