Bob Geldof might be to blame. In the middle of the nineteen eighties, his weekly royalty cheques from 'Boomtown Rats' singles dwindling, he pounced upon the idea of a concert to save the woefully undernourished ego of he and a select group of other not-so-punk based relics of the 1970s.
Jump cut to 2005, amid Olympic winning bids and public transport bombings in London, he staged Live Aid's 20th anniversary concert. Swearwords replaced truly shocking sentiments, but most - whose daddies did not work in the Brtish media and therefore were not privy to free tickets and buckets of cocaine for the event - wondered just what in effing crikey an "awareness raising" concert was being staged for, when the fist shaking organizers' kids went to the same public schools as the civil servants and politicos at the G8 summit at whom watered down sixth form debating society anger was encouraged. It was also widely known that many of the policies the G8 were being asked to consider were on the cards anyway. Cutting a very long and ponderous story short and not nodding in the direction of Richard Curtis' or Bob Geldof's quest for beatification, 'Pink Floyd' sold a few more album units than they normally might.
Live 8 seemed part, in name, to be progeny of the Live Aid brand. It wasn't, Geldof publicly criticising the event. Anyone watching the coverage on BBC1 need not have worried that it would be above criticism.
Presenter Jonathan Ross seemed to be reading a hastily drafted script from autocue, was joined by other 'Off the Curb' comedy agency stablemates Allan Carr (the effeminate human Banana Split puppet who hideously died on his Harris - pretending to conduct booing he started receiving for reading his Eco-blah advice from a real idiot board) and Jimmy Carr (no relation) who was for once funny, outlining the ridiculously nebulous and contradictory advice Eco-warriors were giving at the event.
Most embarrassing was the speech made by an Helena Christensen lookalike whose name eludes me, introducing Al Gore - the famous wrong man, instigator of the parental advisory sticker on music recordings ('Genesis', dead centre of MOR, rocker Phil Collins having just worked the 'F' word into one of his songs two hours earlier.) and conspirator in his own demise. The woman hung on for a couple of dead minutes before ad-libbing that being at Live Earth made you sexy, was like being "hung like a warlord" or having real "these" (pointing at her chest).
An overlong, real mess, much like this review, Live Earth's most unforgivable crime was arranging Razorlight's sound system so that we could hear their music, but they could not - rather than the other way around...