No doubt about it. "Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate
in Crisis" will be big.
Starting Friday night in Sydney, Australia, and working its way around the world - more than 150 musical acts through nine countries, including the concert at Giants Stadium next Saturday - for more than a day, Live Earth will raise awareness about climate change and conservation to a new historic level for a potential audience of 2 billion people.
Genesis will reunite for its first performance in more than a decade. So will Spinal Tap. And the concerts - set to be broadcast on TV, radio and the Internet - will be the first time for many fans to see the reunited versions of The Police, Crowded House and Smashing Pumpkins, alongside A-list appearances from Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers and
the Beastie Boys. Madonna has even written a song especially for the event called "Hey You," in which she sings about working together and starting change through personal actions, promising, "This could be good."
But "Hey You" may become Live Earth's theme song for another reason: It could use the additional attention.
Though Live Earth may go down as the biggest music event in history, it still has some hurdles to clear in order to secure a place in the public consciousness to match previous superstar concerts - from George Harrison's The Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden in 1971 to Live 8, at various cities around the world, in 2005.
In today's pop culture calculus, being bigger isn't nearly enough. Grand gestures need to be exponentially grander to make the same impact as the grand gesture that came before it.
"It gets harder and harder to capture people's attention," says Jim Henke, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's vice president of exhibitions and curatorial affairs. "In these days of information rage, it's hard to be that special or that different and there's a little bit of pressure to come up with that something special to bring attention to the cause.
"But there is still something to be said for having a lot of artists in one place," Henke continues. "There is still an interest in that. And that alone is enough to earn them a little spot in music history. More than raising money, it draws attention to the cause."
And that is what Live Earth organizers and performers are counting on. [
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