Television Reviews : ‘Coca-Cola Presents: Live, the Hard Rock’ Fizzles Out

Dan Aykroyd missed the perfect chance to introduce NBC’s rock-concert telecast Tuesday night with the appropriate “Saturday Night Live” revival: “This is Leonard Pinth-Garnell. Welcome to bad music television.”

The one-hour prime-time special--whose full, product-heavy title was “Coca-Cola Presents: Live, the Hard Rock”--wasn’t live in the West (it was taped earlier in the evening on Roman sets at Universal Studios). It had no hard rock, either, but there were plenty of Coke commercials.

Why did “CCPLTHR” exist? Was it to show how far and fast executive producer Lorne Michaels could fall after his acclaimed Emmys production last month? Was it to demonstrate how much worse the Blues Brothers shtick has become after John Belushi’s death? To plumb the very depths of the Roman comedy sketch genre? To give John Candy and Laraine Newman some work?

The music? Mainly routine performances by overexposed acts such as INXS and Ziggy Marley, carelessly presented (Michael Lindsay-Hogg was director; nice shot of the keyboardist moving his stool, Mike). The unscheduled Toni Childs provided a brief jolt of soulful intensity, but the one unusual attraction was the duo of John Mellencamp and Paul Simon.

It’s not exactly something the world’s been waiting for, and it proved more a mismatch than a mating. The loose-limbed, hyped-up Mellencamp next to the subdued, tight Simon suggested a pairing of Sam Kinison and Mr. Rogers, and even when Mellencamp calmed down, he couldn’t help but overwhelm his little partner. On their third song, Simon’s “The Boxer,” they finally found some common ground and a way to work together. Too little, too late.