While countless numbers watched the stream online, nearly 60,000 people attended the Global Citizen Festival, a concert designed to create awareness of the global poverty issue. The Global Poverty Project‘s mission is “is a world without extreme poverty within a generation. Our mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of people taking action to end extreme poverty. The Global Poverty Project is an educational and campaigning organization that activates citizens to be a part of the global movement to end extreme poverty”. Attendees hopefully paid attention to this as they entered a lottery to get tickets for the festival, but maybe it was the massive bands lined up to support the cause, including Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and The Black Keys.
It was also one of the last Foo Fighters shows in a while. The audience didn’t even let the introducer finish his spiel before cheering for the Foos, to which the man replied something like, “they’ll be on in like twenty seconds.” That man, and other speakers including Selena Gomez, Muhammed Yunus, Katie Couric, were on hand to reinforce the main objective of the festival, creating awareness of global poverty. However, the agenda for the evening included a lot more topics, such as polio eradication (one presenter suggested Neil Young change the lyrics to “keep on rockin’ in a polio free world”) and empowering women (a theme of the Half the Sky movement, of which actress Olivia Wilde spoke about), as well as some recognition awards. Hopefully some of this is of interest to you, and you will check out the site for the Global Poverty Project and sign on to support their cause. Twitter may not be enough to resolve this crisis, you’ll have to reach out to government leaders and donate some of your own funds so that the 1.4 billion people who live on less than US$1.25 per day may one day be out of poverty.
But if it doesn’t interest you for some reason, and you just came here to see photos of rock bands, go ahead and keep on scrolling…
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K’naan:
Hugh Evans (Global Citizen Festival founder):
Band of Horses:
John Legend (doing a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine”):
The Black Keys:
Olivia Wilde:
Foo Fighters (on hiatus until poverty is eradicated):
Neil Young and Crazy Horse:
Setlists (courtesy BV):
K’naan:
In The Beginning
The Seed
Wavin’ Flag
Band of Horses:
Knock Knock
The Great Salt Lake
No One’s Gonna Love You
The Funeral
Foo Fighters:
Times Like These
All My Life
My Hero
Learn to Fly
Arlandria
These Days
Walk
Best of You
Everlong
Neil Young and Crazy Horse:
Love and Only Love
Powderfinger
Born In Ontario
Walk Like a Giant
The Needle and the Damage Done
Twisted Road
Fuckin’ Up
Rockin’ in the Free World (w/ Dan Auerbach, Dave Grohl and others)