Latest news with #SelfAid
Irish Independent
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
The Indo Daily: Self Aid: How Ireland tried to sing its way out of unemployment
Forty years later, Live Aid is remembered as a cultural and humanitarian high point – a moment when music tried to change the world. But in Ireland, it sparked a very different idea. Less than a year after Live Aid, Dublin hosted Self Aid. This wasn't about famine relief in Africa. It was about Ireland's own wounds: rampant unemployment, economic stagnation and a generation losing faith. The goal was to rally support, raise funds and – perhaps more importantly – raise morale. It featured the biggest names in Irish music: U2, The Boomtown Rats, Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy. It was the first and only concert of its kind in Ireland But did it work? Today on the Indo Daily, Fionnán Sheahan is joined by Tony Boland, former music director at RTÉ, and by Tony O'Brien, former Irish Independent journalist and now media consultant, to go back to the day Ireland staged its own Live Aid – and ask why, nearly 40 years on, Self Aid still raises eyebrows.
Irish Independent
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Indo Daily: Self Aid: How Ireland tried to sing its way out of unemployment
Forty years later, Live Aid is remembered as a cultural and humanitarian high point – a moment when music tried to change the world. But in Ireland, it sparked a very different idea. Less than a year after Live Aid, Dublin hosted Self Aid. This wasn't about famine relief in Africa. It was about Ireland's own wounds: rampant unemployment, economic stagnation and a generation losing faith. The goal was to rally support, raise funds and – perhaps more importantly – raise morale. It featured the biggest names in Irish music: U2, The Boomtown Rats, Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy. It was the first and only concert of its kind in Ireland But did it work? Today on the Indo Daily, Fionnán Sheahan is joined by Tony Boland, former music director at RTÉ, and by Tony O'Brien, former Irish Independent journalist and now media consultant, to go back to the day Ireland staged its own Live Aid – and ask why, nearly 40 years on, Self Aid still raises eyebrows.
