Bob Geldof was the lead singer and songwriter of an Irish music band named The Boomtown Rats. It was 23 October 1984, and they were not doing very well； they had not had a hit song for a while. Bob was worrying about this when he switched on the BBC news. It was a report on a famine（饥荒） in Ethiopia. Images of hungry children and crying mothers filled the screen. The reporter described the crisis as “the closest thing to hell on earth".
“There I saw something that placed my worries in ghastly new perspective,” Geldof later said in an interview. Deeply upset and saddened by the report, Geldof decided to do something about it using the language of pop music. In just over four weeks after seeing the news report, Geldof had written, with the help of his friend, another band leader Midge Ure, a song that would be a huge bestseller. In addition, he managed to convince about 40 of the most famous performers at that time in Britain and Irish pop music to come to a London music studio to record the song. Bob named this super group Band Aid.
The song was "Do They Know It's Christmas?” By the last day of 1984,3 million copies had 2 been sold in Britain. It went on to sell nearly 12 million worldwide. Some people bought extra copies, and gave them away or donated them back to resell.
Geldof's next step was to organize charity super-concerts called Live Aid in London and Philadelphia, and streamed them live on television, raising an additional US$48 million. He was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth II, recognizing him for his activism and anti-poverty work for Africa.
