Live Blogging Live Earth.

2:49 EST: Now I have a lot of work to do today, and I really shouldn't be doing this but after turning to the TV on two or three occassions in the last ten hours and finding myself unavoidably drawn to this strange, inevitably bizzare enterprise that is Live Earth, and now after having just watched Metallica finish up their set in London where front man James Hetfield just asked the crowd on his exit if "They were really alive?" - it was then that I realized that this is the very question that I spontaneously posited on this very blog when I set it up and noticed that the good people at Blogspot requested just such a a question (I think, I can't really remember why I wrote it down.) what can I tell you? Such synchronicitiesspeak to me in a deeply profound way, and I realized that this was going to be something that I just have to do. Some author, (I forget who) once said 'Listen to what the earth is telling you'. Oh ... um ... alright ... okay. Besides, I am a huge fan of irony, in all its forms. (Another author: "Irony is the glory of the slaves." Thank-you Hitchens.) And Live Earth is just giving it out in spades. Big time. And just I can't turn away.

Honestly, I'm just bored and lonely and could probably use the practice. Not that - ANYBODY'S ACTUALLY OUT THERE?

2:53:EST: Okay. Things are happening pretty fast, and I will definitely get back to Metallica, but Spinal Tap have now taken the stage in what is probably going to be the most important set of the day. What does it mean to have Spinal Tap follow Metallica? Or actually on the stage at the SAME TIME in different parts of the world. Is this some programmer's idea of a joke? If it is, its hilarious. Spinal Tap has made so hard to take a lot of bands seriously, and I would think Metallica are periously close to being in the category. They - Spinal Tap - already ripped through 'Stonehenge' - "whatever happened to the good people of Stonehenge?" - and then moved on to the 'their song about the Earth, 'their favourite planet, not the moon, not Jupiter' - "Woman in Hell" - and are now into some supergroup thing with a bunch of members including James Blunt and a one of the members of the Beastie Boys singing 'Big Bottomed Woman' . (My TV is pretty fuzzy by the way, and I have a hard time making a lot shit out, so forgive me my own fuzziness.) 'Its like they never left' - says the great Tanya Kim.

3:01: EST: Alright. Now back to Metallica. I can't say that I have ever actually liked Metallica, but I think I can say that I do harbour some affection for them, if that makes any sense. I think this harkens back to my Varsity Athletics daze (not telling) where we used to warm-up to Enter Sandman:



I think the idea was that we were scary and very good, which was only partially true.

I couldn't watch Metallica without remebering that scene in Some Kind of Monster (a film that I loved for its assorted revelations) where James Hetfield leaves band practice to go to Siberia for a couple of weeks, drink a lot of vodka and shoot a bear. But of course that is before he quits drinking and enters therapy.

"I have never opened myself up in this way", he sings to the Wembley Stadium crowd - with guys covered in tatoos and goatees, raising their plastic cups of beer and singing along. British Headbangers! - in some song that I have heard before but don't know the title of. So, whatever, good on him. They play the song while images of elephants - and the backsides of elephants - and factories are projected on the screens behind them. It would be tough to underestimate just how collosall (spelling?) this band is, around the world. Maybe only Guns n' Roses is bigger. And if a band of such epic, world chewing proportions and power- with record titles like Search and Destroy, and Kill 'em All - can all of a sudden 'GET GREEN', its almost enough to make me blieve in this shit. Maybe its been ironic all along - this Metallic schtick? Maybe in some weird, Brechtian exercise in audience alienation Metallica have always meant to embody that raw force of cosumption, capitalism and war that will eventually devour the entire earth. They have just been a warning all along! That was the fucking point! Metalheads! Headbangers! What was amazing about Some Kind of Monster was just how lost the band seemed. How this huge thing that they created - once they sobered up and entered therapy - they couldn't really understand anymore. And they didn't even know if they wanted to do it anymore. They were lost, and angry, and massively wealthy. And all the chicks and the beer and the money were no longer enough.

James Blunt is so fucking lame. Whenever he sings anything I feel like bashing in my skull with a cinder block.

And I like Alica Keyes. But Keith Urban singing 'Gimme Shelter' is just a crime upon humanity. That song rocks, and he is coming periously close to murdering it forever. And just so that we don't all lose our souls:



phew.

The Beastie Boys are on in London. I love the Beastie Boys. And they sure are something live, let me tell you. and they definitely know when to let the beat ...................... drop. But I can barely make them out on my pathetic TV. So, yeah, once again:



The perennial question that we all need to answer for ourselves. Nobody can do it for you - EARTH!

But back to Metallica.

"Are you out there?" James Hetfield screams to the crowd before they leave the stage.

"If you're out there, make some noise if you give a shit!" Which just kills me so much. Perhaps if you give shit, you need to make a lot LESS noise, and thats the point. Just what are the carbon emissions involved in making noise. But perhaps I am wrong and the Live Earth people, and Metallica, are right. I'm trying to remain open. Who am I to say.