By Paula Rogers, XPN, Assistant to the Associate General Manager

To this day there has been no greater personal musical moment than stepping foot into JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on July 13, 1985 to see one of the most powerful musical events of all time: Live Aid. I was a music junkie all through grade school and high school, and when the announcement came out that a concert of this magnitude was going to happen & one of the venues was in Philadelphia, well, it was the only thing my mother heard from me for weeks. For those of you who recall, they didn’t have a set date for the tickets to go on sale. One day they just announced, “tickets are on sale now….” I was out with friends at that time walking around town. There were no cell phones then, no way to text someone to tell them something important. I had absolutely no idea they were on sale. We stopped in a book store that happened to sell concert tickets when I found out. If you know me personally, then you know it is an understatement to say I am fairly animated in certain situations. I called my mother from a pay phone hysterically crying and hyperventilating. She probably thought someone tried to kill me or I was in some sort of accident. I don’t remember what I said but I do remember what my mother did. She told me to go back to the bookstore and wait for her. One of the advantages of coming from a small town is that everyone knows each other, and my mother happened to know the owner of the bookstore. She called her and had her print out 4 tickets for me. These tickets were $50 each (she got me the “good” seats). In 1985 that was A LOT of money, especially for a single parent who supported her mother, sister and me on a hairdresser’s income. She came down in her uniform, with color stains and perm solution on it, and bought my tickets. She never asked me to pay her back, and I don’t know if she will ever understand what going to Live Aid meant to me. I love her more than anyone, and this example is nothing compared to the mountains she moved to give me the best life possible.

Run DMC, Madonna, Black Sabbath, Crosby Stills Nash AND Young, Teddy Pendergrass, Simple Minds, Bob Dylan, The Pretenders, Mick Jagger & Tina Turner (he ripped off her skirt, a major wardrobe malfunction), Judas-freaking-Priest, The Cars, Tom Petty, Duran Duran, The Hooters….what a day. And the highlight of that day was after Phil Collins sang, “In the Air Tonight.” Were you there? Can you hear him now shouting, “Ladies and Gentlemen: ROBERT PLANT, JIMMY PAGE AND JOHN PAUL JONES!!!!!!!!!!!” Just writing it brings me back to that moment and I want to jump up and down and start screaming my head off. I feel I need a medic. I heard Robert Plant in an interview once saying they sounded like hell, but to the 90,000 people in the audience it was the sounds of the gods swooping in to rock our worlds. And rock they did. I will never get over that.

So I owe my greatest musical moment to Rose Rogers, my beautiful mother and best friend. Thank you mom!!!!