McDonald's Olympics

[Stuart Wallis]

Pity it's us rather than them...

Ironically, Rabid Cameron is now saying we should encourage sport. Now, which Party, in their last stint as Government, was selling off the playing fields? Oh dear...

[Jeff]

So, after sitting through the whole closing ceremony, during which we were told that The Who would be performing later about 50 times, they get to the end and then tell us that they will be taking a break for an hour to show NBC's new show 'Animal Practice' and the local news, and then will be back with 'An Olympic Celebration' featuring The Who... I'm not even sure if they showed the whole performance, as I read that it was 8 minutes followed by a closing statement from one of the NBC presenters... Seriously, they couldn't have delayed their new show and the news for 15 minutes? The whole debacle has made national headlines.

[Philipnet]

I've been reading quite a bit about NBC's showing of the Olympics - and how poorly people rate it.

It makes the BBC practically dazzle in comparison

[Rob McCow]

I've heard that NBC royally stuffed up their coverage. Apparently it was pretty poor throughout the whole Olympics?

[Rob McCow]

David Bowie turned down the offer to sign off Sunday night's Olympic Games closing ceremony with a performance of Heroes, one of several high-profile acts who passed up the chance to perform in front of a global TV audience of hundreds of millions at the finale of London 2012.

Organisers of the £15m show had also hoped to persuade the Rolling Stones, Kate Bush and the Sex Pistols to appear in what was intended to be a history of British music. Even the Who, who did close the Games with a medley ending with My Generation, turned down the request to play twice, according to industry sources. But a decision by the band to announce a US tour in July swayed them, given the scale of the promotional opportunity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012...osing-ceremony

It would have been great to have had Bowie and Kate Bush perform again. Maybe not at the Olympics closing ceremony though.

But why did they go after artists who were never, ever going to show up? Why not try and track down people who still actually do concerts?

We could have had The Wurzels!

[Si Hunt]

I know she's minority, but I would have liked Kirsty MacColl to have been in there somewhere. A lot of people rate her as a very English kind of songwriter, and one of our best. Even if it'd have been like 5 second snatch of her singing "Days", I think a lot of people would have been very happy. Instead they played One Direction twice :-S

You can understand the Stones totally, they hadn't played together in 5 years and they just wern't rehearsed and ready. Kate was always a long-shot - she could, I suppose, have turned up, walked around a bit while her song played and nothing else.

Si.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I have to say I wasn't that impressed by the Who...



I did enjoy most of the rest of it though although letting George do a second song was a mistake.

They obviously hadn't cleared enough songs to cover the entrance of the Olympic athletes taking longer than expected which was why we got the rather noticeable One Direction repeat.

[Si Hunt]

As with charity shows, it's an unspoken rule that you don't hijack these events to promote your new songs - nobody appreciates a newie at these things, they want the hits. So shame on you, George.

Also I don't think Emile Sande deserved the exposure she got. Okay, you need someone to represent "The future" but this was supposed to be a celebration of history, mainly. She got a priceless near 20 minute slot in total to flog her album. She's released one record. It's a bit insulting that we have people that have turned out good music for the UK for decades who didn't get to sing a note.

Si.

[Rob McCow]

I agree with you Si. But most of the people who turned up had something to promote. Blur are busy promoting their new mega-box-set. The Spice Girls are promoting a new musical based on their music. The Pet Shop Boys are doing a new album soon. Mid-way through Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush's official Twitter feed announced that the 2012 remix was available through I-Tunes.

Ed Sheeran should have sung 'Money' by Pink Floyd and they should have got Supergrass back together to perform 'Alright' and 'We're In It For The Money'. The Smiths could also have reformed to play 'Frankly Mr Shankley'.

Ever since the original Live Aid, musicians have realised that doing gigs like this for free can be a huge boost to their profile.

[Jeff]

I've heard that NBC royally stuffed up their coverage. Apparently it was pretty poor throughout the whole Olympics?

I wasn't dissatisfied by what I saw of the sports coverage, most of the complaints I read were about the fact that NBC offered no live streaming coverage anywhere. Everything was tape delayed and shown on tv hours later, so a lot of people already knew everything that happened. I read that some people were setting up the IP addresses of their phones to trick the BBC live streams into thinking that they were in the UK and not the US so they could watch the coverage live.

You can understand the Stones totally, they hadn't played together in 5 years and they just wern't rehearsed and ready.

Surely they could have given the Stones plenty of forewarning to rehearse a few songs if they really wanted them... In fact I saw an article where Ronnie Wood suggested that 'being out of practice' was just an excuse and that 'It was never going to happen'. Even so, they could have done something like they did with Bowie, or featured them during the music part of the opening ceremonies.

Honestly, I thought Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and Doctor Who were all vastly underrepresented.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I'm surprised at how much blatant miming was going on considering how much furore there was about one little girl miming in the Beijing opening ceremony. Also I seem to remember there being complaints about some of the opening ceremony not really happening live and being pre-filmed too, yet ours was chock full of pre-filmed stuff.

[Dirk Gently]

I'm surprised at how much blatant miming was going on considering how much furore there was about one little girl miming in the Beijing opening ceremony.

The 'furore' about the girl miming in Beijing wasn't about her miming but the fact that it wasn't the girl who actually sang the song that was doing the miming.
The girl who sang the song wasn't deemed pretty enough by those in charge & was therefore substituted.

[Si Hunt]

Quite right too!

I think a venue that size, there's just a lot of issues with singing live. It isn't always practical.

I'm sure Neil Tennant sounded live though!

1D might as well have been miming, the amount of backing track that they had!

Si.

[Rob McCow]

I don't know about everyone else, but Pet Shop Boys, Ray Davies and Jessie J were all obviously singing live. It also seemed to me that they couldn't hear themselves very well either, because they were all a little off-time and off-key.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

They obviously hadn't cleared enough songs to cover the entrance of the Olympic athletes taking longer than expected which was why we got the rather noticeable One Direction repeat.

I think all the songs from the opening section were repeated during that part.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

The 'furore' about the girl miming in Beijing wasn't about her miming but the fact that it wasn't the girl who actually sang the song that was doing the miming.
The girl who sang the song wasn't deemed pretty enough by those in charge & was therefore substituted.

Yes I know, but there was defnitely some moaning just about the concept of miming, and about the fake CGI fireworks.

[Stuart Wallis]

Just as long as Jessica ennis and Tom Daley weren't CGI as well...