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As the world tunes: From Giants Stadium to Sydney, the hottest acts will take the stage for 'Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis'(Newsday (Melville, NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jul. 1--No doubt about it. "Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis" will be big. Starting Friday night in Sydney, Australia, and working its way around the world -- more than 150 musical acts through nine countries, including the concert at Giants Stadium next Saturday -- for more than a day, Live Earth will raise awareness about climate change and conservation to a new historic level for a potential audience of 2 billion people. Genesis will reunite for its first performance in more than a decade. So will Spinal Tap. And the concerts -- set to be broadcast on TV, radio and the Internet -- will be the first time for many fans to see the reunited versions of The Police, Crowded House and Smashing Pumpkins, alongside A-list appearances from Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys. Madonna has even written a song especially for the event called "Hey You," in which she sings about working together and starting change through personal actions, promising, "This could be good." A "Hey You" theme? But "Hey You" may become Live Earth's theme song for another reason: It could use the additional attention. Though Live Earth may go down as the biggest music event in history, it still has some hurdles to clear in order to secure a place in the public consciousness to match previous superstar concerts -- from George Harrison's The Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden in 1971 to Live 8, at various cities around the world, in 2005. In today's pop culture calculus, being bigger isn't nearly enough. Grand gestures need to be exponentially grander to make the same impact as the grand gesture that came before it. "It gets harder and harder to capture people's attention," says Jim Henke, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's vice president of exhibitions and curatorial affairs. "In these days of information rage, it's hard to be that special or that different and there's a little bit of pressure to come up with that something special to bring attention to the cause. "But there is still something to be said for having a lot of artists in one place," Henke continues. "There is still an interest in that. And that alone is enough to earn them a little spot in music history. More than raising money, it draws attention to the cause." And that is what Live Earth organizers and performers are counting on. Former Vice President Al Gore, whose Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" jump-started the debate about global warming and environmentalism, says Live Earth will be the start of a "worldwide, mass persuasion communications campaign" that will last up to five years. "There's never been a crisis like this one," Gore says in a video statement. "And the urgency is so great that everyone is working together on it." Kevin Wall, founder of the Save Our Selves (SOS) group behind Live Earth and executive producer of Live 8, says that, for him, Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" was a "red alert." "Millions of people saw that movie and realized that this was a compelling argument," he says. "I wanted to see if we could get the globe to pay attention, to get billions of people to take notice." Wall says that throughout the event organizers will announce ways people can improve the environment. "We want people to know they can step up and make a change," he says. "They can make a change by changing how they treat the environment, by buying green, by voting to put people in office who will negotiate these improvements on a global basis. If we can get enough people to move in that direction, we can really have an impact. I wouldn't have done this show just to throw a big concert." Fred Mascherino, guitarist/singer from Taking Back Sunday, who will play the Live Earth U.S.A. show at Giants Stadium, says that as excited as he is to play on the same bill as his musical heroes The Police and Smashing Pumpkins, he is even more excited at the prospect of having more people learn about what they can do to help the environment. "It's really a survival issue," says Mascherino, who has been involved in environmental concerns for years, and currently drives a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit that runs on vegetable oil he recycles from a local Thai restaurant. "This isn't the kind of issue where you donate money to fix a problem. It's not the same solution as one for ending starvation would be. This is more of an all-encompassing thing. It's going to have to be a learning process." Powered by stars Mascherino says the star power of the concerts will kickstart that process. "The names alone are going to get people to tune in," he says. "That will start the chain reaction of getting people to learn something." However, not everyone is convinced Live Earth is the best way to promote the cause. Sir Bob Geldof -- the singer and activist behind Live Aid and the recent Live 8 events to raise awareness of poverty in Africa and the need to reduce Third World debt -- told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that he would only do such a concert "if I could go on stage and announce concrete environmental measures from the American presidential candidates, Congress or major corporations. "They haven't got those guarantees," Geldof says, "so it's just an enormous pop concert or the umpteenth time that, say, Madonna or Coldplay get up on stage." Steven Smith, a Fuse VJ and host of the network's "Steven's Untitled Rock Show," says that while he supports the idea of conservation and environmentalism, he isn't sure Live Earth will send the right message. "These concerts are going to use a lot of power," Smith says. "And there's a concert in China, which is one of the biggest villains for greenhouse gas emissions. I'm all for 'Think globally, act locally' if that's the biggest message, but if the point of this concert is to make us aware that the world is rapidly aging and that we are the cause, we already know that." Smith says he thinks a better example is the Vans Warped Tour, where the tour works to reduce emissions down to the micro level, even using dishwashers instead of paper plates. "I'm always really skeptical about a giant concert to save the world," he says. "Maybe if it was an acoustic show where they were all backstage staying in tents or something. I understand that these bands are giving of their money and time, but give up your tax write-off too." Wall says that so far the interest in Live Earth is even broader than that of Live 8, which he says had a hard time of finding a network to broadcast it. "Most of what happened on Live 8 came after the fact," Wall says. "It was a major show that a lot of people didn't see live. They saw it on broadband. This time, we have NBC dedicating a lot of hours and we have more advanced buzz that will only bubble up even more over the next two weeks." In the end, whether Live Earth succeeds will depend on the performances, says Henke. "When you look at The Concert for Bangladesh, there was great music made there," he says. "Yes, it was a new idea then and the timing was perfect, but people will remember the music. At Live Aid, people will remember U2's performance there. There can be great musical moments at these events. There can be interesting pairings of acts. These shows put these starts in an environment where that is possible." A Sound effort on Long Island Even before the first note of the Live Earth concerts sounds, the idea behind the event has already succeeded in spawning similar shows around the country, including Long Island Sounds Off, set for the Brookhaven Amphitheatre next Saturday. Organizers say the concert, which will be free and open to the public, will feature music from Long Island bands as well as information about global warming and the Broadwater project, which would put a natural gas barge in Long Island Sound. "This concert is not about raising money, it's about giving people more information," says James Faith, the Brookhaven Amphitheatre's general manager. "Then people can make up their own minds." -Glenn Gamboa The best places to watch Tickets for Live Earth U.S.A. at Giants Stadium are $53-$348 available through Ticketmaster, 631-888-9000. Feeds from all nine concerts will be streaming live next Saturday and Sunday at liveearth.msn.com. The Sundance Channel and Universal HD will cover the concerts live for 22 hours starting at 4 a.m. Saturday. NBC will air a three-hour prime-time special of live performances, information about environmental and conservation issues, and highlights from the other concerts, hosted by Ann Curry and Carson Daly, starting at 8 p.m. Saturday. Bravo will air a mix of live and taped performances for 18 hours, starting at 8 a.m. Saturday. Its Web site, bravotv.com, will be live-blogging the event and will offer text-message updates to let fans know when their favorite stars will be on. CNBC will air a mix of live and taped performances for seven hours starting at 7p.m. Saturday. Mun2 will carry a two-hour special focusing on Latin artists' performances starting at 5 p.m. Saturday and Telemundo will air a one-hour wrap-up at 7 p.m. Saturday. XM Radio will air each city's concert in its entirety, starting with Sydney's concert at 10 p.m. on Friday, on individual channels. The "Live Earth All Access" channel (Ch. 40) will air highlights and interviews from all the concerts starting at 9 p.m. Friday. -Glenn Gamboa The Live Earth lineup LIVE EARTH U.S. (Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, N.J. Start time: 1 p.m. Saturday) AFI Akon Bon Jovi Kelly Clarkson Dave Matthews Band Melissa Etheridge Fall Out Boy Alicia Keys Ludacris John Mayer The Police Smashing Pumpkins Taking Back Sunday KT Tunstall Keith Urban Roger Waters Kanye West LIVE EARTH U.K. (Wembley Stadium, London, 8 a.m.) Corinne Bailey Rae Beastie Boys Black Eyed Peas Bloc Party James Blunt Duran Duran Foo Fighters Genesis David Gray Kasabian Keane John Legend Madonna Metallica Terra Naomi Paolo Nutini Pussycat Dolls Razorlight Red Hot Chili Peppers Damien Rice Snow Patrol Spinal Tap LIVE EARTH SOUTH AFRICA (The Cradle of Human Kind, Johannesburg, 5a.m. Saturday) Danny K Angelique Kidjo Baaba Maal Vusi Mahlasela The Parlotones The Soweto Gospel Choir Joss Stone UB40 Zola LIVE EARTH CHINA (Oriental Pearl Tower, Shanghai, 1 a.m. Saturday) 12 Girls Band Sarah Brightman Eason Chan Evonne Hsu Joey Huang Xiao Ming Winnie Shin Soler Anthony Wong LIVE EARTH JAPAN (Makuhari Messe, Tokyo, 11 p.m. Friday) AI Abingdon Boys School Ayaka Cocco Genki Rockets Kumi Koda Linkin Park Bonnie Pink Michael Nyman Ai Otsuka Rihanna Rip Slyme Rize UA Yellow Magic Orchestra LIVE EARTH AUSTRALIA (Aussie Stadium, Sydney, 7 p.m. Friday) Blue King Brown Crowded House Eskimo Joe Ghostwriters Missy Higgins John Butler Trio Jack Johnson Paul Kelly Sneaky Sound System Toni Collette & The Finish Wolfmother LIVE EARTH GERMANY (Arena at Hamburg, 5a.m. Saturday) Roger Cicero Chris Cornell Jan Delay Enrique Iglesias Juli Lotto King Karl Katie Melua Mana Mando Diao Michael Mittermeier Reamonn Sasha Shakira Silbermond Snoop Dogg LIVE EARTH BRAZIL (Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, 2 p.m. Saturday) Vanessa Da Matta Macy Gray Jorge Ben Jor Jota Quest Lenny Kravitz Marcelo D2 MV Bill O Rappa Xuxa Pharrell Williams A concert is also planned in Antarctica, but the lineup is not finalized. Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc. To see more of Newsday, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsday.com Copyright (c) 2007, Newsday, Melville, N.Y. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |