First, what must have been the commercially released video to accompany this star-studded cover of The Buzzcocks’ most-successful song. A list of the contributing artists appears toward the end.
Then, if the notion of the UK as a small, close-knit music community unlike anything we could imagine in the United States still hasn’t hit you, there’s the following, more mind-blowing homemade video:
Here’s the homemade video poster, RonnieFriend‘s description:
A single released as a tribute to the late English disc jockey John Peel, featuring the combined talents of Roger Daltry, Elton John, the Datsuns, the Futureheads, David Gilmour, Peter Hook, El Presidente, Robert Plant, Pete Shelley, and the Soledad Brothers. The song was originally released in 1978 by The Buzzcocks.
This got me thinking of the mix of musicians on the old Concert for Kampuchea as well as tales we’ve heard from some of our RTH Interview subjects from the UK. Is there any musical collaboration among American musicians that covers such a range? This is all too much for my little mind to handle alone. Perhaps you can help me crawl into the collective mind of this tribute’s participants and what it means, man. Thanks.
On the subject of Peelie – have you seen this that kicks off on the 25th October
http://keepingitpeel.wordpress.com/
I did not know that. Thanks for the heads up!
El Presidente?
All of the UK combined is approximately the same size (in square miles, not population) as Oregon. It’s a small country, so Roger Daltrey is more likely to run into Peter Hook at the grocery store than Roger McGuinn is likely to run into Peter Buck.
Weren’t the “No Nukes” shows in the 70s sort of the American equivalent of this stuff?
Cool that Plant participated. I wonder if he knew the song beforehand.
Interesting way to present this. Watching the 1st clip, with the dialog and music drop outs I couldn’t name any participant; you could hear some different accents on the vocals but that was it. The fan clip made it much clearer but the quick, loud guitar Buzzcocks song doesn’t allow each singer to show off on his vocal bit like other benefit-type songs.
I can’t imagine anything like this in the US. Maybe within a local scene like Athens, GA or Seattle. An English friend of mine confirmed sort of what BigSteve said; Britain is small enough and has a centralized broadcast system so that when a cult artist like Morrissey releases an album his fans can push it to #1 for a week and then it disappears. The US is too big for any group to manipulate the charts or to get such a wide range of stars to pay tribute to any one broadcaster.
Perhaps when Dick Clark dies will get a star-studded tribute. Although, I shudder at the thought of all the possible artist combos.
Really? Daltrey turns to “You Better You Bet” for his turn? Really.