Where were you today? Come on, you know you were there, glow stick waving in the highly charged air!
January 19, 2005
REVIEW
A Concert to Salute Youth, but With a Limited Roster
By JON PARELES
The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - Wild, rebellious, irresponsible youth, once the image of rock and roll, was scarce at "America's Future Rocks Today: A Call to Service," a pre-inaugural pop concert for a young audience at the District of Columbia Armory.
The show was the designated youth event amid the inaugural whirl, and its political message was one of unselfishness, urging young people to volunteer to help others.
Between musical groups, teenagers who had started projects like writing thank-you letters to the troops, teaching girls science, sending shoes to Afghanistan and cleaning up parks spoke from the stage and in video clips. Tickets to the concert were free, and many were given to young members of community service organizations, while others went to students.
"America's Future Rocks" looked like a pop concert. Audience members waved glow sticks they had been handed at the door, strobe lights flashed, and waves of squeals greeted the current queen of teenypop, Hilary Duff, and Ryan Cabrera, the boyish guitar-strumming songwriter, two MTV favorites. President Bush and Laura Bush arrived on the stage to the sound of power chords.
Behind the calls to community service was recognition of another type of service, military. In a brief speech, Mr. Bush called the young volunteers "soldiers in the army of compassion."
Ms. Duff, after strutting across the stage proclaiming "The girl can rock!" dedicated her positive-thinking power ballad "Fly" to the "men and women in the military." A multiplatinum rock band from Mississippi, 3 Doors Down, started its set with "When I'm Gone," an anthem of resolve that it has presented in a video clip as a soldier's farewell.
The talent roster was severely limited by politics. Many big-name musicians like Bruce Springsteen and Eminem openly opposed Mr. Bush's re-election.
Youth was not part of the Bush majority, either. Polls of voters in November showed that 56 percent of voters ages 18 to 24 voted for Senator John Kerry and 43 percent for Mr. Bush.
The president's daughter Barbara helped plan the concert, and she and her sister, Jenna, were in the audience. Early reports that Kid Rock, the rapper, would be on the bill had started an uproar from upholders of family values. But Kid Rock, who has called himself the "pimp of the nation," would have been startlingly out of place at such a determinedly wholesome show.
"America's Future Rocks" did not have any rappers or punk-pop bands; those are the musical styles still mostly dedicated to hedonism and alienation. Yet a spectrum of other current pop was represented, from hard rock to rhythm-and-blues.
The unabashedly high-minded tone of much of the music has been a growing part of pop since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the beginning of the war in Iraq. The kind of grim crescendos that defined grunge alienation in the 90's are now backing songs about self-discovery and determination from bands like 3 Doors Down.
As for love songs, the explicit bump-and-grind of much current rhythm-and-blues was not on the agenda. The concert turned instead to the chaste, yearning side of popular music.
Ruben Studdard, an "American Idol" winner, pledged romance without a hint of raunch, and JoJo, a 14-year-old rhythm-and-blues belter, sang kiss-offs rather than come-ons, even as she did some slinky dance moves.
When Brett Scallions, the lead singer of the grunge band Fuel, let slip a four-letter word that might have drawn cheers from a different crowd, he immediately apologized.
Before the show, skateboarders braved the cold on a set of ramps. The kind of tent that often greets visitors to rock festivals held video games alongside tables recruiting for volunteer organizations and information about the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, suggesting another political undercurrent to the event.
And from his booth, a disc jockey tossed Girl Scout cookies to the crowd.
