Tag: Pink Floyd

Live 8 Review

Back in March I posted a review of Live Aid, the iconic concert from 1985 that united people from around the world to support the victims of the famine in Ethiopia, to coincide with this year’s musical at the Old Vic that celebrated the occasion.

For a long time it seemed like such an event would never happen again, but 20 years later Bob Geldof and Midge Ure got together once more to organise Live 8. Ten concerts were held worldwide on 2 July 2005, viewed by 3 billion people, plus a final one on 6 July, to put pressure on the leaders of the countries attending the G8 summit to take stronger action to make poverty history. There had also been a 20th anniversary version of Do They Know It’s Christmas? the previous December as well.

Of course, how much of a difference the event actually made will always be up for debate, but it certainly changed things to an extent, with some commitments made with regards to increasing African aid and cancelling debts. But there will always be much more that politicians can and should be doing, and a discussion on that side of things is far beyond my expertise or the scope of this post, so I won’t be going into that here.

Double-page spread from the Live 8 DVD booklet, with a foreword by Bob Geldof in white text on a blue background. An image of the 8 political leaders from the G8 countries spans the top of both pages, while there's a photo of Bob Geldof at the bottom of the right page, below his signature in black.

In any case, the concerts featured a huge variety of artists, and whilst I felt it was much more of a mixed bag compared to Live Aid, it was still a lot of fun. I had also been far too young to see Live Aid when it took place, which meant I only got to watch it when it was released on DVD many years later, whereas I was able to see Live 8 when it was actually broadcast, as I recalled in my journal at the time.

I also bought the DVD box set of Live 8 that was released in November that year, presenting a wide selection of tracks, and that’s what I’m going to review in this post, along with some online videos that fill in the gaps. I’ve also created Youtube playlists for the UK concerts and the rest of the world, with lots of performances from the official Live 8 Youtube channel (where they’ve uploaded quite a few that were omitted from the DVD set), plus a selection of other clips. I’ve linked to a lot of the videos during this post as well.

So without further ado, and as a sequel to my earlier Live Aid post, I hope you enjoy this run-through of the different concerts and my thoughts on some of the performances!

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London 2012 Revisited – Olympics Closing Ceremony

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the glorious London Olympics from 10 years ago, hence my recent lengthy reviews of the Opening Ceremony, Days 1-8 and Days 9-16. There are loads of great memories, and some things I’d forgotten about that I’ve been happily reminded of. So naturally it’s time to look back at the Closing Ceremony, which was overseen by creative director Kim Gavin.

As big and important as the occasion was, it’s fair to say it wasn’t quite as epic or impressive as the Opening Ceremony – but then it didn’t need to be. We had already put on a fantastic show over the previous few weeks, and so now we could just let our hair down and have fun, and thank everyone for making the Games such a success. This was more of a party than a ceremony really, focusing on the best of British music and culture with a variety of big-name artists. Most of the tracks appeared on the soundtrack album A Symphony Of British Music, compiled by the ceremony’s musical director David Arnold, which I own in my collection. It contains a mixture of original music written for the ceremony, cover versions of well-known songs, and special re-recordings by artists of their own tracks for the event.

And it was still very enjoyable on the whole. It’s very unlikely that everything would have appealed to everyone but, depending on your musical and cultural tastes, there would have been a few particularly memorable or special moments for each person watching. That was certainly the case for me anyway – there are some parts I can easily skip over, and other bits I can watch over and over again.

And visually it looked very cool as well, not just in terms of the costumes, dancing, fireworks and so on, but also the creative use of the ‘pixels’ – the coloured lights behind each audience member – that created animated patterns around the stadium throughout the show, and the impressive Union Jack stage – designed by artist Damien Hirst – that filled the floor of the stadium.

The ceremony lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes, and is included in its entirety on the final fifth disc of the BBC’s Blu-ray set. There are no alternative audio options and no scene selection menu (though there are chapter points you can skip through). You simply get the broadcast coverage with the BBC commentators led by Huw Edwards, but that’s generally fine as they don’t interfere too much. They’re most involved when the athletes are making their way into the stadium, while at other times they just give a bit of contextual information, which is actually very useful. And by all accounts we had much better TV coverage than some overseas viewers. The only extra on the disc is a long PDF with the full list of credits for the ceremony, which you can see if you put it into a computer’s Blu-ray drive. Not quite as long as the equivalent document for the Opening Ceremony, but still pretty lengthy.

You can also watch the full ceremony on the Olympics Youtube channel, where they have their own commentators. As with their Opening Ceremony coverage, it starts with a beautiful helicopter shot travelling slowly over London towards and around the stadium, showing off the city and the venue wonderfully. And there are other videos online relating to the ceremony as well, including a bit of footage from the audience and behind the scenes. So, like I’ve done with my previous posts, I’ve compiled a Ceremony Playlist on Youtube, with relevant clips and the complete music soundtrack if you want to look through it.

And so, with all that said, let’s crack on with my look back at the ceremony. It won’t be anywhere near as lengthy as my Opening Ceremony coverage, as there’s much less to discuss this time. But I hope you enjoy!

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