December 17, 2004
MONEY FOR NOTHIN':
We Are The '80's!: Live Aid then, and now. (Edward B. Driscoll, Jr., 12/17/2004, Weekly Standard)
AFTER YEARS of being bootlegged, an official DVD of 1985's monster, 13-hour Live Aid concert was released this fall by organizer Bob Geldof. The proceeds will go to benefit the Band Aid Trust, with the noble goal of feeding the hungry in Ethiopia. To watch the DVD is to unearth a time capsule of 1980s pop culture.As the four-disc, ten-hour set shows, the concert was an incredible spectacle. Held at open-air stadiums on two continents--Philadelphia's JFK Stadium, and England's Wembley--the concert also utilized additional satellite hookups to Japan, Belgrade, Cologne, The Hague, and Melbourne. Organizers went so far as to fly Phil Collins across the Atlantic on the Concorde, so that he could play in both the United States and the Britain.
The concertgoers certainly got their money's worth. While there were a few clinkers, most of the nearly 70 acts gave it their all. And as the DVDs demonstrate, the groups which came off best were, for the most part, seasoned road veterans to whom playing a stadium like JFK or Wembley was just another gig, even if another billion and a half people were watching at home: Elton John, U2, and Brian Ferry all put on good shows, as did Eric Clapton. While he and his veteran band had probably played "Layla" hundreds of times before, Clapton turned in some beautiful lead lines on the song's extended coda. For other groups, Live Aid was a swansong. In many respects, it represented the culmination of Queen's career. Freddie Mercury would largely
vanish from the public eye a few years later, and be dead from AIDS by 1991.
Of course, not everybody came off so well. A failed microphone meant that most of Paul McCartney's lyrics on "Let It Be" were inaudible; he overdubbed a new lead on the song for the DVDs. But not all mistakes could be covered up: Led Zeppelin, reuniting five years after the death of drummer John Bonham, delivered a dreadful set and refused to allow it to be included in the DVD.
WHILE LIVE AID was a great day for pop music, it was meant to be more than that.
Funny how the good bands did well and the bad ones badly. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2004 9:05 AM
I'm not so sure I would consider Led Zeppelin a bad band. I've never really liked them until recently.
Posted by: pchuck at December 17, 2004 10:17 AMJudging by the excerpt, then, Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin are the "bad" bands?
Whoa, hoss.
Still, be wary of trusting any article that puts Brian Ferry up among the superstar acts accustomed to playing monster stadiums.
The Beattles and Zeppelin sucked. Roxy Music was a great band.
Posted by: oj at December 17, 2004 10:25 AMNow that the Concorde is gone, Phil Collins couldn't do his two-live-performances-on-both-sides-of-the-Atlantic stunt, as he did at Live Aid.
I leave it to you as to whether or not this is a good or bad thing.
Posted by: John at December 17, 2004 10:44 AMIn my decades on this earth, I honestly don't think I've ever seen the phrase "The Beatles sucked."
Or even "The Beattles sucked."
Led Zeppelin was my favorite band in college. If only they had been able to write lyrics ...
Posted by: pj at December 17, 2004 12:58 PMpj:
Any band responsible for Heavy Metal deserves its own circle in Hell. That said, they have one great tune: Fool in the Rain.
Posted by: oj at December 17, 2004 1:19 PM"Conventional wisdom" is the basis of conservatism, for heaven's sake.
At any rate, I don't want to get into a useless back-and-forth about the merits of the Beatles, so I'll simply say that I love melody, I love vocal harmonies, I love well-crafted pop songs, and I love the Beatles.
My reasons for liking Led Zeppelin don't involve melody or harmony. I like Zeppelin's music because it was raw sex blasted through big Marshall amps.
Posted by: Semolina Pilchard at December 17, 2004 2:06 PMAs I understand it, Ferry and Roxy Music were huge in England and Europe. They were simply one of those acts that never caught on in a big way in America. Kate Bush (whose music I really like a lot) is another one. Big deal in Europe, cult act in America.
And I'm with PJ--Zeppelin were great musicians; but it took Robert Plant a very long time to learn how to write decent lyrics: "Fool in the Rain" was from their last studio album. I don't think Robert Plant was writing decent lyrics until about the time of Physical Graffitti.
By the way--if I know too much/write too much about rock music, do I risk being drummed out of the VRWC? I'm not sure what the rules are here. ;)
Posted by: Ed Driscoll at December 17, 2004 2:12 PMEd:
Not at all. In fact, there are no great progressive rock songs:
http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/001068.html
Posted by: oj at December 17, 2004 2:18 PM'"Conventional wisdom" is the basis of conservatism' is the kind of conventional wisdom that's always wrong.
Posted by: oj at December 17, 2004 2:20 PMSo conservatism is instead some obscure basket of counterintuitive secrets?
Conservatism is the belief that all the stuff we've learned over the years is worth holding on to, because through trial and error we know what works. The phrase "conventional wisdom" is just shorthand for "stuff we've learned over the years" and "we know what works."
Posted by: Semolina Pilchard at December 17, 2004 4:43 PMSpeaking of good bands who did poorly at Live Aid, the DVD shows The Who completely bungling "Won't Get Fooled Again": Roger Daltry forgets the third or fourth verse of the tune, as Pete Townshend simply stares into a mini-cam and shrugs his shoulder with a "Hey, I know we've only played this song 10,322 times. What do you want me to do?" look.
And of course Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were the power trio of all time...
Posted by: Ed Driscoll at December 17, 2004 5:41 PMYou have gone to far this time OJ. The Beatles were the best. When they split up they proved that the parts were far less that the whole. McCartney without Lennon was sugar without acid and just as cloying.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at December 18, 2004 12:28 AM