I’m still playing around with these shows in history posts. I’m having a lot of fun uploading single songs to YouTube. Right now I’m just picking out a show from this day, finding a song I like and putting it up. If I get good at this I may do more, or have more to say about it.

Unless the powers that be start taking me down. But for now this is fun. I hope you enjoy.

Listen To Bob Dyan Perform “Slow Train Coming” on this Day in 1980

I love the idea of regularly doing a shows in history post. It seems super fun to listen to a show that happened on this day sometime in the past. I do have to train myself to remember to actually listen to a show from this day in history.

Also, the last couple of times I did this, I got a lot of questions concerning where you could download the show. I need to make sure everyone knows I am no longer uploading shows. If I do a show in history, it is just for fun. It is just to talk about the show, but I won’t be putting download links on this site.

I have been having fun uploading one song from a show to YouTube. I’m still learning how to do it properly, but it seems like a fun way to share a snippet of the shows I’m talking about.

In this case I haven’t had time to actually listen to any show from today. I did listen to a bit of this show from Bob Dylan in Montreal, 1980. The audience recording isn’t great. And to be honest, I wasn’t really in the mood for Christian Bob, but this version of “Slow Train Coming” is a good one and I thought you all might enjoy.

I’ll try to do some more actual Shows in History posts soon.

Watch Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings play the Grateful Dead

Gillian and Dave are curretnly doing a small tour where they are playing Grateful Dead and Dead adjacent tunes. None of the shows were anywhere near me (though they are playing a free gig in Tulsa later this month, but it isn’t listed as part of this tour, and presumably will play their own songs). Man I wish I’d spent the money and caught one of these shows. This snippet is amazing.

My Life In Music: “The Roof is On Fire” by Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three

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Growing up, I was a big fan of late-night talk shows. As a kid I watched Johnny Carson whenever I was allowed to stay up that late. I didn’t always get the jokes in the monologue, but sometimes I did. I loved the silly skits, especially Carnac the Magnificent. And I usually enjoyed the various celebrity guests.

But while Carson had been cool, he was also old when I started watching, and for a young teenager, old meant decidedly not cool. At some point Carson was old enough he couldn’t do it every night, and Jay Leno became the permanent guest host, taking the reins on Monday nights. I loved Leno. I made sure I always watched when he was hosting.

In eighth grade I took a drama class at school, and one of our assignments was to read up on the celebrity of our choice and then pretend to do an interview with them. I chose Jay Leno to interview. I thought that would make me cool.

It amuses me to no end to think that back then I thought Jay Leno – who I would now consider to be the blandest and most vanilla celebrities – was the coolest guy around.

At some point I discovered David Letterman. I don’t think I ever thought he was cool – he was more nerdy and weird, like me. He was hilarious. With his Stupid Pet Tricks and doing things like wearing a Velcro suit and jumping onto a wall, he was like nobody I’d ever seen before. I learned a lot about my own sense of humor from David Letterman.

And then there was Arsenio Hall. Now he was cool. His guests were cool, his musical acts were cool. His audience was cool doing the whole “whoof whoof” thing instead of clapping and The Dogpound.

He wasn’t just cool; he was hip. He was tuned into a part of the culture that guys like Carson or Leno and even Letterman just didn’t understand. I loved it.

One night, during his monologue, Arsenio started chanting, “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire,” the crowd ecstatically joined in. He continued, “We don’t need no water no…” and as the crowd started to say the next line, Arsenio smiled, waved his hands back and forth emphatically, and told them to stop. He couldn’t sing the next line, or he’d get in trouble. The audience went crazy.

I think he did the same thing the next night and maybe a few times more over the next couple of weeks. I was intrigued. I had no idea what song they were singing. But I liked it. I was especially curious about what that next line was. What could be so bad that they couldn’t say it on Arsenio?

Sometime later I discovered it was “…let the motherfucker burn.”

I don’t remember ever listening to the song. It certainly didn’t become a staple. It is possible my brother simply told me what the line was, and I never actually heard it. But that moment on Arsenio stuck in my mind. I loved the way the audience shouted it with glee.

To this day I’ll periodically say, “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire” just to see if anyone responds. I did that the other day while I was on a walk with my family. They had no idea what I was talking about. This made me want to listen to the song.

Pulling it up on Spotify made me realize how little of the song I actually know. The famous part doesn’t come in until the very end, and everything before that is rather repetitive and annoying.

I get why it became a hit and why Arsenio was singing it that day. It would be a fun song to have playing in a club or at a party, or indeed singing on late night TV. It has a good beat, and it has these sing-along lyrics where it asks the audience to repeat back and forth, and then there is the roof. That’s a crazy fun thing to shout. That’s cool on a dance floor but rather tedious listening in your car. I swear I almost turned it off before it even got to the part about the roof and it being on fire.

Still, those memories are good ones, and you can bet I’ll still be repeating those lines even as an old man.

Shows in History: Bob Dylan – London, England (03/31/95)

bob dylan brixton academy

I managed to listen to this show this afternoon and then got busy and forgot to write anything about it. And now it is late, and I have some other things to do, so this will be short.

Get this show. It is excellent. There are at least two versions of it over at Expecting Rain, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Bob is in excellent form, and the band is on fire. And if that wasn’t enough, you get Elvis Costello (guitar & shared vocals), Chrissie Hynde, and Carole King on a couple of songs.

Here’s the setlist:

Brixton Academy
London, England
31 March 1995

01 – Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood)
02 – SeÒor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
03 – All Along The Watchtower
04 – I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
05 – Tombstone Blues
06 – Shelter From The Storm
07 – Mr. Tambourine Man
08 – The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
09 – It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
10 – Highway 61 Revisited
11 – In The Garden
12 – Joey (Bob Dylan-Jacques Levy/Bob Dylan)

(encore)

13 – Like A Rolling Stone
14 – My Back Pages
15 – I Shall Be Released
16 – Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35

I uploaded “Shelter From the Storm” for your listening pleasure.

Other shows that were played on this date in history.

Miles Davis – Los Angeles, CA (03/31/46)

1984 (Featuring Brian May) – Teddington, England (03/31/67)

Queen – Tokyo, Japan (03/31/76)

Shows in History: Van Morrison – Rotterdam, The Netherlands (03/30/91)

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I’m going to try this again. I do like this idea. I like looking at what shows were played on any particular day. There is a part of me that loves stats. I love seeing if there are particular days that have a lot of shows or others that have very few shows. When I am good at this sort of thing, you can follow a tour and see how often the setlists change, etc.

But really, right now, I like listening to shows that happen today. I have a lot of shows, and it is always difficult to know what to listen to. Finding a show that was performed on this day sometime in history is easy. And fun. And here we go.

As much as I love Van Morrison, I’m not well versed in his different eras. I know about Them and the Caledonia Soul Orchestra, his time with Pee Wee Ellis, his brief stint with Linda Gail Lewis, etc. But I unlike with the Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan, I couldn’t tell you my favorite year for Van Morrison performances or anything really about a specific time period. For me with Van I’m usually just picking out something at random and giving it a listen. I should work on that.

I mention this to say I don’t really know what was going on with Van in 1991. I know he released Hymns to the Silence this year, and that’s a good album. But I don’t know if this is considered a good year for Van or not.

Listening to this show, I suspect it is a good year. The liner notes indicate the bootleg Pagan Streams was recorded around this time, and that one’s a killer. This is a long show with something like 29 songs being played and running just over three hours in length.

Most of the first disc isn’t really my thing. I don’t tend to like his bluesy numbers. Songs like “Stormy Monday” and “Baby, Please Don’t Go” are fine, not bad, but they don’t really do it for me.

Things pick up toward the end of Disc 1 with “And the Healing Has Begun” and the rest of the disc finishes out strongly. Disc 2 begins with “Help Me” which is another song I tend to not gravitate toward, though I’ve heard some good versions. This one is certainly energetic.

But then we get to “Orangefield” and I’m in heaven. The rest of the set is wonderful straight through. “Summertime in England” lasts a full twenty two minutes, which I think is the longest one he ever played. Certainly the longest version I’ve ever heard.

Van is in good spirits throughout. He talks a lot, and the conversations are interesting.

The sound quality is mostly good. The liner notes talk about how there was a low quality AUD that circulated for a long time, but then they found a new source of a much better quality. Unfortunately, that source doesn’t have all the songs, so they are spliced in, which can be a little jarring. Especially in the middle of “Summertime in England” which I guess got cut off in the best-sounding tape.

If you don’t already have this, email me, and I’ll point you in the right direction.

Just for kicks I played around with it today and managed to upload “Whenever God Shines His Light” to YouTube. I really just wanted to see if I could do that.

Here are the full show notes.

Van Morrison
March 30, 1991
De Doelen – Rotterdam, Netherlands

Source: Daud clone, except for the three Georgie Fame selections, the conclusion to Summertime in England starting at approximately 17:00, and Caravan through end of show , which are from unknown generation cassettes > CD

The Complete Show

CD 1
1) You’re The One
2) Out of Sight
3) Ain’t That Loving You Baby
4) Stormy Monday,
5) Baby Please Don’t Go
6) We’re Gonna Groove > Who Do You Love (Van with Howlin’ Wilf and the Vee Jays (James Hunter)

7) Parchman Farm
8) Yeh Yeh
9) Green Onions (Georgie Fame and band)

10) And The Healing Has Begun
11) See Me Through
12) Moondance
13) Youth of 1000 Summers
14) Whenever God Shines His Light

CD 2:

1) Help Me
2) Carrying a Torch
3) Orangefield
4) It’s All In The Game > Make It Real One More Time
5) Northern Muse(Solid Ground) > When Heart Is Open
6) I’ll Go Crazy
7) Enlightenment
8) Summertime In England

CD 3:
1) In The Garden
2) Vanlose Stairway > Trans-Euro Train
3) Caravan
4) Send In The Clowns
5) I Can’t Stop Loving You
6) Why Must I Always Explain
7) Gloria (Cuts. Tape apparently gave out at 3-hour mark)

Band: Haji Ahkba, trumpet; Richie Buckley sax; Dave Early, drums; Georgie Fame, organ; Howard Francis, piano; Steve Gregory, sax; Ronnie Johnson, guitar; Nicky Scott, bass.

Notes:
Many years ago I received two Maxell analog cassette tapes containing this show.
The sound on the tapes was very muffled and sounded like the show was duplicated on a boom box with dirty heads.
Oh, those were the days.
Despite the sound quality caveats, Van and the band’s performance was a treasure that I cherished and studied because of its depth and length. I believe the Summertime in England is the longest ever performed by Van. It runs almost 22 minutes. Morrison talks about Christianity, psychiatry, and cults, among other things.
I searched and searched for a good quality recording of this gig for years, and finally one surfaced, but it ended 17 minutes into Summertime, then cut abruptly. The entire rest of the show involving an additional 7 songs was missing.
Recently, in a true labor of love, a friend and Van archivist and my brother helped prepare this complete version of the show, which contains the original nearly two hours of good quality recording, plus the rest of the show from a higher quality analog cassette tape.
I remember that on my original cassettes of the gig, the final song, Gloria, cut, as it does here. It appears that the taper just “ran out of road” as the show went just over the 3-hour mark!
The show has never been uploaded in as complete a condition as this project. This upload runs just a few seconds shy of 3 hours, and contains the opening set of Van with Howlin’ Wilf and the Vee Jays. Georgie Fame then performs for three songs before Van takes the stage again.
Rotterdam was the first show of a legendary 3-gig run that also included The Hague and then Utrecht, made famous as Pagan Streams.

Here are some other shows that were performed today in history.

Eric Clapton & Friends – Malibu, CA (03/30/76)

10,000 Maniacs – Our Time In Eden Tour Rehearsals (03/30/92)

Pink Floyd – Miami, FL (03/30/94)

Bruce Hornsby – Williamsburg, VA (03/30/99)

The Dead – New York, NY (03/30/09)

Adele – Milan, Italy (03/30/11)

My Life in Music: Queensryche – Empire

queensryche empire album cover

In my last post I talked about how I got my first CD player from my brother and how excited I was that it was a five disc changer. The idea of owning five whole CDs that would fill that changer was so exciting to me. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I bought a sixth CD, and I’d have to make a decision as to which disc to hold out.

I can’t remember now if Queensrÿche’s Empire was my second or third CD. I know I also bought U2’s Achtung Baby around that same time. Whatever number it was, I absolutely loved it.

I’m sure I bought it because of the hit single “Silent Lucidity.” That’s a great song, and it is part of a long tradition of power ballads where hard rockers show off their sensitive side with acoustic guitars and introspective lyrics. As a teenager, I was a sucker for that sort of thing.

I have a great memory of watching them play that song at the MTV Video Awards with a full orchestra. I thought that was the coolest thing.

The rest of the album rocked. As a teenager, all of 14-15 years old, I thought the social and political lyrics were amazing. They spoke about real things. Important things. They spoke directly to me.

The opening track “Best That I Can” told the story of a man in a wheelchair who dreamed of being a writer, of doing big things despite his disability. “Della Brown” talks about a woman living on the street. “Empire” was its magnum opus, a big, loud song that talked about gun violence, the illicit drug trade, and the lack of federal support for law enforcement. That was big stuff for little old me.

I took a drama class in eighth or ninth grade. For extra credit, you could lip synch any song you liked. You needed to get the synch just right, but you were also supposed to dress up like the character in the song or bring in props.

I was way too shy to actually do any of that, but I used to sit in my bedroom, listening to this album, thinking of all the ways I could perform these songs. I created all these little dances to go with them, gyrating in tune and doing my best to create a story. I thought it would blow their mind to hear “Empire.”

Like so many of these early albums, I haven’t listened to this in a very long time. Listening now, I still mostly like it. The hit songs are still great. I still love “Silent Lucidity” and “Jet City Woman” is a banger. I like “Another Rainy Night (Without You),” and “Best That I Can” has a nice beat. I like the progressive rock angles of many of the songs.

The lyrics seem a little pompous and simplistic to me now. “Empire” has a spoken word bit about how little the federal government spends on law enforcement, which seems absolutely wild now when you realize how much we spend these days and how little it has worked.

I added a few of those songs to my regular playlist, but most of them I’ll leave off and probably never listen to again. I can’t see myself listening to the album again any time soon.

This is by far the best album out of the three I’ve thus far talked about in this series, so that’s something.

Shows in History: The Grateful Dead – Philadelphia, PA (03/24/86)

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On the old music site, I used to periodically do a Shows in History post where I’d link to all the shows that had taken place on today’s date throughout history. It was a fun way to highlight a bunch of different shows, and I always enjoyed seeing the wide variety of acts one could potentially have caught on a particular day.

Though I no longer post download links to shows, I still think that idea is a fun one.

I am going to try and actually listen to one of the shows that was performed on today’s date (whatever date that is) and maybe give a short review of it or some random thoughts. I know that won’t happen every day, as some days are weird, and busy, and I won’t have time to sit and listen to a full show.

Knowing me, this will be the only time I do this at all.

Today’s show is from the Grateful Dead back in 1986. That’s no one’s favorite year for the Dead. It is the infamous year that Garcia’s addictions/poor health put him in a diabetic coma in July.

But while this is certainly not Peak Grateful Dead nor the best that Jerry ever did, this is a pretty darn good show. The big news here is they played “Box of Rain” something they hadn’t regularly done in over a decade and a half. They’d played it a few nights before in Hampton, which was the first time they’d busted it out in some seventeen years. So it wasn’t a complete surprise when Phil started singing it this night, but you can hear the crowd roar in exultant joy.

The first set is well played but not spectacular. The second set features a very nice “Lost Sailor>Saint of Circumstance” with Bob doing a weird little rap in the transition about freedom. Weirdly, the set ends with just one song being played after the “Drums/Space” combo, but it’s a very nice version of “Morning Dew.” It all ends with a quick little “In the Midnight Hour” for the encore.

So yeah, not the greatest of shows, but still a very good one. If you’ve written off 1986 entirely, I’d give this one a go (and you can do just that over at the Archive)

Here’s the full setlist:

Grateful Dead
3/24/86
The Spectrum
Philadelphia, PA

–Set 1–
Alabama Getaway ->
Greatest Story Ever Told
Dire Wolf
Little Red Rooster
Brown Eyed Women
My Brother Esau
Ramble on Rose
El Paso
Box of Rain

–Set 2–
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo ->
Man Smart (Women Are Smarter)
High Time
Lost Sailor ->
Saint of Circumstance ->
Drums ->
Space ->
Morning Dew

–Encore–
In the Midnight Hour

Other shows that took place on this day:

Jackson Browne – Osaka, Japan (03/24/77)
Led Zeppelin – Los Angeles, CA (03/24/75)
Bruce Hornsby – Daytona Beach, FL (03/24/87)
Bela Fleck – Dublin, Ireland (02/03/24)
Queen – Himeji, Japan (03/24/76)
Eric Clapton – Charlotte, NC (03/24/78)
Steve Earle – Dallas, TX (03/24/89)

Those links just go to show information; there is nothing to download. I feel a little guilty that I spent some fifteen years providing you all with thousands of shows to download and then just one day stopped and transitioned to talking about movies.

Maybe someday I’ll go back to sharing shows, but that won’t ever be on this site. But I still want to talk about music more. That seems only fair. One idea I have is to do regular show reviews. And maybe provide lots of information about the different shows – setlists, artwork, various reviews, etc. That’s a lot of work, and I get so involved with my movie stuff that I forget to do that sort of thing. So this is like a step in that direction. I hope you like it. If you do, please leave me a comment.