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U.S. Thanksgiving looking a lot like St. Patrick's Day
By JOHN DOYLEThe Globe and Mail
It's the American Thanksgiving weekend, which accounts for the packed schedule on the American networks this weekend. But there's a lot of compelling material and entertainment on the Canadian channels too. Frankly, there are too many things to mention or review, so this survey needs a theme.
One theme that stands out instantly, to me anyway. For some reasons there's a bunch of Irish guys on TV tonight and tomorrow, doing their thing. On Sunday, by a strange coincidence, a sitcom makes fun of Irish guys.
U2's Beautiful Day (tonight, CBS, 9 p.m.) is raw, emotional and weird. The voiceover at the start of the program says of the show filmed at Slane Castle near Dublin: "This is different. This is tribal. This is primal." That's not hyperbole -- it isn't your usual rock concert. There have always been times when U2 can take your breath away, but this is magnificently intense. The concert, which took place after an earlier one had sold out in minutes, happened because Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern used his influence to ensure that second show was scheduled. It also took place a few days after the death of Bono's father. Even by U2 standards, this is an overwrought occasion.
Every minute is emotional but the climax is in the third song, Out of Control. That was U2's first single released in 1980 and here Bono goes off on a riff that's all about remembering the past. He says, "I want to thank Philip Lynott for letting us open the [1980] show. We're U2, we're a band from the north side of Dublin and this is our first single." Then he thanks his father for lending him money to go to London to get a record deal. And he promises his father that if the band gets a record deal, the boys will stay in Dublin. Then he thanks the parents of the other band members.
With 80,000 Irish fans screaming encouragement, this is heady stuff. The Philip Lynott he refers to is the lead singer of Thin Lizzy, who died in the mid-eighties. Bono is recreating the band's first big concert as a mere opening act for Thin Lizzy, making this contemporary concert a threnody for the dead and a validation of everything U2 has achieved. Little did I think when I was a teenager and jumping up and down to U2 in the tiny backrooms of Dublin bars, that I would be watching this, more than two decades later. But there's a very good reason why this band from Dublin take up an hour of prime-time network TV at American Thanksgiving. The U2 journey has been a long strange ride with some inexplicable tangents, but they are the defining rock act of the last 25 years. They've been on a long quixotic journey of transcendence for themselves and the audience, and they show no signs of stopping.
Bob Geldof Live at the Rehearsal Hall (Saturday, Bravo!, 8 p.m.) features another Irish rocker who became far more than a pop star. Geldof will never escape his reputation as pragmatic saint who raised tens of millions of dollars for the starving and actually saved lives. He started an entire era of social awareness in showbiz with Live Aid. More recently, the highly public separation from his wife Paula Yates began a heartbreaking saga that ended with her suicide after her lover Michael Hutchence had died in an apparent suicide. Geldof is a complicated, shrewd man who is now more businessman than rocker, but he came to Toronto a few months ago to promote a new, rare album and for this low-key concert.
He opens with the best song he's ever written, The Great Song of Indifference. It's a work of immense irony that essentially says, "I don't care" and includes the lines "I don't care if the Third World fries/It's hot out there/I'm not surprised." Coming from a man who cared more than anyone, it's unnerving. Geldof has returned to his Irish roots in the music, with a fiddle and an accordion accompaniment. But there will always be more to Geldof than the music. Here, host Lance Chilton isn't really equipped to interview a man as articulate and caustic as Geldof, but this is a great concert by a strange and admirable man.
U.S. Thanksgiving looking a lot like St. Patrick's Day
By JOHN DOYLEThe Globe and Mail
It's the American Thanksgiving weekend, which accounts for the packed schedule on the American networks this weekend. But there's a lot of compelling material and entertainment on the Canadian channels too. Frankly, there are too many things to mention or review, so this survey needs a theme.
One theme that stands out instantly, to me anyway. For some reasons there's a bunch of Irish guys on TV tonight and tomorrow, doing their thing. On Sunday, by a strange coincidence, a sitcom makes fun of Irish guys.
U2's Beautiful Day (tonight, CBS, 9 p.m.) is raw, emotional and weird. The voiceover at the start of the program says of the show filmed at Slane Castle near Dublin: "This is different. This is tribal. This is primal." That's not hyperbole -- it isn't your usual rock concert. There have always been times when U2 can take your breath away, but this is magnificently intense. The concert, which took place after an earlier one had sold out in minutes, happened because Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern used his influence to ensure that second show was scheduled. It also took place a few days after the death of Bono's father. Even by U2 standards, this is an overwrought occasion.
Every minute is emotional but the climax is in the third song, Out of Control. That was U2's first single released in 1980 and here Bono goes off on a riff that's all about remembering the past. He says, "I want to thank Philip Lynott for letting us open the [1980] show. We're U2, we're a band from the north side of Dublin and this is our first single." Then he thanks his father for lending him money to go to London to get a record deal. And he promises his father that if the band gets a record deal, the boys will stay in Dublin. Then he thanks the parents of the other band members.
With 80,000 Irish fans screaming encouragement, this is heady stuff. The Philip Lynott he refers to is the lead singer of Thin Lizzy, who died in the mid-eighties. Bono is recreating the band's first big concert as a mere opening act for Thin Lizzy, making this contemporary concert a threnody for the dead and a validation of everything U2 has achieved. Little did I think when I was a teenager and jumping up and down to U2 in the tiny backrooms of Dublin bars, that I would be watching this, more than two decades later. But there's a very good reason why this band from Dublin take up an hour of prime-time network TV at American Thanksgiving. The U2 journey has been a long strange ride with some inexplicable tangents, but they are the defining rock act of the last 25 years. They've been on a long quixotic journey of transcendence for themselves and the audience, and they show no signs of stopping.
Bob Geldof Live at the Rehearsal Hall (Saturday, Bravo!, 8 p.m.) features another Irish rocker who became far more than a pop star. Geldof will never escape his reputation as pragmatic saint who raised tens of millions of dollars for the starving and actually saved lives. He started an entire era of social awareness in showbiz with Live Aid. More recently, the highly public separation from his wife Paula Yates began a heartbreaking saga that ended with her suicide after her lover Michael Hutchence had died in an apparent suicide. Geldof is a complicated, shrewd man who is now more businessman than rocker, but he came to Toronto a few months ago to promote a new, rare album and for this low-key concert.
He opens with the best song he's ever written, The Great Song of Indifference. It's a work of immense irony that essentially says, "I don't care" and includes the lines "I don't care if the Third World fries/It's hot out there/I'm not surprised." Coming from a man who cared more than anyone, it's unnerving. Geldof has returned to his Irish roots in the music, with a fiddle and an accordion accompaniment. But there will always be more to Geldof than the music. Here, host Lance Chilton isn't really equipped to interview a man as articulate and caustic as Geldof, but this is a great concert by a strange and admirable man.
