That stupid Live Aid made me have to pee in front of my supervisior.
I will never forgive that.
Ok, here’s the deal. I was stationed in England with the USAF in '85. Several fellow Airmen from my squadron went to see Live Aid. It was rumored that while they were there, illegal substances were partaken of. Rather than urine test only the suspected offenders, it was decided that a “random” sampling would occur.
That morning I was informed that my name came up and I would have to provide a sample at our Hq, right away!
I was told this as I was coming out of the toilet, having just emptied the reserves.
It took four hours and a sixpack of Mountan Dew to provide the sample. The result was the same color as Mt Dew is. The whole time I was trying, my direct supervisor had to watch over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t tampering with the sample.
This would be as good a post as any to point out that, IMHO, although the original Bob Geldof “Feed The World” is a great song that, to this day, still truely conveys genuine, heartfelt emotion, the, ahem, Michael Jackson “We Are the World” is a sickening, treachley, cornball, projectile-vomit-inducing abomination!
Right from Lionel (Ick!) Richie’s opening line, to Dylan’s barely comprehensable phoned-in mumblings, to Ray Charles’ obligatory black-soul-man-gives-it-credibility, to Cyndy Lauper’s annoying “Well well WELL!” mike mugging, to Springstein’s Joe Cocker impression, it all amounted to one enormous, shrill, contrived crap-fest!
They were taken out of service after a crash in France a few years ago, although the link I posted makes it sound like perhaps they’ve been brought back again.
SSTs are cleared, mechanically, to fly, and a couple may exist in private fleets. But commercial SST was provided by Air France and British Airways and both have not only discontinued SST service, they’ve liquidated the planes out of their fleets. A couple are hanging in air and space museums these days. Sad end to the creme de la creme of luxury commercial air flight.
Cool, yet another thing I would have missed had it not been for the SDMB. I sent Mr. Del off to work with $$ to bring home the DVD, I can’t wait to see it!
I realize it’s not a competition, but I’m curious to see if the performance that I remember as being THE BEST showing of the day is still as good as it is in my mind (cripes, this isn’t going to be one of those terrible things where I have this great memory of something and then when I see it again I realize how very not great it is in actuality, is it?).
I knew TeaElle was talking about Duran Duran. Their set was awful. I was a fan at the time and even I knew it was over when Simon LeBon’s voice broke during “A View to a Kill”. It didn’t just kind of break, it broke baaaaaad and kept on breaking for a long, long time.
U2’s set was the best of the day. They were supposed to do “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Bad” and “New Year’s Day”, but “Bad” went on so long that they never got to do the third song. I have an mp3 of the set, and it still holds up. I’d buy the DVD for that performance alone. IMHO, if it hadn’t been for that Live Aid performance, U2 wouldn’t have become the huge stars they did. Before that, they were a scrappy little European postpunk band who had just had the good fortune to hook up with Brian Eno. After that, they were U2.
There was very good documentary on BBC3 last night about the making of the original Feed The World to coincide with this new edition. Somebody mentioned that there was so much hair lacquer in the studio that it constituted a major fire hazard , and of course George Michael won the big hair contest !
I was at the Philly concert. It wasn’t the classic Zeppelin line-up either. It was Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of course, backed up by Niles Rodgers and Phil Collins . Collins fucking sucked on drums at that point. Most of the rock acts in Philly were outplayed and outclassed by the rock acts at Wembley.
The part I remember most about Phil Collins backing Page and Plant was wondering if he had ever listened to anything by Led Zep. No one was expecting Collins to replace Bonzo, but his playing was completely wrong.
Well, John Paul Jones was there. And Bonham couldn’t attend (obviously) so the lineup was as classic as you could expect. As for Phil’s playing, he was supposed to have a tape available for the Concorde ride, but somebody forgot to give it to him. That’s why Nile Rodgers was hired at the last minute. Phil said later that Nile was in his own world and refused to even practice with him.
DVD Movie Guide’s review lists exactly what songs are on the DVDs; for comparison, here’s a semi-complete list of the songs actually played. As you can see, the only complete sets are those by U2, Queen, Dire Straits, Paul Young (why???), David Bowie, Adam Ant, Elvis Costello, Kenny Loggins, and Paul McCartney …and the last four only played one song each! Completely missing are the Hooters, the Four Tops, Billy Ocean, Rick Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Santana, Power Station and Led Zeppelin.
I think I’m gonna rent it from Netflix before committing to a purchase. Some of the new wave-y acts probably have not aged well at all.
