Picture from Legendary Concerts
I hadn't even realised that today was the thirtieth anniversary of Live Aid, the legendary concert to raise money and awareness for famine stricken Ethiopia. For a couple of years we watched the DVD version on this day but that tradition soon died a death when we slowly realised that the concert that changed the world simply wasn't as good as we thought it was. During a conversation a while ago with a couple of friends, I remember Gary being one but the third person escapes me, it was pointed out that we are the last generation to be told by our elders that entertainment was better in their day. If we try that on with our kids they just look to YouTube and realise that this wasn't the case. What was good about the television we used to enjoy is the fact that we had it locked in our memory behind a pair of rose-tinted glasses and we couldn't go back and check how good it really was. You might have a shaky VHS recording of something, or perhaps a home bought video tape but you might not have a video player so we still keep our nostalgia fresh. My first disappointment was when I spent some of my 25th birthday money on a VHS collection of The A-Team, (yes kids, we still used video tapes in 2001 having flirted with LaserDisc in the mid-1990s and finding out that they were crap). The programme I loved as a child turned out to be a little bit rubbish. For this reason I have not investigated further and am happy to keep Supergran, T-Bag, and Roger Ramjet among others in my head and never go looking for them on YouTube because I will be judging them on the quality in 2015 rather than the 1980s, (1960s in the case of Roger Ramjet but I watched it as part of Number 73 if my memory serves me right), so they are bound to look cheap and shoddy these days.
Live Aid is the case for nostalgic recollection being far better than the reality. My memory of Live Aid was wonderful; at home in a small village in Norfolk, (we lived in a lot of different places when I was growing up), the sun was shining, the patio doors were open, and the music was blasting throughout the day. Best of all, the late Granddad Eddie was still alive and as we was interested in keeping up with music he was keen to watch, he even taped the simulcast from Radio 1. My parents videoed the whole thing on a collection of tapes all numbered and kept for ages afterwards. Sadly, we were a bit skint in those days and video cassettes were very expensive so eventually they were recorded over, this was in the days before 'long play' was invented so we couldn't even stretch the tapes into double length. This is sad of course but it did at least preserve the memory. We attempted to watch the DVD in real time starting at noon but of course the DVD isn't a true representation of the broadcast. A lot of the DVD was sourced from MTV's footage rather than the BBC (it's all olden days references for the kids today - another lesson, MTV used to be a music channel) and is very cobbled together.
We have this idea that the line up was pretty special but if we sit back and think about it, this was actually quite a bland and outdated collection of musicians. Status Quo, The Boomtown Rats, hardly prime bookings in 1985. As hard as it might be to comprehend nowadays, Paul McCartney wasn't that big a deal back then as he wasn't the latter day saint he is now. The Who, as much as it pains me to say, were terrible, and the collection of 'new' acts amounted to Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones. Hardly legendary performers, even David Bowie wasn't too busy in 1985 (he stole the show in my opinion) and Queen were appearing for the first time since being blacklisted by the Musicians Union and had a lot to prove, something a large proportion of viewers couldn't give a shit about and instead just watched with disgust. To all intents and purposes, Live Aid was a glorified pub gig.
A friend of my dad's has been in touch to say that she has the full television version from the day on video. This will be an interesting thing to watch in hindsight as it will at least give us an insight into how it was handled. The BBC didn't really know what they had let themselves in for as such a task hadn't been attempted before. It is the organisation that is more impressive than the event, in 1985 there was no email (that we knew of - a method of sending short text from one computer to another did exist but nobody understood it), no Internet, and about four very big mobile phones so to pull this off was quite a feat.
In 2005 Bob Geldof curated Live 8, not a show that attracts the same misty-eyed nostalgia but a better a show in terms of both technology and musical content. It wasn't all for me of course and it was still very mainstream but quality was higher. Also, apart from the BBC coverage, very little evidence exists because of a very clever trick. Geldof eventually released Live Aid on DVD because he was fed up of the bootlegging going on which of course didn't benefit the charity. In the days leading up to Live 8, sales of video tapes enjoyed a surge, possibly the last time this would happen as DVD was creeping in although you couldn't record on them back in the dark days of 2005. Once you tired to watch the recording back, the sound was fucked. I don't know how they did it but it was a very clever move that will help sales of any future.
The Sunday Alternative #47 is available from here.
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July Housekeeping
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