Star-spangled program overcomes a few flaws
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry , two-fifths of Aerosmith, were the headliners of the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular on the Esplanade last night. But the crowd of 500,000 and the national television audience got three songs and just over eight minutes from them.
The two men put out more energy than some performers deliver in an entire show, and Tyler, fresh from throat surgery, sounded fine in ``I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," ``Dream On," and ``Walk This Way." He's got power, and high B-flat holds fewer terrors for him than it does for Luciano Pavarotti these days. Dressed in a leopard print shirt, open in the front to display coast-to-coast chest and an amulet big enough to be a walrus tusk, Tyler wove around Perry, dressed as Oscar Wilde, like the serpent tempting Eve.
The Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra provided a sumptuous sonic backdrop; Tyler told the television audience that he wants to make an orchestral album.
But the rest of the context was not inspiring. For viewers at home, commercials meant they missed some of the best stuff, like the brass in ``Sing, Sing, Sing," and some of the weirdest, like high-energy conductor Keith Lockhart trying to lead an audience sing-along of ``YMCA," complete with Village People moves.
Television personality Dr. Phil and his wife, Robin McGraw, hosted the national TV show by shouting a stilted script, read none too accurately from a TeleprompTer.
It was not a great night for the sound system, which kept dropping out or overloading. ``American Idol" finalist Ayla Brown, seemingly dressed as the old Columbia Pictures icon, battled the National
The TV coverage, also shown on giant screens at the event, was a mixed blessing. The audience liked watching itself, as if it were on a security camera. Local television host Jack Williams seemed to think that Tchaikovsky wrote the overture in 1812 instead of in 1880, and Lisa Hughes described Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King, and Thomas Jefferson as ``great historians and their legacy."
But Williams was understated and eloquent in reading those historic texts in a piece called ``American Voices," while gospel singer Renese King delivered beautiful and passionate singing in the civil rights anthem ``Over My Head."
The rain held off. What arrived overhead instead was a synchronized flight of F-16s from the Vermont National Air Guard and, at the end, Mums, Peonies, Diadems, Farfallas, Polyps, Rays, Strobes, and Voladorous -- a.k.a. 10,000 fireworks.
