December 3, 1984: "Do They Know It's Christmas?" Is Released

December 3, 1984: "Band Aid," a group of British and Irish singers, led by Boomtown Rats lead singer Bob Geldof, releases its hunger-relief single "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof was born on October 5, 1951 in Dún Laoghaire, outside Dublin. In that city, in 1975, he formed The Boomtown Rats, a punk band which, aside from Bob's role in "Band Aid," is best known for their 1979 hit "I Don't Like Mondays."

The BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, played a major role in capturing the poverty and famine affecting people in the East African nation of Ethiopia citizens in 1984, and thereby influenced Geldof to take action. BBC presenter Paula Yates, then Geldof's girlfriend and eventually his wife (and then ex-wife), is considered to have been the brains behind the original Band Aid. It was she who became the driving force that inspired (and helped) Geldof to rally the most famous pop stars of the 1980s to raise money for famine relief.

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" was written by Geldof and James "Midge" Ure, the lead singer of Ultravox. The answer to the question was, "Not necessarily." Ethiopia then had a Communist government, which banned all religious holidays. Before that, the country's people were largely Orthodox Catholic, thus celebrating Christmas 2 weeks later than most Christians, on January 7. There is also the Rastafarian tradition, which holds that Ethiopians are one of the lost tribes of Israel, that their since-deposed monarchy was descended from the affair of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and that the the Queen took the Ark of the Covenant to the Ethiopian city of Axum.

The song was recorded on November 25, 1984 at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, West London. The performers were:

* From The Boomtown Rats, Irish: Bob Geldof, Pete Briquette, Simon Crowe, Johnny Fingers.

* From Ultravox, English: Midge Ure and Christopher "Chris Cross" Allen.

* From The Police, English: Gordon "Sting" Sumner -- but not Andy Summers or Stewart Copeland.

* From The Jam and Style Council, English: Paul Weller.

* From Duran Duran, English: Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor, John Taylor and Roger Taylor. (Although he is also a drummer, Roger is not to be confused with Queen drummer Roger Taylor.)

* From Culture Club, English: George "Boy George" O'Dowd and Jon Moss -- but not Roy Hay or Mikey Craig.

* From Wham!, English: George Michael -- but not Andrew Ridgeley.

* From U2, Irish: Paul "Bono" Hewson and Adam Clayton -- but not Dave "The Edge" Evans or Larry Mullen. Bono didn't want to sing the iconic line, "Well, tonight, thank God it's them, instead of you!" but Geldof talked him into it.

* From Spandau Ballet, English: Twin brothers Gary Kemp and Martin Kemp, Tony Hadley, John Keeble and Steve Norman.

* From Status Quo, English: Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi -- but not Alan Lancaster, Andy Bown, John Coghlan or Pete Kircher.

* From Bananarama, English: Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey and Keren Woodward. (Fahey is Irish, while Dallin and Woodward are English-born-and-raised but of Irish descent.)

* From Heaven 17, English: Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware -- but not Ian Craig Marsh. (Ware and Marsh had also been in Human League.)

* From The Q-Tips: Paul Young.

* Phil Collins, English -- but not any of his former bandmates in Genesis: Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks or Mike Rutherford.

* Peter Robinson, an English singer who, despite being born male, recorded under the name "Marilyn." (Barely more than a one-hit wonder in Britain, he's never had a hit in America.)

* From Kool & the Gang, American: Robert "Kool" Bell, James "J.T." Taylor and Dennis "Dee Tee" Thomas.

* And from Shalamar, American: Jody Watley.

The song hit Number 1 in Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In America, it only reached Number 13, probably because many of the acts were not yet known there.

The song raised £8 million for Ethiopia within a year, far exceeding Geldof's hopes. With inflation, that's about £23 million, or about $32 million. It inspired an American effort, "USA for Africa," and its song "We Are the World."

In spite of the fundraising of both songs, much of the money was converted not into food for the starving, but into guns and other amenities for the ruling party. In the end, Ethiopia, which had 40 million people before the famine started, lost 1.2 million people to death by starvation, and 400,000 people fled the country. The Communist regime collapsed in 1991, but the country has been in civil war on and off ever since.

Paula Yates died of an accidental drug overdose in 2000. Rick Parfitt died in 2016. George Michael died on Christmas Day in 2016. Dee Tee Thomas died in 2021. (UPDATE: Chris Cross of Ultravox died in 2024.)

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December 3, 1984 was a Monday. On ABC Monday Night Football, the San Diego Chargers beat the Chicago Bears, 20-7 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego.

Baseball was out of season. There was 1 game in the NBA: The Seattle SuperSonics beat the Phoenix Suns, 108-96 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

There were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-2 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New York Islanders beat the Vancouver Canucks, 5-4 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Hartford Whalers, 9-3 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Boston Bruins and the Quebec Nordiques played to a tie, 3-3 at the Colisée de Québec.

August 1, 1981: MTV Goes On the Air

August 1, 1981: MTV, standing for "Music Television," goes on the air. The world would never be the same -- and not in a good way. The 1st video was the appropriately, if not quite correctly, titled 1979 hit by The Buggles, "Video Killed the Radio Star."

The Buggles: Geoff Downes (left) and Trevor Horn

Trevor Horn, from County Durham in England's North-East, produced the song, and sang lead and played bass guitar. He has been called "The Man Who Invented the Eighties." Geoff Downes, from Stockport in Greater Manchester, played keyboards. He had previously been in the band Yes, and would soon be in the band Asia with Yes bandmate Steve Howe.

Dave Birch, from somewhere in England, played lead guitar. Paul Robinson, from Rotherham, Yorkshire, played drums. Debi Doss, an American from St. Louis, and Linda Jardim, from somewhere in England, sang the unforgettable chorus. Jardim died in 2015. As of August 1, 2022, the rest are still alive.

There were music videos before MTV debuted. Sometimes, they were called "promotional films," and The Beatles seemed to specialize in them. Before that, in the 1940s, they were called "soundies," and would be shown with movie theaters' newsreels or in jukeboxes containing small film projectors.

But MTV, whether knowingly or not, promoted Marshall McLuhan's idea that "The medium is the message." Suddenly, the visual meant more than anything else. Never mind whether the lyrics, the voices, or the playing of the instruments sounded good: Did the performance look good? (Most of the time, my answer was, "Not to me, but it sure did to a bunch of people with no taste.")

The original commercial showed various performers telling America to demand its MTV, by yelling, "I want my MTV!" (Shades of the 1976 film Network, and, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!") They included The Police, Pat Benatar, and Pete Townshend of The Who, all of them talented enough to know better, but they took the money, anyway.

By 1983, the performers doing the commercials were adding the tagline, "Too much is never enough." These included people who should have known better, including Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones (who, clearly, believed it) and David Bowie.

Oddly, some already-established performers -- including Bowie, Elton John, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen -- didn't need videos to become famous and respected, yet ended up making great videos. Even the sappiest of disco performers didn't need videos: They just needed to go on American Bandstand, The Midnight Special, Soul Train or Dance Fever, and do their stuff.

Disco sucked, and polluted the airwaves in the Seventies, but it was better than the synthesizer-driven, wouldn't-be-on-the-radio-if-not-for-MTV crap of the Eighties. Duran Duran was crap, but teenage girls loved the way they looked, and so they became huge.

If you'd never heard of these guys, and had to guess

how they sounded, your guess might well be, 

"Like a bunch of twats." And you would be right.

If Bruce Springsteen looked like Jon Bon Jovi, he would have been as big as Elvis Presley; if Bon Jovi looked like Springsteen, we'd have never heard of him. The distance between them is a lot more than the 14 miles of U.S. Route 9 between Springsteen's Freehold and Bon Jovi's Sayreville.

Or, to put it another way: Susan Boyle is 3 years younger than Madonna. If Susan looked like Madonna, she might have become famous at the same time; but if Madonna looked like Susan, she would never have become famous.

Think about it. Doris Day had a hit record in 1942, when she was 20. Teresa Brewer had a hit record in 1950, at 19. Connie Francis had a hit record in 1958, at 19. Lesley Gore had a hit record in 1963, at 16. All of these women, at those respective times, were attractive, but they didn't need to play off that, because they had talent.

Madonna's 1st hit came in 1982, when she was 24. Why not sooner? Was it because she was not attractive enough? No, it was because MTV allowed her to overcome her comparatively lower level of singing and writing talent.

She could stare, she could dance, she could writhe.

But she couldn't sing or write a song worth a damn.

But it was the Eighties, so no one cared.

At first, it seemed like MTV wouldn't play videos by black performers. Then came Jackson's album Thriller, and it was off to the races.

In 1984, they began issuing the MTV Video Music Awards, or VMAs, with the "Moon Man" trophy that evoked their original commercials that seemed to pay tribute to Neil Armstrong -- certainly not to Louis Armstrong.

But by the dawn of the 21st Century, MTV began airing, for want of a better choice of words, original programming. This included The Osbournes, with Ozzy, Sharon, and their kids Kelly and Jack. (Their older daughter Aimee, and Ozzy's children from his 1st marriage, declined to participate.) While it never happened, probably because Kelly and Jack would have known, they could easily have staged a scene in which Kelly or Jack asked Ozzy, "Dad, what does 'MTV' stand for?" The answer, of course, is "Money."

One more note: I mentioned the film Network. Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote that film's screenplay, and also the author of the novels that became the films Marty and Altered States, died of cancer, only 58 years old -- on August 1, 1981, the day that MTV debuted. What a twist of fate that was!

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August 1, 1981 was a Saturday. The NFL wouldn't start its preseason games for another 4 days. The new NBA and NHL seasons were way off. And baseball was still in its strike. So there were no scores on this dubiously historic day.