WILLIE NELSON, THE PRETENDERS, JERRY LEE LEWIS Farm Aid 2008. Live at the Comcast Center, Mansfield, Massachusetts, September 20, 2008. TV HD broadcast.

JOHN MELLENCAMP Farm Aid 2008 [no label, 1CD] Massachusetts, September 20, 2008. Ex(cellent) digital broadcast stereo.

BigO -- in Singapore -- quotes my colleague Rick Massimo's reporting (Comcast Center rocks with star-studded Farm Aid cast):

According to The Providence Journal, "Jerry Lee Lewis is just short of 73; he shuffled onto the stage, pudgy and gray-haired, and wasted momentum waiting out a TV commercial before starting. None of it mattered. Blowing through full-speed-ahead versions of classics such as Roll Over Beethoven, Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On and Great Balls of Fire, and adding in the country ballad You Win Again."

With a new lineup, The Pretenders might have played some classic oldies but they still showcased some new tracks from their forthcoming album, Break Up The
Concrete, and singer Chrissie Hynde even slipped in a line about "doing everything we can to see the abolition of factory farms and slaughterhouses."

And The Providence Journal has the last word on Willie Nelson. "Farm Aid patriarch Willie Nelson closed the 23rd edition of the benefit concert, the first in New England, at the sold-out Comcast Center with a short set that included hits such as Whiskey River and Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys and Nelson's familiar well-worn, comfortable takes on his own material, making even the vigilante justice of Beer For My Horses seem amiable. His inimitable lead guitar, on an acoustic guitar so worn it has a hole in it, was as usual part of the deal."

Mellencamp's "brief eight-song set has all his best small town America songs - Pink Houses, Small Town, Rain On The Scarecrow and the excellent The Authority Song."