Malagueta101

"Who's gonna save me?"


Going through a blog I always read I saw this campaign that grabbed my interest for some different reasons. First of all is a campaign tackling the climate change issue, aiming to raise the profile of the discussion for the meeting that is going to take place in Copenhagen in December. At the flat this meeting has been a recurrent topic since our Climate/Technology/Weird Parties correspondent Filipe "Pimpo" Moura is going to be there, in the middle of the protests.Anyway, the campaing consists of 60 artists such as Jamie Cullum, Mark Ronson, Duran Duran, Lily Allen and Bob Geldof singing a song. The video follows:

http://www.youtube.com/user/time4climatejustice




What reached to me the most wasn't the "concerned" looks the artists had on their faces or the "We Are The World" appeal of the whole campaign. It was actually the song itself, which was written and recorded originally by Midnight Oil, an Australian band that I listened to a lot some 8 years ago. Here's the original version.Hearing the song again made me go back and listen to some of their albums and remeber the band's history, which has a lot to do with militant atittudes towards the enviroment and specially the situation of the aborigins in Australia.

Another important song in this context is "Blue Sky Mine"(also follow the lyrics here), which according to SongFacts:"...refers to the Wittenoom asbestos mine in Western Australia where blue asbestos was mined between 1947 and 1966. The once-thriving town is now a virtual ghost town. Shops are boarded up, the 2 schools are closed, the local cinema is derelict. In their ignorance, the original settlers used asbestos in gardens, school yards and roads. Wittenoom is without doubt Australia's greatest industrial disaster and it is estimated that 25% of the 20,000 men who mined asbestos there will die from related diseases."

And that's it for my nostalgic afternoon.

Cheers,