thoughts on Live 8

I went to Live 8 this weekend in Philly. I wasn't wild about the lineup of bands, but I figured it would be interesting to be there and experience it in person. I ended up getting there about an hour and a half late since traffic was so bad. I thought the music was okay, but there were some good performances. Dave Matthews was good - he got to do about 5 songs, although I wish he had played more of his old stuff. Atleast he played some topically-appropriate songs (Don't Drink the Water and Too Much) - many artists just played their radio hits, which generally didn't seem appropriate for the theme of the event (hey Toby Keith - try going to Senegal and telling some starving children that you're feeding beer to your horses!!). Alicia Keyes only played one song, which surprised me. I'm one of the few guys who was happy to see Sarah McLaughlin, but she's soo hot I can tolerate some of her cheesier songs. Def Leppard was unnecessary and made me feel young, while hearing the crowd react positively to Maroon 5 and Linkin Park was unnecessary made me feel old. It was cool to see Jay-Z but why does he insist on playing with Linkin Park? Stevie Wonder was fun and played a good set, although his arrangements were a little weird.

The European concerts seemed to have better line-ups, especially London (McCartney, Madonna, REM, U2-- any of these bands could have headlined in Philly...). Coldplay played Bittersweet Symphony. U2 played Sgt. Pepper's (with Paul!). REM played Everybody Hurts. Thats ridiculous!! Well, atleast I got to see Will Smith play Parents Just Don't Understand....I might have been better off watching from home, since they only showed a few of the songs from other concerts and it seems like they didn't show many of the good ones.

My roommate Drew pointed out that there was only one African in the Philly lineup (Dave Matthews). I'll leave this topic alone though, since its already gotten a lot of press....

Overall, I'm not sure if they were very effective at improving the situation in Africa. I think their goal was primarily to raise awareness, but Live 8 felt to me like a big outdoor concert. Yeah, they showed some films of life in Africa and our favorite actors threw out some stats on poverty, but the message seemed very subdued in Philly. I guess you can make the claim that the target audience (20 and 30 somethings) hadn't thought about Africa in a long time and this concert changed that. For how long? There were no requests for money - maybe a good stategy - but there were also very few booths or info centers to learn more about the situation in Africa.

The biggest disappointment was that I didn't leave with a sense of what needs to be done next. I thought they would promote some set of action items that the G-8 needed to do - something that would be easy to remember and easy to measure the G-8 summit against. That didn't happen. I think this was a mistake, although I guess you could make the case that doing so might have policized the event. Perhaps that was the true success of Live 8: in the era of Red and Blue states they managed to produce a politically neutral event with a positive message about global policy. Still, in the absence of a clear direction on what to do next, I think Chris Martin's claim that Live 8 was "the biggest event in the history of the world" probably will not stand the test of time.