Live Earth

Over the past few days I've caught bits and pieces of the Live Earth series of concerts that were held on the weekend. Some of it was surprisingly good, and some of it not.

Probably my favourite performance was a duet between Keith Urban and Alicia Keys. I know, I'm just as surprised as you are. It helped that they were covering my favourite Stones song "Gimme Shelter", but they did a great job - Alicia handling the high female vocal really well, and Mr Kidman knocking out a few decent guitar solos. I'm actually giving some thought to checking out his music after this - as I get older, I find I'm listening to more country-ish stuff, like Ryan Adams or Neko Case. It's not that much of a leap to jump right into this.



Worst performance I saw were The Smashing Pumpkins. It pains me to say this, because for years they were my favourite band, but Billy, you need to give up. You had some good songs back in the 90s, but it's over. I couldn't help but cringe as he warbled his way through "Bullet with Butterfly Wings". "Today" was slightly better, but not much - he just really struggles with the singing side of things.



Weirdest moment was probably The Police. Perhaps I should have seen it coming, since in recent years Sting has done duets with guys like Craig David and Puff Daddy. So it shouldn't have been such a huge shock to see John Mayer join them on stage for "Message in a Bottle". I don't have anything against John. He seems like a pretty funny guy, from what I've seen of him on "Chappelle's Show". Not so good at music really, and I'd subtract some respect for the whole Jessica Simpson thing, but he came to his senses there. But I don't see how he's earned the right to get on stage with The Police at an event like this. It got worse though. Halfway through the song they brought out Kanye West to rap along. At this point I was thinking maybe Sting lost a bet or something backstage. As far as rappers go I like Kanye but this was just embarrasing. Perhaps the only time you'll ever hear the words "Al Gore" in a rap song.



A few other thoughts . . . I forgot Dave Grohl in my list of cool guys with a beard from yesterday - he gets extra points for remaining cool even though his band has been getting progressively worse since their second album. Madonna played a new song and it was truly horrible. It was great seeing Neil Finn take a step away from the microphone during Crowded House's set and have the crowd carry on singing. Linkin Park seemed to have no connection to the cause whatsoever, the kids in Japan seemed to like it though.