Austin360 blogs > TV Blog > Archives > 2010 > July > 13 > Entry
“Live Aid” was 25 years ago. Feel old yet?
Al Gore may have invented the Internet but Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof connected the world on July 13, 1985. It’s natural to remember the continents-spanning concert as a musical milestone, but “Live Aid” was also a global television event. At one time, this article from MTV says, 95 percent of the world’s television sets were tuned in to Live Aid. That’s before the age of the Internet, cell phones, e-mail, text messaging, streaming video and Twitter.
The global concert was an offshoot of the UK music celeb-studded single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” which Geldof wrote and produced to aid African famine relief efforts. As the article points out, that project influenced a number of other projects including USA for Africa’s “We Are the World,” Canada’s “Tears Are Not Enough” and songs from France, Spain, South Africa, Holland, Australia, Jamaica and Belgium. And we can probably count fictional rocker Aldous Snow (“Get Him to the Greek”), who recorded the horrible “African Child.”
The article dips briefly into the satellite technology and Concorde jetting required to pull off simultaneous stadium concerts in London and Philly.
Check out CNN’s slide show and interview with former MTV veejay Mark Goodman here.
And please share your Live Aid memories below in the comments.
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