Clash with Generosity
Sir Bob Geldof, the former front man with the Punk/Pop band The Boom Town Rats, is to perform at the Southport Theatre here on Merseyside in September of this year.
The Pop musician turned political activist will play tracks from his latest album “How to compose popular songs that will sell”.
It will be his first theatre show performance in over three years. I do hope that the multi millionaire refrains from rattling his collection box and thrusting it under the noses of his unsuspecting audience, while having a whip round with the intention to install a water pump in an oil field or on the perimeter of a diamond mine somewhere on the African continent!
I’m not insensitive, I am just pissed off continuously being asked by the likes of commercial recycling organizations begging for the shirt off my back.
Even Bob Geldof’s humanitarianism has not gone without controversy. A BBC programme claimed that millions of Dollars raised by Band Aid was diverted off to Ethiopian rebels. There were also allegations that 95% of aid money donated to help the victims of the 1985 Ethiopian famine was siphoned off.
Celebrities with treasure troves of cash donated by the public do have influences but do not necessarily have the answers. The recent revelation that millions of pounds from British Aid was spent on a private aircraft for an African President beggars belief. There is then the outrageous occurrence of an African sovereign using 2million pounds of British Aid on a lavish Royal Wedding!
Geldof’s greatest political and charitable achievement must be the “Live 8″ gig in July of 2005. Bob and his other organizers may of had their own agenda, but for me Geldof receives great acclamation for managing to reunite Pink Floyd for the concert held in London’s Hyde Park in front of 205,000 people, and out to a gigantic global audience.
Bono of U2 is another righteous multi millionaire crusader who also believes he can save the World. Dubbed “the face of fusion philanthropy”, Sir Paul Hewson – ‘Bono’ to his fans, is probably the most politically motivated front man since Joe Strummer of “The Clash”, and was a leading figurehead in the Jubilee 2000 campaign to wipe out the third world debt.
Bono is one of the magnetic onstage performers from the Post-Punk age. I just wish he would ditch those ridiculous glasses, climb down from his rickety soap box, seek out that Mother of all Eco Warriors pop star come actor Sir Gordon Somner alias (Sting) who will be somewhere in the Rain forest! Shake him down from his money tree hoping that he lands on top of bloody Bob Geldof.
Forgive me for having a pop and a cynical opinion of our three honorable Knights of the realm, their humanitarian concern without doubt is sincere, but in my humble opinion its predominantly ineffective. They are not the Saviors of the Universe.
Now, if you do wish to mix polemic with music then listen to “The Clash”. The only Punk band that really mattered, they were their generations equivalent to The Beatles. Joe Strummer had political insight and is lyrically polemic. Check out “Tommy Gun”, “Spanish Bombs” and “Rock the Casbah”. What? No Knighthood for Joe!!!