Live8

[Ghoulish Delight]

Anyone watch this?

My sister recorded the entire coverage on ReplayTV, so we watched the heavily accelerated version. These were my impressions:

* Geldoff apparantly got a lot of criticism for the lineup, but I think most of that came from Americans. It was definitely a Anglo-centric lineup. I thought it was pretty good

* It seemed like most of the performances were pretty good. Pink Floyd, reunited for the first time in forever, surprised me, they sounded fantastic.

* The Pink Floyd segment lead to the best line of the whole thing. The camera focused on a t-shirt that said, "Pink Floyd is Back", to which the male host (we skipped so much of the hosts blathering that I have no idea who he was) said, "Truer words have never been put on a t-shirt." And he was so earnest in saying that.

* Speaking of the hosts, there was, of course, way too much, "We're so important" crap. Bleh. Just do it and stop patting yourselves on the back.

* We found ourselves discussing the probably effectiveness of this thing, and whether it will be remembered in the same way as Live Aid was. My feeling is that it won't. At least on in the US. I have no idea how it was received in other nations, but here, I think it kinda fizzled. And I think that partly had to do with it being on 4th of July weekend. People tend not to pay attention to tv or news when they travel, and lots of people were traveling. And if not traveling, doing social, summery type things. Things that keeps one away from the TV. I know that while I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the news, even I was less aware of what was going on that I would have been on a normal weekend. And considering that these concerts had only free tickets, the point being to get people to be active and to "raise their voices", I think that lack of exposure will really limit the impact. If "no one" saw it, or didn't even see the sound-bite coverage on their local news, then the social dialog that might have otherwise had some impact will never get started. I may be wrong, but that's just my impression.

Of course, even with limited impact, it's got to be better than nothing being done. I just wonder if anyone will remember it in 10 years.