CBS is crawling so slowly back to the halcyon days of WCVB/A&E coverage that we might get a decent Boston Pops coverage in about 100 years (if that soon). They continue to concentrate more time on the fireworks and less on the crowds—since the crowd is there to watch fireworks and not other people in the crowd, why in Sam Hill does CBS think their viewers would be interested in watching the crowd???—but it's annoying the way they have made the Boston Pops change their program (it used to be all the artists and patriotic songs and readings at the "front," then the "1812 Overture" followed by the fireworks; now the so-called "stars" get to perform again after the "Overture" because CBS chooses to broadcast only the final hour of the concert).

This year we folks in the Atlanta area got cheated out of a good deal of the fireworks because the local CBS station always broadcasts the annual fireworks show from Lenox Mall. It's one of those times where I wish we got a dedicated network feed instead of the local channels that Dish has to provide because of the local advertisers whining about loss of revenue. The Lenox show has music nicely choreographed to the fireworks, but that's about it: their fireworks are strictly ho-hum, just the normal red, green, gold, silver, and some blue chrysanthemum and willow aerial bombs that have been playing for the last 100 years. Yawn. Boring. They don't even have some of the fireworks I remember from the church feasts when I was a kid, like the little golden ones that let out a "sqeeeeeee" as they circled. And no one ever does the final "bang!" at the end that always signified the show was over.

The Boston fireworks, on the other hand, were truly a work of art. Along with the new ones that have appeared in the past few years—ones that look like Saturn, or rings around stars, or cube shapes or star shapes—they had several designs premiere this year. One looked like a jellyfish with a big mushroom cap of color at the top and little gold sparkle "feet." There were others that were big umbrella-type circular shapes that looked like the flowers of Queen Anne's Lace (wild carrot), but multicolor—these looked like little jewels and were stunning! The color saturation was also intense on all the different fireworks; at one point it looked like the Charles was on fire. Then the color shifted to an intense blue like that of cobalt glass. It was amazing.

I also hate that they do not identify the pieces of music that play with the fireworks anymore. I could not place the music that played right before Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" near the end; I know it was from a movie soundtrack, but I couldn't remember which.

Pity the coverage wasn't as sterling as the fireworks themselves!

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:39:00 AM

Comments:

I heartily agree with you about the CBS coverage of the Boston Pops coverage - I've railed against it since it moved from A&E to CBS and went from three hours to one. And why was Dr. Phil hosting? Admittedly as a Canadian it doesn't have that resonance for me - it's just a show - I somehow feel cheated to the point where I skipped it and watched my DVD of 1776. As for the music it is a victim of the hour-long format - the execs think that people want to see stars so they tailor the show around the stars. (I also have a suspicion that they believe that Americans don't want anything to do with anything that smacks of classical music so the 1812 is excluded from the show but maybe that's my own prejudice.)

# posted by  Brent McKee : 3:46:00 PM

 

we did nothing..went to a friends house on monday and we stayed inside in the cool. left early...and managed to not watch all the fire works anywhere.. did have the puppies on the lap while the dummies in the street have shot them off. the neil diamond movie was "The Jazz Singer"

one of my favorite Diamond records

# posted by  Anonymous : 12:15:00 AM

 

I knew the Neil Diamond song. It was "Coming to America." It was the music they played before that that I couldn't identify.

# posted by  Linda : 11:26:00 PM

 

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