The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
As most of you are probably aware, Live Aid, the cyclopean July 1985 benefit concert, featured hundreds of musicians from the UK and the US performing concurrently on the stages of Wembley Stadium in London and Vet's Stadium in Philadelphia to raise money towards famine in Africa.
At the risk of bumping up Soft Communication's word count to a billion and a half characters, I would like to post a link to a recent post on my own site: my long-winded but loving, nonetheless, and descriptive, I hope, Highlights of the Live Aid DVD rundown. If the thought of screening the four lengthy discs of the DVD turns your stomach, I recommend at least checking out the Live Aid site, or clicking through the images linked in my post.
I look forward to reading about everyone else's thoughts on Bob Geldof and Live Aid. And remember: There's a world outside your window / and it's a world of dread and fear / where the only water flowing / is the bitter sting of tears (you can sing along to a horribly charming midi version of the song here).
posted by Jennifer @ 1:00 AM
5 Comments:
freddy truly steals the show. though I was disappointed about how dated it all seems. is it because it's still too close?
anywho, I'm dying to see the new bandaid video. I think the new version is TERRIBLE but that doesn't put a damper on my need to see the video.
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D, I couldn't agree more - Freddie had an amazing stage presence that's unmatched by so many musicians. He really looked like he was enjoying himself, and I feel that's what makes audiences feel good (as opposed to, say shoegazing rock or a performance style that's a little less engaging).
While I feel like some of the acts date the show a little (with defunct, as far as I know, bands like Style Council and Spandau Ballet performing), I hope that due to the organic nature of the event (so many acclaimed and emerging bands playing a collaborative show, with no headliners, thrown together in a very, very brief time period with no paycheck for them involved) will make the event last in pop culture history.
It's funny, though, that a music celebration like Woodstock is an event known to a lot of people around the world, but Live Aid hasn't held up quite as well in collective conscious: Some coworkers I've mentioned the DVD to are unfamiliar with Live Aid. Part of that could be less historical distance passed since its broadcast in 1985. And of course, Woodstock signified a very important social phenemonon (youth culture, a backlash against Vietnam, the disparity between old and new lifestyles), but Live Aid was a gargantuan humanitarian effort that actually helped the world (unlike Woodstock).
I see what you mean -- the less Americans know about something, the more intriguing it becomes -- but I'm interested in how that reasoning applies to, say, war coverage in television? World War II was fought a half-decade before home television sets became popular; grisly images from the war in Vietnam were broadcasted every night to horrified American viewers in the 1960s and 70s. Of course, a musical event and a war are completely different from one another (although, Paul Virilio managed to tie in war and filmmaking so eloquently in "War and Cinema," and Wadleigh's Woodstock film is, as you said, the most accessible form of consumption for those who did not attend the actual concert). I suppose what I'm asking is, how does the accessibility of footage (or absolute saturation, as with Live Aid being shown to 1.5 billion viewers worldwide) from an event alter viewers' perceptions of the actual event being shown?
But did anyone see the Tom Petty set at Live Aid? For some reason during "American Girl" he starts giving the audience the finger, which is really strange. I wonder what the story behing that is...
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