Here’s the way I see it: Various webcasts and television channels brought us a constant stream of top-drawer artists rocking crowds across continents and oceans. How on (live) Earth could Al Gore’s latest invention be anything but entertaining for the average viewer? Every time I turned back to it someone relatively cool straddled the stage. The artists may not have given their best performances to date (understatement of the year), yet I still enjoyed the day/night in toto.

That’s not to say I understood the point of this grandiose endeavor. Why would you fly hundreds of artists more than 220,000 miles around the world to make an old point everyone’s been hearing already for years? Will Lenny Kravitz and his directive of letting love rule really get me to take a shorter shower? Still, a global concert’s a global concert, and I ain’t complaining.

So read on after the jump for a slew of videos from yesterday’s intergalactic, 24-hour Live Earth concert, and check out what you may have missed. But before you do that, watch this backstage interview with the specially re-united Spinal Tap — did Rob Reiner just say Al Gore invented The Tap Reunion?

Count me as someone that as few as six months ago would never have expected to see The Police play Message In A Bottle with Kanye West and John Mayer. George Bush doesn’t care about global warming:

Various outlets also aired The Police playing Can’t Stand Losing You and Roxanne. You don’t have to sell your polar ice caps to the night.

The fantastically smug Roger Waters threw down some Dark Side of the Moon shit at Giants Stadium. So, what, Pink Floyd will re-unite for intercontinental debt relief but not for our impending doom? Weak sauce, Pink Floyd.

Two things I enjoy: Alec Baldwin and Smashing Pumpkins…let’s watch:

For more from the recently re-united (kinda) band, this guy’s got the full Smashing Pumpkins webcast broken up into a few parts. Stellar.

Metallica showed up in London for Nothing Else Matters and more:

Here are two more clips of Metallica in action: Enter Sandman and Sad But True

In what we can only imagine is the equivalent of Stillwater playing Bonnaroo, Spinal Tap re-united at Wembley for Stonehenge and Big Bottom…even Metallica got in on the Spinal Tap act:

Crowded House is back! Sing along to Don’t Dream It’s Over:

Here’s a more official version of Don’t Dream It’s Over:

UB-Fucking-40 played this shit…and I loved it. Of the stuff I saw yesterday or watched online or on my DVR today, UB40 takes the cake. Where does it take the cake? Probably, as George Carlin says, to the bakery, to see the other cakes.

Many people said the Foo Fighters were the early highlight of the day, so let’s see whether the defense’s case holds water:

Joss Stone (pronounced like “yogging”?) rocked Johannesburg:

The Red Hot Chili Peppers played generic-but-cool tunes for a London crowd, and the act involved ridiculously cool gloves as well. Gloves in July, Keitas? That’s sending a mixed message about global warming, no?

Keith Urban and Alicia Keys rock Gimme Shelter at Giants Stadium:

Shakira danced like a world-class strumpet in Hamburg…but I gotta admit, it’s a damn good performance:

John Legend and Corrine Bailey Rae actually did a Marvin Gaye cover justice, singing Mercy, Mercy Me, though I’m not sure how that applies to greenhouse gases.

The lovable Madonna, whom I like to call the Miles Davis of Pop Music, laid down a nasty La Isla Bonita with some homeless street performers/gypsies that look like the guy’s who stole Jerry Seinfeld’s Friars Club jacket:

Madge also had the London crowd going apeshit — she even said, “C’mon motherfuckers!” — before shredding Ray of Light.

I fucking love Macy Gray, who looked like she was either really doped up or drunk as shit throughout a fantastic rendition of her hits from seven years ago:

• New videos are rolling in by the minute, so feel free to bookmark this link to YouTube and check back for updates as they come in