Another weekend, another Wembley benefit concert. It's getting a little ridiculous really. Patrick is squelching around Roskilde surrounded by naked Scandinavians, and I spend my saturday afternoon sat in my pants watching Madonna on telly.
There's an interesting contrast between Live Eath and last week's tepid Concert For Diana, where as the latter was stale, dull and had all the atmosphere of a village fete (not even a very good village fete either, the kind of fete where you can't even win a goldfish or play splat-the-rat and is covered by local radio stations running themselves out of a rusting pea green caravan brought in 1976, Live Earth at least managed to maintain some sense of occasion. It felt like event television, which since the Doctor Who series finished has been lacking on BBC one. The coverage at least felt rough, improvised and held together by the skin of the producers teeth. Shots were wrong, sound feds got bungled, the wrong VT's were shown... essentially all the hall marks of live music concerts.
Not that it was without it's irritants, although they came more from the nature of keeping the coverage of the event running smoothly. Most annoying was the BBC's decision to cut away from performances in order to keep in their scheduled interviews. Now the interviews could be split into three catagories.
A) Jonathon Ross interviews a leading comedian or telly person, this would inevitably involve much ribbing of the cause and Wossy trying very hard to keep the tone of the discussions at least semi-serious on the subject of climate change, but not being able to help himself and taking the piss anyway. However Dara O'Brian, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, Chris Moyles and Steven Merchant were never going to be taking it that seriously. The absolute highlight was watching old Wossy's face when Chris Rock used the word "nigger". By and large these interviews were quite engaging, and upheld the brilliantly British tendency to take nothing seriously, ever. I bet the American coverage doesn't have this.
B) Jonathon Ross or Graham Norton interview an ernest world authority on climate change, or young scientist. Norton generally keeps it together, Wossy struggles to keep a straight face. The over all message seems to be "don't leave your TV in stand by". Which is fine, except the picture on ours goes funny for half an hour when you turn it on, so leaving it on stand by is a lot easier. Am I prepared to make the sacrifice? Generally these interviews told us nothing new (although David Baddiel's attempt to play "Climate Change Denial" did make for quite entertaining argument) and felt like an attempt to graft a note of seriousness onto something that seemed to lack focus.
C) Edith Bowman interviews a band backstage. They clearly can't be that bothered, and can't actually hear her questions, which are all a bit obvious anyway.
The first were acceptable, the second grudgingly necessary, the third utterly pointless. It was fine when they were padding to the next performance, but the majority of the time they were actually at the expense of the music. Most acts left their biggest hot till last, meaning if we wanted to see Bloc Party doing 'The Prayer', or Metallica doing 'Enter Sandman' we had to hope we could catch it on the hit and miss interactive coverage, which at least showed full sets. Unfortunately as those full sets were from Joberg, Hamburg, Sydney and Tokyo as well as Wembley, it was very much a case of "Red Button Pot Luck". What generally made this more frustrating was the distant rumblings of a favourite hit song going on in the back ground while one of our TV trio tried to amke the best of an interview.
As for the performances, they were ht and miss as usual with this sort of event. Bloc Party were ernest and should shift a few more copies of A Weekend In The City. 'Banquet' admittedly felt a bit wobbly, 'So Here We Are' felt much more substantial and important, and 'The Prayer' was, as ever, ana amazing three minutes of live music. For those of us who got to see it. James Blunt seemed to be coked off his tits, but that's to be expected. Anyone with half an ounce of taste would have picked the red button option and took their chances at this point. Or there was always the Harry Potter making of on the otherside...even Ben Shepherds utterly inept interview technique is preferable to this googleyed nob jocky.
Does anyone know who Terra Naomi is?
Keane were actually quite endearing and crowd led sing-alongs of 'Somewhere Only We Know' and 'Bed-Shaped' felt genuine and heartfelt. Which actually came as a surprise.
Who booked the Pussycat Dolls, I mean really? Were Girls Aloud not available? And has David Tennant got no shame?
Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Wembley's Live Earth is that British acts were totally out-classed by big American rock bands. Metallica were brilliant and Foo Fighters "did a Queen" with a hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck high octane rock show.
Spinal Tap were entertaining though looked a little creaky. It would be a hard-hearted fool who didn't crack a smile at 'Stonehenge', or Nigel's "Hello Wimbledon!" greeting. Rob Reiner's slightly cringey intro should have been chopped though. The finale of 'Big Bottoms' was probably great, but I managed to miss it.
Madonna's headlining slot was an odd one. No-one in the country, not one single person, wanted to hear her new song. Not one. I would stake my life on it. But we got it anyway, and actually it wasn't that bad. The vaguely sinister looking childrens choir added a note of visual interest, as they murmered blank faced and blank voiced into the Wembley night. Gogol Bordello's brilliant an unexpected inclusion (I mean really, what the fuck are they doing there?) in an amped up 'La Isla Bonita' was worth sitting through the whole thing for alone. 'Ray Of Light''s dodgy Courtney-Love-With-Two-Chords impression just about past muster, but the finale of'Hung Up' was wretched and should be struck from memory. If I want to see a woman pushing 50 doing crotch thrusts over a ghetto blaster I'll go to my Mum's hip-hop dance classes with her again. At least then I won't have to hear somone abusing Abba so ruthlessly.
So what have we learned? Well, I for one have learned nothing new about the environment, and I'm pretty sur emost other people didn't either. I mean really, we KNOW this stuff, we all do. Whether we put into action or not, or just allow the tide of apathy carry us to Global meltdown will not be aided by a pop concert.
As an event pf it's type it wasn't bad, certainly was massively preferable to the Diana concert last week. It didn't have the urgency or gravitas of Live Aid, or even the sense of occasion of Live8. Rather like the now-forgotten Net Aid, this will be a footnote in charity concert history, having made little difference and containing no real memorable moments.
Next week Wembley plays host to "Hull and High Water", a tribute concert for the Yorkshire Floods with reunion performances from Terrorvision and Shed Seven. Ricky Gervais has already been booked.
No comments:
Post a Comment