Australia had aborigines, Japan had high tech. The first band in Tokyo was the dance-pop act Genki Rockets, whose set started with a giant holographic projection of its singer, surrounded by Disneyesque fireworks, as she recited “The Breeze.” It’s about looking at the Earth from somewhere in space: “You can’t find no borders, no countries, no day and night, no up and down, no rain and no breeze.” Then a big, shimmering trance-pop track kicked in for a filtered-voice love song. That gave way to some electro Morse code–three dots, three dashes, three dots: “S.O.S.”–and she introduced….a towering, holographic Al Gore.

Speaking of politics, they’re not absent from Live Earth. In a song called “Start the Day,” the Ghostwriters, an Australian band that includes members of Midnight Oil and the Hoodoo Gurus, started with Creedence Clearwater-style swamp-rock guitar. “Bush is here to steal your oil,” one song went. “Democracy is foiled, toxic weapons in your soil.” Meanwhile, the most popular wardrobe item among all the Australian bands seems to be a T-shirt reading, “Say no to nuclear energy.”