Opinions

Forget the critics, Madison Rising screams patriotism

Next time you go on YouTube, which will probably be any minute now, make sure you search “Madison Rising rocks National Anthem.” Watch this before you waste time checking out more funny cat videos, and judge the performance for yourself.

Madison Rising calls itself “America’s most patriotic rock band” and its website home page features several photos of band members in some version of stars and stripes. Its most recent album opens with “The Star Spangled Banner,” and closes with the much talked about rock version of “America the Beautiful.”

The band has made headlines in a myriad of news outlets, including Huffington Post, the Examiner, Twitter and others because of the performance it gave at Daytona International Speedway Feb. 22. The performance introduced the band’s rock version of the national anthem, and the video has gone viral.

Huffington Post called the performance “cringeworthy” and said Francis Scott Key and John Stafford Smith would have agreed. Fox News commentary suggested that the applause at the end of the song was uncomfortable, and that the audience was simply unsure of how to react to something they were so unfamiliar with.

If you watch the video for yourself, and you listen to the music and take a look at the audience members, I think you will probably find that the media is being overly critical. From Super Bowls, to World Series games and Cal State Long Beach basketball games, it is almost impossible to find a live performance of the national anthem where the singer sticks entirely to the traditional music anyway.

I think it was ambitious for a band to be as confident in their interpretation of the music as this band is.

Lead vocalist Dave Bray began the number holding an American flag over his heart, singing the song slowly and traditionally. As with almost every other performer of the national anthem, he sprinkled a few extraneous notes here and there, but nothing too radical. As he sang “…and the rockets red glare,” the song cranked it up a notch into a livelier, rock tempo.

At the end of the song, the audience cheered, and no matter what any other critic calls it, they were hooting and hollering at least to an extent.

The peanut gallery that comprises the YouTube feedback under the video has been firing a pretty even-sided bickering match over the performance.

The best comments, in my opinion, came from those viewers who know a little about the band itself, and understand that the band isn’t trying to ruin something that is beautiful, rather they are trying to make it more accessible to an audience that may have lost touch with patriotism.

Madison Rising is led by Bray, a U.S. Navy veteran and strong believer in the band’s mission to promote a pro-American culture.

The band believes in “the principles of liberty, independence, smaller government and personal responsibility,” according to its website.

For me, the interpretation of the song symbolizes the ever-changing social dynamics of the U.S.

Thomas Jefferson famously said, “The dead shall not rule the living.” The idea behind this statement is that the people who currently comprise the country should determine the standards by which they live.

Implying that a song, which serves only to praise our country, should only be performed one way for the rest of time is like saying the Constitution should never be amended and/or changed to suit the desires and needs of the present American people.

So there are those who loved the performance, and those who hated it, what else is new?

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