Did the G8 concerts exceed expectations?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the G8 concerts, specifically the Live8 event, and whether it exceeded expectations in raising awareness about global poverty and economic inequality. Participants share their experiences and opinions about the musical performances, the effectiveness of the event in promoting its cause, and the overall public awareness surrounding it.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express enthusiasm for the musical performances, highlighting artists like Madonna and Snoop Dogg as particularly impactful.
  • Others note the absence of rap and R&B groups in the Canadian version of the concert, suggesting a lack of diversity in the lineup.
  • There are comments about the perceived lack of promotion for the event in the US, with some participants feeling that it was poorly advertised and thus not widely recognized.
  • Some participants question the effectiveness of the concert in raising awareness about poverty, suggesting that discussions have focused more on the music than the cause.
  • A few participants mention the record number of text messages sent in support of Live8, but express skepticism about the actual impact on public consciousness regarding poverty.
  • Concerns are raised about the political nature of the event, with some arguing that it lacked a clear political message or action plan.
  • There is a discussion about the disconnect between the concert and other initiatives aimed at addressing poverty, with references to various projects and the role of the UN.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on whether the concerts exceeded expectations. While some appreciate the musical performances, others criticize the event's promotional efforts and question its effectiveness in raising awareness about poverty.

Contextual Notes

Participants express varying levels of awareness and engagement with the event, indicating that the impact of the concert may differ significantly by region. There are also unresolved questions about the political implications and effectiveness of the concert in achieving its goals.

Spin_Network
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UK Report, please add your thoughts from your continent's concerts?

What a DAY!..musically fantastic
I guess the only thing will be for the G8/9 leaders to comply!

Free Africa of Poverty and Trade inequality.

I have to say that Madonna was superb..her backing choir was pretty moving..Joss Stone again..superb.
 
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no rap/r&b groups in Canada's version =[
 
neurocomp2003 said:
no rap/r&b groups in Canada's version =[

Here in the UK we had Snoop Dogg..he was pretty cool live..Robbie Williams has just come on here..I will give a wider comment on all the Artists soon... :cool:

P.S can someone from Philly give an overview of the Artists and their performance's?..I would like to hear how Dave Mathews Band performed?
 
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Spin_Network said:
UK Report, please add your thoughts from your continent's concerts?

What a DAY!..musically fantastic
I guess the only thing will be for the G8/9 leaders to comply!

Free Africa of Poverty and Trade inequality.

I have to say that Madonna was superb..her backing choir was pretty moving..Joss Stone again..superb.

Link for anyone to view:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4641999.stm
 
Live8..Can anything top today?
Only if the problem of Global Poverty and Economic Inequality can be solved, and a sustained effort and liberty and justice for all can be maintained.

Entertainment is one thing - it's the hard work that follow that counts.
 
neurocomp2003 said:
no rap/r&b groups in Canada's version =[

I know! Wasn't it GREAT! :smile:
 
I didn't watch it, I hadn't even heard of it until someone here posted about it. I wouldn't have watched it anyway though, I don't care for watching bands on tv.
 
Was there even a show on the west coast? I don't remember hearing about anything. All I've been listening to lately anyway is orchestral music from the late romantic period and the Revenge of the Sith soundtrack.
 
lol i love it. They did this to "raise awareness for poverty" yet every thread I've seen in every forum in every discussion has been about the music. Must have been some damn fine musicians for the cause to be overshadowed so much. I hear Jay-z performed so i assumed the music couldn't have been THAT good.
 
  • #10
That's what I've noticed from the threads here, it's a shame.

What also amazes me is how poorly they advertised this, at least here in the US, I had not seen anything about it on the tv, or news, including online news links. No one I have spoken to had even heard of it. Can you say FLOP?

I guess it was advertised in Europe?
 
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  • #11
Maybe it'll pick up next week to coincide with the summit. Hopefully the people at G8 will snap their fingers and make poverty disappear. :rolleyes:
 
  • #12
Evo said:
I guess it was advertised in Europe?


We've not been able to escape from it. It's been on every piece of news, every TV and radio station, and in every newspaper for the past few weeks. I was going to say I'm shocked that it hasn't made an impact there (Moonbear didn't know what I was on about either), but it really doesn't surprise me. I think Bush is trying to play it down anyway...
 
  • #13
Since when is Bush responsible for promoting a concert? Unless he coerced the FCC into outlawing radio and television ads to promote Live 8, how can this possibly be his fault? If people, including myself, never realized there was a concert until after the fact, that is the fault of the concert promoters.

Then again, I don't watch much TV and only watch movies on cable or sports when I do. I only listen to sports talk radio if I listen to radio at all, and I hardly even pay attention to the news anymore, except for what appears on the yahoo front page.
 
  • #14
Because by law, your allowed to blame Bush for anything and everything under the sun without question.
 
  • #15
Pengwuino said:
Because by law, your allowed to blame Bush for anything and everything under the sun without question.


Yup, by this reasoning I thought I'd post an entirely irrelevant comment in this thread, since it's what certain other people did in mine...! :-p
 
  • #16
brewnog said:
Yup, by this reasoning I thought I'd post an entirely irrelevant comment in this thread, since it's what certain other people did in mine...! :-p

hey hey, give me credit, don't just say 'certain other people' :wink:
 
  • #17
Spin_Network said:
G8..Can anything top today?

I can supply a list of several thousand "toppers". Just a few minutes ago I lit off a firecracker; wow!
 
  • #18
GENIERE said:
I can supply a list of several thousand "toppers". Just a few minutes ago I lit off a firecracker; wow!

lol i guess everyone is firing off their firecrackers today adn not tomorrow. All i hear is explosions tonight... but then again they probably arent fireworks :-/
 
  • #19
Pengwuino said:
lol i guess everyone is firing off their firecrackers today adn not tomorrow.,,

Yeah! Talk about toppers, the kids and grandkids are all arriving tomorrow to celebrate the Forth with the $300.00 worth of fireworks my eldest bought the other day. I have my PVC potato cannon ready to go with an improved fuel atomizer, hotter spark (weed whacker spark plug and coil), and a longer barrel. A neighbor put on a really great show tonight with a dozen or two of mortor launched aerial displays.


...
 
  • #20
I live in a street full of mormons so nothing really goes on around here :-/
 
  • #21
Pengwuino said:
I live in a street full of mormons so nothing really goes on around here :-/

I knew CA was a strange place to live. Back east we drive our cars in the streets and live in homes. :smile:

...
 
  • #22
Pengwuino said:
hey hey, give me credit, don't just say 'certain other people' :wink:

:smile::smile:
 
  • #23
GENIERE said:
I knew CA was a strange place to live. Back east we drive our cars in the streets and live in homes. :smile:

What? isn't it illegal not to drive on the sidewalk? Guess things are different in CA :-/
 
  • #24
loseyourname said:
Was there even a show on the west coast?
There was one venue in the US - Philadelphia.

There does seem to be a disconnect between Live8 and other programs.

The End of Poverty (in our time)?

I am not sure what Geldof and others have in mind. It is not clear that the project raised the consciousness of many people.

More than 26 million people worldwide sent text messages on Saturday in support of Live 8, setting a world record for a single event, organizers said. They had also expected up to two billion people to tune into the show worldwide.
Yeah, so what?!

There are many isolated projects such as

http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/manzanar/default.htm

http://www.eden-foundation.org/project/

http://www.uneca.org/

For as much as the UN seems to be doing :rolleyes: there is much more that needs to be done.
 
  • #25
Astronuc said:
There was one venue in the US - Philadelphia.

There does seem to be a disconnect between Live8 and other programs.

The End of Poverty (in our time)?

I am not sure what Geldof and others have in mind. It is not clear that the project raised the consciousness of many people.
More than 26 million people worldwide sent text messages on Saturday in support of Live 8, setting a world record for a single event, organizers said. They had also expected up to two billion people to tune into the show worldwide.
Astronuc said:
Yeah, so what?!
There are 2 parts to the strategy; first is to raise the public's awareness of the problem with world poverty and the second is that these messages were collected as a petition to be handed into the G8 leaders at the summit in Edinburgh. The organisers are also trying to get 1 million protestors to march in Edinburgh during the summit to demonstrate to the political leaders that there is a demand from the general public to do all they can to eliminate poverty worldwide.
 
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  • #26
Astronuc said:
For as much as the UN seems to be doing :rolleyes: there is much more that needs to be done.
I agree with the substance of your message in both your posts in this thread, Astronuc. The problem is it was totally apolitical - and I am cynical enough to believe it was intentionally so.

I saw the whole event as farcical (for goodness' sake, a very well-known politician and one of the richest men in the world addressed the crowds with their sickening, hypocritical banalities). This event was, in my opinion (which concurs with political analyses I have read and heard on radio), nothing but an opportunity to allow ordinary people to 'vent' safely and the rich and famous to feel good about themselves. It amounted to a sunny outing.

No doubt many of the participants genuinely believed in 'the cause' and want to do something about it - but such events do nothing at all. By allowing people to 'march peacefully' and express their frustrations in such a controlled environment, all softened by music that is, in essence, devoid of any hard-hitting messages, is just like giving people 'feel-good' drugs to pacify them. It will take a lot more than this to do what needs doing.
 
  • #27
Do you propose some terrorist style bombings to get the message across then? I also heard that one of the richest men in the world has given many billions of his own money to african charities (pretty farcical i know).

The object of the event was to raise awareness of the situation and it did a pretty damn good job of doing that. Many of the celebrities will probably get a nice PR boost out of it but that's always going to happen when performing in front of millions of people.
 
  • #28
Andy said:
Do you propose some terrorist style bombings to get the message across then?
Absolutely not - what on Earth does that sort of violence achieve? I propose people educate themselves rather than going out on sunny day outings.

Andy said:
The object of the event was to raise awareness of the situation and it did a pretty damn good job of doing that. Many of the celebrities will probably get a nice PR boost out of it but that's always going to happen when performing in front of millions of people.
From what I saw and what I read/heard about the actual events, people were just having a good time listening to music. There wasn't much consciousness-raising. Or was there? Were serious politics and economics discussed in any way? What sort of analyses did the speakers provide? And the audience - did they discuss the real issues and their underlying causes? I'm a bit foolish, perhaps, but I do believe that unless one understands the underlying causes of a problem one cannot hope to solve it.

Oh, another thing - let's just see what the results of this event actually are. Not long to wait now. We already have the answer about climate change: what are our great leaders going to do? Nothing, that's what!
 
  • #29
26 million phone text messages from a tv show asking them to be sent. The tv show "American Idol" gets 30 million votes at a time. :rolleyes: All this means to politicians is that people watching a tv show will do whatever they're told to do, most of them probably don't even remember doing it, or why.
 
  • #30
RE: Live 8 and US publicity:

I have been aware of the live 8 concert for a few weeks - but then I'm often on the BBC boards so probably had my awareness raised there. I don't recall - I think I saw some domestic mainstream news mention of it, but not sure.

Terry Gross (Fresh Air) interviewed a couple people yesterday regarding Live 8. Another NPR show a few days earlier interviewed a political science professor from the East Coast. He is African, thus can speak well towards how to "help" Africa.

The theme that came through in both programs was: some of the governments are corrupt, so sending money won't fix the problem ... and other means of enabling Africa to help itself would be more appreciated. That there is a general sense of Western guilt that we try to appease with money, and that this is not the best way to help see Africa out of poverty.

Aside to Pengwuino: Bush isn't responsible for all the woes in the world. But he has made more mistakes, and of greater magnitude, than a president ought to. We hold high standards for presidents, for a reason - and if a country is experiencing: Looming deficit, education cuts, health care problems, and so on ---- the president will take some blame whether rightly or not. He is certainly responsible for some of the fractioning in this country - He has been overt about his religiosity. This is directly responsible for the "religious right base" that he holds. That base is the one mentioned on the Sandra Day Oconnor thread, which is now brandishing threats about "what they'll do" to the politicians in 2006.

Bush's "fault?" Maybe not. Did his actions lead to this sort of thing? I think so. I think he made a conscious choice to express his fundamentalism. I think he could have chosen to not express that.

-Patty
 
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