News Service from House Harris

US: Sydney's Sick Puppies play live to YouTube audience

WASHINGTON, Nov 23 AFPAAP - Sydney band the Sick Puppies has performed in YouTube's first-ever live event, an extravaganza which was part concert andpart variety show.

The popular video-sharing internet site streamed a two-hour live broadcast on Saturday featuring well- to lesser-known singers, dancers and video bloggers who became online celebrities through YouTube.

The event was filmed before a live audience at the Fort Mason Centre near San Francisco's famed Fisherman's Wharf.

The Sick Puppies played onstage while Juan Mann, the Australian man behind freehugscampaign.org who the band immortalised in a video of its song All the Same, did what he does best - handing out free hugs to members of the audience.

Mann became something of an international celebrity when his Free Hugs video appeared on YouTube in 2006.

In the video, filmed in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall, Mann sets out to brighten strangers' lives in Sydney by offering to hug them.

Last year, Mann's Free Hugs campaign picked up the Most Inspirational prizeat the inaugural YouTube video-sharing awards.

Saturday's show opened with a scantily clad Katy Perry performing her song Hot and Cold, a title which pretty much summed up the evening for the tens of thousands of users of the comments board.

"This is AWESOME! YOUTUBE RULEZ!!!!!!!" wrote twilightmaniac1901.

"GO YOUTUBE!" agreed 4yall.

"Can anyone say train wreck?" shot back tobyw87.

Other performers included virtuoso guitarist Joe Satriani, who jammed with Funtwo, a guitarist whose YouTube video went viral in 2006 and made him into an online sensation, and hip-hop artist Soulja Boy Tell'Em.

YouTube also paid tribute to itself and the role it played in the presidential election as a favourite platform for videos by the campaigns and in co-hosting debates with the CNN television network.

The star of the show was Grammy-award winning musician will.i.am of the Black-Eyed Peas, whose song Yes We Can in tribute to Democratic candidate Barack Obama has been viewed nearly 14 million times on YouTube.

Will.i.am performed It's A New Day, the song he released following Obama's victory in the November 4 presidential election over Republican John McCain

Other acts included the grinding up of a broom handle in a blender by the white lab-coat wearing star of the willitblend.com videos and the firing of more than 1,000 paintballs from a cannon at a man dressed in a suit of armour.

Queen Rania of Jordan also appeared in a videotaped message to receive the first YouTube Visionary Award.

Queen Rania, the wife of King Abdullah II, launched her own YouTube channelin April "dedicated to breaking down stereotypes about the Arab and Muslimworlds and to bridging the East-West divide".

YouTube's first foray into live broadcasting comes as the Google-owned website tries to cash in on its popularity by letting advertisers "sponsor" videos and bid on key words people use for searches on the site.