Happy Music Monday! This week is more of a storytelling theme. Scott's gonna give you five bands he's enjoyed live, and then get out of the way. It'll be up to you guys to bring this one to life by telling your favorite concert stories. Who did you love, why did you love them, what were the best concerts you ever saw? Consider this the warm-up act.
Morphine is low-key in style, but the band was just soaked in energy. I saw them for the first time in a super-small club with a handful of people, and they still brought it. Mark Sandman doing harmonics while Dana Colley played two saxes at the same time? Perfect. And to this day, I remember it well.
More good music coming after the jump, and then it'll be time for YOUR story!
Drove two hours through a flash flood with a car full of friends to hear the ska/funk/soul/magic of Fishbone and spent two hours jumping around in a club with strangers. The energy Fishbone offered in the early 1990s isn't really something that can be put into words. Just go watch the video and enjoy the funk.
This iPhone video's terrible, but it's from another show I actually attended, so I wanted to use it because I wanted to tell this story. The Austin City Limits festival was already running behind schedule, and they were trimming people's sets. The stagehands started waving to get Daniel Lanois' attention so they could clear the stage. Daniel Lanois looked them in the eye, turned his back, and went into a solo that seemed to never end. The stagehands freaked out and his backup band started giggling and the crowd went NUTS. When Daniel Lanois finally left the stage, the take-down team were glaring at him so hard, but the crowd wasn't. The crowd wasn't at all.
No, I wasn't there. Yes, I saw them after the fact just like everybody else. But this was recorded live and it's amazing and I'm counting it. Possibly the best single-song performance I've seen in 2014, and that record might stand until the end of the year. Who could have expected that?
I loved Harmonia. I loved NEU! I loved Sonic Youth. So when I heard Michael Rother and Steve Shelley and Aaron Mullan were all playing together for free at Lincoln Center, I pretty much sprinted there. It was one of the best shows of my life. Also for the curious, I think I was standing right next to the guy who took this footage because this was more or less my view too!
Let us also just remind you: some images come from the corresponding Wikipedia page and are here under fair use. See you next week.