by After the release being delayed a day, you can now finally purchase the “12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief” album on iTunes. I watched the concert on live television and it’s interesting to see which artists and what songs made the 24 cuts on this memorial hurricane record.
The one disappointing fact I took away from the live performance was how horrible the audio was in real time. The vocals were buried. The guitars were faint. The drums overran every single song.
I hoped the album would fix those audio mix problems in final production even though the lag time between live performance and distributed iTunes album was less than a week. Perhaps the extra day before actual release helped the audio engineers solve the problem, because the album sounds much better and cleaner and clearer than what we heard live on TV last week.
There are a few things mercifully missing from the album. We don’t get any of the comedic monologues or monotonous talking — except for the ridiculously awful Adam Sandler version of “Hallelujah” that everyone is pretending to find likable and funny — and no single artist gets more than three songs on the album. Kanye West does not appear on the album. Some will cheer that fact. While I have no interest in listening to his songs, Kanye absolutely should have been included on the album to appropriately mark his participation in the benefit concert.
I find it odd that superstars like Springsteen and Clapton were only given two songs each while sub-luminaries like Roger Waters and Chris Martin were given three. Billy Joel also gets three songs, but Paul McCartney — who closed the show and shook the house down — only gets one song?
All the proceeds from the album sales go to help people rebuild their lives from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, and that is a noble effort and a just cause. I encourage you to buy “12-12-12 The Concert for Sandy Relief” and live a little bit as you give back to those who are still suffering the aftereffects of an historic oceanic slurry.
Why couldn’t all songs be included? It’s not like they have one or two records to fill, 25 minutes a side, and can’t put any more musing than that? This seems absurd. I don’t care for West at all either but it’s offensive that his hard work was spurned.
I have a feeling it might be Copyright related. Perhaps some rights couldn’t be cleared in time to get the record out ASAP? I’m not sure what happened with Kanye — but I’m pretty sure he owns his own songs — I supposed he could have, for some reason, denied permission for his performance to be included.
I find it an absolute bummer that Bruce’s and Jovi’s duets weren’t included. In fact, it was what I was looking forward to the most…
Not including those duets is one thing that didn’t surprise me. While the idea was great, neither one of them sang the other’s songs very well. The lyrics were not memorized and the forced harmonies didn’t blend. They were both unpracticed and it showed — especially on the video when you watch their faces.