Live Aid turning.... twenty?

Just seems like yesterday.

A year or so earlier, my folks bought a farm. 1985 would be the year that we tamed it. My Dad, my brother and I were working on a dirt road my Dad had had plowed out with a bulldozer. Now a freshly bulldozed road still needs a lot of work. The bulldozer is like a small tactical nuke - it just rushes in and makes a mess. Many tree roots get stuck in the road, and they have to be pulled out. And of course, there is the drainage issue - a new road is going to make swamps that have to be able to drain off, or your new road will cease to be a road.

Anyway - it was a billion degrees that day, and the horse flies were everywhere. The harder you work, the harder they bite. Sensing that this was my own era's woodstock, I did not want to miss the concert. So I had a whole pile of batteries for my ghetto blaster, and I took it with me on each section of road we worked on. And though we worked pretty hard that day, I still remember the concert fairly well. The music helped keep my mind off the biting flies as I wondered those important questions in life: was it true that Led Zeppelin were getting back together for this? Might even the Beatles, with Julian Lennon playing the part of his dad, turn in a performance? The music itself was kind of interesting - there were some acts that didn't do anything for me, but many were very interesting. Sting was showcasing his new jazz-sound that he continues with til this day. He had Branford Marsalis with him that day. Dire Straits, whom I would see in concert a few days later in Ottawa, played their new song, Money For Nothing. I remember thinking - this can't be Dire Straits! Then the voice kicked in. Weird, I thought.

We had gotten back to the farmhouse in time for one of my all time favourite performances - Eric Clapton. After a few lacklustre years, the master was back. I remember the long rest in White Room, where you know the guitar solo is going to kick in a moment, full bore. And then it did, and did not disappoint. Then a masterful version of the traditional version of Layla. Wow.

What an anti-climactic ending, though. Where some people thought maybe the Beatles would strut out, instead a drunken Ron Wood, Keith Richards, and Bob Dylan stumbled out, and struggled through the set at the local coffeehouse I am sure they thought they had stumbled in on.

Ah well. Live Aid II - can't wait! And all for a great cause still with us today - the badly beset people of Africa.