On Pop

So, you missed the guy who was selling babysitter futures for the last night of 1999? It's telly again then.

Get in training this bank holiday, 30 May, 5.30pm, when BBC2 screens the Great Music Experience, a concert which will be recorded in Japan on 22 May. This is the first in a series of global gigs taking place annually until the year 2000, culminating with 'the greatest ever collection of talent, from all the world's cultures'. As yet undisclosed, of course.

This year's concert takes place in front of a 10-storey, eighth-century Buddhist temple in Nara, the original capital of Japan, and includes acts such as Bob Dylan (right), Joni Mitchell, INXS, Ry Cooder, The Chieftains and a choir of 150 Buddhist monks. The big idea, claim the organisers Tribute Management, is to create not an It's a Knockout-style sense of transnational co-operation, but rather, 'a tour de force of musical possibilites'. Hence, in the opening scene, kodo drums, celtic pipes and Toshinori Kondo's jazz trumpet will blend subtly with Michael Hutchence's vocals and a full Western orchestra. Where Bob will stand with his mouth organ has not yet been decided.

The sad thing is that, as a vision of the future, it implies that in six years' time, we probably won't all be in nightclubs on Mars doing cyber-drugs and wearing silver suits. Rather, we'll still be at home playing name-that-tune with Mr Zimmerframe again. Rock 'n' roll - who said it wouldn't last until the end of the century.

The Great Music Experience, 5.30pm 30 May, BBC2

(Photograph omitted)