Human Right's 50th Anniversary Concert

Report by Intruder

Anyway, I'm back from Paris now, and I can let you know in a bit more

detail what went on on the Bercy stage on Thursday.

 

Lights went out and the first batch of videos began to show: it was

actually the same video made in 1988 by a number of excellent visual

artists from all over the world to illustrate each and every one of the

articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mixed with them,

however, were some bits and pieces of Amnesty documentaries, a promotional

clip (done for the US, I expect) of Amnesty's Get Up Sign Up campaign in

support of the UDHR which features among others, Michael Stipe, Harry

Belafonte, Gabriel Byrne, more actors and actresses of different kinds...

Also, interspersed with these images, is footage from the 1990 "Abrazo a la

Esperanza" show held in Chile, which also featured Tracy, Peter, Sting,

Inti Illimani, Sinead O'Connor and more.

 

Finally, the show got a kick start thanks to the 4 "survivors" from 1988

Human Rights Now Tour: Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel, Youssou N'Dour and

Bruce Springsteen took to the stage, sort of picking up the thread with the

same song that opened (and closed) the shows of a decade ago: Bob Marley's

"Get Up Stand Up" (a full PG version of which, as it has previously been

pointed out, can be found here:

http://www.rights.amnesty.org/english/stage/getup.html).

 

Then everybody (including Youssou's musicians that had been the backing

band for the quartet) left the stage to Peter Gabriel, who in turn

introduced (in his croaking french) The Boss, who gave us four songs alone

on acoustic guitar and nothinbg else. Not being a huge fan (my knowledge of

Springsteeniana doesn't cover too many song titles apart from the obvious

hits) I only recognized two tracks: The Ghost Of Tom Joad and Born In The

USA (a version similar in mood to the one on the recent boxed set, rather

than the radio friendly super-smash). Now, as always, my girlfriend comes

to aid telling me that the other two tracks were Working On The Highway and

Not Surrender (both from the Born in the USA album).

 

In the middle of his second number the monitor speaker stopped working, as well (it seemed from a distance) as his guitar jack: after three or four tries he had to give up

and walked to the back of the stage for a few seconds, only to re-emerge

with the very best help (self proclaimed in countless occasions on his own

tours: check Family Snapshot from the Cardiff concert from March 1980 - on

the bootleg Chromedome,for example - or even his very first ever solo gig

in Passaic, March 1977) in case of technical fuck-ups: ladies and gents,

Mr. Gabriel re-enters the stage to babble some incoherent words (too busy

laughing: yes even the great ones can screw it up) in a microphone that

didn't work.

 

Exit Mr. Gabriel and Bruce finally delivers his last numbers. A standing ovation - and a really touching moment at that - welcomed the Dalai Lama on stage, introduced by Pierre Sané the secretary general of Amnesty International France and Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, who sponsored the whole day as well as actively being involved in the Get Up Sign Up campaign all over the world. Not your everyday's rockstar, he

actually gave a brief but straight to the point speech about how the new

generations are those in whose hands the application of the UDHR lies. More

cheers and back to the actual show.

 

It was time for Tracy Chapman to come back, and for me the surprise (I

hadn't seen her since '88) was that she actually had a band with her: and

it helped a lot on her songs, from the new ones to the very classic Talkin' Bout The Revolution, one of 88's strongest points and '98's as well.

 

More waiting for the stage to be cleared and some more videos help killing

the time till the next set. And yes, we could see the usual piano and

effects setup being introduced on the left of the stage by the very same

Dickie Chappel (Peter's personal technician both live and on tour), while I

must say that the drums brought forward didn't look much like the regular

Manu Katche's kit (not enough pieces and especially cymbals...) - but it

turned out to be his after all.

 

While the techies were still checking microphones and wiring things up,

Peter made a discreet entrance and started his own check up of the piano

and lyric sheets in plain view on his right... But before he could start

with his first number Bruce Springsteen walked back in, and reading (badly

- Peter is in a different league!!!) from a piece of phonetic handwriting

returned Gabriel's favour of an hour before.

 

And now for something complmetely different... After four years we were

finally ready to hear Peter's first live outburst (not just made for tv

cameras).

 

With the first number, Red Rain, we're immediately brought back to the

usual atmosphere: namely, lyric forgetting, not-too-well-dissimulated

tries at pretending he is working on a new version of the song, the odd bum

note on the piano. In short, a thrilling performance which having begun

with only piano and voice slowly gathers momentum (enter Youssou's bass

player and percussionists, David Rhodes and the aforementioned Manu), only

to finish with the usual heartfelt passion of piano and voice again.

 

Second number: Signal To Noise. A hard one to judge. After the VH-1

mindblowing sensecrushing version, thanks not a few to Nusrat's amazing

improvisations, tonight's reworking lacks the Qawwali Maestro refined

arabesques, but in a certain way makes up for it with a staggering powerful

beat and Youssou's equally powerful vocals: it's a magical number, and if

the album version turns out to be a cross between the two executions I

heard until now it might really come out as one of all time's masterpieces

(and "Up" will feature Nusrat's voice, according to what Peter told me two

years ago or so - mind you: he might have changed his mind about it over

two dozens time by now...).

 

Third and - sob! - final number of his set is In Your Eyes. Joined once

more by Youssou, Peter delivers a "normal" version of the song, and

everybody can see he still does enjoy the vocal calls and responses with

the second voice that we leartned to love ever since the 1987 tour (check

the POV video - much much better, musically, than the SWL one).

Gloom and despair accompanied Peter off stage.

 

Yet more videos and then a hal hour of Alanis Morissette. Though I liked

her first album a lot, as well as her song from the City of Angels

soundtrack (haven't listend to the new cd yet), her live delivery is a bit

on the tedious side. The songs are all good, but the arrangements don't

help, and they all tend to sound a bit too similar to one another.

 

Two more legends (the first two obviously being Peter and Bruce...) take

the stage for an excellent 40 minutes set: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant,

both probably in their fifties or more, still have fun rocking and rolling,

and their songs sound as good now as they did over twenty years ago. Raw

energy and musical mastership are the words that better characterize their

performance.

 

A longer intermission (and, you guessed, more videos) made the way for

Radiohead's only European performance this year. It's immediately clear

that most of the 12-15.000 audience is there just to see them. And they do

not disappoint their fans: though some magazines had announced a special

set, entirely made up of new numbers from their next album, in fact they

just played material from the OK Computer album and a couple of older hits.

A brilliant performance nonetheless, and though I still frankly cannot see

why the press has often labelled them as a Progressive Rock band for the

Nineties, I deeply enjoy their music (I had seen them live once before, but

compared to the gig in Milan - where the sound is always so bad you keep

wondering what on earth pushes you to buy tickets all the time - this

sounded spotless!).

 

It was past midnight by the end of their set, and notwithstanding the

halfed crowed Youssou came on stage with a wide green. He might not be huge

in the States, but in Europe and especially in France he is "big league" by

now, and he behaved accordingly. For his second number he introduced -

thank goodness - none other than Peter himself. Together they gave us a

largely re-worked version of Shakin' The Tree. Re-worked? Yes indeed, not

because new arrangements, but once again thanks to Peter reliability on

fucking up lyrics (and probably old contact lenses, as he couldn't read,

much as he tried, the lyrics sheet taped to the floor before his

microphone). Fortunately, as always, he more than made up for it in the

finale of the song, giving us some wild and emotional harmonies (some might

call them shrieks, but that's my view...) that chilled many a backbone.

 

For Youssou's last number Jocelyne and Tracy joined Peter as backing

vocals for the a (frankly quite poor) rendition of the worldwide top ten

single "7 seconds". I'd rather not go into details about this, as I was

frankly embarrassed on "many" a performers' behalf for missing cues and

(yup) forgetting lyrics again (and they weren't much harder than "Seven

seconds away, just as long as I stay, I'll be waiting..."). The end of the

song did try to repeat the previous number success, but simply didn't.

 

Exit our heroes - and 7/8ths of the audience - to leave twenty minutes of

rambling rap to the Asian Dub Foundation. Nothing I feel competent about in

judging, except for pointing out that I do not like them because of

something they told the press in the past, accusing Peter's Real World

label of giving Western audinces a much too polished and edulcorated

version of what constitutes world music nowadays: sorry folks, but the

worst RW album is simply thirty zillions times better than anything you

have ever or could ever produce.

 

I did wait a bit more to see if anybody would decide to come back on stage

for a final encore, but the lights went up and there was nothing else to do

but get back to the hotel with a warm feeling inside. First, we had paid

half a fortune for the tickets, but it was all for a great cause.

Secondly, we had over six hours of music and 5 and a half of them were

absolutely first class. Last but certainly not least, we had seen Peter on

a stage again: this was the hundreth-something time, for me, but invariably

the experience turns out to be sheer magic (and if I sounded cynical about

the whole thing, it's probably only due to excessive love!).

 

the intruder (and girlfriend)

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