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Self Aid was a televised concert staged in Dublin on May 17, 1986 intended
to highlight chronic unemployment in Ireland at the time and to launch and
help finance the Self Aid Trust. Not everyone agreed that a live concert was
the best method to tackle unemployment and some musicians declined an
invitation to perform. Once problem was the obvious comparison with Live Aid,
which clearly inspired Self Aid. Live Aid was a charity event whereas unemployment
is a political problem which cannot be handled by charity. So the message was
muddled and sometimes good intentions are not enough. On a personal note, I
emigrated from Ireland for 4 months later.
MCA issued a live album of the event in 1988.
The original Irish double-LP edition contains 28 tracks.
The European single LP edition contains 12 resequencedtracks [1,7,8,12,14,15,16,20,21,26,27,28].
The European & Japanese CD release contains 16 tracks, all 12 from the single LP edition plus [2,18,24,25]
A single
was issued by WEA to coincide with the concert to help promote it. There
is also a promo 12inch.
