Content tagged 'LIVE From Your Speakers'

Since David Bowie died in January 2016, fans have been gifted with a stream of reissues, retrospectives, films and other ephemera, enabling them to not only remember their hero fondly, but to celebrate him anew. And thank goodness for that – such a towering figure deserves to have his art live on in such quality, and for new treasures to be unearthed from wherever they’ve been hiding. Speaking of treasures: Bowie headlined the Sunday evening slot at the 2000 Glastonbury Festival (the largest outdoor music and culture festival in the world), and, from all reports, played an extraordinary show

It’s hard to pinpoint when the Grateful Dead’s concert at Cornell University’s Barton Hall on May 8, 1977 became the Holy Grail-kinda show it became. It was probably sometime between the summer of 1977, when tapes of the show began to circulate widely amongst Deadheads, and 2011, when the still officially unreleased recording of the show was selected for preservation into the National Recording Registry, for its cultural, historical and/or aesthetic relevance. Or maybe it was the saga of the recording’s origin (with engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson at the soundboard), or the saga of the recording

To hear J. Geils Band front man Peter Wolf’s scat-jive intro to “Whammer Jammer” on 1972’s FULL HOUSE is to hear a transmission from another, much funkier planet — a skiggity-strange liggity-language that kiggity-kicks off another, longer miggity-missive from one Richard Salwitz (Magic Dick to you and me), blown through a blues harp with exceptional power and acuity, with a powerhouse band thumping behind him. Thing is, these were not alien beings — not an extraterrestrial among them, unless Boston went into orbit when the rest of us weren’t looking. This was perhaps the best live band on the

Joni Mitchell’s late-’70s embracing of jazz more or less ended her run as a bestselling recording artist; though she would make records for three more decades, she never again scaled the album chart as she did with classic folk-rock albums like BLUE and COURT AND SPARK. And that was fine by her — to have continued in that mode would have smacked of treading artistic water, and records like DON JUAN’S RECKLESS DAUGHTER and MINGUS opened up her music in lovely, exciting ways, for those willing to follow her, as she herself followed her muse. On the tour supporting MINGUS in 1979, she had an

The return to active duty of the RUMOURS-era Fleetwood Mac was a welcome bit of news in 1997. Each of the band’s three main songwriters -- Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie -- had done solo work that, while quality stuff, had not nearly scaled the commercial heights of the band in their prime. And drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie’s stab at moving on without their singing trio -- 1995’s desultory TIME, featuring ex-Traffic guitarist Dave Mason -- could hardly have fared worse. From the opening notes of “The Chain” on THE DANCE -- the live album and video project

Dire Straits' 1985 album BROTHERS IN ARMS turned the band into a commercial supernova, thanks in large part to a more streamlined approach to songwriting. It’s difficult to imagine leader Mark Knopfler coming up with platinum pop songs like “Walk of Life” or “So Far Away,” or a simple hard rock cut like “Money for Nothing” for 1979’s COMMUNIQUE or 1980’s MAKING MOVIES, records with Dylanesque lyrical aspirations and Springsteenian sonics. And although 1982’s LOVE OVER GOLD contained the proto-“Money for Nothing” in “Industrial Disease,” it also contained the 14-minute “Telegraph Road,” the

You couldn’t get proggier than Yes in 1972. No singer or songwriter was as lyrically cryptic (nor as physically elfin onstage) as Jon Anderson; no other rhythm section was as intricate or muscular as bassist Chris Squire and the band’s two drummers (as Bill Bruford transitioned out and Alan White in); no guitarist merged folk, classical, jazz and rock influences quite like Steve Howe; and no keyboardist rocked the cape quite as well as Rick Wakeman. CLOSE TO THE EDGE was one of the prog pinnacles of the Seventies’ first two years, standing with Pink Floyd’s MEDDLE, King Crimson’s ISLANDS, and

The problem with David Bowie’s live albums is that you can’t actually watch him perform what you’re hearing — a problem that haunts any live vinyl document he released (like 1974’s DAVID LIVE or 1978’s STAGE), but in particular the wonderful LIVE SANTA MONICA 1972. When he walked onstage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on October 20, 1972, he was Ziggy Stardust, about 70 or so shows into a 190-date tour that cemented his icon status and left tens of thousands of attendees feeling like they’d seen a god. And with good reason — he and the Spiders from Mars had a great night, giving

Losing Aretha Franklin recently was a gut-punch, but it did serve the purpose of bringing listeners back to her catalog, to partake of her lifetime of soul, blues, R&B and gospel. In her live discography, LIVE AT FILLMORE WEST was perhaps second only to her 1972 gospel record AMAZING GRACE in terms of power, and that was likely due to the material on that record (all gospel songs) and the locale of the recording (the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, in Los Angeles). Franklin was, after all, the daughter of a Baptist preacher, and had a lifelong affinity with the music of the church. LIVE

Warren Zevon’s recorded output prior to 1980’s live album STAND IN THE FIRE found him to be an excellent songwriter, a fine singer and a masterful selector of sympathetic musicians who could (and did) place his songs in the best possible settings. What those records did not do was let the listener in on the fact that Zevon could rock out, if he were so inclined. Nowhere is that little fact so evident as when he growls — not howls, as he did on “Werewolves of London,” but growls, gutturally, like a wounded and angry dog — on “Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger,” about three-quarters of the way through