Bad Review

The Times of London has released its review of the British leg of the Live Earth concert. Their judgment: tedious.

It did what it said on the poster – but no more. The British leg of Live Earth started at 1.30 pm sharp with a thunderous five-minute drum fanfare by a 20-odd troupe of flailing percussionists, battering a miscellany of ethnic skinned instruments.

Led by Roger Taylor, formerly drummer with Queen, and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, their SOS pattern, hammered out in morse code, was a cute way of flagging up the Live Earth message: environmental calamity ahoy. But it couldn’t disguise the problem that regularly threatened to becalm this Wembley show.

As a concert, Live Earth was not the repeat of Live Aid/Live 8 it clearly wanted to be. Unlike the events organised by the charismatic Sir Bob Geldof – upon which this one modelled itself closely, right down to its choice of name – the acts who answered the call from Al Gore’s people to play at Wembley Stadium were a bit short on superstar clout.

It was Geldof’s legendarily persuasive powers which got Pink Floyd to abandon a 20-year feud and re-form for Live 8 in Hyde Park in 2005. There was nothing on the Live Earth London bill to command that level of anticipation and potential drama.

With the exception of the closing act Madonna – who played next door at Wembley Arena only last summer – there was nobody on the Stadium bill with the cross-generational appeal, and catalogue of monster hits, to supply the great unifying moments which event gigs need to make their message stick in the mind.

Queen singing We Will Rock You at Live Aid, or Robbie Williams leading the 80,000 Live 8 crowd through a giant karaoke session of Angels, are worth far more in this context than the 20 minutes per hour of worthy exhortations dished out on screen or by guest celebs at Live Earth.

Genesis were the first band to take the stage, playing a four-song sample from the set they performed in its entirety later in the day at Manchester as part of their current British tour. The middle-aged-male contingent in the crowd were delighted to welcome back Phil Collins’ recently reformed band of pop-rock veterans. An element of surprise entered an otherwise solid performance when Collins appeared to let out a rare ‘f **k’ during Invisible Touch. But with latecomers still trickling into the stadium, Genesis landed a few punches – notably with the environmentally incorrect Turn It On Again – without knocking anybody out.

Read it – almost universally negative with a few bright spots. But the review indicates that most people who attended were not exactly knocked out by the performances. Does it make a big difference in the media hype? No. But the British press, long a champion of the entire global warming hype, is not overly enthusiastic about the goregasm in general. Worth the huge waste of energy and the massive carbon emissions? Not likely.