Last night the stage at Madison Square Garden in NYC shook with the vibrancy, sincerity, grand showmanship and talent, from a vast array of Music Icons playing their instruments-out and strutting-about and showing everyone who really knows how to rock and those who pale in comparison during the "12-12-12" benefit concert for Sandy Hurricane Relief Victims. Another star-studded Disaster Inspired Concert because money is needed. A lot of it. When it's serious, the stars show up and lend their time and talent or face or words or all of the above to keep the issue alive. Some are paid. Others give it away. It doesn't matter....the point is how important it is when illness, holocausts, floods, earthquakes, take over a city, country or person and how, although seemingly shallow, we sometimes need the World's Icons to bring attention to these tragedies and atrocities to wake the masses from their self-absorbed, ADD-riddled lives and stop for a moment to help by picking up a phone to make a donation.
Bravo to everyone who made last night's concert successful. New York and New Jersey needed their home-grown celebrities and others to bring the disaster further into perspective to gain wider financial support. The clips at the beginning of the event showed the damage Sandy has wrought to NY and NJ in a visual light as devastating as looking at what Katrina did to New Orleans. For some reason, although we have been hearing about the damage, seeing pictures and videos here and there, edited together in such a clear way brought it out of virtual reality into reality. And, again, without The Names to provide a successful concert, many would still have missed the point of The Need To Know how much help is required to revive the shoreline and broken neighbourhoods.
That's why Rock Hudson's shocking death in 1985 was The Milestone In AIDS Awareness, eventually followed by AIDS Research. With a touch of compassion and deep-felt advocacy from his friends such as Elizabeth Taylor, years of constant remindings that NON-GAYS GET the illness/disease caused from far more than a sexual transmission, has made a deep dent: BUT, we still have so far to go to convince the less-aware among us that heterosexuals have HIV/AIDS and that basic bodily fluid sharing won't cause HIV. It's the blood exchange that does it. Got it? You can get it from a razor that an HIV Positive person has nicked themselves on with a trickle of blood should you be foolish enough to use someone else's razor no matter how intimate you have been with that person in sharing other fluid-involved activities.
But how does AIDS relate to a concert for a Natural Disaster? Quite a bit. It's not that Rock Hudson wanted to "come out" and become a spokesperson for AIDS because he was feeling altruistic. His "condition" forced the truth, thus educating The World on the then new and scary disease. It was the simple fact that he was Famous and was dying and, not only that, was Gay And Dying Of A Mystery Disease - which, as with Betty Ford's admission of having breast cancer, ultimately saved the lives of millions of people who were unwilling, unaware, of how to work through it and also educate those who were misinformed or hid behind the-then "stigma" of having any form of cancer. It was Who She Was and her ability to reach a large audience with one interview that changed the entire issue for the better. Without her honesty, her position, most of all, HER NAME, few would have listened.
Had Rock Hudson not died of AIDS, how many more deaths would have happened without so much focus shed on the new Mystery Disease? And so it goes with musicians who step-up and put on incredible shows to help in times of Mass Destruction. We need The Names to aid change no matter what they do in their personal lives.
Keep Rockin', Guys. But Bruce, I wouldn't have worn a cotton shirt last night. - especially when you were always lifting your sweat-stained armpits. Yuck.
Image via: http://www.billboard.com
Very astute. Totally agree.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Susan...
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