Madonna at Live 8 in 2005. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
If you don't know about Live Earth already, you certainly will by the time the humongous 24-hour charity concert gets underway on July 7. With pop's biggest guilty consciences on hand and shows taking place on "all seven continents" (actually six, as Antarctica is cheatingly excluded), you'll be inculcated with the message that this is the. Biggest. Charity. Gig. Ever. And it will be, both in sheer ponderous scale and in its aim to "use the global reach of music to engage people on a mass scale to combat our climate crisis."
The line-ups for the British and American legs were announced this week, and, with the perplexing exception of Bono, include the battle-worn four-star generals you'd expect - Madonna, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Police - as well as the youthier likes of Razorlight, Bloc Party and Paolo Nutini.
The rest will follow: the flow of statistics about how many sandwiches will be consumed backstage, tickets flogged on eBay for 10 times the price (and the consequent debate about morality vs capitalism), the glow of piety hovering over Wembley Stadium on the day, and celebrity interviewer Fearne Cotton proving unequal to the task of talking to anyone older than 25 - these are the things that spell Big Charity Bash. Unique to this one, though, will be Al Gore (in the slot reserved for the benevolent older figure who turns up in dress-down Friday chinos) and a flood of information about how the carbon footprint of the concerts will be offset.
And all the effort will have the effect on climate change that Live 8 did on poverty in the developing world. What's now known about mega-shows like this is that they're never the popular uprisings the organisers imagine them to be. They're just big gigs: 90% of the audience go for the music, not the message, and the other 10% are already converts who don't need awareness-raising events to persuade them to change their habits. The scale of Live Earth will focus the world's attention, or at least that part of it that's watching TV, for a day, after which a "job done" feeling will prevail and people will revert to whatever they were doing before.
Maybe music just isn't the medium for this. Last year was the year global warming went mainstream, and there can't be anyone in the west who doesn't know the facts. Is a fattest-of-all-time rock show going to make a difference, either with the audience or politicians and big business? But how else do you do it?
