Happy 30th Live Aid

Train_of_Thought

Jul 13, 2015 at 8:24am Edited

Maplewoodstock is awesome. Live Aid was a pretty okay festival, too. 30 years today (already?)...damn.

sbenois

Jul 13, 2015 at 3:50pm

I am pleased to say that I took photos at both.

Such a great event, so many cool memories. Phil Collins flying on Concorde to play both London and Philadelphia (how crazy was that?), Led Zeppelin's reunion that was so awful that they refused permission to include it on the DVD, Elvis Costello's solo guitar singalong of "All You Need Is Love", and of course, Queen OWNING the show with their incredible set - still electrifying 30 years later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r19FYTYRvSc

hankzona

Jul 13, 2015 at 4:52pm

Dire Straits was really hot at that time and were playing a two or three week run at the Wembley Arena somewhere in the middle of it and meandered over to Wembley Stadium to play Live Aid.

cuethesun

Jul 13, 2015 at 5:08pm

Agree with Queen. Best 20 minute set you will ever see. To this day, they were the best band that I ever saw live. Performance, musicianship, harmonies, dynamics, staging, pacing...Every element firing on all cylinders.

dk50b

Jul 13, 2015 at 6:08pm Edited

That was my first summer staying up at college. You knew you were watching something very special that might not happen again. There was this cable channel called "MTV" that usually played music videos and covered it wall to wall. Never understood why the US venue was JFK Stadium and not the Garden or Giants Stadium. Turns out that Philly native Tony Verna, inventor of instant replay,m was one of the first to sing for the US concert after Bill Graham.

On First Wave today, they played live performances and reminisced. DJ Richard Blade pointed out that Midge Ure deserves equal credit to Bob Geldof in putting the concerts together. Guess attention goes to the guy who loves the camera more, and who's future wife conceived and did much of the organizing for Band Aid

https://www.yahoo.com/music/midge-ure-the-man-behind-the-band-aid-mixing-103594511481.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/midge-ure-back-in-the-spotlight-6144881.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11235803/Band-Aid-30-Paula-Yates-the-woman-who-inspired-Bob-Geldof.html

And though both famine relief songs were silly in their own ways, I recall thinking how much more listenable "Do They Know it's Christmas?" was over the infinitely more bombastic and self congratulatory "We are the World". Even then I knew they didn't know it was Christmas in late December. I now see it's celebrated January 7th, as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church still uses the Julian Calendar.

Train_of_Thought

Jul 13, 2015 at 7:01pm

sbenois said:
I am pleased to say that I took photos at both.

Nice.

DaveSchmidt

Jul 13, 2015 at 9:15pm

dk50b said:

Never understood why the US venue was JFK Stadium and not the Garden or Giants Stadium. Turns out that Philly native Tony Verna, inventor of instant replay,m was one of the first to sing for the US concert after Bill Graham.

That, at least 25,000 more seats, and the Hooters.