Our Thoughts On The Super Bowl Halftime Show!

Photo credit: Mark Huphreys/AP

Everything wrong with this year's Super Bowl halftime show was perfectly summed up by Bruno Mars show-stopping drum solo.

Thing is, he did it before there was a show to even stop.

See, back in stadium days, the drum solo was a necessary part of the concert event, providing a merciful opportunity for fans (many of whom chugged a few brewskis in the parking lot) to empty their bladders without actually missing any good songs.

Of course, at some point following the untimely death of Led Zep drummer John Bonham, the drum solo came to be viewed as something employed by lesser acts to essentially fill time in lieu of actual material.

Thus, starting your canned performance in front of a GLOBAL AUDIENCE with the musical version of turning off the fasten seatbelts sign is probably not the best idea.

Upon hearing the first strains of "Locked Out Of Heaven" from my buddy's bathroom, I spied the latest Carvin catalog (who knew they were even still around?) on a pile of magazines and settled in for a good long read.

After memorizing the specifications and color options for every guitar in Carvin's 2014 product line, I returned to the living room to find that Mars was STILL milking "Locked Out of Heaven" for all it was worth.

I then plopped onto the couch in slack-jawed wonder as Mars began Song #2, which sounded like something off of a Starship album post-"We Built This City".
 
The good news was that they played only half of the song.  The bad news was that the next song wasn't any better.

By the time Mars introduced the Peppers to the half-empty stadium, even he looked relieved.  I'm not afraid to admit that I have never been happier to see Anthony Keidis in my life.

With his tireless refrain of "Give it away, give it away, give it away now", Keidis and his cartoon co-horts hit the stage with a kegger-powered ferocity that surely saw the testosterone level in the stadium spike by tenfold.  With each member breaking into their own stylized seizures, the whole thing looked and sounded like something out of a Simpsons episode.  One almost had to laugh as the camera flashed to Bruno and his band clapping along at the side of the stage, reduced to onlookers at their own halftime show.

The Peppers finished "Give It Away" and left victorious, leaving Mars to sweep up after them with a three-hanky ballad introduced by clips of troops in the Middle East expressing their love for their spouses and families back home.

And then just like that, poof, the stadium lights came back on and the afterglow from Mars' performance quickly dissipated like so much dry ice.  For all the interest among female fans that Bruno Mars' appearance had been engineered to generate when it was announced last year, the whole performance always seemed on the verge of being overshadowed by its own special effects show, if not the frat-boy antics of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Perhaps the fireworks skewed too heavily male?

Maybe next year, the NFL will once again bend over backwards for the female demographic and name Natalie Merchant as the halftime entertainment.  And instead of fireworks, they can trot out a few dozen animatronic unicorns that shoot sparks out of their, uh, we'll leave that part to NFL.