LIVE AID COMING OUT ON DVD

[roguevalley]

You can make donations here as well:

http://www.liveaid.net /

There is the article at the Guardian. This is a great thing, this set.

Live aid: The man

For Bob Geldof, Live Aid changed everything. By Simon Garfield

Sunday October 17, 2004
The Observer

'The last place I expected to be 20 years ago was here,' Bob Geldof said as he surveyed a gathering of record store retailers recently at London's Charlotte Street hotel. He told them that Live Aid was always meant to be a one-off event, 'no album, video, film etc', and certainly nothing as efficient as a DVD. Geldof had always hoped the day would remain greater in the memory, a day that he said many people considered the second most memorable of their lives, just after the birth of their first child.

But everything changes, except the situation in Africa. So now, on the 20th anniversary of Michael Buerk's hellish report from Ethiopia, there will be a four-disc 10-hour DVD box set of the greatest show on earth. 'We took an issue that was nowhere on the political agenda,' Geldof told his audience, many of whom had watched Live Aid as an alternative to school homework, 'and through the lingua franca of the planet - which is not English but rock'n'roll - we were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surplus.'

The DVD will almost sell itself, but not quite, so once again Geldof did his Geldof thing, made people feel small and important at the same time. He looked out at the staff of HMV, WH Smith and the Virgin Megastores and said he didn't care what instructions they were given from head office, but they personally should ensure that the Live Aid box was going right at the front of their store, and they were to flog it like they had never flogged anything in their lives. Whenever a customer brought something to the counter, the retailers should hand them a DVD emblazoned with a guitar shaped like Africa and say, 'You should get that as well, mate.'

Geldof then said: 'I'm serious about that, I know it's corny but it really works. And I cannot tell you how critically important in your life this moment would be. You can look back and say, "I was a record dealer. I sold DVDs. One of them sold shitloads. The difference is this one kept people alive because of me."'

I met Geldof a few weeks later in an upstairs room at the Groucho Club in Soho, and the first thing I noticed was how clean and eager he looked. The unusual facial hair and pissy weariness had gone, and he no longer resembled someone who had been sleeping in a park. He had the latest Nokia phone and a full schedule, and he began talking about himself as though, at the age of 52, he was a menu or a jukebox.

'What Bob do you want?' he asked. 'Do you want Boomtown Bob? Band Aid Bob? Big Breakfast Bob? Bob and Paula?' He said that cab drivers always talk to him about their favourite Bob-on-TV moments including Geldof confronting Margaret Thatcher about the state of Africa.
'People remember that as me telling her to go fuck herself, but that isn't it,' he says. 'She said to me : "We're very grateful for what you do." I engaged with her, very sotto voce and deferential, and she said, "Well, Mr Geldof it's not as simple as that." I said, "No, Prime Minister, nothing is really as simple as dying, is it?" And I looked at her and got the gimlet stare but I held it. So we went in for lunch, and she taps me on the shoulder and says, "Come and see me tonight." So we went to the flat and we had a scotch together.'

They also very much enjoyed Geldof tearing up a poster of John Travolta on Top of the Pops ('You made my sister cry!'), but the number one favourite memory is the one shared by all who watched Live Aid on television: a truly knackered saint imploring, 'Give us your fookin' money,' a line that made it to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. 'My big contribution to culture!' Geldof says. ' I was so infuriated with the Smashie and Nicey-type DJs saying "Hey, try to remember to write in and ..." You know, will you Fuck Off!'

Geldof had always promised the groups and their lawyers that the event would be a concert and nothing after. But two events have forced his hand. The internet, and in particular eBay, has provided a new outlet for piracy, and as fast as the Live Aid trustees prosecuted one bootlegger, another six would emerge to satisfy demand. 'I'd seen bootlegs straight after Live Aid,' Geldof says. 'Clapton sent me from Italy this beautiful package in a box set. There were these cassettes being produced in Indonesia of the whole concert, and I got them closed down and got the Indonesian government to pay us half a million; but in the last few years things have exploded again.'

The second factor was political, an attempt by Geldof to seize the interest that would inevitably result from the 20th anniversary of Band Aid and use it to refocus attention on Africa. There is also the happy coincidence that next year Britain will not only chair the G8 economic forum but will also have the presidency of the EU. Or in Geldof's phrase, 'You know, Hello?' Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both watched Live Aid, as did Bill Clinton and the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. George W Bush is also believed to have watched it for a few hours. 'I wouldn't call Blair and Brown my friends,' Geldof says, 'but I do know them pretty well and this whole issue of Africa really does bother them. I think if they could do something while they had power they would. Or to put it the other way, if they didn't do anything I think they'd regard it as almost a badge of shame.'

Geldof went back to Africa last year and returned in despair. He is there again now, making a BBC television series. 'I thought, "This is rubbish,"' he said just before he went. 'This is the sole continent in decline since Live Aid. Everyone else is steaming ahead, everyone but Africa. Why? How long do we seriously want this to continue?'

When referring to his life's greatest achievement - which also happens to be one of the greatest single humanitarian achievements of our lifetime - he prefaces his comments with a sigh and the usual expletive (no one over 50 who isn't homeless or watching football swears as much as Geldof): 'I'm just sick of fucking talking about it,' he says. But when the story unravels again his eyes do not glaze over but glisten, and his voice shakes with the sheer absurdity of his ambition.

'I think you have to remember the context of it,' he says as his Earl Grey arrives. 'This was the Eighties, a period of rampant individualism and greed. We do Band Aid, and this record which is meant to raise a few quid goes berserk. People are buying 50 copies and giving 49 of them back. Secretaries call up and say, 'What can I do?' 'Well, do Secretary Aid.' Butchers sold the record, Fortnum & Mason's tea room sold it, people at pressing plants came in at weekends for free to press more copies - like a movie.'

For the rest, go here: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,132568...