Saturday, July 07, 2007
Live Earth: Live - Hour Four: 17.27PM
It's Fergie and The Others, or The Black Eyed Peas as they're otherwise known and, like Pink, they're determined to get the party started, launching into Pump It and acting like the own the stage which, given that they're the first act to demonstrate even a vague bit of life so far, and that Fergie seems to be on speed dial for these sorts of events, they might as well do. Will I Am demands that the crowd say "What's Up" to a variety of countries hosting Live Earth gigs, happily ignoring the fact that this is the sort of crowd who is more likely to say "What ho" than "What's up", he later attempts to get various parts of the crowd to "Make some noise", but given that he only holds out the microphone to them for a nanosecond you can tell he's not really too interested in what they've got to say. Fergie is wearing hotpants, both stylish and practical, particularly in a potential flood situation. Will steals a Brazilian flag from some in the crowd and wraps it around himself. He then says "motherfucking" during their performance of Let's Get It Started, although we imagine more people will complain about their demands to "Get retarded" in the same song. Oh well!
Fergie takes centre stage for a performance of Big Girls Don't Cry, which is a blatant lie. They do. Especially if you make fun of their weight. Not to be outdone, Will takes over to perform his own solo effort, a brand new song - possibly called Help us Out - which he's written about global warming. It is, to be blunt, no Where is the Love. Fortunately the next song is, and there's a hell of a lot of it pointing in the general direction of the band. The first highlight of the day.
John Legend turns up to perform Ordinary People on the piano. It's not immediately obvious why, it's hard to think of anything that people would want less. We can only assume asking the audience a badly worded question has caused this.
Duran Duran, also a regular at these sorts of gigs, are introduced by Geri Halliwell, who manages to shoehorn in a reference to the Spice Girls reunion. They open, unsurprisingly, with Planet Earth, after asking everyone in the crowd who didn't arrive by private jet to put their hands in the air. Fortunately all other forms of travel are entirely carbon neutral so everyone else is justified by feeling smug. Ahem. The sound, however, is terrible and ruins the start of Ordinary World, a song which we still think is rather heart-achingly lovely. The crowd at the arena may or may not agree, but they do wave their arms in the air, vaguely aware that this is the sort of thing you're supposed to do at gigs. Notorious is next, one of the more embarrassing selections from their back catalogue, even more so now that they're a bit, well, paunchy. It's hard to be notorious when you look like you'd rather be hanging around the garden centre at B & Q, and the fact they look like they're going through the motions isn't really helped by the knowledge that they were here doing much the same thing less than a week ago. They close with Girls on Film - we prefer the Girls Aloud version - and a vague exhortation to the crowd to make a difference. They tried, we guess, which is something.
CURRENT CARBON FOOTPRINT: A St Bernard, plodding dutifully through the snow covered mountain landscape, searching obediently, though not hopefully, for a stranded mountain climber.
Fergie takes centre stage for a performance of Big Girls Don't Cry, which is a blatant lie. They do. Especially if you make fun of their weight. Not to be outdone, Will takes over to perform his own solo effort, a brand new song - possibly called Help us Out - which he's written about global warming. It is, to be blunt, no Where is the Love. Fortunately the next song is, and there's a hell of a lot of it pointing in the general direction of the band. The first highlight of the day.
John Legend turns up to perform Ordinary People on the piano. It's not immediately obvious why, it's hard to think of anything that people would want less. We can only assume asking the audience a badly worded question has caused this.
Duran Duran, also a regular at these sorts of gigs, are introduced by Geri Halliwell, who manages to shoehorn in a reference to the Spice Girls reunion. They open, unsurprisingly, with Planet Earth, after asking everyone in the crowd who didn't arrive by private jet to put their hands in the air. Fortunately all other forms of travel are entirely carbon neutral so everyone else is justified by feeling smug. Ahem. The sound, however, is terrible and ruins the start of Ordinary World, a song which we still think is rather heart-achingly lovely. The crowd at the arena may or may not agree, but they do wave their arms in the air, vaguely aware that this is the sort of thing you're supposed to do at gigs. Notorious is next, one of the more embarrassing selections from their back catalogue, even more so now that they're a bit, well, paunchy. It's hard to be notorious when you look like you'd rather be hanging around the garden centre at B & Q, and the fact they look like they're going through the motions isn't really helped by the knowledge that they were here doing much the same thing less than a week ago. They close with Girls on Film - we prefer the Girls Aloud version - and a vague exhortation to the crowd to make a difference. They tried, we guess, which is something.
CURRENT CARBON FOOTPRINT: A St Bernard, plodding dutifully through the snow covered mountain landscape, searching obediently, though not hopefully, for a stranded mountain climber.
Labels: Live, Live Earth, Live Earth: Live
