HBO's Obama Concert and James Taylor's eye

HBO's We Are One concert at the Lincoln Memorial was pretty great, and we're glad they let us poor folks watch it for free.

There were some fantastic moments. The show opened with a reading from Denzel and closed with Beyonce singing "America the Beautiful," and everything in between was just about perfect. Springsteen sang "The Rising" backed by a gospel choir, John Mellencamp sang a rousing version of "Little Pink Houses," Bettye LaVette and Jon Bon Jovi killed with their version of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," and Garth Brooks rocked unexpectedly hard on three songs, including "American Pie" and "Shout."  Just as special were Usher & Stevie Wonder with Shakira, Will.i.am with Herbie Hancock & Sheryl Crow, Mary J. Blige, Pete Seeger, Josh Groban and U2.

North Carolina native James Taylor sang a beautiful version of "Shower the People," backed as usual by Arnold McCullough, and accompanied by John Legend and Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles. It was a cloudy day, but JT was wearing sunglasses to hide a nasty injury to his left eye. MTV reported that Taylor had fallen and hit his eye on a doorknob, and that he had been wearing an eyepatch in rehearsals on Saturday.

He's probably wearing an earpatch today if he was anywhere in the vicinity of Joe Biden when he was screaming his speech into the mic (which apparently he did not realize was plugged in).