TheSound
An Englishman in New York
I got to thinking last night about maybe finding a few Mandela inspired songs and vids, so…
I guess this great song will be playing around the world’s radio stations for the next few days…
Also, the new Mandela bio-pic movie ‘Mandela : Long Walk to Freedom’ now suddenly takes on a whole new poignancy…I think it’s only getting released this week? I assume it was already on many people’s lists of ‘must see’ movies, it is certainly on mine, but now pretty much everybody is hopefully going to want to see it...
I think probably the best ‘protest’ song to emerge from that whole Mandela/anti-Apartheid era was the Steve van Zandt’s ‘Sun City’ - where he got together a pretty impressive line-up of anti-apartheid artists - along Band Aid type lines - for both the recording and the video (Springsteen, Dylan, Miles Davis, Bono, Ringo, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone, Hall and Oates, Peter Gabriel, Run DMC, Jackson Browne etc)…
One of the biggest concerts I ever attended was the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute Concert in front of 80,000 at Wembley Stadium in London back in 1988….it was held whilst he was still being imprisoned by the South African government. It was a pretty impressive line-up, nothing like on the same scale as Live Aid in 1985, but I remember Sting opened the show, and Dire Straits topped the bill and closed the show (with Eric Clapton guesting on guitar) and in between there was Peter Gabriel, The Eurythmics, Bryan Adams, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins, Meatloaf, Simple Minds, Jackson Browne, UB40, many others. The most ultra-cool moment I thought was when Clapton walked out on stage with Knopfler and Dire Straits, which nobody was expecting, and they launched into Walk of Life…EC is so epic!!....
Just go back to Simple Minds, who I always thought were one of the best bands to emerge out of the 80’s… I recall they certainly rocked out at the Mandela concert…
So, that's it.
Amandla!!
I guess this great song will be playing around the world’s radio stations for the next few days…
Also, the new Mandela bio-pic movie ‘Mandela : Long Walk to Freedom’ now suddenly takes on a whole new poignancy…I think it’s only getting released this week? I assume it was already on many people’s lists of ‘must see’ movies, it is certainly on mine, but now pretty much everybody is hopefully going to want to see it...
I think probably the best ‘protest’ song to emerge from that whole Mandela/anti-Apartheid era was the Steve van Zandt’s ‘Sun City’ - where he got together a pretty impressive line-up of anti-apartheid artists - along Band Aid type lines - for both the recording and the video (Springsteen, Dylan, Miles Davis, Bono, Ringo, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone, Hall and Oates, Peter Gabriel, Run DMC, Jackson Browne etc)…
One of the biggest concerts I ever attended was the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute Concert in front of 80,000 at Wembley Stadium in London back in 1988….it was held whilst he was still being imprisoned by the South African government. It was a pretty impressive line-up, nothing like on the same scale as Live Aid in 1985, but I remember Sting opened the show, and Dire Straits topped the bill and closed the show (with Eric Clapton guesting on guitar) and in between there was Peter Gabriel, The Eurythmics, Bryan Adams, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins, Meatloaf, Simple Minds, Jackson Browne, UB40, many others. The most ultra-cool moment I thought was when Clapton walked out on stage with Knopfler and Dire Straits, which nobody was expecting, and they launched into Walk of Life…EC is so epic!!....
Just go back to Simple Minds, who I always thought were one of the best bands to emerge out of the 80’s… I recall they certainly rocked out at the Mandela concert…
So, that's it.
Amandla!!
