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Getting GWAR to the Super Bowl
It's tough to identify one single thing that exemplifies the NFL's hilarious/metastatic bloat. The mushroom clouds of unmotivated laughter rising over a half-dozen rectangular ex-players enthusing dimly through a three-hour studio show? A multiply facelifted Great Plains vanity case building a gaudy dome for his team that uses as much energy on game day as entire African nations? Yes and yes, but neither quite captures how grandiosely big the NFL has made itself. If anything does, it would be the Super Bowl halftime show.
If the only experience you'd had of live music was watching a Super Bowl halftime show, it would be hard to blame you for being terrified of live music. After two quarters of football, crews hastily assemble a massive stage and hordes of "fans" -- and who knows where these maniacally grinning actor-types come from, although circumstantial evidence certainly points to Sensory Deprivation Tanks Pumped With Nitrous Oxide -- stream towards it. It looks like one of those CGI zombie scenes from World War Z, except all the zombies are smiling too much.
At which point a pop star or multiple pop stars emerge and tear through a miniature set with all the harrowing sped-up energy of those panic attack mixes that play during cheerleading routines. Flashpots burst and smoke machines fart endlessly and strange faces get made during dance routines. Every year, regardless of who is performing, Joe Perry of Aerosmith emerges, shirtless and blaze-orange, and pantomimes a shitty guitar solo. All this takes about 15 minutes.
As with all things designed to appeal to every human, they wind up overstuffed and exhausting and strikingly un-human. (A counterpoint: the year that Prince performed. But Prince is, here as elsewhere, the exception that proves the rule.) Because the NFL is the NFL, this will never be any less so -- there will be no ruminative Leonard Cohen set, which is fine because the flashpots would frighten him and he's not a young man, and because it's hard to see how Joe Perry would fit into any of his songs. But if Super Bowl halftime shows are going to be all-out sensory assaults, they might as well be extremely loud and gross and well-costumed sensory assaults, featuring men dressed like grotesque mutant warriors. So, why hasn't the NFL had GWAR play the Super Bowl halftime show yet? http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2013/9/18/4740960/gwar-super-bowl-halftime-show
If the only experience you'd had of live music was watching a Super Bowl halftime show, it would be hard to blame you for being terrified of live music. After two quarters of football, crews hastily assemble a massive stage and hordes of "fans" -- and who knows where these maniacally grinning actor-types come from, although circumstantial evidence certainly points to Sensory Deprivation Tanks Pumped With Nitrous Oxide -- stream towards it. It looks like one of those CGI zombie scenes from World War Z, except all the zombies are smiling too much.
At which point a pop star or multiple pop stars emerge and tear through a miniature set with all the harrowing sped-up energy of those panic attack mixes that play during cheerleading routines. Flashpots burst and smoke machines fart endlessly and strange faces get made during dance routines. Every year, regardless of who is performing, Joe Perry of Aerosmith emerges, shirtless and blaze-orange, and pantomimes a shitty guitar solo. All this takes about 15 minutes.
As with all things designed to appeal to every human, they wind up overstuffed and exhausting and strikingly un-human. (A counterpoint: the year that Prince performed. But Prince is, here as elsewhere, the exception that proves the rule.) Because the NFL is the NFL, this will never be any less so -- there will be no ruminative Leonard Cohen set, which is fine because the flashpots would frighten him and he's not a young man, and because it's hard to see how Joe Perry would fit into any of his songs. But if Super Bowl halftime shows are going to be all-out sensory assaults, they might as well be extremely loud and gross and well-costumed sensory assaults, featuring men dressed like grotesque mutant warriors. So, why hasn't the NFL had GWAR play the Super Bowl halftime show yet? http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2013/9/18/4740960/gwar-super-bowl-halftime-show
Bruno Mars? Why not GWAR?
5 replies
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