Last night, a thousand Twitter eggs incubated beneath the heat lamp of festering Republican rage in what was the first of … four nights of the GOP convention? Jesus. Anyway, those assembled delegates who are so empowered with making life-altering decisions on behalf of their countrymen and other people with dumb hats were treated to a night of incoherent sloganeering, hammy yelling, and C-list celebrity befitting a coronation of Donald Trump—from Rudy Giuliani yelling at America for blocking his driveway, to future Secretary of Being In Charge Scott Baio issuing a call to “Make America America Again” that made only slightly less sense than the plot of Zapped. But what about the music, man? Remember when the gaudily empty pantomime of democracy was all about the music?
The Grand Old Party does, which is why it hired former Saturday Night Live bandleader G.E. Smith to once again fill the dead air between outlandish political parodies with song. Smith—a mercenary pro who just goes where the work is—directed his gaggle of fiddling Neros through a corporate picnic-friendly set list of classic rock songs by Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Who, Rod Stewart, The Knack, and so on, while poor Chris Christie probably sat there bellowing an unanswered request for “Thunder Road.” It was all mostly uncontroversial—and hey, nice to see Creed’s Scott Stapp is getting some work.
But there were occasional moments when the band inevitably got bored with making background noise for people in stars-and-stripes ties to clap arrhythmically to, so they did one for themselves. Rush’s “Limelight” was an odd choice, though its lyrics—“Cast in this unlikely role / Ill-equipped to act / With insufficient tact / One must put up barriers”—obviously has some undeniable resonance with Trump’s campaign. But there’s no such explaining away the cover of David Bowie’s “Station To Station,” a song from the late singer’s drug-hollowed, Thin White Duke era that, as Slate points out, at one point references “the side effects of the cocaine.” Bowie was singing about love there, though watching the RNC, you could also make the case for paranoia.
Unfortunately—or fortunately—Bowie is dead, so he wasn’t around to witness this surreal spectacle (and missed opportunity to do “Man Who Sold The World”). The same cannot be said, however, for the very much alive singer of The Turtles, Howard Kaylan, who threatened legal action over the band’s appropriately listless rendition of “Happy Together,” only to discover mere hours later that—as any patron of suburban bars could tell you—the law cannot protect you against cover bands.
Also watching and grumbling was Queen guitarist Brian May, whose song, “We Are The Champions” played as Donald Trump made his WWE-style entrance to introduce his wife, Melania. Trump has used the song before, as he’s an obvious fan of the line “No time for losers” and not thinking too deeply about things. And May has also rebuked him for doing so before, saying, “Permission to use the track was neither sought nor given. We are taking advice on what steps we can take to ensure this use does not continue.”