2008 Woodie Awards
Across Pa., musicians sing in state that swings
Rob Celletti
Issue date: 10/7/04 Section: Entertainment
- Page 1 of 2 next >
As I drove east to Reading, Penn. last Friday, I could have sworn it was 1969.
I was making an unnecessarily long car trip to attend a concert that had politics written all over it in a time of American crisis. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating. It wasn't quite Woodstock, but it was one of the six concerts happening that night in the state of Pennsylvania as part of the Vote for Change tour.
This tour is one of the most significant and ambitious concert tours in rock 'n' roll history. Over 20 artists joined together and announced in August that they were embarking on a tour of the country's battleground states to try and get people not only to vote, but to vote for a change - a regime change, if you will. The artists, who range from Bruce Springsteen to the Dixie Chicks, would essentially be playing for free, with all of the proceeds going to America Coming Together, an organization whose goal is to get people to the polls on Nov. 2.
Out of the six shows that night, I probably went to the one with the lowest profile. It featured a classic yet all but forgotten rock band, an up-and-coming indie band and a film actor's newly formed band: respectively, Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie, and Tim Robbins' project Gob Roberts. So would you believe me if I said it was one of the most special concerts I had ever witnessed?
The first band was Gob Roberts and as I listened to Tim Robbins sing, I really couldn't help from smiling. The lyrics were all about the Bush administration and while they poked fun, they also had a serious undertone to them. In their closing song, Robbins sang "This is the land you tore out the heart of / George W. find yourself another country to be part of." These lines elicited chuckles and cheers from the crowd which had filled about half of the venue's 10,000 seats. The Sovereign Center was just warming up.
More people filed in as Death Cab for Cutie took the stage at 8:15. They ripped through stunning renditions of "The New Year," "The Sound of Settling," and "We Looked Like Giants," all from their 2003 release Transatlanticism.
I was making an unnecessarily long car trip to attend a concert that had politics written all over it in a time of American crisis. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating. It wasn't quite Woodstock, but it was one of the six concerts happening that night in the state of Pennsylvania as part of the Vote for Change tour.
This tour is one of the most significant and ambitious concert tours in rock 'n' roll history. Over 20 artists joined together and announced in August that they were embarking on a tour of the country's battleground states to try and get people not only to vote, but to vote for a change - a regime change, if you will. The artists, who range from Bruce Springsteen to the Dixie Chicks, would essentially be playing for free, with all of the proceeds going to America Coming Together, an organization whose goal is to get people to the polls on Nov. 2.
Out of the six shows that night, I probably went to the one with the lowest profile. It featured a classic yet all but forgotten rock band, an up-and-coming indie band and a film actor's newly formed band: respectively, Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie, and Tim Robbins' project Gob Roberts. So would you believe me if I said it was one of the most special concerts I had ever witnessed?
The first band was Gob Roberts and as I listened to Tim Robbins sing, I really couldn't help from smiling. The lyrics were all about the Bush administration and while they poked fun, they also had a serious undertone to them. In their closing song, Robbins sang "This is the land you tore out the heart of / George W. find yourself another country to be part of." These lines elicited chuckles and cheers from the crowd which had filled about half of the venue's 10,000 seats. The Sovereign Center was just warming up.
More people filed in as Death Cab for Cutie took the stage at 8:15. They ripped through stunning renditions of "The New Year," "The Sound of Settling," and "We Looked Like Giants," all from their 2003 release Transatlanticism.