{"id":192,"date":"2007-07-07T19:51:50","date_gmt":"2007-07-08T02:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.remarc.com\/craig\/?p=192"},"modified":"2007-07-08T06:48:14","modified_gmt":"2007-07-08T13:48:14","slug":"what-i-learned-by-watching-liveearth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"What I learned by watching LiveEarth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.liveearth.org\/\"><img ALT=\"live earth australia logo\" SRC=\"images\/australia_800x600.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve had <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.liveearth.org\/\">LiveEarth<\/a> &#8212; Al Gore&#8217;s climate crisis concert extravaganza &#8212; on in the background while blogging tonight.  I&#8217;ve learned a few things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Madonna plays a decent rhythm guitar.<\/li>\n<li>Recycled tires and oil drums can be used to good effect as a stage background.<\/li>\n<li>Kelly Clarkson has some pipes.  (I had no clue she won American Idol.  Maybe AI voters are smarter than I give them credit for.)<\/li>\n<li>Red Hot Chili Peppers are, indeed, hot.<\/li>\n<li>The Beasty Boys can still belt out Sabotage.<\/li>\n<li>Drink enough gin and even Bon Jovi sounds pretty good.<\/li>\n<li>Lenny Kravitz = Jimi Hendrix wannabe.<\/li>\n<li>Bobby Kenedy would be great heading up EPA, but I already knew that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m sorry I missed the Spinal Tap set featuring a performance of <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dU3H1Um4Ju4\">Stonehedge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to dismiss efforts such as these as all hype.  But I don&#8217;t.  I see the names of kids (mostly kids, I guess) scrolling across the screen who at least took the time to visit the <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.liveearth.org\/\">LiveEarth website<\/a> and took the <a HREF=\"http:\/\/liveearthpledge.org\/answer_the_call.php\">LiveEarth pledge<\/a>, and I&#8217;m\u00c2\u00a0encouraged.  And I recall a similar concert more than 20 years ago, just about this time of year.<\/p>\n<p>On July 13. 1985,  Bob Geldof and Midge Ure&#8217;s <a HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Live_Aid\">LiveAid concert<\/a> reached 1.5 billion people worldwide to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia.<\/p>\n<p>I was a wired gardener back then, too.  I remember weeding and listening along with the rest of the world on my cassette player\/FM radio strapped to my belt, and realizing (while Phil Collins was singing &#8220;I can feel it coming in the air tonight &#8230; &#8220;) that the world had changed.<\/p>\n<p>Is there still hunger in Ethiopia?  You bet.  But while I&#8217;m no fan of unfettered globalization, I&#8217;m glad that word travels faster and farther than it did just a generation ago.  We&#8217;ve still got some work to do to make sure that that word is truth.  But I, for one, am hopeful.<\/p>\n<p>Look for Al to declare in October or November.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Updated\/bonus track:<\/strong>  So they could get a venue on every continent, LiveEarth included a pre-recorded performance by Nunatak &#8212; a garage band of British researchers in Antarctica.  (Do they have garages in Antarctica?)  They&#8217;re not bad, really &#8212; especially when you consider how cold their hands must be.<\/p>\n<p><object HEIGHT=\"350\" WIDTH=\"425\"><param VALUE=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/scsxbv-0qWc\" NAME=\"movie\"><\/param><param VALUE=\"transparent\" NAME=\"wmode\"><\/param><embed HEIGHT=\"350\" WIDTH=\"425\" wmode=\"transparent\" TYPE=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" SRC=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/scsxbv-0qWc\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had LiveEarth &#8212; Al Gore&#8217;s climate crisis concert extravaganza &#8212; on in the background while blogging tonight. I&#8217;ve learned a few things: Madonna plays a decent rhythm guitar. Recycled tires and oil drums can be used to good effect as a stage background. Kelly Clarkson has some pipes. (I had no clue she won &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/?p=192\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What I learned by watching LiveEarth&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,37,22,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-meta","category-music","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellishollow.remarc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}