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From: evan@petfe.UUCP (Evan Marcus)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: USA for Africa (my turn)
Message-ID: <225@petfe.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Apr-85 21:33:43 EST
Article-I.D.: petfe.225
Posted: Tue Apr 16 21:33:43 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Apr-85 06:06:29 EST
Organization: Perkin-Elmer DSG, Tinton Falls, N.J.
Lines: 43

I may get flamed for this, but I kinda like the dreaded song.  Sure it gets
too much airplay, and it sounds like a Pepsi jingle, but if all you hip
people would realize what the song is trying to do you might like it better,
too.  It is trying to appeal to as many people as possible.  (Just like a
Pepsi jingle!)  The idea is to raise $$$, not to make a major artistic
contribution or statement, if that were the idea, Lionel ("Outrageous")
Richie wouldn't have written it, (fill in your favorite name here) would
have.  The song/album has raised (so I have heard) some $3 mil already.
How can you not like that?  It's a great cause, and the tune IS kinda
catchy. 

One reason for it is because most Americans are not as likely to give money
for nothing as they are to give $10 to get an album or t-shirt.  Quite frankly
I've been changing the channel on those Sally Struthers cry-athons on local
stations in the middle of the night (raising money for Ethiopia too), but
now I (along with, I suppose) lots of other Americans are paying genuine
attention to the problem, and getting money sent to the starving masses.

I keep asking myself what Harry Chapin might say if he were alive today.

Frankly, I hope that they keep playing the song, and more importantly, keep
making more songs like this.  I don't know if the posting about the 50's
groups making one was for real or not, but I hope so.  I'll buy it, too.

OK, flamers, let me have it.  

By the way, that guy in the back of the picture in the dark-rimmed glasses
IS Dan Aykroyd.  (He is first on the list of names on the album cover, and
Garry Trudeau is not on the list at all.)

(The best song on the album, besides the Canadian song, is Huey Lewis', and
I don't like him very much.)

--Evan Marcus

-- 


--Evan Marcus
{ucbvax|decvax}|vax135|petsd|pedsgd|pedsga|evan

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide people into two
kinds, and those who don't.