Learning Day: Creed's Thanksgiving Halftime Show (Patreon)

When you think of the worst 2000s-era rock band, we all default to Nickelback. And that’s an intense category! It was a time when every subpar white boy thought he could sing and every other one thought he could also rap. But I am here to posit something bold: Nickelback doesn’t suck more than any other ‘00s rock band, they’re just basic. They’re music to shop for jeans to. If you tell me your favorite band is Nickelback I know, immediately, that your favorite show is one of the CSIs and your favorite sexual position is “not tonight, babe.” Besides, they cannot have Worst Rock Band of the ‘00s because Creed did everything wrong that Nickelback did, while also being plausible-deniability Christian and doing a drunk Eddie Vedder impression.

Plus Creed played arguably one of the worst shows of all time: the Thanksgiving halftime show at the Dallas Cowboys’ Texas Stadium -- a performance involving so many people, and so harmful in every direction that it might technically count as a battle.

Here’s the weird part: At the time, everybody fucking loved it.

There’s a reason for that, and we’ll get to it, but first… the show.

We open on a skit for the Salvation Army’s Kettle Campaign, and because nobody involved in the planning of this performance is capable of abstract thinking, we must see every individual on stage put a coin in the bucket one by one.

These people are so bad at putting coins in buckets that they blow their whole timeslot, forcing the red-clad dancers to jump in front of the shot, well ahead of the Salvation Army volunteers' exit mark.

No seriously, this was not supposed to happen -- watch them all try to dodge the dancers on their way out. Keep an eye on the white-shirted dude on the right who either finally saw his chance to make four young women touch him at once, or else just did not escape the jazz gauntlet intact.

This is technically the part that opens for the Creed show, not the actual Creed show, and yet somehow this is where the Creed show starts to fall apart. At the -00:16 second mark.

It might seem like a minor misstep but it’s a big problem because, by the end of this performance, there will be 1,800 people on this field. Each of them failing in unique and beautiful ways, like fuckup snowflakes

Like here, the dancers are immediately joined by flag wavers.

And they’re not in sync at all. Maybe the dancers are thrown from that surprise Marvin earlier, or maybe the choreography just sucks.

There’s no time to worry about that, though, because it’s time for Scott Stapp to pretend to sing.

Okay look, I know it’s not fair to give someone shit for lip-syncing at a halftime show. It’s standard practice because you need to do such a big performance, with such long and involved stagework that actually singing is simply asking too much.

Except Scott Stapp does none of those things. He wanders around the stage like his wife is trying on bras and he’s killing time in the women’s underwear section - just idly kicking his feet, poking at things he doesn’t understand and that employees would probably prefer he didn’t mess with.

Every once in a while he’ll mime a lyric or give you this fist pump-

But that’s it for stage presence. And he’s actually bringing the biggest energy in the band. Let’s jump to the guitar player!

Oh shit, we surprised him while he was huffing a Magic Marker!

Damn, let’s give him a minute to clean his chin up and check back on the field.

We’re adding the Dallas Cheerleaders to the melee, and you can really sense the animosity between them and the “real” dancers.

Nobody looks at each other. Smiles not even plastered on. You know those rival troops are one errant pom-pom from a brawl, and there will definitely be some errant pom-poms by the time we’re done.

Back to Stapp, who hits his signature lyric:

Right as we SMASH CUT TO:

Hahaha, shit.

The alopecia acrobat curtain-flying through the scrum gets me every time. I think it’s his little bird-like headchecks. He’s so committed to that role, you just know he waxed every hair on his body for the extra ½ MPH it got him in the wind tunnel. The wind tunnel that definitely put up a ‘pants required’ sign after his visit.

Look around him: You can already see just utter bedlam on the grass, and that’s before we threw Dollar General Hawkman into the mix. It’s so painfully clear what a mess this is going to be… but not to anybody there.

Because that crowd went fucking nuts for this moment. This moment when, again, Scott Stapp put eight extra syllables into the word “higher” just as an albino caught three feet of air.

There’s a reason for this. We’ll get to it.

Let’s check back in with Hardly Birdman who’s gracefully soaring through-

Oh, okay. He had four seconds of hangtime in him. I’ve seen fat children dunk harder than that. It’s too bad they choreographed this hasty landing for the exact moment Stapp repeats the question “can you take me higher?” Because the implied answer is “no, sorry. Give me ten minutes to reset.”

Back to the guitarist, who I guess is rocking that Face Landing Strip on purpose...

He is now being mobbed by the red-clad dancers. I don’t know that they’re supposed to be there. They’re not really dancing, just kind of ambling. Maybe testing the limits. Seeing if, holy shit, maybe they can just take this stage?

Wait, okay, I see what’s happened. They’ve been pushed off the field by our new troop:

The Dutch Shadowmen.

Nobody thought one second of this show through --  dudes in black bodysuits moving stuff around only works on a black stage with a black background, that’s the heart of that effect. In broad daylight against bright green they’re just lost ninjas. And while red, white, and blue are indeed the colors of the American flag, here’s the crazy thing about flags: They have to be in a certain order, or else they’re somebody else’s flag.

You know what? Maybe I just don’t understand the deep connection Creed has to the Netherlands, I’ll give them that benefit of the doubt and check in elsewhere.

I’m not cherrypicking unused stock footage to make this look bad. This is an actual cutaway during the show. Nobody in that shot is doing anything. It’s still an intriguing composition -- I would give so much to know the smalltalk a Dallas Cheerleader makes with a hijacked Bunraku puppeteer -- but it doesn’t sell the majesty of a Scott Stapp medley.

It’s not an isolated incident, we keep cutting away at random to people unprepared for camera time. Including the cameramen themselves, who panic and flee when they realize they’re part of football history.

I understand the problem: When you have 800 people on the field already, there’s literally no safe place to point a camera. It’s like filming an amateur orgy: Without proper staging, you are going to get some unwanted assholes on there.

Oh hey, the music is swelling. Something big is coming. Oh shit, it’s the move the curtain-dancer was preparing for, and player two jumped in to help!

As a feat of athletic prowess, that’s pretty impressive. It only lasts for a second, but you’d definitely give those guys a dollar if you saw them downtown between bus transfers.

Then something weird happens.

It’s only for a second, but there’s a flash of contextless firefighters just moseying about.

It’s almost subliminal, how quick that cut is. As soon as you’re like “wait, are those first respo-?” We jump back to Stapp seducing a water buffalo.

Then right in the middle of that wail -- like a wizard accidentally gave voice to a hernia -- we cut again to some police officers just... standing.

That’s the full transition! I didn’t even speed it up. From Stapp to cops to one-lane goatee in like three seconds, total.

Once more:

A… a guy getting a drink from a foodtruck?

Those are the real heroes: Thirsty polo-wearing guys.

As fast as it comes on, it’s over. That’s all of the stock footage. There’s maybe 8 seconds of it total, spliced across about 30 seconds in the middle of the show. Nobody calls it out, no text appears to explain it. That’s it.

If you lived through the era, you’d recognize this sort of thing as the mandatory lip service certain performers had to give 9/11 for a few years. If you had to guess, you’d probably place this around 2006 - when we’d hit 9/11 remembrance so hard that it became kind of rote.

“9:11,” you’d remark, upon looking at the clock.

“Never forget,” your dentist would mutter automatically.

But no!

This was Thanksgiving Day, 2001.

Two months after 9/11! The original 9/11! And it’s Creed at a football game.

This band, this time, this context -- you’d expect Scott Stapp to break down weeping and dancing paramedics to drag bodybags out onto the field that spell the words “THESE COLORS DON’T RUN.”

And they practically yadda yadda’d 9/11!

Why? Because we are not done introducing wildly disparate elements to this already crowded football stadium. Time is at an absolute premium! There’s only a few minutes of show left and we haven’t even gotten to Gymnast Jesus, crucified by his own banners:

We need to cut that precious memorial slot to introduce the ballroom dancers. They don’t even get their own segment! They already have to share with the human lilies!

Who are you going to cut, huh? Do you want to tell the black children’s choir they can’t tell their friends back home they were in a Creed show? Do you know how funny that story would be?

Our hands are tied here: Scott Stapp just sang the word “children,” sort of, and that means we need to cut to actual children like-

Holy shit, they got a token white kid in the black choir!

You know that kid has an inexplicably deep baritone and it’s hilarious. That’s little baby King Krule right there. That’s the only explanation.

Is there… No.

Is there another children’s choir coming down those stairs?

We have rival segregated choirs!

You tell me, you fuckin’ tell me smart guy: what 9/11 could compete with this spectacle? The spectacle that, in action, looks like this:

Just a fire drill at a YMCA. A parking lot full of karate classes and pottery students, swim teams trying to find common ground with the African drum circle.

We’re not even done introducing the band!

That lady sneaks onstage to sing like ten bars with Stapp, who definitely gets in more syllables per word and that definitely makes him the better performer. Then she disappears, never to be seen again.

I’m convinced she wasn’t even a part of the show, just an aspiring singer/football fan who once heard the Chinese word for crisis is also the word for opportunity.

I know halftime shows are extravaganzas that involve a lot of intricately planned elements working together, but this is the gang summit from The Warriors right after Cyrus gets shot. It is forty-six rival organizations simultaneously mauling each other and trying to flee.

I don’t know, I don’t even have a guess what this is-

But it happens right as Scott Stapp sings deep from the crotch-

And -- keep in mind I’m not this good at Photoshop, you have to believe me -- a child arrives with a dove and gives it to a Dallas Cheerleader.

It’s impossible, right? It can’t actually end like this. This is how you’d end a savage Creed parody. This is how you’d end the Director’s Cut of a savage Creed parody because you backed off at the end for the real one, figuring it was too on the nose.

But no. It’s possible. Anything’s possible, if you’ll just listen to the words Scott Stapp sings right before this moment.

Believe. You can fly.

(ugh)