As 40,000 worshipful Philadelphians waited tonight for Barack Obama to alight from the heavens on Independence Mall--that's the Illinois senator's largest campaign crowd to date--a special guest sauntered on stage and started to sing. Well, "special" might be a little much. Joining such luminaries as Kelly Hu, Kerry Washington, Tate Donovan, Enrique Marciano, Amber Tamblyn, Christine Lahti and Mary Steenburgen in the "Where Are They Now?" club of questionably beneficial celebrity endorsers, it was
Ed Kowalczyk of the
1990s alternative rockers Live, who are famous for being the only band in recorded history to boast
two members named Chad.
To answer your first, and most important, question: no, a
thin, foot-long braided rat tail no longer dangles from the back of Kowalczyk's otherwise bald head; he's fully shaved now. And as for your second, the answer is yes: Kowalczyk did indeed play "
Lightning Crashes," the brooding ballad that spent much of 1995 in heavy rotation on Discmen nationwide and is now the only Live song that anyone actually remembers.
The problem was, he played something else as well.
Don't get me wrong. I'm teasing Kowalczyk, but I don't actually think there's anything wrong with celebrities, new or old, getting involved in politics (although having to Google them to figure out who they are kind of defeats the purpose). And earnest, unbridled idealism is fine. But I'll tell you what's not: covering John Lennon's "Imagine"--a song that's pretty much unimprovable in the first place--and proceeding to add your own, Obama-inspired lyrics. Introducing "Imagine: The Kowalczyk Remix":
Imagine change in Washington
It isn't hard to do
Everybody working together
Listening to me and to you
Imagine all the people believing in 'Yes, we can'
To which I say: No, we can't, Ed. No we can't.
Not that these folks seemed to mind:
Oh well. I guess we can't all be cranky, Beatlemaniacal bloggers...
P.S. Obama's new entrance song: "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen. Which, by the way, is no longer in
Hillary's rotation. Go figure.
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