Reelin’ in the years

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I mentioned the other day about how I was really getting into the Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary celebration. Well, last night I watched a special look at the history of the show’s musical guests. If you don’t know, each show, in addition to the sketch comedy stuff, there’s always a mucical guest. They usually perform two songs during the broadcast, most often a current hit as the first one and then a cover song or aome random song from an older album or something.

Well, over the years, as you can imagine, 50 years of shows and the ever-changing landscape of popular music has led to all different kinds of acts on the show, from country to rock, from pop to punk, from disco to hip-hop and some weird out-there acts that defy being put into a category (I’m looking at you, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band).

See VIEWPOINT, page A6 VIEWPOINT

From page A4

The documentary I watched (which aired on NBC but I’m sure you can find it streaming somewhere) was amazing, and it even got me a little emotional just seeing clips of all of these musicians who have played a role in entertaining us over the past 50 years — so many of whom are no longer with us, like David Bowie, Prince, Freddy Mercury, Johnny Cash, Kurt Cobain, and too many others to mention.

I love music. Even though I just have no musical ability whatsoever, I understand music — what it means, why it moves us the way it can, and how it plays a role in our society and our understanding of the world. So, seeing halfa- century of performances chronicled, with generationdefining artists (Paul Simon), flash-in-the-pan one-hit-wonders (Hanson), and artists whose work was always on the cutting edge despite changing tastes (Madonna), was pretty crazy. You had protest singers like Rage Against the Machine and Sinead O’Connor (who caught hell for tearing a picture of the Pope up after one of her songs, even though she was later vindicated once all the scandals broke).

And my absolute favorites, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as the Blues Brothers… It’s must see TV.