Great Moments in Rock and Roll History

[Ghost of Electricity]

So I guess they can be musical, like Jim Morrison on The Ed Sullivan Show, or non-musical, like Dylan getting the Beatles high for the first time.

 

If Bulfinch was a music critic, what stories would he anthologize?

[BeShakey]

So I guess they can be musical, like Jim Morrison on The Ed Sullivan Show, or non-musical, like Dylan getting the Beatles high for the first time.

 

If Bulfinch was a music critic, what stories would he anthologize?

 

Dylan playing Like a Rolling Stone at the Royal Albert Hall in '66 always gives me goosebumps.

 

Not quite on the same historic scale, but I always like listening to Pearl Jam playing Breath for the first time in 6 or so years after a big fan campaign(back in the days when they had songs they hadn't played for a while). Vedder to the audience - 'You f*cking c*nts. You c*cksuckers. We come up here and we give and we give and we give and you just want more. And you y'know what? You deserve it' (or something like that, I don't have the recording here to check), and then they launch into it and the crowd goes nuts.

 

Or the Pearl Jam show where the crowd got pissed off and started throwing shoes at them.

 

I guess I always like the shows/tours etc that are really confrontational between the crowd and the band. Makes for good stories, and I occassionally get sick of the fawning adoration some bands receive.

[stooka]

Jimi at Monterey comes to mind.

[Tweedling]

The day Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett decided to write songs together.

[Doug C]

When Marvin Berry called his cousin Chuck from the Enchantment Under The Sea dance and held the phone so Chuck could hear Marty play 'Johnny B. Goode'.

[calvino]

When Marvin Berry called his cousin Chuck from the Enchantment Under The Sea dance and held the phone so Chuck could hear Marty play 'Johnny B. Goode'.

 

[Moss]

 

[LouisvilleGreg]

This:

 

According to legend, as a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson was branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician. He was "instructed" to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The "Devil" played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was, in effect, a deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

[calvino]

I guess when Keith ran into Mick at a train station.

[dagwave]

"And the Big Man joined the band"

[calvino]

Another one: the Newport Folk Festival on Sunday July 25, 1965, where Dylan decided he wasn't going to work on Maggie's Farm no more.

[Plumplechook]

Phil Spector has his day in court :

 

[u2roolz]

When Pootie T. and Wolfgang Amadeus Thelonius Van Funkenmeister The 19th and 3 Quarters formed Three Times One Minus One.

Ewww, Girl, Ewwwww (a song to promote literacy) and Goodbye 2 Every 1 Ever (a dedication to everyone that has ever died) are 2 amazing songs to ever grace the airwaves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBsE4ICwivA(NSFW)

[PopTodd]

The day they finally let Marvin Gaye get out from behind the drums and sing.

[LouieB]

While the Robert Johnson story is pure fiction, Charlie Parker did get laughed off the bandstand, went home and practiced his ass off, so that he could play in every key (something even jazz musicians didn't have to do at that time) and came back and changed modern music forever.

 

LouieB

[jff]

The Pete Townshend/Abbey Hoffman incident at Woodstock.

 

[PopTodd]

Pete Townshend looses the hearing in his right ear (when the drum kit goes "BOOM"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utpjQFBuQQM

[The High Heat]

The Million Dollar Quartet

 

[Dmada]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiJ9AnNz47Y

 

changed music forever

appearance and choreography becomes more important than the music

[jff]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiJ9AnNz47Y

 

changed music forever

appearance and choreography becomes more important than the music

 

Great? No. Historically significant? Yes.

[Dmada]

Great? No. Historically significant? Yes.

True.

[stooka]

Rumble

 

From The Independent

 

It's hard to imagine an instrumental being banned as too subversive, but that is what happened to Link Wray's "Rumble" in 1958. Its tough, muscular sound captured the tension of a gang fight and many US radio stations refused to play it or even mention its title. Wray's opening chord sets the scene for 150 echo-drenched seconds of feedback and distorted guitar.

 

"Rumble" was a record like no other and years ahead of its time. Although it was only a minor hit, Bob Dylan went to see Link Wray playing live in 1958 and Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix both acknowledged Wray's influence. Pete Townshend of the Who praised "Rumble", saying, "It made me very uneasy the first time I heard it and yet I was excited by the savage guitar sound." Neil Young commented, "If I could return in time and see one band live, it would be Link Wray and the Ray Men."

[uncool2pillow]

One moment has been captured by Tom Wolfe in the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.

[Moss]

Rumble

 

From The Independent

 

It's hard to imagine an instrumental being banned as too subversive, but that is what happened to Link Wray's "Rumble" in 1958. Its tough, muscular sound captured the tension of a gang fight and many US radio stations refused to play it or even mention its title. Wray's opening chord sets the scene for 150 echo-drenched seconds of feedback and distorted guitar.

 

"Rumble" was a record like no other and years ahead of its time. Although it was only a minor hit, Bob Dylan went to see Link Wray playing live in 1958 and Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix both acknowledged Wray's influence. Pete Townshend of the Who praised "Rumble", saying, "It made me very uneasy the first time I heard it and yet I was excited by the savage guitar sound." Neil Young commented, "If I could return in time and see one band live, it would be Link Wray and the Ray Men."

 

That song was hugely influential. I loved that scene it "It might get loud" with Jimmy Page listening to that song.

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

Bruce at the Bottom Line in 1975

 

 

 

The Week That Made Bruce Springsteen

By Ross Warner

 

The Boss rocks the Bottom Line on opening night, August 13, 1975.

 

In the summer of 1975, Bruce Springsteen was backed against the ropes. His first two albums, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., and The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, had been critically but not commercially successful. Jon Landau of Rolling Stone, who famously wrote in 1974 that Springsteen was “rock and roll future,” had taken leave from his job to help him finish his third record. The album, to be named Born to Run, had kept Springsteen in the studio for over a year, and he knew it was his last shot at a breakthrough. But if it was to be his defining statement, he needed an audience to validate it. He got that audience with an electrifying ten-show stand at a 400-seat club in Greenwich Village called the Bottom Line. It would propel him onto the October 27 covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously and mark a turning point both for his career and for rock music.

 

Having been “discovered” by John Hammond, who a decade earlier had brought a young Bob Dylan to Columbia Records, Bruce was predictably hailed as “the next Dylan” in 1972. Even though his first two albums didn’t really sell, his incendiary live shows made him a cult favorite. Columbia executives hoped to use this magic to build a buzz for Born to Run. His official manager, Mike Appel (who would soon embark on a bitter power struggle with Landau), was so convinced that Springsteen was ready for the big time that he originally tried to book him into Madison Square Garden, but he wasn’t popular enough--yet. So his 10 shows took place over five nights at the Bottom Line, from August 13 to 17.

 

Of the club’s 4,000 seats for the run, Columbia wisely reserved 980 for the media, which had mostly been resistant to Springsteen up to that point. Dave Herman, a disk jockey at New York City’s WNEW-FM, had refused to play Bruce’s first record, offended by its heavy-handed promotional campaign, but he became one of Springsteen’s many converts during the run. He told his listeners, “I saw Springsteen for the first time last night. It’s the most exciting rock ‘n’ roll show I’ve ever seen.”

 

Countless others became converts during that week. The early performance on August 15 was broadcast live on WNEW-FM, giving outsiders a glimpse into the phenomenon. That show went on to become one of the most widely bootlegged concert recordings of the decade and served as proof that Bruce was more than just hype. Beginning with the saxophonist Clarence Clemons’s opening to “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” Springsteen had the crowd in the palm of his hand. Stanley Snadowsky, one of the club’s former owners (it was closed in 2004), recalled, “The raw power was unbelievable. He climbed on the building’s poles, the piano, the tables. He was so exposed in such a reckless way, everyone felt it.”

 

But the shows were about far more than onstage gimmicks. Springsteen and his band showed off every weapon in their musical arsenal. A few songs after “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” he would carry the crowd through the title track to the forthcoming album—a cut that had taken him six months of sporadic work to record. Another highlight was the jazz-fueled tour de force, “Kitty’s Back.” In the middle of each show, Bruce played a gut-wrenching version of the soon-to-be released anthem “Thunder Road,” with only piano accompaniment since “the band hadn’t learned to play that song real well,” as he later said. Then came the show-stopping romp “Rosalita.” By the time he was urging the audience to “Dance ‘til a Quarter to Three,” during his encore, he had not only turned doo-wop on its ear; he had truly become the Boss.

 

This metamorphosis was not lost on him: “It was our coming-out party. And some sort of transformation occurred over those five nights. We walked out of that place in a different place.” It was at the Bottom Line that he first forged his legend, but he also gave rock ‘n’ roll a much-needed shot in the arm. Springsteen has always claimed a redemptive power for rock. He cites the purchase of his first guitar as the moment when he discovered his life’s purpose. But by 1975 the medium had gone stagnant. As the Time cover story put it, “Things had settled down in the ‘70s . . . there was an excess of showmanship, too much din substituting for true power.” Springsteen showed how powerful rock music could still be.

 

Not surprisingly, the Bottom Line shows made Rolling Stone’s 2004 list of the “50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock & Roll,” right up there with Elvis’s first recordings at Sun Records and Dylan’s electric set at the Newport Folk Festival. The stakes were high that week, but up against the ropes, he came out swinging with everything he had each night. After knocking out the New York crowds that week in 1975, he hasn’t looked back.