Police, Genesis, Foo Fighters at Live Earth Concert 7/7/07

[sockii]

Wow, what a line up!!!

Figures I have to be at a wedding that day! Well, hopefully there'll be a recording made of the event...

From Rollingstone.com...

As we reported yesterday, Al Gore will be teaming up with Live 8 creator Kevin Wall to produce Live Earth, a musical concert behemoth taking place July 7th and featuring an all-star lineup of grade-A headliners. ROLLING STONE has learned exclusively that we can add three more music heavyweights to the bill: The Police, Genesis and Kanye West. The concert, which will touch down in every continent on the planet, will raise funds and awareness for environmental causes, specifically global warming, an issue close to Gore’s heart. While big names like Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and U2 have not yet signed on for the concert, organizers say they’re still in negotiations with a score of musicians and expect the final lineup to include more than 100 top acts.

*

Al Gore is teaming up with the organizers of Live 8 and a slew of music biggest stars for a twenty-four hour concert across seven continents (yes, including Antarctica) on July 7th (7/7/07) to raise awareness of environmental issues. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Foo Fighters, Snoop Dogg, John Mayer, Akon, A.F.I., Fall Out Boy, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill are among the participating artists being announced at a press conference in Los Angeles today. Though not all of the locations have been confirmed, organizer Kevin Wall, who spearheaded the Live 8 concerts in 2005, has a possible plan: “We’ll start in Shanghai, and go to Sydney and Rio De Janeiro and Washington D.C. and London and Johannesburg and finish the show in Kyoto at the old Buddhist temple where we would do an acoustic show and ask the world to take a breath.” The concerts, which will include short films and presentations designed to educate the world on the climate crisis and advocate for specific changes, will be broadcast in over 120 countries — on NBC and seven cable networks in the U.S. — and webcast on MSN (revenues from ticket sales will go towards various environmental groups). “Our success, I hope, is to act like a tipping point for a lot of movements that are already happening,” says Wall, who approached Gore with the idea after seeing his film, An Inconvenient Truth. “I told Al, ‘Two million people have seen this movie — two billion people will watch this event. We’ll give you the microphone. Let’s make a change here.’”

[jedsoon]

That's amazing!! I'm speechless...

[Marshmallow Jones 1]

wow, that's a must-see jamboree right there...


when does the pre-sale start?

[Divemistress of the Dark]

If I find out anything here locally from the Gore folks, I'll post...

[Jose]

Al Gore was an american politician? It was a the vice president of Bill Clinton? Isn't It?

[Divemistress of the Dark]

Yes, Jose. He also ran for President of the U.S. himself in 2000 and only lost by a few thousand votes in a couple of states, amidst accusations of vote-counting irregularities.

He also is from my state of Tennessee and maintains a home here in Nashville, although he's in New York and Los Angeles a lot of the time, too. He recently was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming.

(Tennessee is sort of between Florida and Chicago. Many people know it because Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash were from here. We also make a really killer food called barbecue, but that's a whole other thread. )

[Jose]

Uhmmm that's the man who lose the presidence for about some votes...on hands of Georgie Bush!

Hope all those stars accepted an invitation of a politician...but if he is a leader and really a good man all could happen and receive the support from everybody...

The topic of the charity is so good...people needs to be alerted about consequences of global warming and the fragility of global environment...

I know exist lot of economical interests for continue allowing the overexplotion in places that are lounges of Planet Earth... You see what happened with Africa...on the other side South America ( I mean Amazon Rainforest is one of the main places that brings lot of benefits in worldwide climate )

You know to develop a continent than South America with around 400 million of people of about 18 million of Km of territorie, richn with minerals like gold, silver, cooper, oil, gas, etc., needs more oportunities and territorie for also develop a giant space of land for producing food to markets like Europe, USa, Canada, China, Japan and that means the dissapearing of big extensions of rainforest...that's so criminal to humanity and to the region... but at the same time isn't a totally responsability of our poorests states... in some words also are the interest of international commerce and International corporations of food distribution that encourage south american governments for allow the destruction of valuable extensions of Rainforest...

If we pay royalties of some stuff like "Windows" or any other patents, Why not people from around the world - I mean governments of first world - pays royalties for the preservations of Planet Earth lunges ( Amazon Rainforest for example)

I think world needs also equity in such regions than needs monetary funds to develop economically and this kind of royaltie will be preserve our integrity and the future of our planet... Yeah also exist thousand of problems like the abussive use of oil, gadgets thats affects ozone, etc., that affects global warming.

I mean if we love each others makes the rules in equity for everybody to develop one world and not three!

Regards from Peru,

Jose :wink:

[Divemistress of the Dark]

You'd think more people would see things that way, wouldn't you? Sigh. It's so hard that people can be so short-sighted and just plain dumb sometimes. I'm glad Al Gore and the bands playing this festival are doing their part.

[PhilippeC]

Ola Jose!

You're right, the destruction of the Amazon region concerns every country, and we can't put the responsibility on the poorest states.

For example, as our French President Jacques Chirac made a speech on the environmental cause some weeks ago, claiming this must be the priority of the politics, he just forgot his government gave the authorization to a Canadian firm, Cambior, to open a mine in the natural reservation of Kaw, a beautiful preserved site where some species of animals and plants are still to discover!
Fortunately, there were enough petitions against this project so the government finally decided to give up. Unfortunately, Cambior has another project, still in the Amazonian French Guyana, with use of cyanid which will cause a disastrous effect on the rivers there.

Isn't it cynical? While we, in the "1st world", feel concerned on the Amazon destruction by the South American states, one of our Western countries, in charge of a part of this rain forest, is officially participating actively to this destruction, whitout nobody to protest.

I'm really glad The Police is involved in this "Live Earth". But I hope this will be the occasion to point out our responsabilities and to put the pressure on ALL the politicians, always good for the speeches, but rarely for the acts.

A link to discover the beauty of French Guyana fauna, flora & landscapes, by Fabien Naneix. It's in french, but the beautiful pictures are in international language :
http://www.agaankoy.com/

[Wait and See]

I hate politics. I know the artists have good intentions, but I feel the same way about this kind of thing that I feel when I know I'm being fleeced on ticket prices and premiums. The artists are being manipulated by politicians and political activist groups, and in turn the artists are manipulating their fans. Are you musicians and artists who care about the music and your fans, or is it all a scam to manipulate me into supporting some political agenda? It seems like the entire "artistic community" has become its own political party, and as a result their art, which ought to be what matters to them, has lost its credibility with the public. At what point do you cease to be an artist and become merely a propagandist? The general public has become a lot more cynical about this stuff in recent years, for good reason.

As for Al Gore, the guy is a punch line for comedians. He's been on a megalomaniacal descent into madness ever since he lost the election 2000. Lashing yourself to the mast of his ship is not exactly throwing your lot in with a winner.

I know I'm swimming upstream on this stuff though, so I'll leave it there.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

I dunno, friend. Your tone strikes me as much more cynical than anything I would expect from "the public," but maybe it's just me.

[Three over Four]

That smacks of a bit too much conspiracy theory to me Wait and See. Everyone has their own opinion on things, whether they are political or environmental. Artists are just fortunate enough to have a platform where they can present their opinions to millions of people. I know I'd make plenty of statements about what I hold dear to my heart if I had a platform like that! Shoot, I've only got a few people that listen to me and I still do it.

In regards to Al Gore, he has done great things in my opinion with regards to bringing mass consciousness to the environmental problems our earth faces as a result of industrialization. An Inconvenient Truth does a fabulous job laying out the evidence for this in a way that any person can make sense of it. That's a really difficult thing to do with such complicated sets of data.

[Wait and See]

Call me a cynic or a purist or whatever, but let me put it this way...when some people see the "Best Buy" logo on the Police tour, they immediately cringe and think "sell out". To me, this is worse. Money is money, and everybody understands that. If you make a lot of money as an artist and you want to donate it to some political group, that's your business. When you use your art to advance a political agenda, however, you've compromised your art, which ought to be sacred.

There is a word for art employed to advance a political cause: it's called propaganda. It is what it is.

[Three over Four]

I guess I just don't get what you're trying to say here....are you trying to liken the Best Buy sponsorship to a political agenda? Is there some other political agenda that the Police are pushing with this tour that I've missed? Is it that a portion of the proceeds from this tour will be donated to WaterAid? Is that what's bugging you? Maybe it's the fact that I've been up for almost 24 hours at this point, but I just don't see what you're saying Wait and See....please help me understand.

[Wait and See]

I think I was pretty clear... Art + Politics = Propaganda. I know that flies in the face of a now long standing baby boomer tradition of music as a tool of political activism, but then I'm not a boomer. I think everybody with an agenda can go screw themselves.

My favorite Beatles song is "Revolution", because they actually had the nerve to stick it to the "hip" crowd. That took real stones. Whining about the establishment is easy and predictable. Frank Zappa's "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" is another prime example (one of many in Zappa's case).

As for the water charity-- that's a perfect choice, because it's something where there is no controversy. Everybody can get behind it. Letting yourself be pimped by Al Gore is a whole different matter.