Today is the 35th anniversary of LIVE AID, which means tomorrow is the 35th anniversary of me kicking myself for the first time for not figuring out a way to get there. Like most 1985 pop and rock fans, I experienced the daylong, bicontinental, famously flawed yet never matched festival partly on TV and partly on the radio, which wasn't anything like being there but was thrilling in its own way. (Note to self and others: Stop saying livestreams are an unacceptable way of experiencing live music; they, too, aren't the same as being there, but they're part of a long tradition of being a decent substitute for everyone else.) My memories are secondhand, filtered through that media. In today's mix are several firsthand accounts that say more than I ever could, so I'd like to let them do the talking. The one image, also secondhand, that's stayed with me through the decades has nothing to with QUEEN owning the WEMBLEY stage or LED ZEPPELIN reuniting awkwardly at JFK, or rock-stars-in-the-making U2's unforgettable fire in London or pop-star-in-the-making MADONNA justifying our love in Philly, or PHIL COLLINS Concorde-ing his way from one to the other, but, rather, involves another British pop star who took the Concorde in the opposite direction eight months earlier. That's how BOY GEORGE got to the London recording session for "DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS?," the charity single from which Live Aid sprung, in November 1984. In his autobiography, "Is That It?," BOB GELDOF describes George, who was in the throes of a heroin addiction, arriving almost criminally late to the session and appearing all but unable to function, let alone sing. In Geldof's account, George slinks up to the microphone as if he's on his last breath, pulls himself up to his feet, sings a couple of the most angelic, note-perfect lines Geldof has ever heard—in one take—then slinks away and disappears into the void. My memory may be exaggerating slightly—my copy of the book is in a storage closet 3,000 miles away—but that's the gist of it. It's always been, for me, a story of the transcendent power of music, the ability of music not only to speak to our better angels but to be our better angels. To be the world's better angel. To reach places in each of us that we otherwise might not know are there. To lead us to our own microphones or our own radios. To tell a broken, divided world that it doesn't have to be this way, at least not for the duration of a song, or a concert, or a festival, or the longest sustained note each of us can imagine. A month later, after a CULTURE CLUB show at WEMBLEY ARENA, Boy George suggested a charity concert to Geldof, planting the seed that would grow into Live Aid, which that in turn planted the seed of charitable activism in a generation of musicians and fans... An amazing collection of official LIVE AID video here. Call in sick today if you must... A programming note: MusicREDEF will be taking the rest of the week off. We'll be back in your inbox next Monday, July 20... RIP LIL MARLO, JUDY DYBLE and FIONA ADAMS.