On Thursday night, Terminal 5 held the second concert of Unstaged, a live concert series presented by American Express. The first an Arcade Fire webcast from Madison Square Garden directed by Terry Gilliam (Monty Python, 12 Monkeys.)
Spike Lee directed the webcast for John Legend & The Roots, which was streamed on YouTube through the music video website Vevo. The site let fans watch Lee’s directing or let them cycle through camera angles on their own.
It’s not necessarily a Spike Lee joint,’ Lee said. ‘It’s a John Legend and The Roots joint.’
In the past, Lee has directed performances by John Leguizamo, Luciano Pavarotti, and the comedians of The Original Kings of Comedy.
[pagebreak]
John Legend & The Roots released their collaborative album ‘Wake Up’ on Tuesday; an album of socially conscious soul covers from the 60s and 70s.
Legend says in the liner notes, ‘We live in a time of seemingly unlimited possibility and groundbreaking, historic change, yet we’re also in the midst of a deep recession and war. Poverty and disillusionment still afflict a large portion of humankind.’
The lyrics and messages from these 40 to 50-yr old songs still hold sway in todays current social environment.
The project started out as an attempt to cover the Arcade Fire song ‘Wake Up,’ but the song never made it to an album and it became the title of this album instead.
The tracks include music originally made by Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, Bill Withers, and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes.
Prior to the Terminal 5 performance, John Legend and Questlove answered questions posed by Spike Lee that were taken from fans on Twitter.
See the Q&A on the NEXT PAGE, then WATCH clips from the performance.
[pagebreak]
WATCH the duo talk i about what is currently playing on their iPod’s, what is their favorite Spike Lee joint, and who has the best cheesesteak in Philadelphia.
<object classid='clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000' width='400' height='385' codebase='http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,
