THIS DAY IN HISTORY: ‘Live Aid’ concert raises $127 million for Famine Relief in Africa.

Brilliant live performances, and a great McLuhan-esque “global village,” but it didn’t actually provide all that much famine relief: Live Aid: The Terrible Truth.

And as I wrote at the Weekly Standard in 2004, when Live Aid (minus Led Zeppelin’s disastrous set) was first released on DVD, “While Live Aid was spectacular television, it was just another in a series of Big Events from people who believed that throwing money at a problem eventually solves it. Eerily, it forecast how the left would interact with Iraq: Substitute Mengistu for Saddam Hussein and it’s amazing how all the rest of the players stay the same–the BBC, the United Nations, and celebrities who believe that despots can be reasoned with to do the right thing. We won’t get fooled again? Of course you will.”