Having grown up on MTV, I mostly had to cultivate my own taste in music. Looking back, it seems as though most artists and bands I listen to now began recording before 1983 or before MTV launched in 1981. Only a handful of those groups (R.E.M., U2) ever learned to treat video as an art form or anything more than an obligatory three-minute commercial to sell albums and concert tickets. Bruce Springsteen, whose popularity in 1984-85 could only be rivaled by Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson (between albums at the time) never produced anything more memorable than the horrendously faggy "Dancing in the Dark" video.
That sentence actually offends the term "faggy."
Moving from faggy to nerdy, I remember a friend of mine in college (though not sure who it was) who imagined what he might do with a holo-deck from Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the show, you could program a computer to create a completely convincing, fully immersive and interactive 3-D environment. Want to place yourself in pre-Katrina New Orleans? Or act a part in a Sherlock Holmes story?
My friend thought he'd use the computer to attend unrepeatable classic concerts throughout history. Mozart playing for French royalty. Or Hendrix at Woodstock (perhaps with a good umbrella).
Today, childhood dreams can become a reality with YouTube.
So in the spirit of Bill Simmons' YouTube Hall of Fame and his more recent list of the Best Performances of the Star Spangled Banner at a Sporting Event (need to scroll down toward the very end), here's my list of musical gems I've found.
Hard to believe that only a year ago you'd have to spend a lifetime surfing cable or PBS channels to see this stuff. Or spend a fortune on tape trades and official releases. Fuck MTV. I want my YouTube.
- Since I mentioned the almighty Bruce (and my musical taste basically starts and stops with him, all praise be to Bruce), here's a clip from him in his prime belting out "The Promised Land" during the legendary Darkness on the Edge of Town tour in 1978. And just to prove he hasn't lost a fucking thing in the almost 30 years since then, here he is with his Seeger Sessions Band kicking off this year's tour in New Orleans, and giving that city a massive dose of angry redemption. But if you're wondering if he knows how to take a backseat to another icon, here he is with the E. Street Band allowing Chuck Berry to take the reigns. Think Chuck is getting a charge out of a sold out stadium crowd in Cleveland?
- Is there anything more gripping than watching Otis Redding tear into "Satisfaction" during the Stax tour of Europe in 1967? That is, if you can keep your eyes of his huuuuge package.
- You gotta love Ray Charles chatting with Johnny Cash on Johnny's variety show from 1969-71. And he injects some serious soul into Cash's "Ring of Fire."
- The Johnny Cash Show also brings us this duet with Bob Dylan in his Nashville Skyline mode. Which almost beats Cash performing "Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog" with Ralph The Dog on The Muppet Show.
- But my favorite musical Muppet Show clip is this one, featuring Elton John singing "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and looking an awful lot like a muppet himself.
- YouTube can send you to see Neil Young play in London in 1976 or the Grateful Dead in Jersey the following year. Or even catch the latest video from internet darlings Arctic Monkeys.
- But gimme the past. Like Coltrane and Miles in 1958. Or Frank Zappa performing "Dinah Moe Hum" somewhere in the 80s.
- Zappa actually provides some of my favorite YouTube clips so far. There's this appearance on a Halloween Letterman show in 1983 or performing the always hysterical "Bobby Brown" in 1978.
- But don't miss Zappa vs. everyone on CNN's Crossfire in 1986, a time when Tipper Gore and her hectoring nannies were campaigning to censor rock music to protect the kiddies. It's a lesson in libertarianism. Twenty years later, we've just about achieved the theocracy Zappa was warning about then. And he gets to mock Bob Novack. Which is always fun.
- There's this tasty bit from a Steely Dan Classic Albums DVD in which you can see the recording of "Peg" and listen to Michael McDonald reminisce about the difficulties of harmonizing with himself.
- And finally, perhaps my favorite clip at the moment is this brief 1959 bit from Ronnie Hawkins, whose band The Hawks would eventually morph into Bob Dylan's first electric touring band, who got booed all over Europe in 1966 while making the most amazing noise ever heard up to that time. The Hawks eventually morphed into The Band, who played American music as authentic and soulful as anyone. Not bad for a group that was entirely Canadian except for Levon Helm (playing drums in this Hawks clip). But the most startling thing about this is the little dance Hawkins does at the end. Can't quite place it...naw...can't be...1959...but...could it be...?
4 comments:
As Simmons put it, the best Springsteen clip on YouTube is actually when he simultaneously returned from crappydom and, for all intents and purposes ended the career of The Wallflowers, taking the song "One Headlight" and making it his own at duet with the Wallflowers at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. Find it, and laugh.
"Frank, how much money you make peddling this stuff to kids, huh Frank?"
"Millions of dollars, John. Millions of dollars!"
love it,
- chief
The best thing about Zappa was how counter-intuitive a counter-culture iconoclast he was.
Sure, he sung about some nasty shit, but mostly for the sake of comedy -- not to endorse anything. (It was years after hearing a Zappa song that I even understood what a "golden shower" could be. Thanks for that, Frank). He railed against corporate greed and the corruption of artistic integrity.
And yet, he never drank or did drugs. He composed intricate, insanely difficult-to-perform music, toured incessantly and considered himself a conservative.
He might have had long hair and a scary goatee, but he could be as eloquent and composed as a parish priest.
Watch this clip, and see how logic and composure defeats mad-dog, frothing-at-the-mouth self-appointed morality policemen.
Man, does this world miss Frank Zappa.
Wasn't this about the time when the now-ubiquitous "Parental Advisory - Explicit Lyrics" stickers started getting slapped on albums?
To paraphrase the raving lunatic in that clip, I guess these labels are the only constitutional way that "government can help us in the fight against this filth", which is far from the outright censorship that this idiot was somehow proud to repeatedly promote.
The funny thing is, the end result is that if a kid is staring at two CDs in the record store, one with the "Advisory" label, and one without - which one do you think he's gonna want to buy?
And Bones, I agree about the whole "endorsing" thing. How does mentioning or describing a thing mean you're ADVOCATING the thing? It's the same theory that goes into the "Pornography causes rape" argument - It ain't porn raping women, it's rapists! If it were true, just think about how many rapists would be created every day just by the internet!
And so what if you're advocating a morally reprehensible thing? To be able hear such things allows those in a free society to engage in debate over those ideas, rather than become brainwashed by them. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is simply guilty of the same brainwashing attempts he's pretending to shield us from.
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