Posted on 01/23/2009 6:34:45 AM PST by MaestroLC
It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close.
The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made two days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the musicians playing along.
The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own).
“Truly, weather just made it impossible,” Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said on Thursday. “No one’s trying to fool anybody. This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli,” Ms. Florman added, referring to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.
Ms. Florman said that the use of a recording was not disclosed beforehand but that the NBC producers handling the television pool were told of its likelihood the day before.
(snip)
Performing along to recordings of oneself is a venerable practice, and it is usually accompanied by a whiff of critical disapproval. Famous practitioners since the Milli Vanilli affair include Ashlee Simpson, caught doing it on “Saturday Night Live,” and Luciano Pavarotti, discovered lip-synching during a concert in Modena, Italy. More recently, Chinese organizers superimposed the voice of a sweeter-singing little girl on that of a 9-year-old performer featured at the opening ceremony of last summer’s Olympic Games.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
silly chilly millie vanilli?
faking it for Obama ping
If it is "impossible" then why do it at all? So we're learning if something is impossible, just fake it? (I'm a musician, I'm surprised they had their INSTRUMENTS out in that cold weather ... some of those instruments could easily cost as much as a person's average house...uh, if the instruments were real.).
Fake but accurate!
I'm not going to dig up links for the You Tube videos I can immediately think of where the bands were performing live in very cold weather, but they're out there.
Boz Scaggs, Honeymoon Suite...etc).
But those are people who care about what they're doing; who have to deliver an excellent product to their audience. They're not the king's musicians sent to entertain the king's groupies.
So beautifully symbolic of an illegitimate president. He is NOT my president until he shows his birth certificate, his transcripts from Occidental and Columbia, and his health records. The man is George Soros’ puppet.
Fake but Accurate as ole Dan would say.
It's too cold! We can't work!
The underachievement syndrome.
Given that crowd, I'm guessing the instruments played were not the real ones. I could picture it; "Yo Ma Ma, gimmme dat kello thang."
I said they'd be lip-synching the innauguration, but, hey, I get a lot of things right. But don't think I enjoy it. There's plenty of times when I wish I was wrong.
And this: again, the story far more than that "the obama thing" is a study in Smoke & Mirrors. Look at what the media is doing here. They got word that the lip-synching cat was out of the bag (apparently somebody who was watching hadn't taken his kool-aid), and so they jumped in front of it with this apologetic screed.
This Media thing is The King's Liar.
Chinese Olympics,
or
Obama, the fake but accurate presidency.
Like the Olympic opening ceremonies in China?
I'm sure crack instruments led to many wacky intonations among the throng of believers there...
I am an amateur performer. I play classical guitar. Sometimes I am asked to perform outdoors. Sometimes it is ungodly hot, raining cats and dogs, or colder than a witches bosom. During those performances, I have had my fair share of strings breaking, and running the real risk of a very expensive instrument cracking. If I could prognosticate weather, I would simply turn down engagements that would subject me and my instrument from harsh weather conditions.
Given the magnitude of the event (regardless of WHO was being inaugurated) I am almost certain that a weather decision was made when there was no chance of performing under those conditions. Singing or playing an instrument in front of multitudes is not a trivial thing, so it is understandable that performers would want to put their best foot forward as a matter of professional pride.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't be so quick to pass judgment on the performers. The organizers probably did the best they could under the conditions — and also keep in mind that these people are professionals and their reputations are at stake. I doubt it was in any performers interest to have their piano go out of tune, their cello to break a string, or a singer to slur their lyrics because of the cold weather.
I am a staunch, conservative Republican. I am also pragmatic enough to understand that sometimes “shi$” happens, and you have to roll with the punches.
OK — blast away, but remember that tracer rounds work both ways.
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