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Dom Robinson reviews
Live Aid DVD: 
(Please note the following review contains strong language)
Live 8 was billed as “The Long Walk To Justice”.
And for what? Dropping the debt of Third World countries? Why? All they’ll be doing it benefitting the corrupt world leaders who’ve raped their lands of all they can, and now it’ll be like cancelling the credit card debt when they wipe the slate clean, giving them the chance to run up a new bill all over again.
In that respect it was utterly pointless. They just need to storm in there and get rid of arrogant bastards like Robert Mugabe.
Even more odd, why did the BBC keep telling us to visit their site at “bbc.co.uk/thelive8event” when bbc.co.uk/live8 was less cumbersome and worked perfectly well?
About the gigs, I’ll get on to the individual acts shortly, but as for the gig as a whole, it could’ve done without the constant cutting around from one camera to another instead of focusing on the subject at hand; and weren’t Philadelphia’s ‘Live 8’ backdrops on the laser display screen far better than our endless number-counting ones?
First on stage at 2pm was Paul McCartney with Bono, doing a rendition of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Macca was a little on the croaky side, straining to reach the high notes, and Bono’s support didn’t add anything in particular, but while it’s been said that the former Beatle’s never performed this one live ever before, I’m sure he did it at his 1990 ‘Tripping the Live Fantastic’ concert, and checking the track listing online, he did!
And, after all the hype about this opener with the bods dressed as the Beatles, it only lasted just over a mere two minutes. Why not longer?
One thing that was blindingly obvious was that the ambience of the gig just didn’t seem to come across early on. Maybe it was the acoustics, maybe it was because they didn’t have any mics on the audience at first so couldn’t catch them singing along? Granted, though, this gig was put together in a very short space of time.
Anyway, back to the music and Macca left the stage and U2 struck up one of their most bland songs in years, Beautiful Day followed by Vertigo. Come on, guys, you made decent records in the ’80s, but as soon as the ’90s began you just turned in favour of commercial shite, with exceptions for One, Stay and Lemon. Ah, their next song at Live 8 was indeed One. Trouble is, by then Bono was full of his own self-importance so most of the emotion from the song was lost. Maybe this is the sort of song that’s best heard by yourself, not while staring at a sea of 150,000 faces. It was made even more farcical when he turned it into a crowd-only rendition of Unchained Melody…
How can you follow that? Not by getting Fearne Cotton to interview crowd members, as the engineers ensured by dropping the feed and cutting back to Jonathan Ross, who was the right man for the job and, since it was live, was not subject to the same ridiculous censorship that normally intrudes upon his Friday night chat show.
Let’s then skip past some of the guff. Coldplay limped onto the stage, drifted through In My Place, brought Richard Ashcroft on stage to do his Bittersweet Symphony and the band finished off with another of their songs and I’m so glad they called time after that.
3pm and an intro for Elton John from Matt Lucas and David Walliams in their ‘Lou & Andy’ guise, adapting the show nicely for this moment where Andy needed to do ‘toilet’, much to the surprise of one of the guitarists…
For all his showboating faults and for making some right duff music in the last few years, at least ol’ Reg Dwight got the party started proper with a raucous The Bitch is Back and Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting. Just a shame he had to ruin it by bringing on frontman of ‘Totalshambles’ Pete Doherty to duet on Children of the Revolution. He’s not a rock star he’s a stupid, talentless junkie with rocks for brains and probably had ‘rock’ for breakfast(!)
After Elton directed the waster in the right direction following the conclusion of their set, Bill Gates was brought on to brow-beat about his utopian vision for the world. Yes, Bill. There’s as much chance of that happening as you creating the perfect operating system. And then things took a further downturn as Dido appeared to witter on and entice Youssou N’Dour to sing his 1994 one-hit-wonder Seven Seconds, then a hit with Neneh Cherry, where their voices complemented each other, but Dido’s constant off-key high-pitched warblings did nothing for this duet.
And then onto the Stereophonics – a band who went as far as they could with Mr Writer before chucking away their creative talent in favour of bland mainstream pap like Have a Nice Day, following which they’ve never recovered. Kelly Jones and the band, now including a drummer who replaced the Rod Liddle look-a-like, gruffed through an engaging Bartender and the Thief, Maybe Tomorrow and the finale, Local Boy in a Photograph, but started to throw it away in the middle somewhere with their recent single Dakota.
Back to a bit of interviews and Jonathan Ross quizzed Jeremy Clarkson on his huge drugs cabinet to help him with his back pain, although one of them was a muscle relaxant that meant he couldn’t stray further than 14 feet from the nearest lavatory. This was interrupted to cut to the Eden Project where Hollywood hottie-but-weirdy Angelina Jolie was giving a speech onstage… which we completely missed, only seeing her long enough to introduce some African band no-one had heard of.
Vacuous cunt
…or I wanted to hurt someone bad. Why? Because REM were just striking up for Man on the Moon and what do the BBC do? They cut away from them to Fearne Cotton, the most vacuous cunt in the universe – a woman so talent-free she is to brainyness what Chris Moyles is to skinny – and she ‘interviewed’ two dull members from some band called Razorlight about what they thought of Live 8. Like anyone gives a fuck! REM are playing – just get back to them! I was hoping when I played back my recording that this was a bad dream and that we’d seen the whole of REM after all. Fucking hell, BBC, you useless shower of fucking twats.
One word for the next act, Ms Dynamite – YAWN! “People asked me why I wanted to be here, and my answer was – how could I not be here?” No, the answer was you wanted a badly-needed career boost. She gave a similarly pointless interview to Jo Whiley later, but inbetween were a couple of belters from Keane, Somewhere Only We Know and Bedshaped, although they did seem to be desperately right-on as the lead singer shouted “Live Eiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!” as he stepped on stage.
Shortly after four hours into the broadcast and Philadelphia’s side of things got underway with an intro from Will Smith and that video of celebs clicking their fingers every three seconds – something which looked rather odd when mimicked by the watching crowd, not least because their piece of video was out of sync by the time it reached us but just because it looked a little distasteful. This was not a moment to wave a candle or a lighter and cheer on, so why collectively click?
Travis, like Stereophonics, were a band who once shone and now produce shit – and don’t even sell much in the way of records these days. Put that down to the pointless dirge like Sing and Side, songs that have nothing going for them but which meander from start to finish, but which they intended to perform here. God knows why. Their only saving grace here was Why Does It Always Rain on Me? but even that’s overplayed now. Go back to the days of Writing to Reach You, Driftwood and All I Wanna Do Is Rock, not the achingly awful Flowers in the Window that, thankfully, they left to one ‘side’ here.
Bob Geldof went on to do a token performance of I Don’t Like Mondays, followed by Midge Ure enthusing about the day, although clearly wishing he’d done a song or three too. Brad Pitt waffled on telling us what to think before Annie Lennox took to the stage for a twee Why before bossing us about and leading into Little Bird, another of her least effective solo efforts. Finally, she regained ground with a great return to 1983’s Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). Ah, the ’80s.
And for anyone wondering why she thanked Comic Relief, this is all part of that.
I couldn’t care less about the offerings from Philadelphia and Berlin that followed (Black Eyed Peas and Green Day)
Anyway back to the real music and UB40 were due on shortly. I said, they’re about to start. For crying out loud! Get away from a double-dose of airheadness as Davina joined Fearne, waffling on about sod all. UB40’s beginning was a very close shave! Who’s in control of the editing suite? If Fearne hasn’t a clue how to wrap up then just ignore her and cut back to the music! We won’t mind!
Things got worse then the switchover to BBC1 happened two hours late and mid-way during a prelude to UB40’s Red Red Wine. I know it had already joined the live broadcast on BBC1, but surely they could’ve waited until their set had ended before cancelling BBC2’s output? All they were showing at that time were highlights of the Wimbledon Women’s Final and news of other sporting results before their own content got under way (sigh). The band’s other tracks included Food For Thought as the opener and their cover of Can’t Help Falling in Love as their closer.
Before the next musical interlude we were stuck with Annie Lennox waffling about Mandela to Ross and a coked-off-his-bonce Robbie Williams to ol’ Fearne. We were spared more of the latter by cutting to Destiny’s Child in Philadelphia, but I’d rather they hadn’t bothered as I can’t stand them. Back in the UK we had what Jonathan Ross later described as “a mother-lovin’ good time” when Snoop Dogg effed and mother-jeffed through his subsequent performance, and how dogs in Hyde Park are usually kept on a leash.
Skip past the ramblings of the boss-eyed fat-fuck that is Chris Moyles, once described by Mark Lamarr as a “cunt”, and correctly so. Oh no, now it’s Razorlight, that band who interrupted REM earlier, a band who’ve done one decent song (Golden Touch) and little else of merit. Want to go one better? Show some videos of starving African kids, backed by The Cars’ Drive, and it’s the use of the song like this that was done 20 years ago which put me off the track for good.
Madonna’s selected tracks came in the form of Like a Prayer, Ray of Light and Music, the latter of which is the only one I didn’t think much of, whereas the other two are okay. She also threw in a “fucking”, but no-one would top Snoop Dogg for the most swearing of the day. Dido and Youssou returned for more, at the Eden Project, for the former to ruin Seven Seconds again. Why have two versions of this and so little of Duran Duran?
The ‘Material Girl’ was next seen with Jo Whiley commenting on how big a Ricky Gervais fan she is, while Snow Patrol, one of a number of new bands from the past 12 months or so, did a couple of songs including their debut, Run.
Following this, The Killers only came on for one song, All These Things That I’ve Done, Jo Whiley interviewed Katherine Jenkins (god, she’s gorgeous!), Brian Wilson performed Good Vibrations in Berlin. Not sure if that was the song or what looked like the onset of Parkinsons…
Joss Stone, who really is ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ warbled up and down ten octaves when only one would have sufficed, the Scissor Sisters couldn’t fail with the funky Laura and Take Your Mama, but were less impressive with a new track, Everybody Wants The Same Thing, which rather plodded on; Peter Kay cracked a few decent gags either side of their set and then came Velvet Revolver. Who? Apparently the remainder of Guns N Roses, but it was a raucous mess and they only proved how out of it they were as they came off stage and confused an already brain-free Fearne Cotton.
Some semblance of music returned when Sting got up to perform the two tracks he previously did at Live Aid, Message in a Bottle and Every Breath You Take – slightly changing the lyrics of the latter due to the G8 matter, plus another unannounced track. Following him was the overhyped Mariah Carey who didn’t want to be outstaged by a group of African kids so made sure they stood right behind her. Her tracks were Make It Happen, Hero and her new single, We Belong Together.
Now turn up the Cheese Factor to 10 as a dumb-founded David Beckham stood in front of the crowd to introduce the UK’s biggest show-off, Robbie Williams, who kicked off with a brief We Will Rock You (is he trying to get the Queen gig off Paul Rodgers?) before continuing, while hooked up on goofballs, with Let Me Entertain You, Feel and ending with the song that saved his career, the dire Angels, which was released as a last throw of the dice by his record company, following the comparative flop of South of the Border (at No.14). Note that Angels only made it to No.4 and didn’t hit the top slot as many seem to think.
And time for a comedy interlude as Peter Kay walked on-stage as the band began to hum louder and louder with feedback while winding down from Robbie’s set, he told a couple of jokes and then got a singalong going for Is This The Way To Amarillo?, only for it to be temporarily interrupted by Jonathan Ross back in his pod telling us Jo Whiley had a special guest with her – George Michael – who proclaimed he was going to duet with Macca at the end for Baby You Can Drive My Car. Following that, they cut back to Peter Kay who reintroduced himself, so to speak, and introduced The Who. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend brought some life back into the proceedings with Who Are You? and Won’t Get Fooled Again, both relatively short but sweet compared to the next band on stage, following a brief soujourn to Berlin where we saw Roxy Music rattle through Love is the Drug.
David Gilmour and Nick Mason managed to patch things up with Roger Waters (above-right) long enough for their trip to Hyde Park as they got back together as Pink Floyd to perform what were easily the best tracks of the day, Breathe, Money, Wish You Were Here and Comfortably Numb. Gilmour was perfectly on song while Waters sounded a little croaky but it was still a sight to behold and it clearly got the best response from the audience aside from the finale.
There’s nothing more I can say about those songs, and the entire Dark Side of The Moon album in fact. If you’re not into it and you haven’t gone to University yet, then make it your first purchase when you get there. If you’re past that stage and still alive, then there’s no reason not to splash out now.
Finally, at the UK gig, “Have you ever seen anything like it in your lives?” as he introduced Paul McCartney to the stage for the last set of songs, kicking off with Get Back on his own before George Michael stayed true to his word and appeared alongside for Baby You Can Drive My Car. Macca was back on his lonesome for the next track, and he didn’t half sound strained as he performed Helter Skelter. He fared better with the last two, The Long and Winding Road and the coda from the overlong Hey Jude, during which he was joined by all and sundry, but both are tracks which have been played too often in my view so I’d rather have something you don’t tend to see all the time.
The last three hours of BBC1’s broadcast were handed over to concert footage from around the world, the best performances and tracks coming from the Kaiser Chiefs (I Predict a Riot, Everyday I Love You Less and Less), Will Smith (Gettin Jiggy With It – the guy’s an arse but it’s a catchy track), Def Leppard (Pour Some Sugar On Me – what stopped them making any single decent piece of music the second the ’80s ended? “Let’s Get Rocked”? Let’s get some interest back in writing songs, morelike!), Stevie Wonder (Masterblaster Jammin’, Higher Ground, Signed Sealed Delivered, So What The Fuss, Superstition), Tom Cochrane (Life is a Highway), A-Ha (Take On Me) and Zucchero (Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime).
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2005.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.