Lots of artists have foundations and try to raise money for causes they care about, Elton John has his AIDS foundation, Lady Gaga her anti-bully ‘Born this way’ foundation, Bono the One campaign and Michael Jackson had his Heal the World,… didn’t Sting have some rainforest foundation at one point? What happened to that? Err I know, most of them are a scam but this is not the point, they give the illusion that rock-pop stars care about others. The point is that usually, singers-songwriters pick causes they can directly relate to, Arcade Fire has raised money for Haiti and Springsteen for the victims of hurricane Sandy. Quite logical.
But Broken Bells has found the most original/weird/out-of-this-world/nerdy/unexpected cause ever: the band will donate money to the B612 Foundation’s Sentinel mission, a mission searching for asteroids which come close to the earth and could eventually present a danger. I know it could happen, the dinosaurs have learned the lesson, and that’s such a constant preoccupation of mine I have to admit. I am joking, and this serious article seems to say we shouldn’t worry too much: ‘the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.’
Still we have to be prepared and Broken Bells is here to help: $1 from every ticket sold on their West Coast tour will be donated to the B612 Foundation’s Sentinel mission which will search for special objects larger than 460 feet, which could cause some serious damages. Space.com is even reporting that James Mercer and Danger Mouse’s band and B612 will host an after party after their show on April 15th at the Fonda in Los Angeles. There will be telescopes from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and special guests, such as ‘Dr. Marc Buie, the mission specialist on the Sentinel project, and Rusty Schweickart, former astronaut and co-founder of the B612 Foundation, as well as other astronomers and dignitaries’. They also promise you ‘a space-themed drink’ but good luck at getting these afterparty tickets, which will be extremely limited. Since this new TV series Cosmos, there is definitively something in the air….
