Live 8 Concert

US Live 8: Philadelphia review (cont.)

Alicia Keys, Linkin Park and Def Leppard Play Live8

As the audience watches a piano is rolled out and the crowds cheer thinking that maybe Stevie Wonder is up next. Alicia Keys comes out. Before she plays, she speaks a couple of minutes about life and death and mortality. She does a beautiful song titled "For All We Know" and gets up and says goodbye. I think the rest of the crowd is thinking the same way that I am - we got cheated. She only sang one song and she was awesome. The audience was stunned. My biggest disappointment of the day was that they had only enough room for one of her tracks. I would have surely traded a Destiny's Child number for another track from Alicia Keys.

I get a phone call from a friend and miss most of Def Poetry, and next up Linkin Park hit the stage. The crowd snarls with excitement. It is evident that they are one of the most popular musical acts of the day. Almost immediately they have all of Philly clapping in sync with their precise drumming and crunching guitars. They rocked the crowd as they did "Crawling", "Somewhere I Belong", "Breaking The Habit" and "In The End". During the song "Breaking The Habit", random images flashed with random characters and a number 1014. It was like some cryptic message. I don't know enough about the band to know what this means.

During a break, DJ Green Lantern spun records and mentioned the recent passing of R& B singer Luther Vandross.

It's about 4:20 when Def Leppard takes the stage kicking into "Pour Some Sugar On Me", these old school rockers are met cheers, but a lot of people in the crowd have decided that the day is over and the crowds thin a little. They seem well rehearsed and next up is a Badfinger cover tune "No Matter What". They finish their set with "Rock of Ages"