I know they didn’t collect donations, I’m talking about the money raised by ticket sales and such. Maybe they netted nothing, I don’t know.
Pink Floyd have seen their album sales rocket 13-fold, after being reunited on stage for the first time in more than 20 years. Fans have flocked to record stores to buy copies of the band’s greatest hits album. Sales of Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd are up 1,343 per cent at HMV.
The Who and Annie Lennox also registered massive increases, and with the exception of Pete Doherty – whose performance with Elton John was not well received – all the artists who performed have benefited from the publicity…
I just got back from Glastonbury last week, where Baaba Maal managed to keep tens of thousands of tasteful souls from the insipidity of Coldplay. In fact, Glastonbury had a whole stage devoted to world music, and still somehow managed to sell out 155,000 tickets at £125 each in less than two hours.
There were nine concerts put on around the world for Live 8, featuring such crowd-pulling luminaries as Crosby, Stills and Nash, Snow Patrol, Good Charlotte, Moral Code X, Spleen, even Chris de Burgh (CHRIS DE FUCKING BURGH!) and so forth. Excluding the event actually held in Jo’burg, there were about 150 performers. Do you know how many of those were of African birth?
Two.
And one was Dave Matthews.
Now, I don’t know what counts as “perpective and proportion”, but doesn’t that strike you as just a tad pathetic? No-one is suggesting that Floyd make way for, say, Femi Kuti, but y’know, since Coldplay were already on the bill, perhaps godawful-shite-alike imitators Keane could have been eschewed. Richard Ashcroft? Not exactly a stadium-filler even at the Verve’s height, sad to say. Pete Doherty? Well, I guess watching a junkie shamble through a shite cover or two is a bigger draw than someone with genuine talent. Etc., etc. and so forth.
I think Geldof has a much more realistic view of public taste than some in this thread. You put your African band on, you lose 80% of your audience. Simple as that. 15 minutes of a token African band no-one’s watching could be 15 minutes of re-formed, white, old guys that has another 8 million tuning in specifically to see. It might be wrong, might show a lack of taste, narrow musical horizons, a lack of curiosity to experience new things, whatever. But that’s the way it is. If you want people’s attention; give them what they want, not what you think they should have.
The concerts were not held to promote African bands (who most likely not the ones in poverty) or African music.
I like to think I have refined, broad and knowledgeable tastes in music, but I don’t really care for African music. Sorry, but it doesn’t do much for me. I wouldn’t make a point of watching it. But I might tune in to see white old guys (who I’ve no particular interest in either) out of curiousity just because they’re famous. Which is why I think Geldof had it right.
Popularity and taste have never been ad idem, DB 
I have never said a word about whether Geldof et al made the correct decisions from an aesthetic viewpoint.
What you are saying is that about 1.3% of the acts were African.
Do I need to dig up figures to prove what percentage of recorded music and concert attendance sales (outside Jo’burg) are African? If you think it’d be over 1% you’re living in fairyland.
What you just said suggests to me that based on local popularity, African acts were overrepresented.
Sorry, my third sentence should read:
"Do I need to dig up figures to prove what percentage of recorded music and concert attendance sales in the locations where the concerts were held (outside Jo’burg) are African? If you think it’d be over 1% you’re living in fairyland.
I can only agree with you on this one. The public’s continual fascination of the ‘romance’ of a rock tosser heading for an early grave is pathetic. People prefer their rock heros dead. And the idea he cares about African poverty is a bit of a joke too. There’s nothing more self-centred and selfish than a junkie.
But the fact is, he gets people’s attention, while Baaba Maal wouldn’t.
It’s not about the merits of any of the music. This is what many music fans won’t grasp. No-one cares what you think about Chris De Burgh, obviously he’s popular enough in Germany. (And no-one cares what you think about German tastes in music either.) It’s about getting an audience and getting their attention.
If you completely ignore that one of the 2 (two!) African-born acts was Dave Matthews, who can hardly be described as performing African music, and that the whole point of the thing was to raise awareness about African issues, sure. But given that that was the whole point of the events, having only one African playing African music (Youssou N’Dour) is, to my mind, pretty crap. Do you really think having a couple more would have made any difference to the attendances at what were, after all, many times over-subscribed gigs? And don’t you think it might have been appropriate, given the stated aim of the whole shebang?
I don’t know anyone who went “Ooh, Pete Doherty! I must enter for tickets forthwith!” The headliners (Madonna, Floyd, Coldplay) are what draw the crowds, and I absolutely think they should have been there (even though I can’t stand Coldplay, for example). My point is that there’s enough incidental filler (like Doherty) in there for there to have been considerable scope to include more African artists, whose presence would have been valuable both musically (IMHO) and from the POV of the event’s actual stated aim. If the sole aim of the festival had been to satisfy local tastes, then fine; you’d be absolutely right. But it wasn’t.
Maybe I’m just a cynical goit, but I think having Baaba Maal on for 20 minutes would get people thinking a lot more about Africa than some shite who couldn’t even be bothered to show up for his own set at Glasto, even if 100 times as many people had heard of the latter, prior to the show. And I don’t think the attendances would have changed one bit.
Its a real shame that the Live8 concert was scheduled on the same day as the Edinburgh “make poverty history” march, and blame can be squarely laid at the door of Bob Geldof for this. The media coverage of the event was diluted many, many times due to Live8. My wife went on it, along with an estimated two hundred thousand other people (great turnout), and it sounds like it was the perfect counterpoint to the celebrity-orientated, superficial presentation of Live8. Both events contrast one another nicely, and should have been held on alternate weekends. For Bob the twat to effectively muscle the edinburgh march off the front pages and TV sets is disgraceful.
Doesn’t this rather put the lie to the notion that this is somehow increasing people’s awareness and concern over poverty in sub-Saharan Africa? If they can’t sit for 15 minutes while an African musician performs (and Futile Gesture - you claim refined musical taste, but you’ve written off an entire continent?!) without being driven away, there’s very little chance they’re going to care or even listen to Jay-Z’s speech about poverty.
Each of the venues has about a dozen acts playing, and while I haven’t looked at the lineup everywhere, there’s plenty of filler on the U.S. list. Unless you really think substantial numbers of people came just for fifteen minutes of Def Leppard (if they did, then it says something terrifying about humanity) then they could have had an African musician with less exposure but more talent instead. If featuring 5 or 6 well-known pop acts and 2 or 3 African musicians would have reduced participation as compared to 5 or 6 well-known pop acts and 2 or 3 drug-addled 60 year olds in Depends, well, guess what? There were still plenty more people looking to get tickets than there were tickets available. It wouldn’t have hurt media exposure, either - news reporters are drawn to things like this like flies to shit.
The notion that including some African musicians would have somehow been poison to audiences is bizarre. I have no doubt that there’s some fans of Def Leppard somewhere, the event’s success did not hang on the presence of sixty-five year old white guys in skin tight animal-print pants. While featuring musicians from Africa might have hurt the Total Request Live feel of the event, as I recall it wasn’t supposed to just be some shitty music festival.
The Police and the organisers figure it was 225,000 who attended the march in Edinburgh.
I heard on local radio some of the organisers express their disappointment that their event, in planning for well over a year, was suddenly reduced to a sidebar to Geldof’s hurridly thrown together scheme. I suspect behind the scenes, they were fuming.
We also had a concert with a wide variety of music but it was smaller and meant mainly to entertain people waiting to march or who had already completed the circuit. I think Texas headlined at the last minute but there was also african, carribean, latin, celtic, jazz groups on.
And did the concert from the Eden Project not count as a live8 gig; they had a lot of world music also…
That supposes that there is a direct link between being aware of the politics of poverty and someone singing something in a language you don’t understand to music you don’t particularly like. The connection is less than obvious to me.
Sure, what I’ve heard of it. I know it’s very varied, and I don’t hate it. But I don’t think anyone should have to defend their taste in music. What other genres would you like me to write off? 
Depends what you think of Jay-Z, I suppose.
See immediately you’re basing your argument on a value judgement of the music. Who says the African musician is more talented? Who says their music is worth more than Def Leppard’s? And even if by every acceptable means of measurement Def Leppard were far and away less musically talented, it matters not a jot. It’s not about the music.
It’s not about who had tickets either, it’s the TV viewers. There’s far more old Def Leppard fans who may have tuned in to see them than there are fans of a minor African act, particularly among the populations of the G8 countries.
Live8 can be sullied?
It was bad enough last time, with millionaires ranting at me to dig in my pocket and ‘get my fucking money out’, while stoking their own grossly-inflated egos.
Now, it seems, they just want to raise ‘awareness’. Yeah, they’ve certainly raised my awareness. I’ve become really aware how lucky I am that these half-wits aren’t running the world.
If we have this notion about helping sub-Saharan Africa, it seems patronizing not to include, you know, Africans in it in some way. Besides, injections of money into a poor economy can have a substantial effect. If Pink Floyd’s records became 13 times more popular around the time of this event, a little-known artist would probably be even more heavily affected, and that would potentially end up helping people in Africa (assuming, of course, that the money made it into the African economy.)
Am I being whooshed here? It’s Def Leppard! I mean, I have no doubt that there exist less talented musicians in Africa, but frankly, it’s a small minority. It’s fucking Def Leppard for fuck’s sake!
No, but it’s already been explained how much the individual musicians are profiting off of it. Like I said, I think it’s self-congratulatory and not really about the poverty, either.
There are no doubt some people who tuned in just for Def Leppard. It can’t possibly be that many, though. I don’t buy this suggestion that if one or two of the filler bands were removed from the show, the audience numbers would have substantially decreased. That’s an assumption and one that’s hard to justify. I myself would have been more likely to tune in to see a musician I’d never heard of than the crapfest that made up the U.S. lineup, anyway.
Don’t worry, Snoop Dog is representing the Africans. He being African* himself and all.
*His…err…words, not mine.
You might’ve had a good point to begin with, but now you’re just being a twat. If I ever hear another Def Leppard song it’s possible that I’ll stick my pocketknife in my ear, but they can play their instruments.
You can irrationally and without any particular necessity “defend” your musical favorites from the nothing that is attacking them until your heart’s content, but come on. Def Leppard is irritating to us but they can play, and you just sound like the dumb bastards I’ve come across who say: “Who could like African music! It’s just negroes shouting over drums! I made music like that when I was a year old, that doesn’t take any talent!”
Come on. Grow up a little.
They’ve sold hundreds of millions of albums, and people will tune in to see them. Getting people to tune in is the name of the game. Period.
Now, if you’d suggested that someone who nobody has given a tin shit for in a decade years, like Tom Cochrane or Our Lady Peace, got the boot for an African artist, I would’ve agreed, and it would’ve made sense. Pick your battles.
Let me get this right, I had to sit through Maroon 5 singing “Rockin’ in the Free World” yet Neil Young sang it and some producer chose not to show that???
I’ll assume you’re being willfully disingenuous when you imply that these artists would generate anywhere near the “buzz” the current Live 8 roster does. That’s not to say they’re not vital and expert artists, but that African music does not enjoy pride of place on the current world stage. If you were to dress them up in midriff-baring t-shirts and rely on synthsizers, then perhaps.
And everyone knows the quickest way to a Grammy nomination is to piggyback on Ry Cooder.
As far as the money-raising…the corrupt government officials will see far more of it than will the poor and hungry. Did we (USA) solely create these situations? It’s debatable.