The Renewal of America will be YouTubed
January 19, 2009
In his speech at the kick off, President-elect Obama called for everyone to work together to renew America. Based solely on that event, I think it’s starting to work. In the old America, I’d never seen U2 live, in Obama’s, I’ve seen them perform two songs (from quite a distance but still live). That’s change I can believe in.
From the survey, it looks like people want more travel pictures. I’ll do that one better for now. My taping of In the Name of Love wasn’t that great. It’s split between an intro and the body of the song. Also, more critically, it has me among other people singing along. I’m not a good singer, at least not in the range of U2 songs. That said, while I do love the band, in general they can be a bit tricky to sing along. The crowd was having some trouble with the ooooOOOahooo bits. Might have been better closer to the stege.
On the other hand, I think the clip of City of Blinding Lights came out pretty well. It was a theme song for the campaign, so can’t say I’m surprised they played it. There’s some laughter at the shout-out to Joe Biden, but I think that’s just part of the live music experience. If you can catch the actual video (I think it’s on HBO but unscrambled) it’s worth doing, Bono has great stage presence and plays around with the song some.
Anyhow, since this was some combination of a campaign event and government event, I think it might effectively be in the public domain for all anyone cares. If I’m wrong, it’ll get pulled.
Update: Oh, I’d have to check the video to be sure, but if memory served Bono actually made a gesture that clearly referenced the Black Power salute. That said the resolution isn’t high enough on this video to judge what’s on the Jumbotron.