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Live 8 was a series of benefit concerts that took place in July 2005, in the G8 nations and South Africa. They were timed to precede the G8 Conference and Summit held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland from 6-8 July 2005; they also coincided with the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. Running parallel with the UK's Make Poverty History campaign, the shows planned to pressure world leaders to drop the debt of the world's poorest nations, increase and improve aid, and negotiate fairer trade rules in the interest of poorer countries. Ten simultaneous concerts were held on 2 July and one on 6 July. On 7 July the G8 leaders pledged to double 2004 levels of aid to Africa from US$25 to US$50 billion by the year 2010.

More than 1,000 musicians performed at the concerts, which were broadcast on 182 television networks and 2,000 radio networks. *

Live Aid and Band Aid organizer Bob Geldof announced the event on 31 May 2005. Many former Live Aid acts offered their services to the cause. Prior to the official announcement of the event many news sources (see e.g. Midge Ure have since explicitly said they don't think of the event as the same as Live Aid. Geldof said "This is not Live Aid 2. These concerts are the start point for The Long Walk To Justice, the one way we can all make our voices heard in unison." [http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=643010" target="_blank" >*. Many of the Live 8 backers were also involved in the largely forgotten NetAid concerts.

Organizers of Live 8 presented the "Live 8 List" to the world leaders at the G8 summit. This is a list of names compiled from around the world of people who have voiced support of the Live 8 mission to "Make Poverty History" www.live8list.com. Names from the list also appeared on the giant televisions at each concert during the broadcast.

Some ticket holders placed their tickets on the auction site eBay, creating an uproar which included Geldof demanding that the company remove the auctions, even encouraging hackers to attack eBay. eBay later removed the tickets, after some controversy.

Other critics say that millionaire rock stars would make greater contribution by donating parts of their personal fortunes. Indeed, as some of the performers involved had been out of the public eye, some may have perceived the concert as a way of getting back "into the spotlight". However, it is important to note that Live 8, unlike Live Aid, wasn't intended to raise money, but awareness and political pressure.

An official Live 8 DVD set was released on 7 November 2005 internationally, 8 November 2005 in the United States. It was released almost a year to the day after the release of the DVD of Live Aid on November 8 2004.

Concerts

There were ten concerts held on 2 July 2005, most of them simultaneously. The first to begin was held at the Makuhari Messe in Japan, with Rize being the first of all the Live 8 performers. During the opening of the Philadelphia concert, Will Smith led the combined audiences of London, Philadelphia, Berlin, Rome, Paris and Barrie (outside Toronto) in a synchronised finger click. This was to represent the death of a child every three seconds, due to poverty.

Bob Geldof was at the event in Hyde Park, London and made numerous appearances on stage, including a performance of "I Don't Like Mondays". Some of these were also shown to other venues. Special guests appeared throughout the concerts, with Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and Bill Gates making a speech at the London show and Nelson Mandela appearing in the South African venue. Guest presenters, ranging from sporting stars to comedians, also introduced acts.

Included in the line-up were Pink Floyd, reunited with former bassist/lyricist Roger Waters for the first time in over 24 years. The complete foursome had not performed together since a show at Earls Court in London on June 17, 1981.

The final event was held in Edinburgh on 6 July 2005 and went by the name Edinburgh 50,000 - The Final Push. It featured further performances from some of the artists from the other concerts, and was the closest of the eleven to the actual location of the G8 summit.

Key events

  • 31 May 2005: Official announcement of Live 8 concerts by Bob Geldof.

  • June 1, 2005: Bob Geldof calls for a million people to descend upon Edinburgh in a "Long Walk to Justice", on July 6, the first day of the G8 summit at Gleneagles. Geldof is immediately criticised by Lothian and Borders Police chief constable Ian Dickenson for encouraging such a large crowd to assemble in Edinburgh with such little notice and no consultation with local authorities about how to accommodate so many people.

  • 3 June 2005: British Chancellor Gordon Brown announces that VAT will be waived on the cost of the London concert. He estimates that this will save the organisers £500,000. * He also supported Geldof's call for a peaceful protest rally in Scotland.

  • 6 June 2005: Text lottery launches in the UK for tickets for the London concert. 1.5 million text messages are received in the first day.

  • 7 June 2005: Midge Ure announces a concert to be held in Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, Scotland on 6 July as the climax to the proposed rally.

  • 11 June 2005: G8 finance ministers agree to cancel the debt owed by 18 of the poorest countries.

  • 14 June 2005: eBay announces that they will block the selling-on of tickets after Geldof calls on the public to rally against the internet auction site.

  • 15 June 2005: Peter Gabriel announces he will organize a sixth simultaneous Live 8 concert dubbed "Africa Calling" featuring all African artists, to counter criticisms that most performers announced to date are white. The event is to be held in Cornwall, southwest England, on 2 July. Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour will host the event, which will also feature performances by African performers Maryam Mursal, Salif Keita and Thomas Mapfumo. *

  • 21 June 2005: Damon Albarn, who recently criticised Live 8 for the lack of African artists, is now reportedly happy about Live 8 now that they have addressed his criticism. He told a reporter: "I have said certain things in relation to the density of African performers... In some way that's been addressed and that's really good... Live 8 will make a difference - it's already created a debate that we're all involved in." *. Albarn's band Blur was originally a part of the Live 8 line-up, but withdrew after complaining of the event being too "Anglo-Saxon".

  • 23 June 2005: All 35,000 tickets for Canadian show are taken within 20 minutes of being made available online *.

  • 28 June 2005: ABC say they will broadcast a two-hour highlights event at 8 p.m. ET on 2 July in prime time.

  • 2 July 2005: AOL Music begins broadcasting streams from each city live and on-demand at AOLmusic.com*.

  • 2 July 2005: The march against poverty in Edinburgh starts and continues mostly peacefully, with an estimate of 200,000 people involved with the march. Main concerts start.

  • 8 July 2005: The G8 summit ends. Leaders pledge to increase aid to developing countries by US$50 billion overall by 2010, including an increase of US$25 billion in aid for Africa.

  • 8 July 2005: Live 8 organizer Bob Geldof thanks the G8 for meeting the Live 8 goal.

  • 25 October 2005: Official Live 8 Africa Calling at the Eden Project DVD releases.

Live 8 list

We don't want your money, we want your voice.
- Bono

The Live Aid concert, held in 1985, was a massive fundraising effort which accumulated approximately £79 million, which was sent to the world's poorest countries in aid.

The Live 8 concert was not a fundraising event of any kind; rather, the organisers were hoping that it would spur people's political interest. The event coincided with the 2005 G8 summit at the Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire, Scotland, and the idea behind it was to overwhelm the eight politicians attending with the amount of public support for the principles of the Make Poverty History campaign.

An enormous petition with (presently) over 38 million names is available to be signed on the Internet. Named the "Live 8 List", this can be reached via the Live8 List page. Millions of paper petitions and emails have already been submitted.

Tickets

Although the concerts were free, 66,500 pairs of tickets for the Hyde Park concert were allocated from the 13 June 2005 to 15 June 2005, to winners of a mobile phone text message competition that began on Monday, 6 June 2005. Entry involved sending the answer to a multiple choice question via a text message costing £1.50. Winners were drawn at random from those correctly answering the question. Over two million texts were sent during the competition, raising £3 million. Thus texters had a roughly one-in-28 chance of winning a pair of tickets. The first £1.6m raised is to be given to the Prince's Trust, who in turn will donate to the Help A London Child charity. The Prince's Trust usually host the Party in the Park concert in Hyde Park in July. This event was cancelled in 2005 to make way for Live 8. The £1.6m donation will act as a quid pro quo. Funds raised beyond the £1.6m "will go to pay for the costs of Live 8, as it is a free event", according to the Live 8 website.

Some lucky people who won tickets immediately placed them for sale on the Internet auction site eBay, with the intention of making a profit. This was heavily criticised by the organisers of the event, including Bob Geldof. Initially, eBay defended their decision to allow the auctions to go ahead, stating that there were no laws against their sale. They also promised to make a donation to Live 8 that would be "at least equal to any fees" they would be making for such sales. Many people, angered by others seemingly using Live 8 to make money, placed fake bids for millions of pounds for such auctions in an attempt to force the sellers to take them off sale. It was later announced that eBay, under pressure from the British government, the public, as well as Geldof himself, would withdraw all auctions of the tickets. Others have argued, though, that selling the tickets would not have done any harm to the people Live 8 is supposed to be helping and it would have allowed those who missed the random selection a chance to go to the concert.

Similar scalper situations arose for the Edinburgh and Canadian shows, and eBay halted sales of those tickets as well. In fact, the 35,000 free tickets for the Canadian show were all distributed in just 20 minutes on 23 June 2005, Ticketmaster reported. *

Rally and protest in Edinburgh

On July 2, the same day as the Live 8 concerts, a rally and protest march was held in central Edinburgh, near the Gleneagles venue for the G8 conference later that week. This protest had been organised by the Make Poverty History group and local authorities as part of a series of events in Edinburgh commemorating the G8 conference, and had been planned for months before the announcement of Live 8.

An estimated total of 225,000 people took part, making it the largest ever protest in the Scottish capital. The marchers had been asked to wear white to make a symbolic ring of white through the city, matching the Make Poverty History white wristband. Marchers were addressed by celebrities, political and religious leaders who supported the reduction of world poverty.

A group at the head of the procession through the city were dressed in business suits. They raised applause from the marchers by stopping to bow before Starbucks and McDonald's while chanting "Two, four, six, eight, we really must accumulate." .

I want to pay tribute to the crowd of 225,000 who came and cooperated with the police to make this a successful and memorable occasion. I also want to pay tribute to the organizers of the march who have achieved their objectives through meticulous planning and cooperation.
Chief Constable Ian Dickenson

Criticisms

A lack of African presence

London-based group Black Information Link described the list of performers at the Hyde Park event as "hideously white" noting that Youssou N'Dour, Ms Dynamite and Snoop Dogg were the only non-white performers scheduled to perform at the event. Damon Albarn re-iterated this criticism, saying that "This country * Stevie Wonder, Black Eyed Peas, Alicia Keys, Destiny's Child, Jay-Z and Kanye West also turned up at Philadelphia to perform while Will Smith, Don Cheadle, Black Ice, Kami, and Chris Tucker made appearances as presenters. Albarn reportedly eventually became happy about Live 8, feeling that his criticisms had been addressed. He told a reporter on 21 June:
"I have said certain things in relation to the density of African performers... In some way that's been addressed and that's really good... Live 8 will make a difference – it's already created a debate that we're all involved in."

A Live 8 spokesman said that a number of black performers had been approached to participate and that the event would feature a "large urban element", and pointed to the number of artists of African descent like Ms. Dynamite. However, Youssou N'Dour and Dave Matthews of Dave Matthews Band, remained the only African-born artists signed to perform at the main concerts. Bob Geldof originally said that this was because he had aimed for the biggest-selling, most popular artists to ensure a large television audience; but critics noted that even if this was acceptable as the sole criterion for inclusion, some of the minor white artists signed up were substantially less well-known than some major African artists. Bob Geldof has been accused of compounding the original error by announcing an entirely African line-up ("Africa Calling") at a concert to be held at the Eden Project in Cornwall on the same day as the main Live 8 concerts. *

Artists' careers

As with many charity events before it, Live 8 has come in for some criticism in the media. Some of these criticisms are not specific to Live 8 but representative of a particular point of view concerning western attitudes towards Africa. However, some criticisms were directed at Geldof himself and the motives for Live 8:

I am coming, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Live 8 is as much to do with Geldof showing off his ability to push around presidents and prime ministers as with pointing out the potential of Africa. Indeed, Geldof appears not to be interested in Africa's strengths, only in an Africa on its knees. *

Geldof is criticised for using Africa as "a catwalk" which is more about reviving the careers of ageing rock stars than about helping the poor in Africa. For example, some fans and music critics feel that some of the lineups, such as that in Barrie, are not only largely ethnically homogeneous but not likely to connect with, or speak to, younger fans ("Live 8 organizer dismisses criticism..." Globe and Mail article).

Many believed that it was hypocrisy that many of the performing artists had tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars of "spare cash" lying in their bank accounts whilst wanting to "Make Poverty History". Counter-critics, however, point out that these celebrities are still not rich enough to be able to cancel the debts of nations. Damon Albarn also suggested that the performers' record labels should pay "a tariff" as the accompanying publicity would increase future record sales and hence their profits. Live 8, it is important to note, is not a charity event. Indeed, public figures and media have since called on the artists and their record labels to donate the profits of increased sales that followed appearance at the event (see "...Live 8 profits plea" BBC article, for example).

More criticism has been leveled at some of the performers based on what they took home for participating in the Philadelphia concert. While they received no monetary compensation, some were given gift bags containing lavish gifts and designer goodies - including Gibson guitars and Hugo Boss suits - valued at approximately $3000 (see "Fancy gifts at odds with cause?" The Philadelphia Inquirer). None of the items appeared to have been fairly-traded, sweatshop-free or environmentally friendly.

No Spice Allowed

Thanks to Live 8, people all around the world were able to watch the historic reunion of Pink Floyd with former bassist/lyricist Roger Waters. But another group was supposed to perform at the event, as the tabloids kept talking about the Spice Girls coming back for a last appearance together. Although the story behind this performance that never happened was more known only by people at the UK, news and rumours kept everyone for months unsure whether their reunion was true or not.

The Spice Girls did intend to perform together at the Live 8. Even Melanie C, usually against a group's reunion, and Geri Halliwell, the one who left the group in 1998, announced that they wanted to take part in it. However, the organizers of the event, including Geldof, initially announced that the Spice Girls would not be at Live 8, due to their music "not being political enough" (which struck some fans as a hypocritical due to the relatively non-political performers' Mariah Carey and Robbie Williams inclusion in the event).

Since many people expressed how they wanted the Spice Girls to perform, including rapper Eminem and Coldplay´s frontman Chris Martin, the organizers decided to accept them in the event, provided all five of the group's original members were present.

Everything seemed fine, as Geri, Melanie C, Emma Bunton and Victoria Beckham all agreed to perform as a group. But Geldof mentioned that Melanie Brown, the fifth spice girl, wasn't too sure if she wanted to be there or not.

During this time, the tabloids created a series of rumors about whether they would be there or not, as a surprise or not. In the end, Brown decided not to take part in Live 8 as she was working on a yet-unreleased television script, so none of the girls sung on stage. Nevertheless, Melanie C, Geri Halliwell and Victoria Beckham still supported the event in photo and voice ads, as well as attending the event, as part of the audience.

British comedian Peter Kay played a cruel trick on The Spice Girls fans in the audience when he was scheduled to present one of the acts. After several minutes of building up the upcoming act, he introduced The Spice Girls (most of the crowd cheered) and then looked confusingly backstage, supposedly enquiring as to who he was introducing: "The what? The who?" He then turned back to the crowd with a smile on his face and introduced The Who.

Late Ending

The show was originally scheduled to end at around 8:00pm (BST), but due to new artists being added, the planned finishing time was extended to 9:30pm. Due to the need to send tickets a few weeks early, they had the original 8 p.m. finishing time printed on them.

The show ran much later after Bob Geldof decided to perform and many of the other acts decided to give speeches. There was a large panic backstage, as revealed on a BBC1 documentary. Backstage crew had to run into the Golden Circle to find Tessa Jowell, the British Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. She then held an emergency backstage meeting and it was decided that the show would go on. This panic was due to the chance of London being gridlocked if people missed their train. The early ending would have meant fans missing out on bands including The Who and Pink Floyd. The "Hey Jude" finale ended up finishing at around midnight after George Michael duetted with Paul McCartney.

The Daily Mail commented on the event for running two hours late, with a frontpage headline reading "Live L8" (Live Late).

Swearing and Censorship

Despite the show being broadcast before the watershed in many countries, there was no attempt at censorship. The BBC apologised * for an instance when Madonna asked the audience "are you fucking ready, London?", and for Snoop Dogg's performance which contained the use of swear words without censorship. Madonna also swore repeatedly during her following song, Music, where she said "Come on, I want to see all you fuckers dancing". Robbie Williams and Razorlight also swore during their performances, but Williams' was after the watershed.

In the official DVD release of the concerts, Madonna's pre-song cursing was not included while her in-song cursing was. On the other hand, almost half of Snoop Dogg's performance was not made available. Robbie Williams' "Hyde Park, you look fucking beautiful tonight" as well as Midge Ure's "I find it amazing, that Bob can do his fantastic thing and then fucking turn this on for me" remain from the Edinburgh concert.

In the United States, MTV censored swear words from the performances it broadcast, except for the word "bullshit" as part of the lyrics to Pink Floyd's "Money". ABC drew criticism when they aired a highlights special of The Who's performance of "Who Are You?" without censorship of the lyric "who the fuck are you?".

Other

Although the concerts in London and Philadelphia had the biggest stars lining up, both concerts are currently not available in their original, full version. Several artists' performances were cut to one or two songs, including Bon Jovi and Dido.

Criticism was drawn from viewers of MTV, VH1 (and possibly other networks), in which the broadcaster cut to commercials while bands were still performing, specifically Pink Floyd and The Who. Criticism was also aimed at MTV and VH1 for focusing too much on ill-informed VJs and not enough on the music. In some instances, VJs referred to the event at "Live 8 2005" or even "Live Aid 8" proving that they had little or no knowledge of the cause going into the event.

Very few of Live 8's songs were played in full by MTV and almost none of them were broadcast live, leading some to say that MTV may have covered the event but they did not broadcast it. The following weekend, MTV and VH1 broadcast six hours of a commercial-free special devoted to Live 8 showing full performances in response to the heavy criticism. Still, this broadcast was a mere snippit compared to the extensive BBC coverage.

The MTV and VH1 Live 8 broadcasts were a complete betrayal of the foundations upon which the networks were built. It was a far cry from the comparative coverage of Live Aid, which aired live from the London opening to the Philadephia close.

In the weeks leading up to Live 8, The Daily Mirror began a petition, garnering support for British rock legends Status Quo. Originally offered a 6 p.m. slot, the Quo already had commitments in Ireland and therefore they requested an earlier slot. The Daily Mirror's petition, titled "No Quo, No Show", was backed by thousands though eventually nothing came of it. One proposed rationale behind this was a rumour that Geldof was angered at Quo's reference to there being "a lot of drugs" at Live Aid in 1985.

Legacy

On July 2, 2006, BBC 1, CTV and MTV broadcast Live 8: What a Difference a Day Makes. In the U.K., the special was 60 minutes as compared in the U.S. version on MTV running at 90 minutes. The special was aired on MTV at 7:30 a.m. eastern time, giving nearly no chance for those to be made aware of the broadcast. Instead of airing the special late at night, MTV aired their normal broadcasting schedule for Sundays, again adding to the criticism of MTV's lack of care for Live 8.

This lack of care may be due to the paucity of Americans at the organizational level of the event. Generally, Americans tended to view the event as a European-thing or a 'non-American' event and, as such, ignored it.

In a report issued in June 2006 the G8 have reportedly not lived up to their promises set in 2005. According to DATA, the U.S. has increased its development-assistance pledges but is increasingly off-track in meeting them and, in general, the G8 is moving slowly in the effort to meet its promises. *

Some consider Live 8 to be a success, including Bob Geldof himself. However, many believe it was a publicity stunt and a failure as the G8 have already forgotten their pledges. * Geldof also believes that public attention was quickly diverted by the London bombings on July 7.

See also

References

Further reading

Make Poverty History | Musical advocacy groups | Rock festivals | Benefit concerts

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Live 8".

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