Lights go out at Aussie Stadium and the show goes on
By Jeffrey Jolson
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 7/7/07 — All the lights, stage and audience, went out at Aussie Stadium during the heralded Crowded House reunion and it turned out to be one of the magic moments of Live Earth. “I think this is a statement,” said lead singer Neil Finn in the darkness. “Since the PA is still working, let’s keep singing.” And he launched into “Something So Strong” and everyone starting singing and dancing in the dark.
It was a bit of a scary moment. But the spirit in the stadium provided all the electricity that was needed. And after all, weren’t we here to conserve?
“We are the groundswell,” Finn stated, referring to the fact that Australia had set the bar that the other eight Live Earth shows had to reach. He was right about that. The whole long day in Sydney was like an Aussie Woodstock with their top acts turning in emotional performances. See
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To Australians and New Zealanders, the reunion was something like a Beatles reunion or at least a Police reunion, in that these were all the songs they grew up with, heard when they first fell in love, listened to after a bad breakup, you get the drift. So the show HAD to go on.
And go on it did with the hits “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” “Something So Strong,” “Better Be Home Soon,” “Fall At Your Feet,” and “Weather With You.”
Peter Garrett, of Midnight Oil fame and now a member of the Australian House of Representatives (go figure) introduced the band, which started the reunion show with the lyric “Been waiting for the wall to crack, but I knew one day I’d have you back.”
Its unfair to say that Finn sang “Fall at Your Feet.” He’d just sing “Whenever I Fall…” and 60,000 people sang the rest of the song.
It seems like the group may be back together for a bit. “We made it back,” said Finn. “This is our theme song of the moment,” and sang “Don’t Stop Now” with the lyric “Sometimes time you have to turn the wrong way around.”
Indeed it was something so strong that kept the show going in the darkness, which lasted quite a while, even into the encore. “We’re all united in darkness,” said Finn. “And in honor of the darkness we should do one more. Let’s have everyone in the wings come out on stage. Now’s the time to have a snog with your girlfriend out here.”
But if Crowded House was the heart of Australia, Woldfmother was the cajones.
Wolfmother opened the evening sets in Australia’s Live Earth event. They are not like early Black Sabbath or Deep Purple, as some critics are fond of saying. They are better. It took those bands years to get this good or better. The crowd just went bananas when Wolfmother and the group’s hard rock would have blown the roof off Aussie Stadium if there was one.
They played “Woman,” “Joker and the Thief” and “White Unicorn.” Other acts had people sing along to familiar songs. Wolfmother singer/guitarist Andrew Stockdale had the crowd ringing the environmental chant of the day “S-0-S” loud enough to be heard in space. It was true original hard rock, not retro-metal, not Black Sabbath wannabes and the fans were climbing over each other to get closer.
Now we understand why Led Zeppelin invited Wolfmother to perform when the Zep was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame. It was during their performance that Robert Plant turned to Jimmy Page and said “Hey, these guys are pretty good.”
Moving on to Japan Cocco turned out to be a singer-songwriter who did an acoustic set of melodic songs that transcendring ted any language barrier. In fact La-la-la, works well everywhere, which is what many of her songs contained. The songs worked like children’s songs, they are mostly about the sounds and repetitions of words like “hi-did-he-ho” so they were a joy even if you didn’t know where the Roppongi district was.
She stopped singing and broke down in tears when she told a story. About what, we have no idea but we got teary-eyed too. We hope to get you a transcript of that story, our Japanese is limited to ordering extra towels. The point is emotion knows no barriers and when someone feels that deeply, we all feel it. Which is the whole point of Live Earth. Two billion people will get this feeling at some point during this day.
Back to Aussie Stadium for another good singer-songwriter. There seems to be a bumper crop of them this year in Australia. This one is Jack Johnson, a Jimmy Buffet-type whose lyrics were as appropriate as could be. He seemed to be more of an environmentalist than the other activist acts heard throughout the day, who were mostly anti-war. “How many train wrecks do we need to see/Its bad and getting worse/Where did all the good people go?”
Other lyrics, and these are rough takes on the fly, included “Traffic in the sky and its not getting better/It’s enough to make me cry/How could we have known/Its not so hard to tell.”
He pointed out a sticker on his guitar that read climatecounts.org where you can check out how big companies rate environmentally.
Back in Japan one of the USA’s most popular rock acts Linkin Park, and some of their 50 million albums must have been sold there, as the Japanese knew every word to every song. The group treated the audience to songs from their new album “Minutes to Midnight” which if you were reading a message into everything today, you could say referred to the environmental crisis. “No Time is borrowed/Its time to pay.”
The California rockers used every inch of the stage as Chester Bennington ran up and down the huge stage like it was his private running track, or more precisely his private mosh pit as his writhing, anguished style of running wouldn’t cut it with most high school coaches.
Good old teenage angst, which was not lost in translation as songs like “Numb,” “Crawling” and “In the End” and lyrics like “I can’t stop what I’m hearing within” came through loud and clear to the Japanese teens, who were transfixed.
“I’m breaking my habit tonight,” he sang. And just this once, the lyric meant breaking our energy gobbling habits.
They didn’t just play a few hits either, their set was nearly an hour, and then coming back for three or four encore songs. It was hard to tell with Crowded House on the other monitor. It was like watching the Superbowl while the World Series was on at the same time.
And you certainly didn’t need a translator to understand Bennington’s primal screams and mad glare. And they knew every song by the third note. Sometimes by the first note. And Bennington even took to time to say in Japanese (from notes) “Show we can make a difference and thank for supporting the cause.”
He added “Thanks for joining us the defining moment of our generation.” Could he be right? The 2000’s version of Woodstock? The rest of the day will tell.