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The Live Earth powers that be decided to offer Idolator a press pass to Saturday's event at Giants Stadium, and, armed with some extra-strength sunscreen and a round-trip bus pass to New Jersey, I headed out to the wilds of the Meadowlands. The pass gave me access to the "press bubble," a large, inflatable room where reporters could watch the show on TV and quiz a few of the performers and celebrities who were around (sadly, Kanye West was not one of them), and the stadium, which was teeming with Bon Jovi fans, people in eco-friendly T-shirts, and, um, other Bon Jovi fans. After the jump, a few impressions from the day:


A good chunk of the crowd was there to see Bon Jovi. Sure, they only played a few songs, but New Jersey's hometown heroes were clearly the attraction of the day--I counted four Slippery When Wet-era T-shirts alone, and the ovation the band got at the end of its performance looked bigger than the one for the Kanye/Police/John Mayer clusterfuck that ended the show. The not-jammed-at-all traffic on the way back to New York City also made me wonder how much of the crowd departed after Bon Jovi left the stage; I'd put that number at around 25%, and maybe a little higher since a Linkin Park performance was broadcast into the stadium following their set.
Kelly Clarkson's voice can fill a stadium. Patrick Stump, not so much. Clarkson sounded great during her brief set, although it wasn't hard to think "Awww" when she said that she wanted to steal the idea behind the Live Earth stage decor--recycled tires that were painted to resemble a map of the world--for her own show. But Stump and Fall Out Boy were swallowed by the mix; while they battled through their set, I thought, "If this show had happened five years ago, Creed might be playing right now. And they might have actually sounded better." A horrifying thought.
Twenty years ago, Keith Urban wouldn't be a "country" artist. He sounded pretty good on "Gimme Shelter." Pity that he had to get railroaded into the 8,645th attempt to remind the U.S. viewing public that Alicia Keys is an Important Artist. (Although it could have been worse: He could have been saddled with Joss Stone.)
John Mayer doesn't like hacky journalists. One journalist was asking every visitor to the press bubble what their "eco-sin" was--a silly question, but at least it wasn't the obvious attempt to lead celebrities into happy quotes about the Smart Car that another "reporter" was clearly angling for. The poor schlub was the first person to ask Mayer a question, and the obviously beleaguered guitarist/Dave Chappelle collaborator kind of flipped out, ranting about negative lines of questioning and telling the reporter to pass along a hello to his editors at "Glass Half Empty." (Burn!) On the plus side, though, Mayer clearly has the irascible personality to be a blogger. If only he'd just stick with that.
The partnership between Live Earth and the New Jersey State Fair was a bit ill-thought-out. Held in the Giants Stadium parking lot, the New Jersey State Fair opened its doors to Live Earth concertgoers--and only Live Earth concertgoers--on Saturday. While the fried food there--including the fried 3 Musketeers, which I tried after passing the "Guess Your Weight" booth--was a definite upgrade from the concessions offered by the stadium and the prospect of seeing the world's smallest woman was infinitely preferable to AFI's set, the masses weren't really streaming for the fair's midway. I made two laps around, and most of the ride operators looked bored out of their skull; the guy manning the "throw a dart at a balloon" booth was so hungry for companionship that not only did he let me toss off a few darts free of charge, he gave me a prize: A rose that looked as if it had been made from pipe cleaners. He also told me, at 6 p.m., that he'd grossed about $25 all day.
The Giants Stadium infirmary is straight out of the '70s. Thanks, balky contact lens that left me blind for the second half of the day!
Sun Chips want to be your Chicken Soup For The Soul, but crunchier. After leaving the infirmary, I was accosted by two young women in yellow t-shirts asking me if I wanted to "give a quote about brightness" to "an upcoming book." They seemed very eager for me to contribute and offered me a T-shirt as the prize for signing their release, and I felt almost-bad when I told them that I had just come out of the infirmary and wasn't into thinking about "brightness." That worked, and ten steps later another young lady in the same T-shirt offered me a bag of Sun Chips and a shirt--no quote-strings attached--that read (and please think of all of the below text in a Fruitopia-like font):

Apathy is a harmful emission. Live Brightly.
How does this t-shirt live brightly? With 100% organic cotton, inks that contain non-phthalate plasticizers, it's free from PVC-containing resins, it's free from lead & other heavy metals, and it's tested to comply with ENTI-3 toy saftey standards ... Share your smallsteps @ sunchips.com

And I immediately wished that The Baffler was on a shorter-than-two-year publication cycle.
Billy Corgan is out to get all of you people who downloaded Gish instead of buying it. Yeah, we don't know, either.
I actually learned a fair amount from the day... I'm not really into having celebrities lecture me on the problems of the world--it's a lot easier to tackle the Big Issues when you have assistants picking up your dry-cleaning--but the few public-service announcements that I caught at the show and on my TiVo later had a pretty impressive 1:2 new-old info ratio; it probably helped that most of the people participating weren't giving off a "we're awesome and you should follow our exact footsteps" vibe, but one that encouraged education and small steps (not to get all Sun Chippy). The hot day probably helped deliver the "global warming" message, and the changes made to the venue also made me think about the greater impact of larger-scale events. It'd be nice if Giants Stadium (and other arenas worked by the dreadful concession company Aramark) used planet-friendly wrapping for their concessions, and offered more options for getting rid of the torrents and torrents of garbage events generate. (The compost heaps generated by Saturday's trash alone will probably feed hundreds of Garden State gardens.)
...but the lineup could have been a bit better. Giving concertgoers the chance to see all the bands that are on tour this summer anyway, but in one fell swoop and in truncated sets that have crappy sound, isn't really a compelling draw; at the Giants Stadium there was no big "get," like Live 8's Pink Floyd reunion (related: Roger Waters was terrible). Bon Jovi fans were probably going to outnumber everyone else anyway--after all, they can sell out Giants Stadium on their own--but I kept wondering what the atmosphere might have been like had some other huge, unexpected act played. And no, that closing-show catastrophe doesn't count.
One last suggestion to the Live Earth organizers: Please get that awful Madonna song off of the PSAs. Seriously, if I have to hear Madonna sing "this could be gooooood" in that girly-sing-song voice again, I'm going to crack.
[Photo: AP]
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