'Live 8' Anticipation Builds

The final pieces are being put in place in Philadelphia, one of eight cities around the world serving as venues Saturday for Live 8, the mammoth antipoverty musical event.

Philadelphia's roster includes Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Jack Nicholson and Toby Keith, among many others.

The Early Show correspondent Tracy Smith says they won't all be singing, but they'll be there, nonetheless, as will an estimated million fans, for what she calls "the mother-of-all-music concerts with a mission."

That mission: to pressure the leaders of the G8, the eight richest nations, meeting in Scotland next week, to forgive billions of dollars in African debt.

"It's gonna be the biggest concert in the history of the world," says music mogul and Live 8 organizer Russell Simmons.

He's still booking acts for Philly. But so far, that lineup includes Stevie Wonder, Dave Matthews and Alicia Keyes.

In London, it's 1985 all over again: Sting, Paul McCartney and Elton John will all return for an encore of the original "Live Aid."

That one sought donations to relieve famine in Africa. Some 1.9 billion people around the world watched, and $200 million poured in.

Smith asked Simmons about naysayers out who point out that Live Aid 20 years ago raised a lot of money, but as recently as two years ago, there was another famine in Ethiopia. Nothing has really changed, they charge.

"We're here to serve all of us," Simmons responded. "All of us are here to keep giving. That's it. We're here to keep giving."

As for the naysayers, "That's their own trip."

This time, notes Smith, every G8 country is taking part. Along with Philadelphia and Toronto in North America, there will be Live 8 concerts in Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, and Johannesburg, South Africa.You can watch it all for free on the Internet, courtesy of AOL, Smith points out.

"You can … concert hop," says AOL spokesperson Regina Lewis. "You can say, 'OK, show me what's going on in Rome. Now, lets try London. I'll take Philly."

There's only a six-hour window for all the bands to do their thing in the City of Brotherly Love so, says producer Tim Sexton, they'll be using a specially designed, turntable-like stage to pull it off.

Even though there won't be any tickets, searches or metal detectors for the mega-crowd, Philadelphia Mayor John Street says he's confident about security: "We're the great United States of America. We're a free country. And we're not gonna treat people like everybody is part of some invisible enemy."

In the twenty years since Live Aid, Smith observes, many of the artists have changed, but the song remains the same: Fight poverty and hunger.

"The message is gonna sink in," Simmons says. "The fire will be lit on Sunday morning and it's gonna keep on burning."

One sour note: The stars are all getting goody-bags worth about $12,000, in a concert that's supposed to be about eradicating poverty.