Lost Hits of the New Wave #36

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid

The original "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was written by Bob Geldolf of the Boomtown Rats and the criminally underacknowledged Midge Ure of Ultravox in 1984 to bring awareness to the famine in Ethiopia. Later overshadowed by that summer's American "We Are the World," I still think the original is the better song, and with the better stars.

Geldolf brought together a supergroup he called Band Aid to sing the song, which included Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, The Boomtown Rats, Sting, U2, Bananarama, Kool and the Gang (a seeming oddity, there only because they shared a record label with the Rats), Ultravox, Status

Quo, Marilyn, Heaven 17, Paul Young, George Michael, Paul Weller, Jody Watley, and Phil Collins. Artists who could not be a part of the recording like Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson, Big Country, and David Bowie were included giving holiday messages on the B-side of the single, called "Feed the World," a cool groove all by itself.

I worked in a record store at the time of the release, and its re-release in 1985 and remember the flurry to get a copy. This was huge. I also remember the crowds at the mall's Heroes World that Christmas, because they had a poster of Band Aid out front with a number chart to show who was who - and everyone wanted to know who was who.



The song was re-recorded in 1989, 2004, and this year as well. Here's the new version for 2014 by Band Aid 30:

Lost Hits of the New Wave #14

"Can't Stand Losing You" by The Police



Back in the days before MTV, or before everyone except me had cable television and MTV, I would seek out every possible avenue to see music videos. Long about 1980, 1981, those avenues were few.

There was a program called "Rockworld" that aired on the pre-Fox channel 29, on the UHF dial for all the old folks reading, and that was one outlet for pre-MTV music videos. It was an hour long and would feature one or two artists or bands per episode, and there really weren't that many episodes, and they repeated them often. This was where I saw many of the early videos by Adam and the Ants, DEVO, Van Halen, the Pretenders, and The Police.

The Police videos all looked they had been filmed on the same day, and quite possibly with a single budget. Besides "Can't Stand Losing You," one of my all-time favorites, there was also "Walking on the Moon," "Message in a Bottle," and of course, "Roxanne."