Pops on the Fourth is bloated, unwieldy

Call me a buzz kill, call me a scrooge, but 35 years is plenty. At an average of a half-million people, Bostons annual July Fourth event is bloated and unwieldy, now a nationally televised fireworks spectacular complete with nauseatingly cheeky anchor people and gals in tight cocktail dresses dancing Irish jigs.
That said, it wasn’t all painful on the Esplanade this year: The weather held out, and Rascal Flatts served up the most spirited musical performance the event has seen in years, putting recent visits from Aerosmith and John Cougar Mellencamp to shame. Opening the show with a tight version of “Take Me There,” the Ohio trio returned later to perform “Life Is a Highway,” “Fast Cars and Freedom” and “Every Day,” keeping the crowd fully engaged and singing the entire time.
The Pops Esplanade Orchestra’s tribute to Leonard Bernstein was mostly ho-hum, but “Mambo” from “West Side Story” briefly threw some life into the mix. Sixteen-year-old Martha’s Vineyard native Katie Mayhew, grand champion of the Pops High School Sing-off, belted Sondheim’s “Being Alive” with seasoned diva flair. WBZ’s Jack Williams’ reading of Ernest Thayer’s baseball poem “Casey at the Bat” put an animated spin on an otherwise silly tribute to the game’s important role, as Pops maestro Keith Lockhart put it, “in the fabric of our culture.” Lockhart also used the phrase “sociological phenomenon” to describe the fireworks event - an excellent way of summarizing everything that’s wrong with it.



Sure, the fireworks are always fun, but somehow a backyard barbeque with friends and family would be a more meaningful, less stressful and self-important way of expressing one’s pride in being American. But, it’s a free country.