On Friday 1 July Ivana and I left Utrecht early in the evening en route to one of the biggest events in history: Live 8 2005. We met up with Babette and Tina at a German Raststätte and the four of us arrived in Berlin late that night. In Berlin we stayed at the Tipi theatre, just a few hundred metres from the festival terrain, thanks to Babette and the caretaker Harry who had been waiting up for us. On that Saturday morning we had breakfast with our fantastic host Harry and left for the festival terrain. There was a small group of people already waiting, but it would take another hour, untill midday, before the gates would be opened. Ivana and I decided to take a short walk through the park surrounding the festival terrain, the street between the Siegersäule, in front of which the concert was to take place, and the Brandenburger Tor, which marked the other end of the terrain. On our way back we found a shortcut to the festival terrain through some bushes. We were watching there for a while, seeing people get sent back who tried to enter the terrain already, trying to decide whether to stay there or get back to the gate. We had not noticed that it was already twelve untill we suddenly saw people running our way. So we quickly entered the field, only to find another gate. Here we were told that the gate would be opened at the side later, so we waited patiently at the left side of the gate while Die Toten Hosen were rehearsing. About an hour later, the gate did open, only on the left side, so we were lucky and ran to the front, again finding a gate on our way, some 50 meters from the stage. On the other side of the stage we only saw people with VIP passes and it seemed this was as good as it was going to get. So we settled near the gate and had a nice time with the people around us. After a while though we saw people entering the first part of the terrain from the right of our gate. After debating for some time, we decided to take our chances and found our way to the first field where we sat down waiting for the concert to begin.
The concert started at two that day with the set of Die Toten Hosen that we had already heard and the second time it sounded just as good as during the soundcheck. Most of the bands were German, but though we didn't know most of them, the music was great and the message clear: Make Poverty History. Show the G8 how the world feels about this issue. On Sunday morning busses would leave from the Siegersäule, right behind the stage, for people wanting to go to Edinburgh. All in all it was very moving and very clear both the artists and the audience cared. It was truly beautiful to be able to be part of this experience.

Die Toten Hosen	Wir Sind Helden	Soehne Mannheims
Katherine Jenkins	BAP	Audioslave
Tim Robbins	Greenday	Juli
Claudia Schiffer	Silbermond	Chris de Burgh
Brian Wilson	Renee Olstead	Sasha
Daniel Powter	Berlin	Images from London

Unfortunately, for me personally A-ha's contribution to this concert was a bit of a dissappointment. They started off very beautifully with Hunting High and Low, but then Morten forgot the second line and started mumbling. The rest of the song sounded really good again luckily. Take On Me then went down very well with the crowd, but Morten seemed to have some technical problems with his earpiece, as always. For me it was very disappointing that he spent more time complaining about the sound than he did talking about Live 8 and his speech didn't seem very well prepared either. Personally I think most bands will have had problems on stage. What can you expect when something this big is put together in such a short time? It's a great achievement, but perfection is a little too much to hope for. Still troubled, A-ha ended the set with Summer Moved On, where Morten again mixed up some lines, but it sounded great and was brought to a good end, despite being a difficult song. Obviously they had prepared a fourth song, but as the show was already running 2,5 hours behind on schedule and some time had been wasted during the set, we might never know which song that would have been. So though musically A-ha had a good performance, it lacked professionalism and is a missed opportunity for them presenting themselves to a larger international audience. Still, they were there doing their part for a good cause which we all should support.
After A-ha's set we had to leave, as it was running late and we had to return to the Netherlands. On the way back we were able to listen to a lot of other bands still on the radio, both from Berlin and other cities, which made a very good end to a fantastic day. The musical hightlights for me, in Berlin, had been Brian Wilson, also because he played 'God Only Knows', which was the first song on my wedding last year, and Greenday, who were absolutely great, though we were carefull to stay out of the pit untill after their performance ;-) The most moving and maybe even enlightning part for me was Will Smiths opening speech in Philadelphia. He made so very clear why we were there. Every three seconds a child dies of poverty. Someone's daughter dies, someone's son dies. Every three seconds a child dies. Snap your fingers and another child has died. So if you haven't yet, please sign the live 8 petition and help make poverty history!

Sandra Buster, webmaster a-ha.nl