Live Earth

On Saturday, July 7, a series of concerts is to be held around the world called Live Earth to raise awareness of global warming, continuing the trend of mass media awareness of global warming spurred by the Al Gore documentary film from 2006, "An Inconvenient Truth". It will be held in pretty much every continent except Antarctica. The event will be held for 24 hours from a single time-zone point of view, given that the globe has 24 time zones. I went to liveearth.msn.com to find out who'd be playing each country. Thank goodness there's no Justin Timberlake! Ha, that must mean Justin Timberlake enjoys polluting teenage girls' minds AND the enviornment with his polluting lyrics and concerts! :p

As far as watching the event goes, the only way I personally can watch it is through condensed coverage on NBC on the evening of July 7 because I don't have cable TV. Zap2It.com reports for NBC's coverage: "Scheduled performances include Madonna, the Police, Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, Kelly Clarkson, Melissa Etheridge, Faith Hill, Fall Out Boy, Enrique Iglesias and the Red Hot Chili Peppers." Hmm, I'd tune in to watch RHCP and Clarkson. If I'm lucky, NBC might televise other American acts playing LE like Dave Matthews Band, Smashing Pumpkins, the Police, AFI, Roger Waters (formerly of the Who), Kanye West, and Alicia Keys. If not, then I'm sure some local radio stations will carry the event live with these artists.

And then I hope that NBC might carry some performances from outside the U.S., as some of my fave artists are playing internationally. For example, in Germany, the two American acts there will be Chris Cornell (formerly of Soundgarden) and rapper Snoop Dogg. Other American acts will perform in the UK: Beastie Boys, Black Eyed Peas, Foo Fighters, John Legend, and...let's hope they can still play well after that horrible "St. Anger" CD from 2003...METALLICA!!! RHCP and Madonna are playing the UK, so I see that NBC will televise a few international performances.

However, since I'm Chinese and enjoy Asian cultures very much, I've taken to finding streaming TV and radio stations from outside the USA that'll carry the Chinese and Japanese legs of the Live Earth event. I've seen the 12 Girls Band, who'll play Live Earth from Shanghai, on PBS before, and look forward to finding out more about them. Given that I've been a fan of Asian music since 2004, I will keep trying to find out if there's any streaming Asian TV channels that can carry Live Earth online. Or at least if not TV, then streaming radio. And then, there's Youtube, and possibly I can find LE on DVD/CD later on.

Finally, I've looked over the Australian and South African performance lists for Live Earth, and I've decided not to waste my time watching live performances from a jumbo of international musicians I've never heard of. I have more important things to get to like my summer homework and stuff like that.

And finally, Justin Timberlake doesn't care about the environment, just as Kanye West asserted after Hurricane Katrina that "George [W.] Bush doesn't care about black people".