I'd raise up my lighter but my hand might freeze off

Forget U2. Forget The Police. Forget Foo Fighters, Snow Patrol, even Spinal Tap. I hereby proclaim Nunatek to be the world's greatest band. Friend of the penguin, comrade of the long-dead Captain Scott, foe to global warming, this five-man band hails from Antarctica and is comprised of research scientists studying evolutionary biology, global warming and ass-kicking rock and roll. They'll be performing, via tape delay, at this Saturday's Live Earth concert, fulfilling the organizers' hope of having at least one band perform on each continent.

"You've got to remember, although we've got a very big following within the British Antarctic Survey — and in particular, Rothera station — we may not have the worldwide renown that some of the other acts have," said my new rock star crush Tristan Thorne in a great, tongue-in-cheek interview on NPR yesterday.

Nunatek, which is a Greenlandic word for mountain peaks protruding through ice sheets, will start their concert outside at around three o'clock in the afternoon in dull Antarctic light and a balmy temperature of around 10 degrees below zero Celsius before moving indoors to a venue that Thorne calls "very popular venue known as the 'sledge stall.'" The audience will be filled with hard-core fans, i.e., seventeen members of the Rothera Research Station, all crazed and PhD holding.

Check out their performance the day after the concert at liveearth.msn.com. In the meantime, you can check out a video of the band rehearsing:


Rock on, Tristan. Rock on, Nunatek. Whoooooooo!