The lineup here.
Personally I’m a little underwhelmed. Supposedly the lineup is composed of bands that Diana liked, or according to Will and Harry, would have liked… or bands they like.
Duran Duran and Elton John were enjoyable… but some of the choices are a little weird. Apparently Di liked Status Quo and one of the blokes out of Supertramp… worse yet is the suck that Sean Combs brings. Is he relevant anymore?
Maybe the underwhelming lineup is a reflection that some recording artists (Elton John excepted, of course) think the whole idea of this anniversary-of-her-death concert a bit weird, and with the benefit of hindsight, realize that far too much to-do was made over Diana when she was still alive, let alone now.
Although I really liked Diana, thought she was a very beautiful woman who did some great charity work and didn’t do a bad job with her sons, she seems to have had an abysmal taste in music if those were her “favorite” performers.
I mean, it is not like there wasn’t Tina Turner, Rolling Stones, Sting, Streisand, Springsteen and a multitude of more, uh, talented performers to choose from during her lifetime. Thankgod the Spice Girls haven’t started their tour yet or we might have had to sit through that as well.
Perhaps the Royal Family has a tin ear?
I’m just a bit unclear on exactly what more they think they can do for Diana. She IS still dead, right?
Yes, but her charitable foundation lives on. Acc. to the kids in the interview with Matt Lauer, they were trying to gain control of some of the memorials that would inevitably being spawned as the 10th anniversary of her death approaches. And why not raise some cash while they were at it?
Meh. I thought it was better than the abysmal Idol Gives Back special. It was odd that I had just watched “The Queen” only to have the interview with Will and Harry pop up. It’s a Dianathon.
Yeah. Status Quo? Though I’m impressed to see that Rossi and co. are still running.
I remember the Prince’s Trust concerts in the 80s - good stuff, all the big stars - your Spandau Ballets, Level 42s, Durans, Clapton, etc. A 2007 version of the same would have been a nice do. Or even a retro version. I can’t figure out if Wills and Harry were rejected by more popular bands, or if they’re the ones scrolling through their iPods and saying, “Hey, let’s get Diddy to do 'Roxanne ‘97’ at Mum’s concert!”
The emcees weren’t much cop either. I saw Ricky Gervais and Mackenzie Crook re-interpret the scene from the first season of The Office when Brent plays guitar at the office training… verbatim. He even ended up doing the psycho dance from season two. I don’t know what he was planning to do (apparently he was taking up time for Sir Elton to get his shit together) but it was the only time I saw the guy look really, really desperate. Beckham came out and looked like a prat. Ooh boy.
I’m pretty sure they could have gotten Robbie Williams and the surviving members of Queen together for this, for starters. Maybe OneCentStamp and DianaG are on to something. I feel bad for the boys, they seem like nice kids and their hearts are in the right place. Shame their taste in music is in the wrong place!
Heh. I have The Queen in my DVD player, was getting ready to watch it when the concert came on. Weird!
Better that than a Hapsburg chin and hemophilia, I guess.
I missed the big show today but caught the hour-long recap on NBC tonight. It looked like a real hit-and-miss affair, but at least the lineup reflected some guiding sense of taste (or the lack of it), rather than settle for being a clone of Live Aid/Farm Aid/Live 8… Speaking of which, it may be that a few invited acts demurred on the grounds that they’re doing the Live Earth charity concert this Saturday, July 7. In any event, any charity concert with an appearance by ballet dancers is following its own drummer, so to speak. And I’m sorry I missed the appearance by Status Quo. I’ve never seen them perform and didn’t even know they were still active… or alive.
Were they actively fundraising during the concert’s live broadcast, with toll-free numbers to call and all that? Or did they rely only on ticket sales & concessions?
I wonder how much they raised for charity.
Aren’t they the sons who swan around in Nazi paraphenalia? And if the state guranteed me a beyond luxurious lifestyle for as long as I lived, I’m sure I could find the time to do a charity meal or two.
I believe that was Harry dressed up somewhat inappropriately for Halloween (or Guy Fawkes or whatever) and he wasn’t the first teenager to do something stupid - although most teens don’t have an army of photographers following them around.
And yes, they were born in the lap of luxury, but so was Paris Hilton…who do you think turned out better?
What did Elton do at the end? Our DVD cut off.
Paris. She’s at least created a brand from her privilege and amassed her own not too shabby empire. Harry and Will are leeches living off the taxpayer, and doing nothing more than hanging around to benefit from an archaic tradition that holds that a specific class of inbreds are better than the rest of society.
Nah, it was a crap line-up and to be honest the whole ‘concert for Diana’ thing is in pretty bad taste. I realise I’m probably the only person in the UK who couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about her, but that’s just the way it is.
You really, really aren’t.
I’m still pissed off that all the shops closed on the day of her funeral. I had stuff to buy that day!
It’s been ten years, maybe I should let it go…
I can’t say I was profoundly affected by her death - a little surprised and a bit sad, for sure. I was really taken aback by the massive emotional outpouring that happened - I still don’t really understand that phenomenon.
As for the concert? Didn’t watch it and was only peripherally aware it was happening (actually, I remember hearing about plans for it, but I thought those had already come to fruition or failure some time ago).
A concert like that might have been quite appropriate, say, on the first anniversary of her death, but now? It just seems tacky, artificial, unnecessary.
I understand that the princes are all grown up now and wanted to find a grown-up way to honour their dead mum, but I dunno - this all just seemed like unnecessary repetition to me - a more fitting tribute might have been, I dunno, an expansion of the scope of the memorial fund work, or something like that - I honestly think that if Diana was the saint many people have made her out to be, then she wouldn’t have wanted a tacky concert, she’d have wanted something that directly helps people in need. Whether or not and to what extent she was that person is of course a matter of debate.
Perhaps she would have preferred another memorial water feature thingie to cost the taxpayers a fortune for upkeep and repairs.
Re the concert, what I want to know is did Roger McGough of Supertramp actually hit that high note in “Breakfast in America”? I don’t know, because I was covering my ears in embarrassment for the poor man at the time.
What am I saying? Roger McGough is that Scouser poet. Roger Hodgson, I meant. And it was “The Logical Song” :smack:
The scene from Swan Lake was good.