When We Were the World
Its hard to believe today is 20 years since the Live Aid Concert. My daughter Emy and I won the DVD the other day and have been watching it since because I hate the baseball All Star game.
As I watch this video, I remember the day. It was hot as heck in Rhode Island, I spent the day alternating between the concert and the wading pool with then 3 year old Emy. The performers looks just like we last left some of them. This was when they were their most famous and for me, many of them are frozen in time.
That whole period was frozen in time really, but there was nothing frozen about that day. Warmth was the order of the day, not just in the weather, but all around. There was a feel good side to this show on both sides of the pond, at Wembley Stadium and the now razed JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.
I had watched a lot of soccer games from Wembley over the years on video, but this is the way I will always picture Wembley. Full of people cheering the performances of British music icons of the time, hastily assembled to fulfill Bob Geldof’s vision of a fed Africa. Geldof quite brazenly moved this forward and regardless of the PR backlash he received that many people felt this was to advance his own agenda, few could really question Geldof’s heart.
Here in the US, the nice thing about what was going on was that it was now cool to be charitable. The celebs we loved were telling us so. The nice thing was we were getting to see our favorites all pretty much in one day. If there was someone you were a fan of, chances are they performed somewhere that day. Sadly, some of the best performances were lost that day as the media took Geldof at face value in his request that this was supposed to be a one time broadcast, never to be taped or re-broadcast. The Brits didn’t take him seriously, the Americans did. The BBC had just about all the concert available, minus the ones that were lost to disasters of the day. (if you’ve ever worked live TV, you know what I mean)
The majority of the US version was found unceremoniously thrown in a vault at the MTV studios, uncataloged or labled.
I think what amazed me the most about Live Aid was what the whole world could do together if we put our minds to it. It took an entertainment event to get everyone to focus on the same thing. Sadly the world can’t just get together on other things the same way unless we add rock stars.
That day we had a friend over to watch the big event. We drank beer, ate lobster we couldn’t afford and made the most of the day. In retrospect, I now realized that even though we were relatively poor in those days, the fact we could make a day out of a TV concert and chow down, made me realize the importance of what was in front of me.
The saturation of “AID” shows that followed were never held a candle to the master event. As a matter of fact, by 1988 the onslaught of causes that were trying to be saved thru music, almost hurt some musical careers as people began to see them more as high paid activists and not musicians.
The mere fact that 20 years later people still talk about this one is a tribute to how special this day was.
I can remember that as night fell, Emy knew she was going to stay up for Hall and Oates as all the airplay they got at our house made them her fave. They were on tour at the time, unlike many of the other groups, so their performance was much tighter than many other people's. Even after they were done performing with the Temptations that night, she really didn’t want to go to bed. Maybe realizing that even she knew something important was going on.
As the bedtime negotiating process continued, she saw coming on the screen, Lionel Richie. She knew him and screamed.."LIONEL RICHIE...LIONEL RICHIE!"
She knew what would be coming next as he was going to sing her favorite song, the encore for the night, “We are the World.”
She didn’t know what it meant or why anyone was singing it. That kind of thing doesn’t matter to a kid that age.
A full belly of lobster and a night of music was enough to keep her happy. She had no idea how lucky she was, kids just take things for granted.
Twenty years later, we were in the car together when we heard a trivia contest on the radio for Live Aid asking who backed Mick Jagger and Tina Turner at Live Aid. I knew it was Hall and Oates and she placed the call to the radio station and we won the concert video.
The Live Aid concert touched us when it aired and it still does 20 years later. Now we get to live it all over again.
Lobster anyone?
As I watch this video, I remember the day. It was hot as heck in Rhode Island, I spent the day alternating between the concert and the wading pool with then 3 year old Emy. The performers looks just like we last left some of them. This was when they were their most famous and for me, many of them are frozen in time.
That whole period was frozen in time really, but there was nothing frozen about that day. Warmth was the order of the day, not just in the weather, but all around. There was a feel good side to this show on both sides of the pond, at Wembley Stadium and the now razed JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.
I had watched a lot of soccer games from Wembley over the years on video, but this is the way I will always picture Wembley. Full of people cheering the performances of British music icons of the time, hastily assembled to fulfill Bob Geldof’s vision of a fed Africa. Geldof quite brazenly moved this forward and regardless of the PR backlash he received that many people felt this was to advance his own agenda, few could really question Geldof’s heart.
Here in the US, the nice thing about what was going on was that it was now cool to be charitable. The celebs we loved were telling us so. The nice thing was we were getting to see our favorites all pretty much in one day. If there was someone you were a fan of, chances are they performed somewhere that day. Sadly, some of the best performances were lost that day as the media took Geldof at face value in his request that this was supposed to be a one time broadcast, never to be taped or re-broadcast. The Brits didn’t take him seriously, the Americans did. The BBC had just about all the concert available, minus the ones that were lost to disasters of the day. (if you’ve ever worked live TV, you know what I mean)
The majority of the US version was found unceremoniously thrown in a vault at the MTV studios, uncataloged or labled.
I think what amazed me the most about Live Aid was what the whole world could do together if we put our minds to it. It took an entertainment event to get everyone to focus on the same thing. Sadly the world can’t just get together on other things the same way unless we add rock stars.
That day we had a friend over to watch the big event. We drank beer, ate lobster we couldn’t afford and made the most of the day. In retrospect, I now realized that even though we were relatively poor in those days, the fact we could make a day out of a TV concert and chow down, made me realize the importance of what was in front of me.
The saturation of “AID” shows that followed were never held a candle to the master event. As a matter of fact, by 1988 the onslaught of causes that were trying to be saved thru music, almost hurt some musical careers as people began to see them more as high paid activists and not musicians.
The mere fact that 20 years later people still talk about this one is a tribute to how special this day was.
I can remember that as night fell, Emy knew she was going to stay up for Hall and Oates as all the airplay they got at our house made them her fave. They were on tour at the time, unlike many of the other groups, so their performance was much tighter than many other people's. Even after they were done performing with the Temptations that night, she really didn’t want to go to bed. Maybe realizing that even she knew something important was going on.
As the bedtime negotiating process continued, she saw coming on the screen, Lionel Richie. She knew him and screamed.."LIONEL RICHIE...LIONEL RICHIE!"
She knew what would be coming next as he was going to sing her favorite song, the encore for the night, “We are the World.”
She didn’t know what it meant or why anyone was singing it. That kind of thing doesn’t matter to a kid that age.
A full belly of lobster and a night of music was enough to keep her happy. She had no idea how lucky she was, kids just take things for granted.
Twenty years later, we were in the car together when we heard a trivia contest on the radio for Live Aid asking who backed Mick Jagger and Tina Turner at Live Aid. I knew it was Hall and Oates and she placed the call to the radio station and we won the concert video.
The Live Aid concert touched us when it aired and it still does 20 years later. Now we get to live it all over again.
Lobster anyone?
posted by CuzzinDave at 10:05 PM
3 Comments:
Somewhere down in my folks basement is a total vhs recording of the event, from when my brothers and I took turns popping in tapes from morning to night. I got the dvd while I was in Iraq, and it took me back to funner times and awesome performances I only had snapshots in the mind of. To be 13 again, such a better era of music and simpler times.
sounds like they should've called you when they were making the DVD Soldier!
Live Aid...my sister, our best friends and I all watched from a small, portable television in my parents' pop-up camper, parked in the driveway of our home. We held our tape recorder up to the tiny speaker to try to capture our favorite performers. I couldn't wait to see Duran Duran, but we laughed hysterically at how terrible Simon sounded (I love ya, Simon, but you really didn't sound your best that performance).
Earlier in the day, I walked barefoot through the patches of clover in the back yard and got stung by a bee on my small toe. My whole foot swelled up like a balloon and it burned/itched for weeks.
Days after the concert, we played our tapes, remembered the fun we had watching Live Aid all day, spending the night in the camper, and realized something truly monumental had taken place.
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