Live 8 and Africa

Most of you probably heard the big broo-ha-ha (I have never written out that expression before) surrounding these world wide concerts. It was a huge event here in England with the most popular bands in the world playing for a great cause.

The idea behind it was to raise awareness about the problems of poverty and disease in Africa, and to put pressure on the politicians at the G8 conference to do something about it. While I have little to no faith in the politicians to come up with something effective, I have to admit it is a very difficult problem. It is not something you can just throw a bunch of money at to make it better.

The poor African countries are filled with corrupt politicians who prevent the money from getting to the people who need it (kind of like in America, except on a much more tragic scale). In addition many of the countries are still plagued by the tribal warfare that has been going on for centuries.

There was an article on the BBC news this morning about Liberia (the country I lived in for a year and a half when I was five years old). The country has been plagued by warring tribes and political unrest for years and years. When we lived in the country, there had just been a political coup (the existing government had all been shot, and their heads were put on stakes for every one to see). The country was filled with soldiers carrying machine guns. When we were there things were relatively peaceful, but still quite tense (a factor which led to us moving back to England sooner than planned). Violence has continued in Liberia since then, but for the last two years they have had a stable government. The problem is that the stable government is completely corrupt. According to the BBC story, over half of the country's income is spent on the politicians themselves. Until recently, there was no paid police force. The police subsisted on bribes and extortion.

This is a subject that is close to my heart. My parents met and married in Kenya, I have lived in Liberia, and I have grown up in a house filled with African artifacts. All these things have created some kind of a bond. Africa is such a beautiful country, and in general Africans are a beautiful, vibrant people. I have always been impressed with the friendliness and acceptance of Africans (from many different African countries), it is such a tragedy that their continent is so filled with pain and suffering.

Live 8 and the Live Music

So I spent most of the day on Saturday watching the "Live 8" concert. I also spent a fair amount of time watching the Glastonbury festival. The Glastonbury festival is one of England's largest popular music festivals. It is a weekend long, thousands of people come and camp, and it always rains (kind of like Wimbledon).

I love watching live music. It brings together so many elements that are fascinating to me. I love watching how the stage is set up, the different mics, speakers, mixers, amplifiers, guitars, and gear that are used. I love seeing how the musicians present themselves on stage. All of the posturing to look cool, some trying way too hard to get the crowd going, some looking way too miserable, or angry.

Most of all I love to see how well they can perform their music live. Nothing puts me off more than a band who gets up to play, and then has a backing track playing with all kinds of prerecorded instruments and sound effects and backing vocals. If I want to listen to a recording, I'll put on the CD. I don't expect the band to sound exactly like the album (especially with today's heavily produced music), in fact I look forward to hearing a different live rendition of the songs.

I actually really enjoyed some of the bands. Paul McCartney played "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with U2 which was really cool (especially the four French horn players who played the horn part). McCartney said that he had never performed the song live before.

Coldplay put on a great show as always, although Chris Martin (the lead singer, and usually piano player) made several mistakes while playing guitar and once had to start a song over again. I do expect more from a full time professional band, but it does make me feel a little better about myself. I make that kind of mistake all the time, but at best I practice my music for an hour a night.

Usually, I am completely opposed to anything that resembles pop music, but there were a couple of bands that I really liked. One of them was a British band called Razorlight. They have really good songs, good vocals, and great sounding guitars. The downside was that the lead singer did this "Jim Morrison" kind of a thing where he stripped his shirt off (nothing like a pale, flabby English boy in tight white jeans) and ran around in the crowd. Another guy who was really good was Craig David. He is an R&B singer who had only an acoustic guitar player backing him (no convoluted thumping rhythm track). The Acoustic guitar player was amazing and the vocals were spot on.

One last confession. I saw Will Smith playing at the Philly concert and I really liked it. He was doing "Summer Summer Summer Summer Time", and I got a little nostalgic for the old American summer. For the first time I realized that Monday was the fourth of July, and I would be working.