Live 8, revisited

This piece, originally broadcast 7/7/05 on WAIF radio, is a bit dated already, and whatever became of the sequel? If recollection serves correct, the USUK were to invade Nepal and hunt down McCartney, the newly instated King of the Himalayas. Meanwhile, with McCartney and his Maoist guard running interference in Nepal, the Lollipop militia are unimpeded in their activities, setting up summer training camps in Libya, from whence the Witlerian revolution spreads as children the world over seize radio & TV stations, parliaments, universities et cetera... so it goes something like that... Perhaps this phantasm history can be told in its entirety eventually (but while it is at least somewhat timely, I should hope.)

In the meantime, I've one slight revision to the original co-authored piece: news of the knighting of Bono demanded the addition of one brief line for Amber, lifted from a recent E!News headline...

Concert review: Live 8, London

LONDON, July 4 - If you want to end wars and stuff, Arlo Guthrie always said, you've gotta sing loud; and if you want to liven up a moribund pop culture, as Lollipop Militia cult leader Adolf Wittgenstein, aka "Witler," wrote in "Dirty Bombs, or Mein Kampf To Get Into Your Little Edelweiss Panties", only mass televised public execution will do. Thus two dozen of the world's best-loved performers sang loud, and then were spectacularly executed by the lolita pop sensations Amber Alert.

The free 10-hour show before 200,000 fans in Hyde Park may not have succeeded in putting a stop to poverty in Africa, but it did see to the quick demise of some of the past forty years' most over-rated recording artists.

The marathon concert was billed as the greatest rock show ever, and it came to a close with the most incomprehensible, and widely televised, act of psychological warfare since 9/11.

The event was a masterful display of technical organization as 26 acts performed mostly 15-minute sets, while the violent finale had apparently been carefully choreographed by the collaborators, which included the African Childrens Choir and, some are now suggesting, Paul McCartney himself, the only non-child artist to come out alive, and whose collaboration with Amber Alert in a blistering rendition of "Helter Skelter" (a favorite of Charles Manson) preceded the massacre.

Up until the horrific end, memorable moments came far and few between, featuring a begrudgingly reunited Pink Floyd, the remains of the Who, a self-satisfied U2, a slumbering R.E.M., a sagging Madonna, a mind-numbing Sting, but then came the knock-'em-dead number by Paul McCartney in world class form.

Playing together for the first time since 1981, Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters, lead David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright looked like they wished they were anywhere else, delivering "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb" like wet noodles. Gilmour had said earlier that performing with Waters after their long falling out was "like sleeping with the ex-wife."

U2's Bono, ever equating himself with John Lennon, accompanied McCartney in "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" to get the event started. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry later plodded through an interminable "Won't Get Fooled Again." Ex-Boomtown Rat Bob Geldof, who was the key organizer of Live 8, sneaked in - the only way he gets to play it these days - a rendition of his long forgotten hit, "I Don't Like Mondays." Coldplay came on with their sloven dirges, and Richard Ashcroft joined them for more self-pity with his song "Bittersweet Symphony." Current English pop sad-boy Pete Doherty accompanied Elton John for a middling treatment of Marc Bolan's "Children of the Revolution." In a similar flash of uninspired presience, R.E.M. played "Everybody Hurts" and "It's The End Of The World As We Know It."

Indeed, as they knew it.

McCartney ended the day, joined unexpectedly by Amber Alert to close with a smashing version of "Helter Skelter" Amber Alert immediately segued into the anthem "We Are The World And We Want To Watch You Die!", while their nubile fans, the Witler Youth, did push-ups and jumping jacks to the beat. Then as the other 26 acts made their way onto the stage, mistaking this as a cue to join in the final chorus, members of the African Chidren's Choir (formerly of the Congolese Revolutionary Army) yanked out uzis and brought the music to a deafening stop with machine gun salvos into the air. The nymphettes of Amber Alert then seized the other performers who were systematically executed Circus Maximus style.

Amber commenced with these words of send-off to the netherworld, "Good Knight, Bono!", as she tied him to hot metal racks while tearing his testicles, nipples and other bits of meat off with red-hot pincers. Pete Townsend was crushed in a large grape press while Roger Daltry was bound in a large bag and thrown onto the horns of a raging bull. Madonna was hung upside down and had boiling lead poured into her vagina. George Michaels was torn in half from balls to head with a chain saw. Pink Floyd's heads were crushed like ping-pong balls, being fastened alternately between a chain of swinging anvils. R.E.M. were forced to challenge Coldplay in a duel the death. It was tridents vs. plastic forks. The victor won a coating of honey and a hive of killer hornets. Richard Ashcroft was punctured inside an iron maiden. An effigy of the corpse of Freddy Mercury gave Elton John a HIV+ death fuck. Bob Geldolf was ceremoniously drawn and quartered, then force-fed his own colon. Sting had nearly escaped, but Amber, yawning in dull annoyance, flung a net over him and threw him to the audience. Here the thousands of fresh and limber little hotties dropped roasted coals one by one down his anus, ripping open his stomach as they feasted on his steaming intestines. One merciful lass gave the pinko pop star a sip of Evian water before pulling his jaw apart with the back of a hammer.

In the melee that followed, the members of Amber Alert and the African Children's Choir escaped in an airlift by what appeared to be a fleet of Libyan helicopters.

Paul McCartney remains at large.

In a joint statement, President Pussy and Tony Blair called the slaughter an "evil, cowardly act by dastardly, dirty little girls" and promised that their heads would be presented on a platter in the Oval Office before the year is out. President Pussy said he has credible evidence that they and the Lollipop Militia receive material support from, and refuge with, Maoist rebels in Nepal. U.S. forces are reportedly amassing in the Himalayas.

Meanwhile, at the summit of the African Union currently being held in Sirte, Libya. Colonol Muammar Qadaffi made no direct comment on the slaughter, but said: "We are being subjected to a double faced phenomenon which is benign on the surface and malicious underneath. I mean there is an attempt to promote proposals aimed at extending support for Africa. But when they are linked to humiliating conditions we don't want humiliation." In his inaugural speech to the 50 African leaders gathered at the summit, he called for the formation of a borderless United States of Africa.