The Arcade Fire people are currently in Haiti and have made the news by covering songs from the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, and Cindy Lauper.
There was a rumor running that the band was actually accompanied by photographer and filmmaker Leah Gordon (what happened to the French guy?) to make a documentary about the shows they are playing over there, but this has been denied by their manager Scott Rodger, so I don’t know who started a rumor with so many precisions… but it is also reported they are producing a DVD with RAM, a local band lead by the owner of the Hotel Oloffson, where they had their gig.
It has been called a secret show, but Rolling Stone magazine has all covered it for us with 10 colorful pictures. ‘The concert had been billed as the ‘Grand Return of the World Famous Band from Canada,’’ the magazine reports, …and I wonder who came up with this expression, as there is no way this may sound acceptable for anyone.
I know they have raised more than $1M dollars for Haiti, and that Regine Chassagne has lived there when she was a child, but talk about some pompous expression!
They played inside the hotel Oloffson and on some of the pictures (and the videos) you can see the crowd around, and people are really, mostly … white (beside the security guards in yellow t-shirts). It’s Haiti, how is this possible?
But Rolling Stone writes: ‘Win Butler stood atop an amp and sang to the crowd of foreign NGO workers and mostly upscale Haitians, many of whom were chanting the lyrics’. This explains a lot, may be non-upscale Haitians have no clue who Arcade Fire is, and only foreigners, who are working there, were invited?
But was it a ‘surprise’ concert in Port-Au-Prince as NME is reporting it? And Rolling Stone magazine and Esquire magazines were randomly there too? They sure jumped on the occasion to buy pics from photographs who were there, and applied their stamp marks on it!
Here is the setlist, and let’s watch them cover the Stones:
‘Who’ll Stop The Rain’ (Creedence Clearwater Revival cover)
‘Keep The Car Running’
‘The Last Time’ (Rolling Stones cover)
‘Crucified Again’ (don’t know that song!)
‘Ocean Of Noise’
‘The Tide Is High’ (The Paragons/Blondie cover)
‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ (Cyndi Lauper cover)
‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’
‘Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)’
‘Rebellion (Lies)’
‘Haiti’… Of course!
‘Wake Up’… Of course!