Al Gore’s Live Earth concerts (the lineup of which I controversially dissed a while back) are getting some more negative publicity. First up, last week, a surprisingly coherent Roger Daltry of the Who told England’s The Sun that “the last thing the planet needs is a rock concert.” Well now! How do you feel, Mr. Daltry, about using a notoriously wasteful type of event to raise environmental awareness? “I can’t believe it,” he says, “let’s burn even more fuel.” Daltry did of course play both LiveAid and Live8, which were apparently not powered by fuel but by magical unicorns on treadmills. Speaking of LiveAid, Sir Bob Geldof himself was even more harsh on Live Earth, saying “everybody” already knows about global warming. Knows about, and rejects, Sir Bob, just like that crazy idea we evolved from monkeys.
Now I see on BoingBoing that if you want to organize a house party or other event in support of Live Earth, you’ll have to follow restrictions that make the hoop-jumping required to just buy a ticket look like a walk in the park. Hey, Al, can I call my event “Friends of Live Earth?” Well, not exactly:
“Friends of Live Earth” cannot, directly through visual or other communications, be linked with any organization, including sponsors/broadcasters of your event. “Friends of Live Earth” should only be used as a supporting message.
Oh, OK. As soon as I understand what that means, I’ll start baking cupcakes for my party.
As far as the rest of the lineups are concerned, Sydney, Australia looks okay, if only for the presence of Wolfmother, and the only two artists I’ve heard of on the German lineup are DJ Sasha and Snoop Dogg. This negative press having an impact on the event’s success seems unlikely, but on July 7th, I still think I’d rather just change some of my light bulbs to fluorescents.
