TO MTV et al - "WHO" THE FUCK ARE YOU?
I got up early on Saturday, July 15, 1985. I didn’t have a videotape recorder, but I had a TV with cable and I had a radio, a cassette tape recorder, and a stack of 90 minute TDK audio cassette tapes. And that was all I needed to have an experience that would stay with me for the rest of my life. I think I missed the Royal Salute by the Coldstream Guards, but with MTV on my TV and an ABC feed on the radio, I began my taping with a music group that I had never heard of until that day, Status Quo, singing “Rocking All Over The World.”
So began a hot summer day for me in Austin, Texas, where every 45 minutes, all day long until after dark, I would either flip a tape or put in a new tape as I watched the largest-ever gathering of rock and roll performers presenting what the experts had been telling Bob Geldof, right up until the final weeks, couldn’t be done. It was Live Aid, and all day long I watched it live, and I taped it live. Live Aid changed the world. The show was broadcast live to more countries than any other event in history. It was a show that took place in two locations on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean, yet it was all one show. As if to prove it, Phil Collins performed on the stage at Wembley Stadium, in London, and then flew across the Atlantic on a Concord jet to perform at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia before the day was over. When Mick Jagger and David Bowie realized that they couldn’t perform the same song together as a duet from two separate transatlantic stages because of the speed lag created by satellite transmissions, they quickly created a joint video to present during the concert.
Everyone donated their time and services, and over $70 billion was raised in that one day alone to help feed people who were starving in Africa. And I had recorded it all on audio tape. Well, almost all of it. MTV and ABC didn’t always cover the same group; after all, these were two concerts going on simultaneously. At one point, MTV showed what would become a lifelong experience for me in my memory with the performance by Freddie Mercury and Queen. I just learned recently that Bob Geldof and I agree that Freddie stole the entire show and that Queen gave the most outstanding performance of the day. When they left the stage I turned to my radio feed only to hear the ABC announcer say, from Philadelphia, “let’s go now to London to see what’s happening there.”
From London, the announcer was screaming, saying, “you won’t believe what just happened. This was the most phenomenal thing I have ever seen.” He, of course, was talking about the superlative performance by Queen that ABC had completely missed. But even though ABC missed it, I didn’t; and I have carried the memory of that experience with me for almost 20 years, always believing that “someday” the video would again become available and I could relive the experience of seeing and feeling 72,000 people becoming as one under the incredible direction of Freddie Mercury.
Not one to sit around just waiting for the video to be released, I spent about a hundred hours cutting and reediting the audio tapes so that they were presented with all of the London show followed by all of the Philadelphia show. ABC had also missed one of my other favorite groups, The Beach Boys. So, in order to complete my Live Aid final tape I researched the groups and songs that had been missed by ABC and went out and found copies of them, preferably live, on vinyl, and placed them in the show where they would have been performing. I edited out different applause segments and inserted them as filler between sets. And at the end of each side of a tape, if there was any tape left over, I inserted the sound bites and interviews that had been interspersed throughout the day. When it was all done, I had the world-changing Live Aid on tape and I have listened to it many times over the years.
Then, about 8 years ago, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I made the acquaintance of someone who worked at Rare Bear Records who had several hours of the end of Live Aid on video tape. He was kind enough to make me a copy, so I was once again able to watch Mick and Tina, and Dylan and Keith Richards, and the “We Are The World” finale. Yet I continued to look forward to the day that I was certain would when they would finally release the entire show on video.
Finally, last year, Live Aid came out in a 4 DVD Package, and it was what I asked for, and got, at Christmas. I didn’t look at it right away. Then a couple of months ago I played just the beginning of the first DVD. I wept over the plight of the people starving in Africa. I wept when I saw Princess Diana enter to take her seat. And I wept when Status Quo started rockin’ all over the world. I put it away until I could find more time to enjoy this treasure.
Next thing you know, Bob Geldof is announcing Live 8. Late one evening I pulled out my Live Aid DVD, turned up the volume on my TV, and, for the first time in almost 20 years, I let Freddie Mercury once again take the stage and steal the show. We are the champions of the world.
The next night, I invited my 38-year-old stepson, Joe, to allow me to change his perception of Queen for the rest of his life. Blew him away. Then two nights ago, I blew Joe’s girlfriend, Sister, away with the Radio Ga Ga king.
Unfortunately, Freddie died 6 years after Live Aid. So what was going to happen this time around with Live 8? Well, for 2005, the entire experience took things to whole new levels. If you don’t remember, Live 8 was first announced on June 1, just 32 days before it was to occur. In those 4 ½ weeks, over 10 concerts were orchestrated around the world. Over 100 bands and entertainers jumped on board offering their services. The tickets to the events were free. The goal this time was not to make money but to bring awareness of the issue of world hunger to the population of this planet. Tickets to the concerts were obtained through sending a text message requesting tickets. It became the world’s largest ever text-messaging event. And the entire show was not only carried on TV but it also on the Internet, in its entirety.
Personally, I missed the “live” part of Live 8. July 2 was a busy day for me. However, I did tape 12 hours of whatever MTV and VH1 did (I had to put in new tapes in the middle of Pink Floyd). On July 5 when I showed up at one of my jobs, I asked my friend Marc if he had seen any of Live 8. “Yeah, I watched it all day,” he said. He not only watched on AOL’s Music site, but he also had submitted his face for the March and had, of course, signed the pledge.
Apparently AOL offered all of the concerts simultaneously and gave the viewer the choice of which acts they chose to watch. Phenomenal. What’s more, Marc told me that AOL was broadcasting the concerts over again in their entirety. Plus, they planned to allow the viewer to select which song by which entertainer they chose to view. I wondered how long it would take to accomplish that. The next night, when I had a little bit of time I went to http://AOLMusic.com only to discover that they had already offered that option. So I got to see Neil Young and his wife sing “Four Winds” and to see Neil joined by Gordon Lightfoot, Bare Naked Ladies, Bryan Adams, and a stage full of Canadian artists that I wasn’t even familiar with, to close Live 8 “Rockin’ In The Free World.”
And what about my MTV/VH1 tapes? Well, I had heard that the majority of MTV’s broadcast had consisted of a bunch of MTV talking heads praising MTV and themselves between countless ads. Why bother when I’ve got instant access to anything and everything through the Net? Then the pressure of MTV “fans” and critics, coupled with what we might assume was at least the inkling of an awareness of the stupid faux pax that had relegated them to the back burner, MTV announced the other day that they would run 5 hours of coverage of Live 8 performances on both VH1 and MTV on Saturday, July 7.
Well, I forgot to slap a tape in before I went out Saturday morning, so I “missed” the VH1 presentation (unlike the net, one has only one chance to catch it). But I did get home in time to start a tape to get most of the end of the MTV presentation. I tuned in shortly before Snoop Dog, and quickly noticed that half of the words that he was singing were blocked because of censorship. And MTV had advertised this as “unadulterated.”
I lay down and took a little nap, only to be awakened later when The Who took the stage in this MTV re-presentation. Lord God, Almighty, the people who hated the sixties and what they represented, and who have used their misguided perceptions to create a world that is reeking with greed and starvation, are probably crapping their pants because the sixties have turned 60 and they’re still kicking ass. That’s right, we’re all turning 60. My high school graduating class is having a special reunion next month celebrating the year we all turn 60.
And then it happened. The Who was singing “Who Are You” just as great as ever, and toward the end, when it rolled around in the chorus, Roger Daltry said, “Who the fuck are you.” But it came out, “Who the (censored) are you.” Unadulterated? MTV is dead. The mainstream media is dead.
The Who was followed by Pink Floyd. And they were singing “Money, get back. I’m all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack. Money, it’s a hit. Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit.” Except that last line came out “Don’t give me that do goody good (censored).” I mean, come on, people, let’s grow up here. We are in the most incredible age anyone could have imagined, an age when almost anything is possible. It was almost 30 years ago that Arthur C. Clarke stated that we will probably have accomplished everything presently imaginable in the next 75 to 100 years. As that promise unfolds, the old standards of free market capitalism gobble the incredible wealth that is being created by the explosive information revolution like a huge cosmic vacuum cleaner (notice that, unlike the great American dream, it is the market that is free, rather than the people that are free).
Live 8 became necessary because the so-called leaders of the marketplace can not figure out, on their own, what the hell is going on. The marketplace is out of control and they are hanging on for dear life, grabbing all that they can with their greedy little fingers while hoping that no one recognizes that the emperor has completely lost his clothes, and his ethics, and his mind, and has become morbidly transparent. The media is a plastic creation of this greedy marketplace and can not deal with reality, but rather sanitizes what it presents for what they consider to be acceptable human consumption. In the meantime, a child dies every 2 ¼ seconds from starvation or malnutrition and it takes something of the magnitude of Live 8 to bring this truth back up to the surface of our consciousness, because an awareness of this magnitude is not a high priority for the media machine or for the “free” market that drives it and feeds it. Words are not obscene; what we are allowing to happen to our fellow human beings is what is obscene. Let me repeat that: Words Are NOT Obscene.
I’m writing a book. God, I’ve been writing this thing for over a decade now. Most of it is being written in my head, but that which escapes to the “printed” page can be found at http://millenniumparadigm.blogspot.com . In that book I will be dealing with this and with other details of what is going on in this world that we inhabit and what is possible for us to accomplish if we decide to put our minds, our backs, and our intention upon the possibilities instead of absorbing ourselves in the false, censored “reality” presented by the media machine. I haven’t updated the book in far too long a time. However, lately, with the work of Bob Geldof, the encouragement of many of my friends, and the growing disgust that I have for the greed that is killing the people of this planet through starvation, untreated diseases, and desperation, I feel perhaps inspired to once again work at bringing this book to a state of completion where it can transform itself from an electronic presentation to one printed on paper.
I’m further inspired to continue this endeavor, because the insipid media machine is already creeping into the Net, slowly altering and corrupting the record of what went down with Live 8. I speak here specifically of AOL and Microsoft who are already polluting the record with self-aggrandizement.
Someday, those of us who have been around for decades will be gone, only to be nothing more than a memory. But thanks to people like Sir Bob Geldof and every single person who gives of themselves through Live Aid, Live 8, or any of the countless other groups and movements and activities that work for the benefit of all humankind, what we believe in, and what we aspire to, will continue to be a huge thorn in the side of greed and selfishness far into this new millennium. So, my message today for MTV, and all of the other puppets of a system that is out for itself and that will act only for the benefit of all humankind when they are absolutely forced to: “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” (And that goes for the critics of Live 8, also.) I’m had it with your “do goody good bullshit.”
I got up early on Saturday, July 15, 1985. I didn’t have a videotape recorder, but I had a TV with cable and I had a radio, a cassette tape recorder, and a stack of 90 minute TDK audio cassette tapes. And that was all I needed to have an experience that would stay with me for the rest of my life. I think I missed the Royal Salute by the Coldstream Guards, but with MTV on my TV and an ABC feed on the radio, I began my taping with a music group that I had never heard of until that day, Status Quo, singing “Rocking All Over The World.”
So began a hot summer day for me in Austin, Texas, where every 45 minutes, all day long until after dark, I would either flip a tape or put in a new tape as I watched the largest-ever gathering of rock and roll performers presenting what the experts had been telling Bob Geldof, right up until the final weeks, couldn’t be done. It was Live Aid, and all day long I watched it live, and I taped it live. Live Aid changed the world. The show was broadcast live to more countries than any other event in history. It was a show that took place in two locations on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean, yet it was all one show. As if to prove it, Phil Collins performed on the stage at Wembley Stadium, in London, and then flew across the Atlantic on a Concord jet to perform at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia before the day was over. When Mick Jagger and David Bowie realized that they couldn’t perform the same song together as a duet from two separate transatlantic stages because of the speed lag created by satellite transmissions, they quickly created a joint video to present during the concert.
Everyone donated their time and services, and over $70 billion was raised in that one day alone to help feed people who were starving in Africa. And I had recorded it all on audio tape. Well, almost all of it. MTV and ABC didn’t always cover the same group; after all, these were two concerts going on simultaneously. At one point, MTV showed what would become a lifelong experience for me in my memory with the performance by Freddie Mercury and Queen. I just learned recently that Bob Geldof and I agree that Freddie stole the entire show and that Queen gave the most outstanding performance of the day. When they left the stage I turned to my radio feed only to hear the ABC announcer say, from Philadelphia, “let’s go now to London to see what’s happening there.”
From London, the announcer was screaming, saying, “you won’t believe what just happened. This was the most phenomenal thing I have ever seen.” He, of course, was talking about the superlative performance by Queen that ABC had completely missed. But even though ABC missed it, I didn’t; and I have carried the memory of that experience with me for almost 20 years, always believing that “someday” the video would again become available and I could relive the experience of seeing and feeling 72,000 people becoming as one under the incredible direction of Freddie Mercury.
Not one to sit around just waiting for the video to be released, I spent about a hundred hours cutting and reediting the audio tapes so that they were presented with all of the London show followed by all of the Philadelphia show. ABC had also missed one of my other favorite groups, The Beach Boys. So, in order to complete my Live Aid final tape I researched the groups and songs that had been missed by ABC and went out and found copies of them, preferably live, on vinyl, and placed them in the show where they would have been performing. I edited out different applause segments and inserted them as filler between sets. And at the end of each side of a tape, if there was any tape left over, I inserted the sound bites and interviews that had been interspersed throughout the day. When it was all done, I had the world-changing Live Aid on tape and I have listened to it many times over the years.
Then, about 8 years ago, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I made the acquaintance of someone who worked at Rare Bear Records who had several hours of the end of Live Aid on video tape. He was kind enough to make me a copy, so I was once again able to watch Mick and Tina, and Dylan and Keith Richards, and the “We Are The World” finale. Yet I continued to look forward to the day that I was certain would when they would finally release the entire show on video.
Finally, last year, Live Aid came out in a 4 DVD Package, and it was what I asked for, and got, at Christmas. I didn’t look at it right away. Then a couple of months ago I played just the beginning of the first DVD. I wept over the plight of the people starving in Africa. I wept when I saw Princess Diana enter to take her seat. And I wept when Status Quo started rockin’ all over the world. I put it away until I could find more time to enjoy this treasure.
Next thing you know, Bob Geldof is announcing Live 8. Late one evening I pulled out my Live Aid DVD, turned up the volume on my TV, and, for the first time in almost 20 years, I let Freddie Mercury once again take the stage and steal the show. We are the champions of the world.
The next night, I invited my 38-year-old stepson, Joe, to allow me to change his perception of Queen for the rest of his life. Blew him away. Then two nights ago, I blew Joe’s girlfriend, Sister, away with the Radio Ga Ga king.
Unfortunately, Freddie died 6 years after Live Aid. So what was going to happen this time around with Live 8? Well, for 2005, the entire experience took things to whole new levels. If you don’t remember, Live 8 was first announced on June 1, just 32 days before it was to occur. In those 4 ½ weeks, over 10 concerts were orchestrated around the world. Over 100 bands and entertainers jumped on board offering their services. The tickets to the events were free. The goal this time was not to make money but to bring awareness of the issue of world hunger to the population of this planet. Tickets to the concerts were obtained through sending a text message requesting tickets. It became the world’s largest ever text-messaging event. And the entire show was not only carried on TV but it also on the Internet, in its entirety.
Personally, I missed the “live” part of Live 8. July 2 was a busy day for me. However, I did tape 12 hours of whatever MTV and VH1 did (I had to put in new tapes in the middle of Pink Floyd). On July 5 when I showed up at one of my jobs, I asked my friend Marc if he had seen any of Live 8. “Yeah, I watched it all day,” he said. He not only watched on AOL’s Music site, but he also had submitted his face for the March and had, of course, signed the pledge.
Apparently AOL offered all of the concerts simultaneously and gave the viewer the choice of which acts they chose to watch. Phenomenal. What’s more, Marc told me that AOL was broadcasting the concerts over again in their entirety. Plus, they planned to allow the viewer to select which song by which entertainer they chose to view. I wondered how long it would take to accomplish that. The next night, when I had a little bit of time I went to http://AOLMusic.com only to discover that they had already offered that option. So I got to see Neil Young and his wife sing “Four Winds” and to see Neil joined by Gordon Lightfoot, Bare Naked Ladies, Bryan Adams, and a stage full of Canadian artists that I wasn’t even familiar with, to close Live 8 “Rockin’ In The Free World.”
And what about my MTV/VH1 tapes? Well, I had heard that the majority of MTV’s broadcast had consisted of a bunch of MTV talking heads praising MTV and themselves between countless ads. Why bother when I’ve got instant access to anything and everything through the Net? Then the pressure of MTV “fans” and critics, coupled with what we might assume was at least the inkling of an awareness of the stupid faux pax that had relegated them to the back burner, MTV announced the other day that they would run 5 hours of coverage of Live 8 performances on both VH1 and MTV on Saturday, July 7.
Well, I forgot to slap a tape in before I went out Saturday morning, so I “missed” the VH1 presentation (unlike the net, one has only one chance to catch it). But I did get home in time to start a tape to get most of the end of the MTV presentation. I tuned in shortly before Snoop Dog, and quickly noticed that half of the words that he was singing were blocked because of censorship. And MTV had advertised this as “unadulterated.”
I lay down and took a little nap, only to be awakened later when The Who took the stage in this MTV re-presentation. Lord God, Almighty, the people who hated the sixties and what they represented, and who have used their misguided perceptions to create a world that is reeking with greed and starvation, are probably crapping their pants because the sixties have turned 60 and they’re still kicking ass. That’s right, we’re all turning 60. My high school graduating class is having a special reunion next month celebrating the year we all turn 60.
And then it happened. The Who was singing “Who Are You” just as great as ever, and toward the end, when it rolled around in the chorus, Roger Daltry said, “Who the fuck are you.” But it came out, “Who the (censored) are you.” Unadulterated? MTV is dead. The mainstream media is dead.
The Who was followed by Pink Floyd. And they were singing “Money, get back. I’m all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack. Money, it’s a hit. Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit.” Except that last line came out “Don’t give me that do goody good (censored).” I mean, come on, people, let’s grow up here. We are in the most incredible age anyone could have imagined, an age when almost anything is possible. It was almost 30 years ago that Arthur C. Clarke stated that we will probably have accomplished everything presently imaginable in the next 75 to 100 years. As that promise unfolds, the old standards of free market capitalism gobble the incredible wealth that is being created by the explosive information revolution like a huge cosmic vacuum cleaner (notice that, unlike the great American dream, it is the market that is free, rather than the people that are free).
Live 8 became necessary because the so-called leaders of the marketplace can not figure out, on their own, what the hell is going on. The marketplace is out of control and they are hanging on for dear life, grabbing all that they can with their greedy little fingers while hoping that no one recognizes that the emperor has completely lost his clothes, and his ethics, and his mind, and has become morbidly transparent. The media is a plastic creation of this greedy marketplace and can not deal with reality, but rather sanitizes what it presents for what they consider to be acceptable human consumption. In the meantime, a child dies every 2 ¼ seconds from starvation or malnutrition and it takes something of the magnitude of Live 8 to bring this truth back up to the surface of our consciousness, because an awareness of this magnitude is not a high priority for the media machine or for the “free” market that drives it and feeds it. Words are not obscene; what we are allowing to happen to our fellow human beings is what is obscene. Let me repeat that: Words Are NOT Obscene.
I’m writing a book. God, I’ve been writing this thing for over a decade now. Most of it is being written in my head, but that which escapes to the “printed” page can be found at http://millenniumparadigm.blogspot.com . In that book I will be dealing with this and with other details of what is going on in this world that we inhabit and what is possible for us to accomplish if we decide to put our minds, our backs, and our intention upon the possibilities instead of absorbing ourselves in the false, censored “reality” presented by the media machine. I haven’t updated the book in far too long a time. However, lately, with the work of Bob Geldof, the encouragement of many of my friends, and the growing disgust that I have for the greed that is killing the people of this planet through starvation, untreated diseases, and desperation, I feel perhaps inspired to once again work at bringing this book to a state of completion where it can transform itself from an electronic presentation to one printed on paper.
I’m further inspired to continue this endeavor, because the insipid media machine is already creeping into the Net, slowly altering and corrupting the record of what went down with Live 8. I speak here specifically of AOL and Microsoft who are already polluting the record with self-aggrandizement.
Someday, those of us who have been around for decades will be gone, only to be nothing more than a memory. But thanks to people like Sir Bob Geldof and every single person who gives of themselves through Live Aid, Live 8, or any of the countless other groups and movements and activities that work for the benefit of all humankind, what we believe in, and what we aspire to, will continue to be a huge thorn in the side of greed and selfishness far into this new millennium. So, my message today for MTV, and all of the other puppets of a system that is out for itself and that will act only for the benefit of all humankind when they are absolutely forced to: “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” (And that goes for the critics of Live 8, also.) I’m had it with your “do goody good bullshit.”
