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).And NBC knew about it, but didn't report it.
“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
What did they expect of January weather in Washington, D.C.? Near-freezing weather had been predicted for at least a week for Inauguration Day. It was a lovely idea, but if weather was going to be a factor, perhaps they could have had a horn quartet instead of faking it for everyone. It's a small thing, but just as we don't expect chief justices to botch the oath, we don't expect to have musicians pretend to pull an Ashlee Simpson during the inauguration.
5 comments:
This ranks with the British finding out that the Nelson statue at Trafalgar Square was taken down using and American helicopter during the 60's. People asked who then originally placed it atop the column. The pigeons?
As if its never been cold on Inaugural Day and this particular problem had never come up before.
From personal experience, cold weather impacts brass instruments too. It doesn't rise to the level of a "Christmas Story" triple dog dare factor because you can keep the mouth piece somewhat warm in a pocket but it does cause the instrument to react in ways you might not expect, including valve issues if you're not using better brands of valve oil.
I would point out that the military bands that played before and after the "elite" celebrity ensemble were actually playing. I understand all of the performers that played on Sunday actually played but that should get a closer look since it was much colder that day, if I recall correctly.
Yo-Yo Ma and his buddies should've taken a pass or better yet said, "Look, this might not sound exactly like we want it, but we're going to give it our best shot because we appreciate the honor to play before the nation." Instead, I think they smelled the windfall in all the hyped sales of CDs and DVDs. Really, why else would the Yo-Yo have been making all of those "impassioned" facial expressions? Gas? He should go buy a banjo and start over.
The Milli Vanilli Award goes to the MSM for faking it day in and day out for years. Who knew that objectivity changed with the weather...everyday?
Nothing against the performers, or I guess in this case non-performers, but I thought the whole idea and execution was a waste of time. I hope it's the last we see of that.
I guess this is where some of the one hundred twenty million spent on this most expensive Inauguration Day ever---went.
Ading to what tfhr said, though I had to go through dozens of boxes, I found an old photo my granddad brought back from his service in the Polar Bear Expedition against the Bolsheviks in 1918-1919. He had shown me that photo and others when I was four or five and promised me that I could have them.
Taken in the middle of winter near Archangel, it shows a
Royal Marine and an American soldier from the 85th Division(Custer) holding their bugles as close to a large pre-dawn fire as possible. The Northern campaign was not going well but the Americans and the
British still kept the proper forms alive.
My granddad told me that the soldiers in his company threatened to cut off the b**** of the American bugler because it was too cold to get up. But like a lot of war stories told from the vantage point of 50 years later I'm not sure I believed him.
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