I was watching the Live Earth concert off and on yesterday afternoon and into the evening.  It seemed like a pretty boring concert all in all.  There were a couple decent performances from Madonna and The Police, but most of the acts were extremely dull.

I was flipping back and forth from Sundance to CNBC.  The sound quality on CNBC for the concert was extremely bad, so it sounded like crap.  However, the Sundance channel commercials were enough to make anyone want to jump off a bridge into a gigantic land fill full of running cars emitting carbon dioxide.  They seemed to have about 4-5 minutes of concert and then 6-9 minutes of the same damn commercials over and over and over again.

Madonna put on a good close the show act featuring some interesting gypsy punk band from the Ukraine that has been all over the US lately. Most of the performers seemed to be suffering from really bad sound checks, or they just couldn't carry a tune at all.

There were a couple acts that sang well, but only covered 2-3 songs and never really seemed to get warmed up.  Like John Mayer and Chris Cornell.  The Smashing Pumpkins reunited sounded pretty good. 

Obligatory Crowd chant

Every single performer that hit the stage seemed determined to get the audience to do something, like wave their hands, jump up and down, stand up, or not throw their plastic cups and bottles on the grounds of the events.  Almost all of the groups seemed to fail in this mission and after watching 20-30 groups/singers try this on multiple continents it got pretty tedious.

The crowd just wasn't into being herded around like cats.  Madonna succeeded in London, but Lenny Kravitz seemed to fail in Rio (he sounded the most consistent of anyone, but seemed to be half as stoned as Macy Gray).  

The Tokyo audience was the exception to herding angst.  They were going nuts for Linkin Park, despite the fact that Linkin Park sounded liked absolute crap as the only person in the group that could sing proceeded to screech yell at the top of his lungs like a death metal singer trying to sound punk.

Al Gore's Weight Meter

Al Gore looked like he had lost weight when he was introduced by Melissa Etheridge.  Then he was later introduced by Carmen "I'm a walking blond joke" Diaz and looked like he had put on about 50 pounds back stage.  I suspect that was an illusion of contrast between the leggy Diaz and the portly Etheridge.

The Bon Jovi Hypocrisy

It seemed a little weird that Bon Jovi would sing their trademark song featuring the lyrics "steel horse I ride" and "wanted dead or alive".  First, the Sundance channel had just featured a doom and gloom commercial about Pig steel and how its sourced through slave labor from the Amazon.  So riding a steel horse in Jersey didn't seem to fit in with the Live Earth theme.  Then I just couldn't help putting together the mental image inspired by the lyrics "Wanted Dead or Alive", the location - New York, and the timing - Post 9/11.  I had this warped mental image of Osama Bin Laden riding around on a steel horse harley with a sling of bandito bullets across his chest slowly killing off the planet by polluting the environment. 

The acts that I missed

I missed seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers and thankfully missed seeing Spinal Tap.  A number of people after the show complained about the artists that flew in for the show on private jets.  The Duran Duran front man seemed pretty pissed off about some of his fellow entertainers that thought so little of the environment to forego a private jet.  Meanwhile has been band Oasis boycotted the event all together on principle and probably on drugs.

New Single Promotions and Stupid Songs to Save the environment

About every third entertainer seemed to be pushing a new single that sounded very bad live or pushing a catchy save the planet tune that they had come up with just for the show.  This really didn't seem to work for anyone, including Madonna who sang Hey You, which sounded like a bastardized version of the Pink Floyd song of the same name.

Speaking of Pink Floyd their lead singer sang in New York with several African American children standing behind him while he went though "We don't need no Education".  On the surface that would seem to be a nasty contrast as New York City school children need lots more help getting a quality education, but paying attention to the meaning behind the lyrics it almost rang true as none of us need a false political education.  Of course there was an obligatory Pig balloon floating around the audience during the Pink Floyd numbers with grafiti like images of a 'Wall' and the letters "SOS".  SOS was a consistent theme throughout the concerts, probably referring to save our ship - the earth, but spray painted on a blow up pig, it seemed more fitting to interpret it as "Save Our Sausage."  (Credit to my wife for that one)