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Talent in a Previous Life

Because It's Never Just About the Music

Monday, June 06, 2005

They Came and 8 Us 

Wasn't the original Live Aid great? Well, we don't know ourselves, as at the time we would have been about 7 and our musical taste would likely have centered pretty firmly around the theme tunes to He-Man and Transformers, but History says it's great, so it must have been. After all, History is almost never wrong, so we will accept it's verdict, despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary from the line-up on the back of the 4 DVD box set. Anyway, as the event was so brilliant, Bob Geldof and The Other One have decided to stage another one, although this time it's not to raise money, but to raise awareness. Of course, the last time there was an awareness raising event on a similar scale, they called it Net Aid and, other than the inclusion of Catatonia it was an entirely rubbish event which only really drew attention to the fact that Gail Porter was a pretty rubbish TV presenter. Nowadays things are different, and people collect causes like The Noise Next Door collect bad reviews, so as a nation, we're a bit more susceptible to the ideas being raised, though quite whether all of our national media should be pulling together to promote an event whose awareness raising powers will be pretty much limited to letting people know that Coldplay have a new album out and that Annie Lennox still exists is a question that shall be left for another day. The fact remains that, like it or not - and for many possessing even a modicum of musical taste, the answer is not - the event will be taking place and will be impossible to escape from. Due to the enormous amount of tedium expectation for this event, the organisers have expanded the locations from the original London and Philadelphia to include Rome, Paris and Berlin, figuring not entirely unreasonably that if we're going to suffer, the rest of Europe might as well too. Anyway, as promised, here's our look at the full line-up - as it currently stands that is, if the list remains Spice Girl free, it'll be plumbing new depths of pointlessness:-