July 2 2005 - Canada’s Live 8

Canada's artists had hearts on sleeves

Jul. 2, 2005. 09:00 PM
VIT WAGNER
STAR MUSIC CRITIC
It was a day when some of Canada’s most beloved musicians - and a handful of celebrated visitors - wore their political hearts on their sleeves and joined their voices with other artists around the world to sing out against global poverty.
It will be another week before we have any notion of how well that message resonated - from Canada’s Live 8 show in Barrie and the other nine concerts that rocked the world yesterday.
But the appearance of headliner Neil Young, performing for the first time since suffering a brain aneurysm in the spring, was at least some small occasion for hope - to say nothing of adding formidable heft to the Canadian show’s role as international curtain-closer.
The iconic Canadian rocker, who had to skip the Junos in Winnipeg earlier this year, fulfilled his role perfectly, ending the day with a mixture of easeful artistry that saw him move from the poignancy of “Four Strong Winds” to the massed, celebratory joy of “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
Contrary to predictions that the Barrie show would hold precious little appeal for younger listeners, the number of teens and twentysomethings vastly outnumbered the Boomers, for whom the lineup was supposedly tailored.
Despite the apparent generational disadvantage, the kids didn’t have any trouble joining in with Randy Bachman on “Takin’ Care of Business.” One of the highlights of the day, the set was performed without Guess Who mate Burton Cummings, sidelined by laryngitis.
Impressively, it was the first time Bachman had ever played with the Carpet Frogs, the band enlisted to support him.
Given the larger issues in play, it would be churlish to complain about the event as a musical showcase. It wasn’t so much that any of the artists acquitted themselves particularly poorly as it was that the rushed proceedings didn’t afford much of an opportunity to build momentum.
But there were enough standout performances from the likes of The Tragically Hip, Bruce Cockburn and Australian upstarts Jet to keep spirits high, even if a lot of heavy hitters performing in distant capitals like U2 and Pink Floyd could only be glimpsed briefly on the big TV screens.

Star Here are Vit Wagner's mini-reviews of the performers at Canada's Live 8
concert, filed and updated throughout the day.

Neil Young
So simple. So perfect.
Eschewing bombast and grand declarations, Neil Young brought an abundance of class to an eloquently phrased closing set that opened with a minimally arranged cover of Ian and Sylvia’s enduring “Four Strong Winds.”
He was then joined by singers from the Fisk University Jubilee Choir for a spiritual about God’s impartial beneficence.
It would have been enough, but clearly a bigger show-stopper was required.So - apparently unbeknownst to the hosts who were at the point of sending everyone home - many of the day’s assembled artists joined Young in a mutual love-in on the anthemic “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

The Barenaked Ladies
The Barenaked Ladies, perhaps mindful of their place as the day’s penultimate act, played it relatively safe, resurrecting a couple of well-worn radio hits.
Steven Page, strumming the acoustic guitar with co-frontman Ed Robertson, reached back for an elegiac rendition of “Brian Wilson,” followed by the even more popular. “If I had a Million Dollars.”
Under normal circumstances, that last confection would never be mistaken for a protest song, but with the constant reminders during the day of people whose income wouldn’t come to a million dollars in a million years, it worked.

D.M.C.
Rapper D.M.C., once a third of the influential hip hop trio Run-D.M.C. that played at Live Aid, brought along a slew of friends to help him through an incendiary, politically-charged set that brought some anger to the protest.
Predictably, with members of Aerosmith on hand, the assembled resurrected the successful, cross-over cover of “Walk this Way.”
“You’d better watch out,” said D.M.C., signaling what proved to be the high point of the set. “We’re on the watchtower.”
What followed was a rousing rap laced with riffs from the Jimi Hendrix cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”

The Tragically Hip
There’s no point in being a stickler about the calendar where the Tragically Hip is concerned.
“Happy Canada Day,” announced the singer Gord Downie. “This is the first day of the rest of your lives.”
It’s always Canada Day for the Kingston, Ont. band, which easily could have lured 35,000 to Barrie even if they were the only musicians on the bill.
Like Bruce Cockburn, the Hip tailored its selections to suit the occasion, opening with “Music @ Work,” and then laying down sharp performances of “Ahead by a Century” and “Poets” - the last of these featuring a cameo by Dan Aykroyd on the harmonica.

Motley Crue
You expect Motley Crue to up the voltage to potential brown-out levels and the Los Angeles heavy-metal heroes didn’t stint on that count.
Drummer Tommy Lee and company, who apparently had their sights set on making a bigger splash elsewhere, were forced to answer questions in the press tent about whether they'd had to resort to inviting themselves to Barrie.
They left any lingering resentment over those queries backstage, as Lee backed a crashing assault through “Kickstart My Heart,” “Home Sweet Home” and “Dr. Feelgood.”
Hands down winners of the day’s unofficial prize for most body art.

Jann Arden
Trust Jann Arden to take an unlikely slot between Jet and Motley Crue in her characteristic, good-natured, self-deprecating stride.
“I want you to know that I’ve been Motley Crue’s opening act for more than one day now,” she announced. “It’s going good.”
No wilting wallflower, the Calgary singer/songwriter relied on her pipes to make sure that the comparisons were not as stark as they might have been.
With customary sure-handed support from her accompanists, Arden’s set included “Where No One Knows Me,” which - given the popularity of her shows in these parts - surely wasn’t the case.

Jet
Owning a limited songbook can be an advantage when performing a short, stadium-sized set, particularly when you’ve managed to fashion that repertoire into a string of hits.
Jet, the hard-rocking Australian band, added to the Live 8 lineup to increast the roster’s quotient of up-and-comers, acted as if it had all the time in the world as it slowly but loudly worked its way into “Cold Hard Bitch.”
Fronted by swinger Cameron Muncey, the band then switched gears for the ballad “Look What You’ve Done” before closing things out efficiently with “Are You Gonna Be My Girl.”
They managed the time perfectly.

Our Lady Peace
Who says Canadians don’t know their history?
Never has the name of Lester Pearson, who famously championed foreign aid, been invoked more frequently in a single day - at least not for a generation.
Our Lady Peace singer Raine Maida was among those who cited the former Canadian prime minister.
The vocalist’s blending of national pride and internationalism didn’t stop there. While ending with fan favourite “We Are All Innocent,” the band started things off with a more unlikely choice, a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” that was altered to include references to poverty in Africa.

Gordon Lightfoot
Canadian folk legend Gordon Lightfoot has been around for a long time - 66 years to be exact - but he probably never imagined sharing a bill with Motley Crue and Deep Purple.
“Everybody’s rocking here today,” he said as he took to the stage. “I’m going to give you a little musical interlude.”
In all honesty, it probably wasn’t the right showcase for Lightfoot who, like Bruce Cockburn earlier, performed a solo set on the acoustic guitar.
His modest appraisal of his role in things, however, was happily contradicted by the enthusiastic reception that greeted “If You Could Read My Mind.”
But Massey Hall is more his thing.

Blue Rodeo
Toronto roots rockers Blue Rodeo, another group that acquitted itself admirably at SARSstock two years ago, can always be counted on to deliver a reliable set, whether headlining at the Molson Amphitheatre or wedging itself into a full day of music.
The band’s Live 8 set was no exception, even if it chose to stick to the lower-key side of a repertoire that now stretches back two decades.
With Greg Keelor and Jim Cuddy typically alternating as frontman, Keelor got things started with “Heart Like Mine,” followed by Cuddy reaching back for one of the group’s enduring favourites, “Try.”

Great Big Sea
If the African Guitar Summit felt short, it was a marathon compared to the precious little time allowed Great Big Sea, as it seemed that organizers were rushing to get back on schedule.
Representing a cultural shift of trans-Atlantic proportions, the popular St. John’s group dug into the traditional, seafaring music of its home province.
In its way, it was as authentic as the music the Africans delivered, thanks mainly to a largely a cappella approach accompanied by drumming.
Frontman Alan Doyle led the way, with the rest of the band harmonizing on a couple of selections, including “Donkey Riding.”

African Guitar Summit
Like a cool serving of sherbet to clear the palette between courses, the African Guitar Summit breezed in with a short but impressive display of world beat pop.
The group, made up of guitarists and drummers transplanted from several African countries to Canada, dug into its self-titled debut, which won a Juno Award earlier this year for world music.
The quality of the musicianship was superb, if only it could have lasted several minutes longer.
“On behalf of all of the people on the African continent,” one of the performers announced, “we want to say thank you.”

Deep Purple
Deep Purple, the first of four non-Canadian acts on the bill, probably didn’t need Dan Aykroyd and Tom Green to steal its thunder with a mouth-guitar run at the signature chords from the band’s most recognizable hit, “Smoke on the Water.” Not that that the introduction - or the long-time absence of original guitarist Ritchie Blackmore - was about to dissuade the Brit prog/metal vets from building its three-song set around the track. To their credit, singer Ian Gillan and company ably represented the sonic diversity of the group’s repertoire by opening with ’70s time capsule, “Highway Star,” and then closing with the more ’60s-styled “Hush.”

Randy Bachman
Even the last minute cancellation of Guess Who bandmate, singer Burton Cummings, wasn’t about to deter guitarist Randy Bachman from stealing the show.
With Cummings out of commission, reportedly due to illness, Bachman hammered out a rousing three-song set of crowd-pleasing hits from his quintessentially Canrock BTO catalogue.
Bachman, deservedly renowned as one of the best rock guitarist this country has ever produced, exploited the familiarity of “Hey You,” “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” and, predictably, “Takin' Care of Business” to create a fist-pumping frenzy eagerly joined by fans who weren’t around when the songs first charted.

Les Trois Accords
Formed in Drummondville, Les Trois Accords was probably the toughest sell of the day, holding up the obligatory francophone component with a brief appearance.
In order to pique the audience’s curiosity, the band was introduced as an opening act for the coming Rolling Stones tour.
Unlike Dobacaracol, Les Trois Accords' main distinction was singing in French. Its music, including opener “Hawaiienne,” leans decisively toward an indistinctive, if enthusiastically rendered, brand of generic rock.
The group’s inclusion on the bill was befuddling, considering that the lineup already had more artists than clearly were needed to fill the day.

Bruce Cockburn
Few artists other than Bruce Cockburn could perform some of his best-loved songs and have them land squarely on point at the same time.
Needing only an acoustic guitar and his famed, finger-picking virtuosity, the Canadian folk legend easily mined the smoldering fury of “If I had a Rocket Launcher” and the equally incendiary “Call it Democracy.”
In a talking blues intro to comparatively hopeful set-closer “Waiting for a Miracle,” Cockburn set his sights squarely on naysayers who argue that aid is wasted on corrupt regimes, pointing out that those who lead authoritarian governments often do so with the West’s complicity.

Simple Plan
Montreal quintet Simple Plan, representing the pop/punk contingent who formerly gathered here when Edgefest was held in the park, made a direct appeal to their legions of young fans on the lawn and watching across the country.
“People need to hear what you have to say, no matter how old you are,” urged singer Pierre Bouvier.
In what was certainly the most boisterous performance to this point, the band enlisted the assembled in a mass pogo to accompany “Jump” (not the Van Halen song). The effort was successful enough to kick up a minor dust storm.

K’naan
A welcome shift in musical direction was introduced courtesy of K’naan, a 28-year-old Toronto rapper who fled Somalia at the age of 14, and Quebec multi-cultural ensemble Dobacaracol.
The Quebecois group, bolstered by drums, guitars and turntable scratches, delivered a hip-shaking fusion of world beat and rock that might have had a bigger impact if the audience had been more familiar with its music.
K’naan, accompanying his storytelling with a steady drum beat, made the most of a short set featuring two songs from his debut CD, The Dusty Foot Philosopher, in the process establishing himself as an artist to watch.

Bryan Adams
Bryan Adams, a veteran of 1985’s Live Aid, brought the most international stature of any Canadian on the bill, short of Neil Young.
After maintaining the straight-ahead rock vibe with “Back to You,” Adams closed out with an allusion to “Tears are not Enough,” the song he co-authored in connection with 1985’s appeal to alleviate starvation in Ethiopia.
The most memorable part of his set, however, was an interlude in which audiences from seven of the global shows were led in a snapping of fingers by Philadelphia host Will Smith, symbolizing a poverty-related death every three seconds somewhere in the world.

Tom Cochrane
Tom Cochrane, one of the Live 8 performers who has publicly endorsed the Make Poverty History campaign, kicked things off impressively with a mixture of music and politics.
Prior to launching into to a full-on rendition of the anthem “Life is a Highway,” Cochrane urged Paul Martin to live up to Lester Pearson’s 35-year-old commitment to raising Canadian foreign aid levels to 0.7 per cent of GDP when the prime minister goes to next week’s G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
“We’re gonna party, aren’t we?” Cochrane shouted to party-ready audience. “But we’ve got to get the message out there.”

Sam Roberts
Montreal rocker Sam Roberts, a performer with generational appeal for the substantially young audience, garnered a warm reception with a clap-along introduction to his breakthrough hit “Brother Down.”
It was a logical choice, given the song’s thematic sympathy for the world’s less fortunate.
“We’re not going to stand and see our brothers and sisters around the world suffering anymore,” the singer/guitarist announced.
Well practiced at working a large crowd from his show-launching set at 2003’s SARSstock at Downsview Park, Roberts and his band risked working in the relatively unfamiliar “Bridge to Nowhere,” before wrapping up with the driving “Hard Road.”