Well imagine, it is exactly 40 years since Live Aid happened - a bit mind boggling fact, as I clearly remember this as one of the quintessential moments of 1980s pop culture and since I was a teenager back than, a major highlight of my life. I remember everything like it was yesterday, it was this spectacular 16 hour charity concert where simultaneously we followed what was going on at Wembley and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. I was at the hospital, recovering from a very difficult lung infection and I still remember hushing my mother and sending her back home so I could go back to TV and watch the biggest pop stars in the world duetting with each other. The highlight was supposed to be duet of Mick Jagger and Tina Turner, for which I had to wake up at 5 a.m and sneak into hospital's living room so I could watch it while nurses slept. The pictures of their duet was on every cover page next day, this is how huge they were. Of course, there were many stars performing and it was literary Olympus of the biggest names you can imagine, on both sides of Atlantic.
I have never been on a Tribute Act concert, somehow suspecting its not the real thing so why bother. However, this sounded too good to miss and I am glad I went - with a faithful Tina fan in a tow - we went simply to check the Jagger/Turner duet but we actually ended up having great time. I explained him this is a venue where I already witnessed The Three Degrees and knew the audience was totally middle aged, happy, relaxed and confident - no youngsters, no kids, simply people of our age having fun. Nothing pretentious. On arrival, I was delighted to hear the sound of Royal Fanfare exactly like the concert originally started and than "Rockin' All Over The World" which was the first song performed back in 1985 - it was just as good as I expected and even more, since glorious 1980s hits simply poured from the stage and the audience was in a great mood.
When Jagger/Turner duet happened, the performer who sung Turner (Dutch artist calling herself Diva Turner) explained that Turner had only one song on Live Aid, she will nevertheless sing few of Turner's live favourites and almost unbalanced the concert with her strong performance - I watched, fascinated. She was obviously not Tina Turner but she inhabited and very respectfully performed exactly in that gloriously regal and powerful style - the audience loved it and danced away. Later it continued as a 1980s jukebox and I totally got into it, much more than I expected - you see, I was there, living trough 1980s so I rarely listen to this music anymore, but this was great fun and I actually knew every song by heart. I promised to myself to check out other Tribute acts because as long as I like the music, it doesn't matter that is not original artist - we simply celebrate music itself and enjoy a good time. In a way, we also honour artists who are not here anymore.
Performers: Arjan Janissen
Maureen Fernandes
Nicolette Junggeburth
Jeroen Kraneveld
Richard van der Heijden
Charl Dijkhoff
Robert van Asseldonk
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