what I learned watching 20 hours of Live Aid concerts from 1985 (not about the music really)

[msongs]

Well the music is awesome but I was interested in social and cultural trends in evidence from the concerts.
Some Observations:
The crowd shots showed a sea of tens of thousands of slim to skinny people, hardly any pot bellies in evidence.
No cellphones of course, just people living in the moment. No personal water bottles. No plastic bottles either that I saw. Some flick your bic moments in night shots. How could those people all stand in one place for hours upon end?
The mostly 20 something crowds are all pushing 60 and 70 now.
Performances - all live, no miming, all instruments making sounds from input of human hands, even the synths which were just entering the highlight of the programming era. No T & A, no foul language, no abuse and denigration of women.
Pop star Madonna dancing and singing, her breathy vocals clearly showing effects of combining the two as would be natural. Being breathy was ok, no need to mime to a track to have a fake moment. Same went for other acts, it was ok to be human and imperfect.

And the famous Led Zepplin reunion? I thought it was great, all messy, sloppy and out of tune, like good rock and roll should be lol. Most overrated performance? Queen. they were fine doing what they did well but best concert in human history? lol hardly. and kudos to Patti LaBelle, the human air raid siren. She sang great and put on a nice physical show too. Salvaged the end bit of We Are the World with her vocal leadership.

If you tried to do this now all you'd need is to push the play button on your DAW software. the fabricated music and pitch corrected singing would go on without need of intervention if even if all the humans on the stage passed out and fell over.

Msongs

[ProfessorGAC]

1. Lots To Agree With

The only thing I find iffy is the "skinny people" part.
The crowd, as I recall, was mostly 30 & under.
Still lots of slim & trim 18-30 year olds today.

[synni]

2. No foul language?

Apparently, you didn't listen to Madonna's stage patter during Live Aid. The concert took place during the controversy about her nude photos. She said to the audience, "I'm not taking shit off today!"

And that's just what I heard while walking past a mall TV that day.

I know times are hard right now, but there's really no sense in viewing the past through rose-colored glasses. Rock concerts are hedonistic by nature, and have been ever since the 1960s. Suggesting that Live Aid was somehow innocent is doing a disservice to people who are too young to have been there.

[msongs]

3. don't consisder shit and its partner piss to be foul language

[justaprogressive]

4. Swearing at a rock concert?

The Fish Cheer. then

Country Joe McDonald: Listen people I don't know how you Expect to ever stop the war If you can't sing any better than that. There's about 300,000 of you fuckers out there. I want you to start singin'. Come on.

[Marthe48]

5. That was the first song my future husband played for me

We didn't even know our last names. He had the Woodstock album and it turned out that he couldn't believe that track.

[Marthe48]

6. I remember when she made a crack about her attire

As I recall, she showed up in an ankle length coat, and performed in in. It was hot, too.

[Marthe48]

7. We watched almost the whole thing, and taped hours of it

Phil Collins made rock history by performing in the Live Aid concert in London, and flying to New York to perform in the U.S. Live Aid concert, same day.