So, when my girlfriend Becca asked me if there was a chance we could catch the marathon airing of the Live 8 concert on TV, I wanted to tell her it is easier for Michael Jackson’s llama to enter the eye of the needle than for us to watch what was billed as "the greatest gig of all time." There seldom is good TV these days.
Sure enough, the music channels were airing inane reality shows and daft VJ antics (which are not at all amusing when you’re flipping from station to station hoping to see a historic gig). When I got to ABC 5, Becca and I saw Bono and the rest of U2 performing Beautiful Day, which promptly took us to that "other place." What a beautiful day, er, night, indeed.
Props should go to ABC 5. This station features concerts from time to time, as well as award shows like the Brit Awards and the American Music Awards. (Not the local showbiz award extravaganzas with a running time of five hours and half a century, and which feature long and winding acceptance speeches, tacky dance numbers, and silicone boobies spilling generously from ghastly gowns.) Would you believe, ABC 5 did a broadcast of the Live 8 gig from 9 in the evening (Saturday) to 9 in the morning (Sunday)? That’s 12 hours of great music (except wimpy pop from Bryan Adams and Josh Groban). Whoever brokered this thing should be knighted. Again.
According to the NME, Live Aid founder Sir Bob Geldof organized Live 8 to call for more aid for Africa, debt cancellation and fairer trade laws with a slogan "Make Poverty History." The simultaneous concerts (in London, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo, among other cities) aimed to raise public support, and were timed to coincide with the G8 summit of world leaders, which is taking place in Gleneagles in Scotland.
The original Live Aid concert took place on July 13, 1985 at London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium. It featured great performances (from the likes of Queen, David Bowie, U2, Dire Straits, and Elton John, among others) and bad hairstyles (Ultravox, Nick Kershaw, Howard Jones and Spandau Ballet, among others). (On a side note: A smashed Bob Dylan with equally wasted Keith Richards and Ron Wood played a horrible set. So did Led Zeppelin. That’s what the band gets for recruiting Phil Collins to replace the great John Bonham on drums.)
Since expounding on a 12-hour gig in a short article is like putting a rabbit into a piece of prophylactic, let me just rattle off a few impressions (not in the order of performance, since a sleep-deprived viewer could lose all sense of chronology).
No, I didn’t get to see Paul McCartney sing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with U2 at Hyde Park. Drat!
U2 was in peak form with Beautiful Day and One. By the way, U2 stole the thunder from the more hyped-up acts in the first Live Aid gig with a heartbreakingly good version of Bad, despite Bono’s mullet. This time, Bono and the rest of U2 played the role of elder statesmen.
Coldplay performed In My Place and Fix You. Chris Martin called in The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft for a faithful rendition of Bittersweet Symphony. Props go to the members of Coldplay for their willingness to play sidemen for the guy who, according to Noel Gallagher, "casts no shadow."
Oasis and Radiohead were both no-shows. Drat again!
Elton John played upbeat numbers Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting) and The Bitch is Back. He called in an obviously high Pete Doherty, formerly of The Libertines and currently of Babyshambles, for a shaky Marc Bolan cover (Children of the Revolution). How Pete was able to finish the song on his own two feet no one knows. That’s just rock n’ roll. What’s so not rock n’ roll is Elton John kissing Doherty on the lips. I can’t wait for that scene to be spoofed on South Park or Saturday Night Live.
Green Day did wonders with the band’s cover of Queen’s We Are The Champions. This pop punk outfit has the musical chops to play Freddie Mercury’s bombastic, over-the-top anthem. Nice going.
Annie Lennox was an angel, performing the song Why? alone on the piano.
The Who performed Who Are You? and the ballsy Won’t Get Fooled Again, a prophetic and very appropriate song for us Filipinos. Dig the line, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Nice to see Pete Townshend doing patented windmills on his guitar. Hate to see our country going to the dogs again and again. (Kathy Moran would say this is an insult to dogs).
In Rome, Duran Duran tastefully played Ordinary World and Save a Prayer, and tastelessly followed that with The Wild Boys.
Audioslave performed in Berlin. Screamer Chris Cornell, surprisingly, couldn’t hit the high notes in Like A Stone. Shades of Robert Plant mumbling Stairway to Heaven in the Live Aid gig 20 years ago.
Bill Gates made a moving speech, and just as I thought he was going to introduce a really important artist (say, Bob Dylan or Van Morrison or Stevie Wonder or freaking Beethoven), the techie tycoon announced, "Here’s Dido!"
Organizer Bob Geldof sang I Don’t Like Mondays with his Boomtown Rats gang. (Factoid of the day: Geldof starred in Pink Floyd’s The Wall movie.)
Michael Stipe sang with the rest of R.E.M. wearing blue eye makeup. What for? Stipe only knows. He opened with a song that was not Ignoreland, unfortunately. But Stipe and R.E.M. made up for it with Everybody Hurts.
Bryan Adams sang insipid pop crap. So did Bon Jovi and Josh Groban. Motley Crue in Barrie, Canada followed Pink Floyd’s set in London. That’s just like eating ambrosia or the food of the gods and then drinking it down with cod liver oil. Vince Neil sang the schmaltzy Home Sweet Home with tabloid god-fodder Tommy Lee playing his organ, er, keyboards. Mick Mars looked dead. Vince looked like a fat Barbie Doll in a Mad Max movie. Nikki Sixx looked like Nikki Sixx... in the ’80s.
I dozed off and missed the sets of The Killers, Velvet Revolver, Scissor Sisters, Neil Young, Deep Purple, Sting, Razorlight, and the duo from Little Britain (one of the best shows on TV today).
Mariah Carey made my apartment swarm with ants with her syrupy songs. Madonna was, uh, okay.
Sir Paul closed the entire thing with a couple of Beatles tracks such as Get Back, Drive My Car (with George Michael, ugh!), Helter Skelter (a song Charles Manson stole from the Fab Four, according to Bono) and The Long and Winding Road punctuated by the "la-la-la-la" part of Hey Jude, which became a global sing-along as the other artists got on the London stage to engage in cause-oriented karaoke.
But for me, the most memorable set belongs to Pink Floyd. Bassist Roger Waters buried the hatchet and agreed to perform with guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright for the Live Aid gig, playing for the first time in 24 years. The last gig they did was in 1981. That’s ancient history – older than the parting of the Red Sea, the sinking of the Titanic or Michael Jackson’s first plastic surgery procedure.
Pink Floyd played all-time favorites Breathe, Comfortably Numb, Money and Wish You Were Here, with Gilmour and Waters trading verses on the tribute to fallen leader Syd Barret. (What if the crazy diamond made a surprise appearance and sang See Emily Play?) The words "We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year" take on a whole new meaning.
The rift between Waters and the rest of Floyd are well documented and have taken on Berlin Wall proportions. A rock journalist once said that Waters would only play with Gilmour, Mason and Wright the day pigs start flying.
That night, over the skies of London, a couple of hogs were spotted with 747 insignias on their butts.
Musicians make great miracle workers.