LIVE 8 PHILADELPHIA
7-2-05 THIS POST'S CONTENT:
T
he Live 8 show in the city of brotherly love was packed to capacity and I felt as much a part of a living, breathing, sweating organism as I have ever felt in the most packed subway cars of New York. That is, once we got there.
The day started at a snails pace. INK (freshly back from England), RAN-D , my brother BRETT and I crashed with Brett's friends in Philly ( TRACY was busy with her law school work and couldn't make it to the concert). The Live 8 show was the morning after First Friday, where we toured Philly's art gallery openings, followed by a night of drunken mayhem at BROWNIES . Needless to say, waking-up wasn't easy.
We naively decided not to head out for the concert till around 10:30 AM, with the music set to start at Noon and us being 25 blocks away (most of which was in lockdown mode) we clearly had no right to be anywhere even in sight of the stage for the amount of people that were supposed to be attending. If we were to get close we would have to demonstrate Darwinian tactics and go full force, no holds barred. If we were to see anything it would take a little deception, a little stealth, a little fancy footwork, and if it came to it a "brace your forearms, duck your head, and plow through the ranks like gangbusters" fall back plan.
Once we arrived on the scene the crowd seemed really detached.
The reasons for this were obvious:
1) We were about 10 blocks away so we couldn't see the stage.
2) It was blisteringly hot.
3) We were getting bombarded by a nearby Jumbotron screen blasting commercials nonstop in-between acts.
It's very hard to get enthusiastic for a concert when you are watching it in the noon summer sun on a shit quality TV while the real thing is going on just blocks away.
At the eight-block mark a steady stream of spectators were still filtering in from the tertiary streets. The crowd was so large it seemed it could fill up a movie theater every few seconds, so the spots to stand or sit in actual shade were ever growing scarce. Most of the crowd didn't linger though, they scattered the second they hit the main fairway and began filtering towards the stage (the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel) like a million tiny mirrored balls being loosed on a pachinko machine.
I don't know if it was the ipod commercials flashing dancing silhouettes on bright solid colored background, or the picnic like atmosphere of lawn chairs, umbrellas, coolers, and blankets. At the seven-block mark there just wasn't really that pervasive, communal feeling of "we are changing the world" I had hoped for. It felt like the people were there for a leisure afternoon at a free concert in the park.
It was a buzz kill, that was until THE BLACKEYED PEAS hit the stage. This fueled us up and we started to traverse the crowd at a more nimble pace. I was encountering an overwhelming urge to get as close as possible to the stage at all costs." I wanted to get the performers in eye view. I told my bros, this was the goal for the day. "We need to get close enough to actually see the performers." Seems like an easy task, except when you have 8 blocks of solid people between you and your goal.
Ink doesn't do well with massive crowds and wanted us to all pick a shady tree and cop a squat in front the nearest monitor and watch the show from afar. For Ran-D, Brett and myself, this wasn't an option.
We nominated Ran-D to lead, and he cut through the crowd like a heat seeking missile. Much like a packed club there is an etiquette to skirting a concert. It takes a certain finesse. One needs a keen eye to spot openings, the left leaning sway of a drunk girl- cut right, the hole in a line- shoot straight, the easy step over a cooler- hurdle forward. The coordination for this was built over thousands of hours of childhood video game play; it's so easy it becomes brainless. So many faces the mind tries to identify and place, your eyes are constantly overwhelmed by faces, by people, thousands deep, taking laughing, moving, looking around. So much visual stimulation the brain blocks out to focus on the singular task of "FOLLOW RAN-D."
I have never felt so much a drone bee navigating the hive as I did while bum rushing the masses ever forward. We easily muscled through the seas of bedraggled wannabee hippies trying to hold claim to the land their blanket, fold out chair, or beach towel occupied waiting only to see Dave Matthews before retreating back to their studios for a well packed bowl and cold cat-licked pizza.
We came to a point where the majority of the "sitting folk" ended. These people are the dumbasses who would bring lawn chairs to a rave. We cautiously tried to step around people's blankets up until around the third block away from the stage where having a blanket spread out is just rediculous. There were a million people crowding toward a stage occupying 4 square feet each, while these morons spread out 10 foot blankets hoping to occupy 100 square feet of untouchable land, as though they are righted to it because they woke up earlier.
At the point where the blankets ran into a wall of people we had to stand on a middle-aged man's blanket to get through the crowd. By this point we were exausted.
Blanket Man: "Hey, do you mind."
Ran-D: "What?"
Blanket Man: "What the Hell? You're standing on my blanket!"
Cojo: "This is a concert dude."
Blanket Man: "Well, You should have gotten her fucking earlier!"
Cojo: "What the FUCK? There are a million people here, you honestly think you could spread out a blanket this close and nobody would step on your little FUCKING area just because you got here earlier than them? FUCK YOU!
After that we lost our couth. We were standing shoulder to shoulder with sweaty tank topped kids Anyone closer than him who thought they could put down a blanket and not expect tread ware was disillusioning themselves. We walked all over them without mind. We weren't the only assholes, we were just part of a massive line of people trudging ever onward in a line all competing for a better view.
We side-stepped past the bastions of sixteen-year-old Hot Topic clad Mtv-youth who made the trek to the fields in hopes of hearing a specific song from a specific "fill-in-the-blank" rapper de jour, where, upon hearing, their automaton brains would click to life with recognition forcing their bodies to move, sway, pump fist. Their faces would pullback into conspiratorial grins and they would recite the lyrics en mass. A chorus of puberty cracking defiance, in mock rebellion, unknowingly orchestrated by record industry spinsters, ad meisters, trend projectors, and network bigwigs.
Somewhere along the line Ran-D ran into a little black kid who was having an extremely hard time trying to get through the crowd. He looked to be about 8-years-old and nobody was moving out of the way for him. Ran-D and him got to talking and cooked up a quick plan where Ran-D walked behind the kid yelling that he was helping the kid get back to his family in the front of the concert. Total bullshit story, but it worked, slowly but surely the crowd spread and let them through, myself, Brett, and Ink all following in their wake. We did this for about twenty minutes until we reached a fence on the outer parameter of the stage. Seems you would have had to camp out there, or get there at the crack of dawn to actually be one of the few hundred to be on the other side of that fence. We still had a good two football fields between the stage and us and by this point were being squeezed by bodies on all sides. We were getting drenched in everyone else's sweat as well as our own, and there was no shade in site.
Ink started freaking out, and having a panic attack or something so he bailed and went home. After a few minutes of struggling to stay vertical we decided to cut right and back a few hundred feet to get shade. We backed up to the shady comfort of the last tree in the rows of trees leading up to the Art Museum.
We stood there for two seconds before some Long Island sounding yentas in lawn chairs started bitching at us to move. Ran-D had I assume had it by now. We had been bounced around in the heat for the past hour and were exhausted and grimy. So he bitched back at them. Something to the effect of "Fuck You, this is a concert, there are no assigned seats." To where they threatened to punch him out. He responded with something to the effect of "I would loooove to see you try that, I would love it. I would get the cops over here in a second and sue your ass. Oh, man I would love that. I'd have the cops pulling your fat asses out of here in no time." The whole crowd around us had now stopped what they were doing and were watching the commotion. Brett had moved about twenty feet to the right, towards the tree and was motioning for us to come so I said, "C'mon, Brett found a spot." and moved away motioning for Ran-D to come. "Ladies, enjoy your seats, I hope you have a wonderful time." He said to them sarcastically as we walked further into the shade.
This was the most prized shade because this was the last tree. People were packed like sardines. People were climbing the trees for a better view. It was pretty chaotic.
Bon Jovi hit the stage next with "It's My Life." The crowd went nuts. At this point I pulled out my video camera so I could digital zoom in closer to see if any of the stage was visible from this vantage point. I got in close and could see their keyboardist, and Richie Sambora rockin' out on the left side of the stage. There was this giant AOL funded scaffolding in the dead center (for cameras), which obscured the view of the main acts from about 99.9 percent of the audience.
When Destiny's Child came on we could just barely see Kelly Rowland in the little speck of the stage that was visible.
At this point we had seen enough. We started making our way out of there. It's one thing to do something "to say you were a part of it" and it's another to really enjoy yourself; and this was no longer enjoyable. I figured we could hit a bar and watch it on TV and have a better view.
We started making our way out. We got into the center fairway-which was the actual road leading up to the stage where there were food and drink vendors, and some small amusements and such.
They had said leading up to this that there would be free water, but that was BS. The only water we got for free was on our first trip through the fairway when a woman at a booth handed us dixicups full of water. That's it.
We started muscling along a police barrier to get around and hopefully out, when half the crowd ahead of us got turned around. Ran-D was just ahead of this crowd so Brett and I jumped through the police barrier. A cop grabbed me and told me I can't go through there. I told him I wanted to get out of this place, and asked where the exit was. He told me we were going the wrong way and pointed out an exit just behind us. By this point we could see Ran-D jumping up in the crowd trying to find us, but it was impossible to reach him. We could hear Will Smith rapping to the crowd as we exited the main part of the fairway. Brett and I spent the next half hour walking back and forth on the outer rim of that exit looking for Ran-D. Listening to Kanye West rap. Even on the outskirts of the event people were up trees and ontop of trucks and cars trying to catch a glimpse. I caught a shot of a kid sitting on top of the baseball backstop.
I heard someone in the audience say " If they shut the music off on this guy, I swear to god he's just talking. I can't believe he gets paid to talk to music." to which his wife responded: "Once we see Dave (Dave Matthews) we can get the hell out of here."
Brett and I were beat and needed water. Walking out we noticed that cops, or the fire department had unscrewed all the fire hydrants and plugged them with water flutes that shot up water like sprinklers.
I dunked my head in one and we started walking. The mass exodus towards the concert was still going on. We were 2 out of maybe 50 people walking away from the concert while there were thousands upon thousands walking towards it. Within a few minutes we found a suitable bar and ducked inside. 
The bar, DRINKERS PUB , was a very Elvis and Brando Motif and they had their walls lined with flat screens tuned to VH1, which was broadcasting the Live 8 shows around the world. It was cool to watch Dave Matthews and Jay-Z etc on Plasma TV's in a bar just blocks from where they were actually playing. Eating chicken fingers in the cool of Air Conditioning, with a cold beer in your hand, while playing Elvis Pinball (when the ball goes down the side chute where you can't hit it a little light comes on that says "Elvis has left the building"). It was a major improvement from the real thing. We hung out in Drinkers for hours doing just that, Drinkin'!. The bar filled up after Dave Matthews band ended (as we had expected). The line-up of the show was such a mishmash of bands that it never really gathered the momentum it could have if it were music all of similar genres I guess, and the crowd was too varied. Do real rap fans actually dig Will Smith? Do real rock fans dig Bon Jovi? (I mean guys).
It was interesting to see Grammy winning performers, some of which have massed giant catalogs of songs, forced to boil their entire careers down to a portfolio of their three most identifiable, TV friendly best. A statement on par to reducing an entire life down to a few lines on a tombstone, or reducing Warhol down to Monroe, Channel No.5, and Campbell's soup. Seems as though P-O-P being a three-letter word in our short-term-memory society can be the 1-2-3 simple breakdown of the definition of an artist's work. P-O-P, 1-2-3, If we can remember three things about you, you are valid. Breaking you down to evening news sound bytes. Breaking you down to the three biggest hits. Three sentences in a paragraph write-up in Rolling Stone. Three major achievements, no one hit wonder here, broke past the sophomore album, two hits could just be lucky twice, but three is genuinely a valid musician. Anyway, it was all for a good cause, so I'm glad all the big name acts sucked it up and played the small sets. Christ, on Conan they only play one tune.
Let's just hope that all this worldwide hubbub actually does some good in stopping world hunger.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo