cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.
mr. and mrs. skippy enjoyed several hours of the live earth concerts yesterday. skippy started by watching king brown band and toni collette & finish from sydney, australia, via the net on friday evening. the connection was suprisingly good and the msn website had a nice big screen (which could be enlarged), so it was a good web presentation.
as the saturday wore on, both bravo and cnbc carried various venues of the concerts. the chili peppers rocked the house at wembly stadium, and smashing pumpkins were also particularly good. lenny kravitz, looking a bit thicker than we remember him, got the whole crowd going in rio, when he left the stage and wandered out into the audience to finish “let love rule.” it was also bizarrely exciting to see kayne west rap with sting & the police on “message in a bottle,” which was an appropriate song, because its refrain of “sending out an s o s” went perfectly with the logo of the entire concert series.
also of note: melissa etheridge, genesis, duran duran, ub40 (they be 50!) metallica, shakira (looking not like a belly dancer for once), linkin park, kelly clarkson (who is growing into a great singer) and of course, mrs. skippy’s favorite, madonna. but skippy was incredibly happy to see roger waters do the finale of dark side of the moon, from us and them thru eclipse. and then he topped it off with a children’s choir joining him for another brick in the wall, as a huge inflatable pig floated thru the audience.
if there was a problem with the broadcasts, it was the jumping around from venue to venue, artist to artist, with no apparent rhyme or reason. we would have liked to have seen madonna’s set all in a piece; and it was jarring to be watching a dark night at giants stadium one minute and then a bright daylight set at sydney’s venue. and, switching back and forth between bravo, cnbc and nbc (in prime time) the same artists would be seen over and over again (at one point, roger waters was on all three channels at once! now, we love roger waters, but he ain’t no sid barrett).
we missed keith urban and alicia keyes doing gimmee shelter, which was apparently the highlight of the concerts, and we didn’t see any of the dc concerts with garth brooks and trisha yearwood. in theory, everything is available on demand at the web site.
jeralyn has a great live-blogging account of the concerts at talkleft. but for an opposing view, simply left behind was underwhelmed by nbc’s coverage.
