We’re Hipper Than Berlin… Live8 Canada

Posted on 23rd June 2005 by Vicious

We’re hipper than Berlin, but that’s not really saying much

Our choices for who should be added to spice up roster

Is it just us, or is the lineup for the Canadian Live8 concert something of a sloppy-seconds serving of classic or neo-classic rock, Central Canuck roots acts and some London and Los Angeles visitors? At least the bookers managed to find a few actual African bands to perform, including tasty rapper K’Naan and the Juno Award-winning African Guitar Summit featuring Van’s very own Alpha Yaya Diallo.

But where’s the edge? The urban, and the youth-market acts?

Sure, our lineup is waaaaay hipper than Berlin’s, but we can do better.

Apparently, three acts remain to be booked for our show in that rock ‘n’ roll centre of Barrie, Ont. After careful consideration, here’s who we’d like to see fill out the roster.

Nelly Furtado: Uh, hello. After “Forca” became an anthem of the last Euro 2004 Cup, Nelly’s hotter than ever. And she’s actually one of those rare artists with a worldwide following in two languages: English and Portuguese.

K-OS: A complete package. He brings the funk, the fun and a social conscience in line with the event’s stated goals. He’s also an artist that could appeal to the under 50s in the audience who’ll be stifling yawns through all that dull Ontario roots music and those Maritime drinking songs.

Rush: Anyone who’s travelled the globe knows that this trio is arguably our most successful cultural export. From the Kalahari to the top of Kilimanjaro and all jungles in between, there are fans who know that there is trouble in the forest. Plus, there could be a really, really long drum solo in the set for guest percussionists to jam on.

Related Posts with Thumbnails
This entry was posted in Nelly Furtado and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/06/07/do0702.xml Jack

    Live8 ? Here’s some relevant comments from a well respected source:

    Let’s not encourage these Live8 idiots. They’re part of the problem! Africa needs accountants not rock ‘stars’.

  • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/06/07/do0702.xml Jack

    Oops – here are the comments:
    ”Increased aid”? All in all it’s just another brick in the wall behind which Africa’s citizens are trapped. Africa is poor because in most of the continent it’s impossible to generate non-corrupt economic activity. In order to register a company in Ethiopia, a businessman must deposit 18 years’ average income in a bank account which is then frozen. That’s why Ethiopia is poor and no amount of “aid” will do anything to change that. As for Zimbabwe, the insane syphilitic Mugabe this week began destroying the vegetable gardens of the poor – at the same time as he’s receiving massive shipments from the World Food Programme. Twenty years ago, Zimbabwe exported food. Now its people are starving. That will change only with the removal of the government. It’s nothing to do with “aid” and, as I challenged these pompous pop poseurs in the Telegraph, if they’re so confident in African business conditions, why don’t they move their music-publishing companies to Sierra Leone or Zimbabwe? There’s a reason these countries are poor and it’s not because America is rich.
    Mark Steyn,
    http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=30

  • Matt

    Jack, not to sound too harsh, but what a horrible and ignorant thing to say. Yes, there are some corrupt governments in Africa and Ethiopia and especially Zimbabwe are excellent examples of that. But there are also plenty of clean, well intentioned, and amazingly enough still democratic governments that are perfectly capable of providing not just real aid, but real economic development but they are lacking the funds. Ghana is an excellent example of this, as is Milawi. These countries have people dying of not only AIDS, but things like malaria. Most people would think that malaria is under control but 3 million people (almost all poverty stricken, many children) die of malaria every year, mostly in Africa. They’re dying not because their governments are corrupt, but because they don’t have the money for a $3 mosquito net, or to spray their homes, or to buy medicine. It’s stupid that this is happening in this day and age. By most objective measures of corruption the corruption rates in Africa tend to be lower than many other countries that have in fact developed in Asia and Europe. Corruption is a convenient, yet ultimately invalid reason not to send aid to Africa.

    There are piles of evidence generated through scientific means that if the rich nations gave just 0.7% of their GDP (which they have repeatedly promised, and failed to deliver with that number actually falling from 0.3% to 0.2% in the 90s) these sorts of deaths due to extreme poverty could be nearly eliminated in our lifetime. Nobody deserves to die because they are poor.

    Now I agree with you that Mugabe is a horrible human being and that his government in Zimbabwe needs to be removed, but let’s not use that as an excuse to deprive children in say Ghana food and medicine. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but addressing the poverty problem is a very real possibility in our time, and if money and awareness are raised by a bunch of rock stars playing at a concert then I’m all for it.

    Someone should tell this Mark character that yes, there is a reason these countries are poor and while it may not be because America is rich it is largely because they’ve been subjected to hundreds of years of slave trade and colonial pillaging by the western world only to be abandoned when it became inconvenient. And it is partly because they live in a climate that not only makes food production difficult, but also happens to be a uniquely perfect environment for diseases such as malaria. This is not to say that the people and governments in Africa have no responsibility for their own development because they are, but let’s not

    Matt

  • Soraya

    Re Nelly Furtado: It wasn’t the World Cup, it was Euro2004, hosted in Portugal.