12 pm — 2 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

As Live Aid geared up for its momen­tous series of con­certs of both sides of the Atlantic, famous con­cert pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham com­pared it to Wood­stock: “What we’re doing now is entire­ly dif­fer­ent. The rea­son for the event is more impor­tant than the event itself.”

Three decades lat­er, the mem­o­ry of the event has eclipsed its rea­son (and one Queen per­for­mance has eclipsed most of the con­cert). It was a gath­er­ing of the best of main­stream ‘80s rock–still try­ing to jus­ti­fy itself along­side acts from the 60s and the ‘70s–and the zenith of the fundrais­ing telethon: broad­cast live in 140 coun­tries to raise $50 mil­lion for vic­tims of a relent­less African famine. (Fun fact: the con­certs raised about $560 mil­lion in 2019 mon­ey, about two days’ worth of Jeff Bezos’ cur­rent earn­ings!)

If you have a day to spare, you can recre­ate that amaz­ing July 13th in 1985 with this series of YouTube playlists.

The day start­ed at Lon­don’s Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um (up top), with the Reg­i­men­tal Band of the Cold­stream Guards per­form­ing the Roy­al Salute for Queen and Coun­try and all that, and then things real­ly start­ed with Sta­tus Quo, those griz­zled ol’ blokes play­ing “Rockin’ All Over the World.” Yanks might have said “who?” but it was the Brits who either bopped along or said, “Not this bloody Dad rock!” (Okay, not true, the phrase hadn’t been invent­ed, but some­thing sim­i­lar was uttered.)

2 pm — 4 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

The British side was indeed a mixed bag, reflect­ing the idio­syn­crasies of its own sin­gles chart com­pared to the more stead­fast Amer­i­can charts. Elvis Costel­lo sang “All You Need Is Love”; the Style Coun­cil sang their hits; Nik Ker­shaw played his chart-top­per. Phil Collins per­formed “Against All Odds,” then jumped on a Con­corde for New York, arriv­ing to sing it again for a dif­fer­ent audi­ence.

4 pm — 6 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

There’s so much more to explore in these playlists: the Led Zep­pelin reunion, The Cars at the height of their pow­ers (RIP Ric Ocasek), Neil Young (and his reunion with Cros­by, Stills, and Nash), Bob Dylan, The Four Tops, Run D.M.C., the list real­ly goes on and on.

6 pm — 8 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

8 pm — 10 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

2 pm — 5 pm | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

5 pm — 8 pm | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

8 pm — 11 pm | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

Live Aid | 11 pm- 2 am | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

Live Aid | 2 am — 4 am | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

Find a com­plete list of Live Aid per­for­mances here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 13, 1985)

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

A Stun­ning Live Con­cert Film of Queen Per­form­ing in Mon­tre­al, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored to Per­fec­tion (1981)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Play­ing For Change, a “move­ment cre­at­ed to inspire and con­nect the world through music,” has released its lat­est video–this one fea­tur­ing musi­cians from five con­ti­nents play­ing “The Weight,” a clas­sic song from The Band’s 1968 album, Music from Big Pink. Amongst the musi­cians you’ll find The Band’s own Rob­bie Robert­son and The Beat­le’s Ringo Starr. In our archive, find oth­er Play­ing for Change takes on The Grate­ful Dead­’s “Rip­ple,” The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter,” Bob Mar­ley’s “Redemp­tion Song,” and Ben King’s “Stand by Me.” For more, vis­it Play­ing for Change’s YouTube chan­nel.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

Jeff Bridges Nar­rates a Brief His­to­ry of Bob Dylan’s and The Band’s Base­ment Tapes

Can you imag­ine Jimi Hen­drix singing a duet with Lulu? Well, nei­ther could Hen­drix. So when the icon­o­clas­tic gui­tar play­er showed up with his band at the BBC stu­dios in Lon­don on Jan­u­ary 4, 1969 to appear on Hap­pen­ing for Lulu, he was hor­ri­fied to learn that the show’s pro­duc­er want­ed him to sing with the win­some star of To Sir, With Love. The plan called for The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence to open their set with “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” and then play their ear­ly hit “Hey Joe,” with Lulu join­ing Hen­drix onstage at the end to sing the final bars with him before segue­ing into her reg­u­lar show-clos­ing num­ber. “We cringed,” writes bassist Noel Red­ding in his mem­oir, Are You Expe­ri­enced? The Inside Sto­ry of The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence.

Red­ding describes the scene that he, Hen­drix, and drum­mer Mitch Mitchell walked into that day as being “so straight it was only nat­ur­al that we would try to com­bat that atmos­phere by hav­ing a smoke in our dress­ing room.” He con­tin­ues:

In our haste, the lump of hash got away and slipped down the sink drain­pipe. Pan­ic! We just could­n’t do this show straight–Lulu did­n’t approve of smok­ing! She was then mar­ried to Mau­rice Gibb of the Bee Gees, whom I’d vis­it­ed and shared a smoke with. I could always tell Lulu was due home when Mau­rice start­ed throw­ing open all the win­dows. Any­way, I found a main­te­nance man and begged tools from him with the sto­ry of a lost ring. He was too help­ful, offer­ing to dis­man­tle the drain for us. It took ages to dis­suade him, but we suc­ceed­ed in our task and had a great smoke.

When it was time for The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence to go on cam­era, they were feel­ing fair­ly loose. They tore through “Voodoo Child” and then the pro­gram cut to Lulu, who was squeezed awk­ward­ly into a chair next to an audi­ence mem­ber in the front row. “That was real­ly hot,” she said. “Yeah. Well ladies and gen­tle­men, in case you did­n’t know, Jimi and the boys won in a big Amer­i­can mag­a­zine called Bill­board the group of the year.” As Lulu spoke a loud shriek of feed­back threw her off bal­ance. Was it an acci­dent? Hen­drix, of course, was a pio­neer in the inten­tion­al use of feed­back. A bit flus­tered, she con­tin­ued: “And they’re gonna sing for you now the song that absolute­ly made them in this coun­try, and I’d love to hear them sing it: ‘Hey Joe.’ ”

The band launched into the song, but mid­way through–before Lulu had a chance to join them onstage–Hendrix sig­naled to the oth­ers to quit play­ing. “We’d like to stop play­ing this rub­bish,” he said, “and ded­i­cate a song to the Cream, regard­less of what kind of group they may be in. We ded­i­cate this to Eric Clap­ton, Gin­ger Bak­er and Jack Bruce.” With that the band veered off into an instru­men­tal ver­sion of “Sun­shine of Your Love” by the recent­ly dis­band­ed Cream. Noel Red­ding con­tin­ues the sto­ry:

This was fun for us, but pro­duc­er Stan­ley Dorf­man did­n’t take it at all well as the min­utes ticked by on his live show. Short of run­ning onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was noth­ing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talk­ing at the end, played through Stan­ley tear­ing his hair, point­ing to his watch and silent­ly scream­ing at us. We played out the show. After­wards, Dorf­man refused to speak to us but the result is one of the most wide­ly used bits of film we ever did. Cer­tain­ly, it’s the most relaxed.

The stunt report­ed­ly got Hen­drix banned from the BBC–but it made rock and roll his­to­ry. Years lat­er, Elvis Costel­lo paid homage to Hen­drix’s antics when he per­formed on Sat­ur­day Night Live. You can watch The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From SNL here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Great Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

Leg­endary musi­cian and pro­duc­er Ric Ocasek passed away on Sun­day, and the whole rock world mourns his loss. Great­ly respect­ed not only by fans but by fel­low musi­cians (and Stephen Col­bert), Ocasek achieved a very rare posi­tion in the music business—one almost unheard-of: an inter­na­tion­al super­star in the 80s with his band The Cars, formed in Boston in the late 70s, he thrived in the era of the video star, at the dawn­ing of the music video age along­side 80s jug­ger­nauts like Van Halen, Madon­na, and Michael Jack­son.

Ocasek was also one of the most revered pro­duc­ers in 80s punk and 90s alt-rock, with as much cred­i­bil­i­ty in such cir­cles as pro­duc­ers like Steve Albi­ni and Butch Vig. (His cred­its include Bad Brain’s Rock for Light, Weezer’s Blue Album and Green Album, and records by Sui­cide, Hole, Bad Reli­gion, Jonathan Rich­man, Guid­ed by Voic­es, etc. etc.) He had a daunt­ing work eth­ic, but he also had a great deal of humil­i­ty and an endur­ing sense of what record­ed music does for us.

He may have mas­tered the art of mak­ing hit records and slick videos, but as he told Rolling Stone in 1980, “music’s a pow­er­ful emo­tion­al force” that is, most impor­tant­ly, “a way to com­mu­ni­cate with­out alien­at­ing peo­ple, a way to get beyond lone­li­ness. It’s a pri­vate thing peo­ple can have for them­selves any time they want. Just turn on the radio and there it is: a sense of belong­ing.” That’s what The Cars gave their fans.

They cre­at­ed a sense of famil­iar­i­ty, blend­ing synth pop, punk, and New Wave with clas­sic rock and roll moves; five ordi­nary-look­ing joes who’d paid their bar band dues. They also sus­tained an air of alien­ation and intrigue. Will­ing to be sil­ly, yet unap­proach­ably cool, with the most weird­ly oblique of pop radio hits. “With their debut album in 1978,” writes Rolling Stone’s Mikal Gilmore, “the Cars cre­at­ed one of the rarest phe­nom­e­na of late-Sev­en­ties rock & roll: a pop arti­fact that uni­fied many fac­tions of a plu­ral­is­tic rock scene.”

“Con­ser­v­a­tive radio pro­gram­mers jumped on it because of Ocasek’s con­so­nant pop sym­me­try and Roy Thomas Baker’s pol­ished, eco­nom­i­cal pro­duc­tion; New Wave par­ti­sans favored it for its terse melod­i­cism and ultra­mod­ern stance; and crit­ics applaud­ed it for its syn­the­sis of pre­punk art-rock influ­ences, includ­ing Lou Reed, David Bowie, Roxy Music and Bri­an Eno.” The band’s rep­u­ta­tion with crit­ics would suf­fer with their sopho­more album, Candy‑O. And what Gilmore called the “technopop” of their third record came to define their sound in the 80s.

The Cars in 1978 were raw and edgy, even as their debut album spawned some of their most radio-friend­ly hit songs, includ­ing “Good Times Roll,” “My Best Friend’s Girl,” and “Just What I Need­ed” (the first three tracks on the first record, and some of the biggest songs of their entire sev­en-album run). See them play the ear­ly hits and more  at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex, Brighton in 1979 in the full con­cert film above, and let the good times roll.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First 10 Videos Played on MTV: Rewind the Video­tape to August 1, 1981

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Hear John Malkovich Read Plato’s “Alle­go­ry of the Cave,” Set to Music Mixed by Ric Ocasek, Yoko Ono & Sean Lennon, OMD & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

We all want the funk, but do we even real­ly know what it is? Most every style of music has its dis­tinc­tive rhyth­mic prop­er­ties, from waltzes to sam­ba to the off­beat ska gui­tar of reg­gae. But what is it that pri­mar­i­ly defines the music of James Brown and oth­er funk greats—music we can­not seem to hear with­out mov­ing some part of our bod­ies? If you don’t know the answer, don’t worry—not even the great Boot­sy Collins under­stood the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple when he first backed the God­fa­ther of Funk in the ear­ly 70s.

Though funk is pur­pose-built to make peo­ple get loose and has pro­duced some of the freest spir­its in pop­u­lar music, it must be played a cer­tain way, its high prac­ti­tion­ers pro­claim. No less a mas­ter of funk than Prince put it best, as Austin Kleon notes: “Funk is the oppo­site of mag­ic. Funk is about rules.” Collins learned the num­ber one rule in Brown’s band, the sine qua non of all funk: You’ve got to keep it on the one. In oth­er words, the bass has to hit the first beat of every bar.

Hit the one, Collins learned (and teach­es us in the short les­son at the top) and you can blast into the wild pyrotech­nics that made him famous. Miss the one, and no amount of fan­cy fret­work is going to impress James Brown, who told him, “you give me the one, you can do all those oth­er things.” (See Collins tell the sto­ry in the video clip below.) Brown had an elab­o­rate the­o­ry of “the one,” accord­ing to his biog­ra­ph­er RJ Smith: “The ‘One’ is derived from the Earth itself,” he said, “the soil, the pine trees of my youth. And most impor­tant, it’s on the upbeat…. nev­er on low­down­beat.”

It’s the one, accord­ing to Brown, that gives funk its root and its fruit: a seis­mic, earthy pulse and sexy, uplift­ing opti­mism. “I was born to the down­beat, and I can tell you with­out ques­tion there is no pride in it.” Unlike his men­tor, Boot­sy doesn’t shade the blues when talk­ing about the one. But he does have a mes­sage to deliv­er and it’s this: once you get the “basic funk for­mu­la, you can do any­thing you want to do with it.” Booty’s been bring­ing the funk since it began and took it places James Brown would nev­er tread in Parliament/Funkadelic. Who bet­ter to car­ry the mes­sage to would-be funka­teers out there?

In order to reach as many as pos­si­ble, Collins decid­ed to found a school, “Funk U.,” in 2010. Still going strong, the pro­gram has fea­tured such guest online lec­tur­ers as Flea, Les Clay­pool, and Vic­tor Wooten. The lessons of Funk U. are about music, he says, but they’re also about some­thing else: about the deep truths he learned from James Brown. “You need the dis­ci­pline and you also need to know that you can exper­i­ment, and you can open up and let your cre­ative juices flow.” All that from the sim­ple rhyth­mic beau­ty of keep­ing it on the one.

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Some of the Most Pow­er­ful Bass Gui­tar Solos Ever: Ged­dy Lee, Flea, Boot­sy Collins, John Dea­con & More

Visu­al­iz­ing the Bass Play­ing Style of Motown’s Icon­ic Bassist James Jamer­son: “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness