Live 8: The Performances


July 4th, 2005 - 17:15 | 6 comments

REM on Stage - 2It’s hard to know where to begin. It feels worryingly like showing-off to go through the people we saw, but I’m really not…I won’t go through everyone :-)

  • Elton John’s one of my favourite singers, and it was great to see him live. He sang ‘The Bitch is Back’, ‘Saturday Night’s All Right’ and a duet with Pete Doherty, who apparently acted rather weirdly (couldn’t see much of that from where I was).
  • Dido was really very good indeed - she can sing beautifully, and I hadn’t realised how attractive she is.
  • REM got one of the biggest cheers of the concert when the ‘Everybody Hurts’ riff began. Everybody likes that song, and most of the crowd stood to sing and sway. I wasn’t sure about the blue eye-band thing Michael Stipe had going on, but the more I think about it now, the cooler it was :-) He came on stage and said: “We’re REM, and this is what we do” - I liked that.
  • Ms. Dynamite walked onto the stage with an extremely high-pitched ‘How you doin’ people?!’, which caused a woman next to me to exclaim ‘ooh’ in a what-the-hell-was-that manner
  • Velvet Revolver - 2Keane are one of my favourite bands of the moment, and I thought they put in an excellent performance. They played ‘Bedshaped’, which is my favourite of theirs.
  • Annie Lennox was really, really great. She sang a very moving song, too.
  • Razorlight endeared themselves to me when the lead singer said: “Give peace a chance - John Lennon said that. Music can change the world - Bono said that. Sign the f***ing petition - I SAID THAT!”. I bought ‘Somewhere Else’ via iTunes yesterday.
  • Only Bob Geldof compared to Madonna in terms of stage presence and gravitas. She really had a majesty, I thought. ‘Like a Prayer’ was the first song I started singing along to, and I didn’t really stop after that. ‘Ray of Light’ and ‘Music’ really got the audience going.
  • I liked Snow Patrol so much I bought their album once I got home - ‘Run’ is great!
  • Joss Stone was very impressive given that she wasn’t even born during Live Aid! Her songs weren’t particularly to my taste, but I could appreciate how good she was.
  • Robbie singing Angels - 2Lil and I had been looking forward to the Scissor Sisters all day, and they didn’t disappoint! They handled the audience very well, and their performance was a masterclass. They played a new song specially for the occasion, too.
  • Velvet Revolver were loud :-)
  • Lenny Henry introduced Sting with something like the following: “…and he was in one of the biggest British bands of all time. This is going on so long it’s almost a tantric introduction - I could go on all night, but I won’t, it’s Sting!”. Sting changed the words of “Every Breath you Take” to include references to democracy and ‘We’ll be watching you’. I don’t know whether that was referring to Zimbabwe, Iraq, or something else.
  • Robbie Williams was one of the major highlights of the evening, I thought. He sang ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘Let me Entertain You’ and ‘Feel’. He then said “I’ve got to sing it, haven’t I?” and the crowd absolutely erupted. Everybody knows the words to Angels, and even I was singing along at the top of my voice! He was pretty funny, too.
  • Pink Floyd - 4Watching The Who was like live CSI! I only really knew the songs from the introductions to CSI and CSI: Miami, but it was most cool. The blood-curdling scream at the end of ‘Don’t get fooled again’ was very impressive!
  • I felt a little bad watching Pink Floyd as to be honest I don’t know all that much about them. The rest of the audience were in hysterics, and I gather it was something rather special :-) I’m still racking my brains trying to remember where I know ‘Comfortably Numb’ from - sure, I could look it up, but what fun’s that!

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6 Responses to “Live 8: The Performances” 

  1. Gravatar Icon 1 Skuds 

    Now… where have you heard Comfortably Numb before…

    How about last year’s single by the Scissor Sisters? The people you were really looking forward to seeing!

    Its OK - we all get sudden blank spots in the memory. Personally I was trying to remember when I last heard a song murdered more comprehensively than Pete Doherty did to Children of the Revolution, and I still can’t think of one :-)
    Looks like you had a much better view than we did! (Though we had more elbow room)

  2. Gravatar Icon 2 Lil 

    Wow, I’m glad one of us was actually paying attention =’) Soooo nice to have a run-through of the performances to look back on! =D
    I hardly think anyone could accuse us of showing off - we shared it with 150,000 other people ;P

  3. Gravatar Icon 3 Andrew 

    That’s it! You’re a genius :-) Can’t believe I didn’t get that…Elbow room was indeed rather lacking where we were, it’s an tricky decision about what to sacrifice.

    Yeah, I suppose there were a couple of others there :-)

  4. Gravatar Icon 4 Andrew 

    Listening to the song again, I don’t think I ever realised the words they were singing in the chorus - that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

  5. Gravatar Icon 5 Skuds 

    I’ll admit that (even though, or maybe because, I am a Pink Floyd fan) I had been hoping Scissor Sisters would do Comfortably Young and perhaps get Dave Gilmour to join in.

    Previously I would have said that Roger Waters was too much of a miserable git to join in, but he seemed quite chirpy on the day - the happiest I have seen him.

    By the way, did you miss out the Killers because you don’t like them or because you blinked and missed them?

  6. Gravatar Icon 6 Andrew 

    To be honest I really don’t remember them that much, other than the slightly bizarre initial talk before they started singing. The songs didn’t really stick with me, so I didn’t have much to say ;-)

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