A Most Unappreciated Man

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I went to Farm Aid, an annual benefit concert to raise money for America's family farms. The concert was in Mansfield at the recently renamed Comcast Center--known to most people as the Tweeter Center--and marked the first time that Farm Aid was held in New England.

The weather was gorgeous, the venue was spacious, and the performances were outstanding. One of Farm Aid's major selling points, beyond the obvious fact that it is for a good cause, is that it attracts a very diverse group of artists. We saw Arlo Guthrie, moe., Jakob Dylan (who played a terrific set with a band called the Gold Mountain Rebels), The Pretenders, Kenny Chesney, and Jerry Lee Lewis--who I didn't even know was still alive--all on the same stage. And these were just a few of the openers. Each set was around thirty minutes and then the next act would come on. All told, the music played almost continuously from the time we got there, at 1:30, until after we left at 10:30.

Almost every performer brought his A game. The event is hosted by Willie Nelson, the president and one of the co-founders of Farm Aid, and many of the performers are his friends, so the atmosphere is genuinely fun and friendly. I have never been to a concert where the performers seemed to be having such a good time. Willie was brought on stage repeatedly throughout the day to play with various acts and produced some pretty memorable moments. His duet with Kenny Chesney--singing a song about getting drunk and going home with this and waking up with this--was hilarious and, no doubt, based on a true story.

After Chesney finished his set, they got the stage set up for the headliners. Dave Matthews, with Tim Reynolds, played first as the guest headliner, followed by Farm Aid's three co-founders and its board of directors: John Mellencamp, Neil Young, and of course, Willie Nelson.

Matthews was pretty phenomenal. This is the third time I've seen him perform live, albeit the first with Reynolds and without his band, and I have to say that he continues to impress me. The guy is 41, has been touring practically nonstop for over a decade, recently lost one of his band members--the late saxophonist LeRoi Moore--to the aftereffects of an ATV accident, and yet he can still rock a concert better than anyone I've ever seen. He was cracking jokes and dropping one-liners about Reynolds, who threatened to steal the show a few times and definitely pushed Dave to another level throughout the hour-long set. Look, you can say all you want about Matthews' fanbase: that they're frat boys who smoke Newports and wear pink polos and go tanning ... or that they're obnoxious girls who over-quote his songs and use them as away messages and spill beer on everyone in their vicinity when they get sloppy drunk at his concerts. These pithy observations have been astutely pointed out ad nauseam by people who fail to realize that this doesn't prevent Matthews from putting on terrific shows night after night.

Matthews, to his credit, was the second most charismatic performer that took the stage at Farm Aid 2008. His presence on stage and rapport with the crowd was surpassed only by the man who followed him: John 'Cougar' Mellencamp, forever known to some of us as just The Cougs, a man who I feel is widely misunderstood and underappreciated.

Now, some of you are probably not surprised by this, since my respect for The Cougs is well-documented. Some of you are likely to scoff at the idea that The Cougs could excite a crowd in the same way as Dave Matthews. However, I think that these people are basing their sentiments on a misconception of who The Cougs is and what he is about, so I'm going to spend a moment defending John Mellencamp.

Most people hate on The Cougs for just one thing. We all know what I'm talking about, so I'm going to address it head on:

Mellencamp has been recording music for over thirty years, has won a Grammy for Best Male Rock Performer, and as of 2008, has been elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has produced such classic songs as "Jack and Diane," "Small Town," and "I Need a Lover," among many others. He has won numerous humanitarian awards and been an important member of Farm Aid since he helped found it in 1985. And, since 2006, he has been known for just one thing: his song, "Our Country," being obnoxiously overplayed as Chevrolet's theme song to help them sell Silverados.

It's probably an exercise in futility for me to defend the merit of "Our Country" as a song--too many people have had it irreparably ruined by the advertising executives at Chevy. However, to write Mellencamp off as an artist based on "Our Country" is like writing off Michael Jordan as a basketball player because of his ill-fated tenure with the Wizards. (Yes, I know, I just compared The Cougs to Michael Jordan. If this is really too much for you, think of it as writing off Tyler Hansbrough's great college career just because he was a bust in the NBA).

How cool is John Mellencamp? Well, try this as a barometer: while every other act was introduced either by themselves or by--ugh--Carson Daly (the one real downside of Farm Aid), Mellencamp was introduced by Bob Costas. Bob Costas. Think about that for a second. Costas took time off from whatever important piece of journalism he was working on, flew to Mansfield, and probably didn't get paid for his time, just to spend thirty seconds on stage introducing The Cougs and saying a few words about how much he's done over the last two decades to help the American farmer. I don't care who you are, I don't care what your feelings are about John Mellencamp, that has got to give you pause. Bob Costas is not only the greatest sports broadcaster of our era, he's also a gentleman, and a scholar of the highest caliber. If I could pick one person to introduce me for the most important event of my life, there is no doubt in my mind that I would choose Costas for the job. He did just that for John Mellencamp, pro bono, because he has so much respect for The Cougs.

Costas set the stage and, let me tell you, The Cougs delivered. No performer--not Matthews, not Chesney, not even Neil Young--was able to electrify the crowd at Farm Aid the way Mellencamp did. They were loving it. I was loving it. And you could sure tell The Cougs was loving it. One moment illustrates this best: in between songs, Mellencamp asked us all to get out our phones and call someone so that they could hear what was going on at Farm Aid and be a part of the experience. Within second, thousands of cell phones were held aloft, and The Cougs walked to the edge of the stage and asked a young woman who she was calling. Then, he reached down, picked up the phone, and said, "Hey Terry, how you doing? This is John Mellencamp, and we're at Farm Aid, just wanted to let you know what a good time we're having, and we wish you were here." Then he laughed, gave the phone back to its owner, and went right on rocking. When he played "Small Town," he brought the house down, plain and simple.

The point is, Mellencamp is so much more than "Our Country," and he showed it on stage at Farm Aid. The farmers loved him, the drunk girls loved him, even the goth-punk-looking kid with long hair who was dragged there by his hippie parents loved him. And I'll bet Bob Costas would've loved him, too, if he hadn't had some important work to do as our nation's greatest culture emissary. Nobody crucifies The Who or The Rolling Stones or The Postal Service because their songs are used in crappy commercials--why crucify The Cougs?

PS. You would be surprised to know how hard it was to find those pictures of stereotypical Dave Matthews fans. Try google-imaging "frat boys" and "sloppy drunk girls" and see what comes up.