The globally streamed 6 hour concert presented by Fenix360 and WOWtv for the “Let Me Help Inc.org Foundation” (a 501c3 charity) for “Children of the World”, Saturday, October 1st, 2022, Reviewed
It’s an easy mistake to make and I make it all all the time. SohoJohnny Pasquale comes up with some intricate, difficult, time consuming concept to raise money and I think “uh oh” and then he pulls it off. In 2018 there was the disco party (entirely sold out) (here) and the 9-11 disco and fashion extravaganza that lead us out of the pandemic (here), to name but two, plus the streaming special November 2020.
But even compared to those achievements last night’s worldwide streaming event was an amazing achievement. With artists from around the world performing, the International Children’s Day exploded for six hours of dreaming, pleading, sharing and singing, whether it be Rocky Kramer’s classic rock untethered, Drmageddn performing drums let loose with covers like “Living On A Prayer” and “Mr. Brightside”, Tony Orlando’s deeply felt pleading for the cause, Chords2Cure and special guests presenting children rockers at their best,or John Fusco’s breathtaking Americana “Coyote Man” and much more, it soon became clear Soho was delivering even more than he promised.
Even the earlier streaming benefit felt more like friends getting together to share music and friendship, “Children Of The World” was simply too large, unless Soho and John Velasco were managing the evening with the precision of an air land invasion it would stall: instead it moved effortlessly from moments of heart wrenching pain personified by one man asking how he can tell his young daughter that she is going to die, to the very early in the evening with Nicolette Furno dance and song EDM self-explanatory, protest song, “Reach Out Your Hand” by John Patti, and his brother Chris who plays some Chicago blues and stays till the very end at his own Indie Studios in New York.
After the Patti family we moved London where Tony Moore was the anchor, as the music moved into Hard Rock performed by two giants: Moody Blues and 10 Years After. Sometimes, the performers were involved in charities, and sometimes their performances underline it with one of the best moments of the entire evening a cover of “New York State Of Mind”.
The show moved from (Melbourne) Australia to India, to Eastern Europe and Asia, with some of the celebrities’ (Tony Orlando, Lou Gramm) speaking on before of the Charities and Daisy Jopling performing an original piece of work “Pray”. Paul Cashmere of Noise 11 MCing the Australian segment is everything you’d want from an Aussie segment including a great young rock band, Sam Strange’s Lip Stereo. AC/DC is from here as well and the late great Divinyl, Chrissy Amphlett, has a street named after her and I have no idea how any cosmopolitan music city can exist without a street named for Chrissy Amphlett.
Soho is a quietly intense MC, his eye on the till and the time, he is friendly and curious and serious and is like the face of the charity helping children, there is an unmovable sorry, like the Chords2Cure children who formed the charity in response to two of their choir members dying from cancer. Despite your efforts and Soho’s efforts, it is just too sad and Soho, who can let loose (remember him singing and dancing with Kim Sledge in 2020) temperance is well in order.
The evening’s best moments were Cool Kid Nation and Sophia Angelica’s “New York State Of Mind”, both performers are very young and CKN is even younger than that, the two songs are the lessons Soho is teaching us written large: THIS SONG CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE
In the end, Soho chose to do a streaming performance to help children and chose the most difficult way to do it by being all inclusive from the Far East to the Near West, and pulled it off. It maintained a balance between the needs of charity, the needs of empathy, and the sounds of music. A New Hope, in fact.
