The Times
In the summer of 1985, the entire world was united and glued to their TVs on July 13th, 1985 when Bob Geldorf of the Boom Town Rats and Midge Ure of Utravox mobilized 1.9 billion viewers in 150 countries for Live Aid. The dual concert performed simultaneously in London and Philadelphia with an estimated 162,000 fans in attendance, raised over $150 million for Ethiopian famine relief. Called the “Global Jukebox,” Live Aid changed the world by creating a template for global charity initiatives used today.
As a follow-up to Live Aid, on September 22nd 1985, the 1986 Cortland senior class was just settling in for their last year when they were treated to the very first televised Farm Aid concert. During his Live Aid performance in Philadelphia, Bob Dylan said to the audience “I hope that some of the money that’s raised for the people in Africa, maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe one or two million, maybe, and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms that the farmers here owe to the banks.” Watching on his tour bus was Willie Nelson. He was so moved, he began contacting music friends, John Mellencamp and Neil Young and in just 2 months, they put on the first Farm Aid concert! Dylan performed at that first show with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
On September 19th, 1985, Tipper Gore, wife of Senator Al Gore (later Vice President), headed a group of 4 women known as “The Washington Wives,” pressured the music industry to create a rating system on so-called “porn rock.” A Senate hearing was held on behalf of the PMRC (The Parents Music Resource Center) with a goal to increase parental control over children’s access to music deemed to have violent, drug-related or sexual themes. The group went after Prince, AC/DC, Twisted Sister, Madonna, Def Leppard, Black Sabbath and Cyndi Lauper. Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, Frank Zappa and John Denver showed up to testify. On November 1st, 1985, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) agreed to put Parental Advisory labels called the “Tipper Sticker” on selected releases.
Before streaming, there was an explosion of home entertainment consumption featuring home movie rentals. On October 19th, 1985, the very first Blockbuster video store opened in Dallas, Texas. The stores revolutionized Friday night movie nights by offering affordable, immediately available home rentals with massive inventories. At its peak in 2004, the company operated over 9,000 stores across 25 countries and employed more than 84,000 people worldwide. As consumer habits changed due to the introduction of streaming and digital services, the chain was forced to file for bankruptcy and closed all of its stores in 2013 except for one remaining store in Bend, Oregon.
Just as 1986 seniors were starting their last semester at Cortland, students witnessed the devastating explosion of the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger as it unfolded live on television. On January 28th, 1986, after just 73 seconds after takeoff, the entire world held its collective breath watching the shuttle break up into a plume of smoke and fire. The day of takeoff was an unusually cold day and NASA engineers warned flight administrators that the O-rings could be vulnerable at low temps. The subsequent investigation revealed that the O-ring seal on Challenger’s solid rocket booster, which had become brittle in the cold temperatures, failed. All seven astronauts including 37-year-old Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire, were killed.
A few months later, on April 26th, 1986, the world once again witnessed a traumatic disaster in the once Soviet Union not far from Kyiv. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant had a catastrophic accident when a routine safety test went horribly wrong due to a flawed reactor design and human error. The reactor overheated, causing massive steam explosions that blew the roof off the building and exposed the radioactive core to the open air. The Soviet government tried to keep the accident a secret. However, radiation alarms as far away as Sweden went off, forcing Russia to admit what happened. Around 100,000 people living near the plant were evacuated.
The music of 1985 and 1986 continued to be dominated by MTV which shaped both global music and video trends as well as youth fashion. MTV also had a major effect on radio stations who were scrambling to keep listeners. Many stations were forced to change formats to gain a larger audience while large corporations bought up regional radio stations to consolidate their media footprint and playlists. Cause related singles like “We Are The World” and “That’s What Friends Are For” united the world, while synth-pop Brits were topping the charts with hits from Wham and Tears For Fears. The MTV music generation was characterized by sky-high, heavily sprayed hair, neon colors, spandex, and dramatic makeup. Power Ballads from Whitney Houston, Journey and Foreigner relied on soaring vocals and Hip-Hop artists Run DMC and LL Cool Jay broke through to multi-racial audiences.
Notable Events
- Live Aid – July 13th, 1985
- “Do They Know It’s Christmas” – The finale of Live Aid from Wembley Stadium in London
- “We Are The World” – The finale of Live Aid from JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, PA
- Farm Aid – September 22nd, 1985
- Willie Nelson talking about what inspired Farm Aid
- Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes After Takeoff – January 28th, 1986
- Just 73 seconds after takeoff, the world held its collective breath as the Challenger broke up into a plume of smoke and fire
- Senate Hearing – PMRC – September 19, 1985
- Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) Testifies
- Music of 1985/1986
- The MTV Generation was in full swing with music videos being the primary driver of success for the music business. It was so successful that VH1 was launched in 1985 and programmed with classic rock targeting an older audience. Norwegian trio, A-ha’s video “Take on Me” used a revolutionary technique called rotoscoping where animators traced over live-action footage and computer animated graphics for the video “Money For Nothing” from Dire Straits dominated the video waves. Film soundtracks were massive drivers of the charts. Movies like Back to the Future (“The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News), The Breakfast Club (“Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds). And of course hair bands were everywhere, like Bon Jovi and Motley Crüe who hit their commercial peak in the mid ‘80s.
- A-Ha – “Take On Me”
Dire Straits – “Money For Nothing” featuring Sting
Huey Lewis and the News – “The Power Of Love” from Back To The Future
Simple Minds – “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” from the Breakfast Club
o Whitney Houston – “How Will I Know”
Bon Jovi – “Living On A Prayer”
Graduating Class of 1986
CONCERTS THAT CAME TO CORTLAND 1985/1986
James Taylor – SAB @PER Ice Arena – September 27th, 1985
- In early 1985, James Taylor had been contemplating retiring from music. He had divorced Carly Simon, had 2 kids and was addicted to drugs. The deaths of John Belushi and Dennis Wilson (of the Beach Boys) at the time, straightened him out and by the time James Taylor played the Ice Arena in Cortland, he was just about to release his 11th studio album, “That’s Why I’m Here.”
- James Taylor – “Only A Dream In Rio”
James Taylor – “Fire and Rain”
Dizzy Gillespie – CALS @ Corey Function Room – February 2nd, 1986
- Jazz great John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, was a musical virtuoso who started playing piano at the age of 4 and by the age of 12, taught himself to play the trumpet and the trombone. His signature bent trumpet originated by accident in 1953 when someone knocked over his trumpet stand, causing the bell of his horn to become badly bent. He liked it so much that he had all of his future trumpets custom-made with the 45-degree upward bend. His somewhat unnatural but iconic ballooning cheeks were the result of decades of intense trumpet playing.
- Dizzy Gillespie – “Salt Peanuts”
Otis Day And the Knights – Spring Fling PER Ice Arena – May 3rd, 1986
- Opening for John Cafferty at Cortland’s 1986 Spring Fling was Otis Day and the Knights. The band is actually a fictional band created for DeWayne Jessie, who was a character actor in National Lampoon’s Animal House. In the movie, Jessie lip-synched the songs “Shout” and “Lama Ding Dong.” The actual vocalist who sang the songs for the movie was Lloyd G. Williams. In the 1980’s Jessie purchased the rights to the band’s name and created a real-life version of the band with family members.
- Otis Day and the Knights – Animal House – “Shout”
John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band – Spring Fling PER Ice Arena – May 3rd, 1986
- John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band got their name from a paint can. And although they had quite a bit of success with radio play and album sales in the 1980’s, the band was virtually ignored by major record companies because of persistent comparisons to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. That is until they scored the soundtrack to the movie Eddie and the Cruisers which produced a Top 7 hit single “On The Dark Side.”
- John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band – “Voices of America’s Sons”