A Beautiful Day

Wasn't Live8 fantastic? Being a cynical bastard by nature I really tried to dislike it (and after sitting through Dido & Miss Dynamite-e-eeee I was feeling vindicated), however by the time Snoop 'What's my motherfuckin' name' Dogg rocked the crowd in the middle of the afternoon I was sold.




I missed quite a bit of the stuff in the evening, but hopefully i'll be able to download the bits i've missed. My little sister was having her housewarming party last night, and although we had her portable TV on it wasn't audible, and until it wasn't until the end that we had the brainwave of tuning the radio in. I did feel for the neighbours attempting to watch the show with our stereo pumping out at full volume with a 2 second time delay!

The Good

• The BBC coverage was superb... apart from when Chris Martin said 'we're going to show you a very important film now. If the BBC cut away they're not doing their job.' Cue cut to Jonathan Ross in studio! Other than that (and Fern 'Amazing' Cotton) it was great though. I'm particularly grateful after reading American viewers' attempts to watch the action on MTV or VH1. Long live the beeb! Down with advertising!
  
• The bloke is clearly a twat, however Razorlight were good fun. That 'Somewhere Else' is a good song.
  
• The oldies rocking the house late on. We finally managed to synch the stereo up in time for The Who... so the neighbours were treated to a time-delayed 'turn it up to 11' finale of The Who, Pink Floyd & Macca. Yeah, let's party like it's 1975.
  
• Snoop Motherfuckin' Dogg. OG. I can't imagine there's ever been so much fucking on TV at 5 in the afternoon. I'm all for making poverty history by swearing a lot.
  
• An interesting set by Macca... I wouldn't have bet on 'Helter Skelter' to be one of his choices - he nailed it though. I'm almost starting to forgive him for all that 'McCartney and Lennon' nonsense.
  
• Almost.
  
• Yeah U2 were great as well. The doves were cheesy as hell, but hey it worked for me.
  
• I didn't realise The Killers did that 'I got soul, but i'm not a soldier' song. It was good. I've danced to that in clubs a lot.. who did the remix i'm likely to know?
  
• Was Peter Kay absolutely plastered? I was only half watching at the time but it looked like he had to be escorted from the stage.
  
• The crowd still finding room in their hearts to boo the French when they read out the list of venues! Bravo!
  
• Surely all this will do no harm at all to London's 2012 Olympic bid? (could they not have found a better picture of the Queen?)
  

The Bad

• Coldplay are rubbish, and will never write a song as good as 'Bittersweet Symphony'.
  
• Talking of rubbish.. what is the point of Pete Doherty? Write a decent song and then i'll take an interest in your pathetic drug-addled life.
  
• Missing Robbie Williams & Madonna - supposedly the two highlights of the show. Thank god for the interwebs.... (see above)

• I had the sound down for Mariah Carey but she looked terrible. Unfortunately my lasting memory of the whole event is going to be an image of Victoria Beckham singing her little heart out to a Mariah number. Gah!!
  
• I still can't believe they couldn't find more room for African artists on the bill. Surely the resolution of any problems in Africa have got to be done in partnership with Africa - not with a load of white folks telling them what to do. A bit of exposure and therefore money for someone like Femi Kuti would have validated the whole event much more for me. It would have been good to hear as well.
  
• What was with that enormous 'Golden Circle' VIP area? Is this the model of democracy that African nations are supposed to follow? An elite tucking into lobster and Dom Perignon at £100 a bottle, while the plebs fenced off a mile from the stage aren't allowed alcohol and have to suck down sloppy burgers. All that was missing were a bit of random gunfire shot intermittently into the public section and it could have been something organised by Kim Jong-Il. I'm sure if they could have thought of 200,000 celebrities to invite the organisers would have dispensed with the public altogether.
  
• Where is this country 'Africa' anyway? Last I heard it was 54 countries with 800 million people. A place of greater diversity than anywhere on earth. Is it a good idea to continually paint the entire continent as a dusty desert filled with malnourished, bloated and weeping children waiting for hand-outs from the West.
  
• I'm still not totally sold on what the whole 'Make Poverty History' thing is trying to acheive. I can't quibble with the sentiment, but I can't help feeling that our main priority as a planet should be to address climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Yes Bush you fucking retard, this is a man made problem and we need to fucking do something about it. I can't help but worry that if existing third world nations develop in the same way as India, China and Mexico have - i.e. with massive & uncontrolled fossil fuel consumption - then the problems we are seeing now are going to be magnified tenfold in the future. I'm worried that this will get swept under the carpet in the rush to hand out some large sounding but insignificant amount of money to Africa.
  
• 
  

(in case you can't read that it says 'Global Warming? Next you'll be telling us we're descended from monkeys')

The 'Make Poverty History' slogan doesn't wash with me either. I mean there is terrible, crushing poverty in this country & we can't do anything about that. I'm also sure any Sunday afternoon drive around downtown Detroit would reveal destitution, hunger and hopelessness to match anything in Africa.

Don't get me wrong, it's a disgrace that anyone in the world should be without access to clean water or essential medicines, and despite what anyone says we in the West OWE Africa big time. We spent centuries raping the contintent for minerals, oil and slaves - and continue to do so. 'Ah yes, but if we give money to Africa it will be stolen by corrupt governments and spent on guns and armoured Mercedes'. Well yes that may be true.. but in the majority of cases those corrupt Governments have been installed through the meddling of the West (America) who have then supplied them with vast wealth and armaments in the interests of selling more coke or pumping out oil or diamonds. Debt relief in the past has been granted with terrible conditions allowing foreign companies access to Africa whilst denying reciprocal agreements.

Personally i'd like to see a commitment to (truly) fair trade, cancellation of ALL existing debt, significant reparations in compensation for the slave trade, and a complete ban on the evil and immoral trade in arms.

But that's not going to happen, is it.

• Of course a small portion of the trillions of dollars spent on murdering Iraqis would have saved many many thousands of lives. But that's different to all the wars being waged in Africa isn't it. They are all barbaric savages with no respect for human life aren't they. After all the Twentieth century has been a time of unrivalled peace in Europe hasn't it? Ah yes, it's another 'do as we say, not as we do' moment isn't it.
  
  The fact is that if we want to tell the world what to do, we have to lead by example. That means scrapping weapons programs, ENORMOUS undertakings to cut fossil fuel emissions and a significant shift from oil towards renewable energy sources. Otherwise we're all fucked, and before too long much of Europe will be as dry & uninhabitable as sub-saharan Africa.
  
  
  

Ah look. I can't help myself. Even after the superb day yesterday all I can do is complain and rant. What did you think? Did you enjoy the show? What would be a good result to come out of the G8 summit? Are we all doomed? Should we just accept that we're all going down in flames and live our last days having a bacchanalian orgy of sex, guns and fucking in the street?

And most importantly, how did the Kaiser Chiefs go down in Philadelphia?