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07/04/2005:

"The music's over, the message lingers on"

It was, as Chris Martin of Coldplay put it, "the greatest thing that's ever been organised probably in the history of the world", and although veterans of the two world wars might have disagreed, for once the drift-net rock statement captured the mood.

...In the end, this is what saved the concert from mawkishness: the possibility of failure put steel in the atmosphere at Live 8.

"Come Monday morning, most people here will have probably forgotten a lot of what was said," said David Smithey, 26, a manager from south London, when it was all over. "But that's not the point. It's not us, now, who've got to remember."

At midday the approach to the park was a familiar pre-rock concert landscape of men weeing under trees, jocular police and a revivalist with a megaphone: "I used to be a sinner like you, now I'm a winner."

And then you heard the conversations. "Bono gets all his merchandise made in a cooperative factory in South Africa," said a girl in Top Shop's finest, made-up for a chance appearance on telly.

"Surely the key issue is debt cancellation," said a man waving an Arsenal flag. "Bob can get things done," said another.

A girl dragging a suitcase of provisions said: "I feel bad, I just bought a load of stuff from Harrods food hall when there are, you know, people in Africa ... " Her friends reassured her that this was precisely the issue they were there to confront.

"Tony Blair can't actually do anything," came the voice of a lone cynic, to which her companion fairly screamed: "YES HE CAN, he's got a percentage."

At the entrance, fans without tickets pleaded for spares, but apologetically, lest they be mistaken for touts and beaten to death.

The fear of anti-climax made the crowd initially jittery and the organisers seemed to feel it too; the outline of Richard Curtis could be seen hovering anxiously in the wings on stage. It took a while for people to find their voice. When Bono said "eight of the most powerful men on earth are meeting in Gleneagles in Scotland", a huge cheer went up and then abruptly stopped, as people wondered if they should rather be booing. "God bless you, Africa," said Bono, more straightforwardly, and so it began.

...The weirdest sequence of the night was Jon Bon Jovi live from Philadelphia to Brian Wilson in Berlin to Snoop Dogg in London, and then a short film about starving children in Africa. The crowd could not shift registers quickly enough and ragged cheers spilt over as horrendous imagery flashed up on the giant screens. "No," chided Sir Bob, coming on stage afterwards, "I don't think we clap that, do you?", before telling off the press for being a bunch of dirty cynics.

"Fock off, Bob!" someone called out, fondly.

...There were, of course, lots of warm, fuzzy and nonsensical statements from the stage, and it fell to Ms Dynamite, never one to shirk her duty, to remind everyone that "at the end of the day, we as a nation have robbed, killed, stolen and tortured the third world", and that if there was a debt to be paid, we owed it.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Except for the 'nonsensical statement' at the end which is the only thing that made any sense to me, this sounds like that harrowing "10 Minutes Hate" scene from 1984. Hitting the reptile brain button. The reptiles, of course, are fine, it's us humans that're the problem.