Yesterday, as many people know, was Live 8. I have vague memories of Live Aid; I was 7 years old and lived about 10 minutes outside of Philly, and while we didn't go to the concert, we did have it on all day and taped the whole thing.

Anyway, yesterday, I tried to watch Live 8. I say "tried" because MTV/VH1 did everything they could do to NOT show it. Honestly, they couldn't have screwed this up any more if they had tried. They had decided at some point that the music was secondary to their VJs. I don't think they showed a complete set from ANY artist. There were commercials every 5 minutes. They frequently cut into the middle of a song to show us VJs yammering about how awesome it is that is on stage, instead of SHOWING the group on stage.

They show MC Lyte saying something like, "I'm really affected by this. I'm happy, because it's so cool to have all these bands and all these people out to see them. But then I'm sad, because we have to do this in the first place. If I get choked up or start crying, you know why." Only she's talking in the most unaffected monotone I've ever heard, and she sounds like she's reading from the phone book or giving an office lunch order to the local sub shop. Shut up, MC Lyte. And it's Keith URBAN, not Keith HERMAN.

They talked over Stevie Wonder, and then cut away from him performing live to show a taped performance of Destiny's Child from earlier.

They cut to VJs in the middle of The Who playing "Won't Get Fooled Again".

They cut to VJs while Pink Floyd was playing "Comfortably Numb".

Now, I'm not even a huge Pink Floyd fan like some folks are, but even I know how stupid that was. This is the first time in how long that they've been on stage together? And MTV/VH1 CUTS AWAY from them?

I already hated MTV, and I tolerate VH1 because of things like "I Love the 80s". But now? If you can't cover something like this correctly, give it to someone else. The fact that you show music videos at 4 AM no longer means that you're a music channel.

AOL will apparently have their feeds available for about 6 weeks, so I'll probably go through those over the next few days to see everything that I missed.

MTV sucks.