BossMaura: so did you see the madonna/gogol bordello performance?
GuestDan: i did. it was really enjoyable.
GuestDan: probably my favorite english language moment of the whole thing.
BossMaura: i thought it was terrible, hahaha

While I had forgotten the first rule of sucking up to your boss (determine his or her opinion before offering your own), I liked the few moments Gogol Bordello provided because they offered what most of the event lacked (with one obvious exception): joy. The Washington D.C. event was a coffee-shop open-mike night featuring some famous guy in a hat and his wife; the Chinese show was government approval polished to within an inch of its life; most of the performances elsewhere were over before they had a chance to gain any particular momentum. It's probably the seriousness that comes with benefit concerts, along with the production values that accompany anything filmed for television, but seeing Razorlight perform in front of images of penguins or Fall Out Boy prove that they're not ready for stadiums didn't inspire much drive to action, just a series of yawns and switching back to amuse myself with musicians performing in languages that I don't understand.

In other news, the new Gogol Bordello album will be in stores tomorrow. Hey, music bloggers, stop posting Interpol tracks for a minute and do the Internet a favor: Post a MP3 of "Your Country" already.

Gogol Bordello [MySpace]

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]

Kudos to the two media outlets bold enough to take on the real news item of the day: How awesome was Xuxa?

Billed as "Europe's Online Newspaper," Jurnalo.com had this to say:

Brazilian actress, singer and children's show presenter Xuxa opened the show on the world-famous Copacabana Beach.

"We are all guilty," Xuxa, 44, told the crowd. "We waste paper, water, energy and many other things. . It is not just for Americans. This is a concert for the whole world. "

Xuxa came on stage in style, over a bridge that linked it to the hotel Copacabana Palace.

And Harp's Fred Mills, in an article surrounded by various non-Xuxa related observations, wrote:

Latin superstar Xuxa, doing "the wave" with the masses in Rio de Janeiro, while her posse of pretty boys flanked her and twirled big white and yellow flags? Check. (This particular segment, while undeniably cheesy, actually conjured up memories of U2's Bono back when he was prone to strut around the stages of benefit concerts waving his big white "this is not a rebel flag!" banner. So I now have a weird kind of fascination with Xuxa.)

Don't worry, Fred—a fascination with Xuxa is perfectly normal. Did we mention she's Brazil's best-selling music star of all time? I mean, there were giant inflatable bears! And people in monkey costumes! Linkin Park just had a bunch of sweaty angsty guys on stage. Is that supposed to be entertainment?

As a public service (and while they're still available), here is Xuxa's performance as captured on YouTube, in two parts:

Largest Live Earth show for hundreds of thousands in Rio [Juranlo]
Live Earth Sizzles and Fizzles [Harp]

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Gore gets last-minute D.C. venue for Live Earth [Reuters]

Live Earth Show In Rio to Go on After Ban Revoked [Reuters via NYT]

- The day's biggest test? Cleaning up all the garbage. [Reuters via Canada.com]
- Virtual world Zwinktopia is counterprogramming the all-day affair with a concert featuring Kelly Rowland, Hinder, and Scott Ian. Wait, does this mean that Judge Dredd has a Zwinky? [PRNewswire]

The company has donated 272 pairs of Wheatware™ Compostable drumsticks, 3,240 Wheatware™ Compostable guitar picks, and 4,100 Wheatware™ Compostable clothes hangers to Live Earth musicians across the world, including London, England; Johannesburg, South Africa; Sydney, Australia; Tokyo, Japan — and best of all, New York City, America.

The launch of Wheatware™ products is part of Wheatware's Great Switch-Out™ from Wood to Wheat, a campaign to entice people to switch from unsustainable tree products like wood to sustainable, crop-based ones like wheat, thus saving the forests critically needed to halt global warming.

We've noticed Linkin Park and Razorlight are among the bands playing Live Earth that have taken the "making music biodegradable" seriously for their entire careers—the've been quite good at recycling songwriting ideas for most of their existence. Perhaps they'll take their environmental commitment to the next level and donate themselves to a compost heap.

Making Music Biodegradable [Marketwire]

Best known to English-language audiences for the 65 episodes of her throughly confusing, self-titled syndicated children's program (1993-1996), Xuxa will introduce Macy Gray, Pharrell Williams, and Lenny Kravitz to the million projected attendees at Rio's Copacabana Beach. She's a forgotten starlet in the States, but in her native Brazil, Xuxa is the very definition of a multimedia superstar. Her 1998 disc Xou Da Xuxa 3 is the best-selling album in the nation's history, her daughter's birth was watched by millions on live television, and her children's television programs spawned merchandising of Hello Kitty-sized proportions. According to Wikipedia, her numerous films include Brazil's nine highest-grossing movies, as well as one of Brazil's first hardcore pornographic movies, and a fictional (we think) battle with Satan over the ability to paint rainbows on city walls.

Next Monday, be sure to check Idolator for all your post-Live Earth Xuxa coverage needs.

(As an added bonus, we present Erasure—yes, that Erasure—performing their single "Love to Hate You" on a 1991 episode of the Brazilian version of Xuxa's children's program.)

Xuxa [unofficial site]
Live Earth [official site]

BAS officials told Gore that a band was already in place on the South Pole. BAS press representative Linda Capper told blogger Tim Slagle, "We have a house band — five of our science team. They are very good indie rock-folk fusion. The remaining 17 will be the audience on location."

They've never played in front of an audience. To make matters worse, the band, named after a Greenlandic word for "summit," will be playing outside on the ice, where temperatures could be as low as minus ten degrees Celsius. One of their colleagues will film the performance for broadcast on TV and the Internet.

The band, named Nunatak, doesn't seem to have a MySpace page, so we don't know what to expect, though those of you rushing to make an "Eskimo' Money, Eskimo' Problems" joke better double-check your geography.

Antarctica Cements Act for Gore's Live Earth [Yeas & Nays]

"Hey You" [liveearth.msn.com]
Earlier: And Now, An Awkward Attempt At Sincerity

"They're not that environmentally conscious, but they've heard of global warming," said [This Is Spinal Tap director Rob] Reiner. "Nigel thought it was just because he was wearing too much clothing - that if he just took his jacket off it would be cooler."

This budding awareness is borne out in the lyrics to new material recorded by the band, including a new single, Warmer than Hell. Reiner provided a sneak peak [sic!!] at the lyrics: "The devil went to Devon, it felt like the fourth degree/He said, 'Is it hot in here, or is it only me?'" It is hoped the single will contain a three-minute solo by bassist Derek Smalls.

The band will appear at the Al Gore-organized Live Earth concert at Wembley Stadium, this July 7. Reiner, a long time environmentalist, explained his hopes for the concert.

"What I think is going to be nice about this whole effort is there will be marching orders for people," he said. "Not only from a personal standpoint of what individuals can do in their lives, but a macro perspective with respect to the public sector and government."

Haha, that Rob Reiner! What a funny guy, right? Wait, why aren't you laughing?

Spinal Tap to reform for Live Earth [Guardian Music]

Billboard: Any particular bands on your wish list?
Gore: There are a lot of great ones that are already signed up. I recruited the Red Hot Chili Peppers; they told me yes when they came onstage at the Grammys. The Police are on board now. And Madonna's on board.

Billboard: Any other bands you personally asked to participate?

Gore: Oh, yeah, a bunch of 'em. I've made lots of calls. The Black Eyed Peas. I don't have the list in front of me, but I've talked to a lot of 'em, and I haven't gotten turned down yet.

One can only imagine how the Gore-Fergie phoner went down: First he lobbed a few questions about why will.i.am is always "all up in the videos," and then launched into a stern warning that—unless we cut greenhouse emissions by forty percent—our London Bridges will truly be going down. "Whatever that means!" Gore joked. "No, seriously, what does that song mean?"

Gore, Wall talk 'Live' [Billboard, via The Hollywood Reporter]

AFI
AKON
ALICIA KEYS
BON JOVI
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND
FALL OUT BOY
JOHN MAYER
KANYE WEST
KELLY CLARKSON
KT TUNSTALL
LUDACRIS
MELISSA ETHERIDGE
RIHANNA
ROGER WATERS
SMASHING PUMPKINS
THE POLICE
M.C. ROVE

Tickets go on sale Monday. James Iha is already torn—it's like 40 minutes from his house, and he wants to hear the new Kelly material, but the awkward "Oh, hey, how's it going?" run-in with Billy may be too much to handle.

^* Before any Mets haters rush in to agree, let us stress that this criticism only applies to the building itself, and not the amazin' baseball often contained therein.

Scoop Time: Shea Stadium to Host Live Earth [Hidden Track]