Flipping through the tv and came across the HBO inaugural concert,

towards the end was the song 'This Land Was Made For You And Me”

There were 3 people on stage... Bruce Springsteen, a silver haired dude, and a third guy.

The silver haired dude had a subdued mic, but I could hear him; Bruces' mic didn't even seem to be on, and the third guy had a great voice, in tune, harmonically in touch with the chorus and everything...

But they would not show this guy on camera for anything!!

Even when the song was over and they were going off stage, the cameras only showed the two, not this third guy, on purpose. I don't get it.

BTW, I just read the 'Ten Commandments for Sound' sticky and wonder if the sound crew on that gig emphasized their strength in some subtle way?

The "silver haired dude" is Pete Seeger, legendary folk singer/political activist (and almost 90 years old). The other guy is his grandson, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger. I didn't see the broadcast so don't know why the director called the shots as described.

Mr. Seeger wasn't really singing at all, he was just prompting the lyrics throughout the song. The whole event (no offense to anyone involved with it) seemed a bit thrown together. I can't imagine that it would be a simple thing to get that many huge celebs together to rehearse or sound check stuff though. Even the national anthem got mulched due to the non-standard arrangement (musical intro too short, and a bizarre musical pause at "home of the ... brave" that caught up the singer - sounded to me a bit like there wasn't enough rehearsal time across the board. In my bands, the strange timings and odd key changes are the bits we'd rehearse most heavily. The rest we tend to ignore in rehearsal knowing we could fake it on stage as there was nothing out of the ordinary to it.

There were some other things like the other guitarist's level being too high throughout most of the song with Mr. Mellencamp for "Pink Houses". There were longish pauses during setups and act changes and some shots of stagehands getting caught in the light as the facade would retract.

I put it all down to throwing that much celebrity and scheduling on stage inadequately rehearsed (not just the talent, but the technical needs rehearsal as well).

And I have to mention the camera shaking badly on the close-ups during Obama's speech. Even my non camera/video friends noticed. You'd think they could at least somehow manage to keep the camera steady during the president elect's speech.

Most of the problems seem to be sound though. I agree with the OP on mixing of Bruce, Pete and his grandson.