Basically no shows are happening due to the coronavirus outbreak (although some performers are doing live broadcasts instead), but if you already feel like seeing a show, or just need to a brief distraction from the madness of the world right now, luckily there is YouTube which has an incredible range of live footage from all the history of pop music, movie clips of concerts, TV performances and more. professional filming footage, to tons of videos shot by show fans. If you’re looking for a place to start, we’ve picked out some of our favorites. Here are five more:
Spiritualized @ World’s Greatest Bar (World Trade Center) 04/16/1998
Jason Pierce was flying high – and we mean that in terms of altitude – during this Spiritualized show at World’s Greatest Bar which was on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center and on a day off after their tour opened for Radiohead. (They were playing at Radio City Music Hall the next night.) There wasn’t much of a view, as the April showers had their heads in the clouds that night, but the band would still have prevented the eyes to look at the horizon line. The spiritualized were fascinating as usual. [Bill Pearis]
Super Furry Animals @ Prairie des Filters 07/18/2016
The great Welsh Super Furry Animals came out of hibernation for a tour in 2016 and here they are in Toulouse, France, performing the Prairie des Filters Celtic music festival in front of a huge and adoring crowd. The setlist is a killer, including “Rings Around the World”, “Hello Sunshine”, Juxtapozed With U “,” Hometown Unicorn “and the always catchy” The Man Don’t Give a Fuck “, with animal clothes furry. [Bill Pearis]
Mudhoney @ Berlin Independence Days Music Festival – 10/10/1988
Mudhoney are real lifers who still put out great music and do great shows today, but there is still nothing quite like 1988, the year of their first EP. Superfuzz Bigmuff and the single “Touch Me I’m Sick” was released. Not only did these highly influential recordings have a clear impact on the sound and style of much of the grunge that would become popular a few years later, but how this pro-shot footage (which was released on DVD) helps to immortalize, Mudhoney was dumb on stage too. Mark Arm goes wild, dripping with confidence and has all the guts in his voice he needs, and the band’s Stoogey guitars sound as loud and fucked up as ever. [Andrew Sacher]
Soundgarden @ Club Lingerie Los Angeles, CA – 11/02/1988
True to the Seattle grunge theme of 1988, here’s Soundgarden in LA just months after the release of their 1987 debut EP. Scream life. The late Chris Cornell is still a few years away from becoming the star we will always remember him for, but he’s clearly a star in the making, and it’s pretty amazing to see these images of him and the rest of the group in that form. primitive and hungry. They not only played stuff from Scream life but also the Fopp EP and their first album Ultramega OK which will be released later that year, and they also did three incredibly grungy classic rock covers – Rush’s “Working Man”, Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” and Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen”. It’s pretty amazing to see Chris Cornell nailing Robert Plant’s back-to-back moan with Alice Cooper’s gritty sneer, and it’s no surprise he’s so good at both – he had these two merged together before. things about his own songs. [Andrew Sacher]
Fleet Foxes @ Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, CA – 02/28/2008
Fast forward 20 years since Mudhoney / Soundgarden and Sub Pop was set to release the instant classic Giant sun EP and self-titled debut album by Fleet Foxes, who performed a fine selection of these now popular songs on this show. After a sublime rendition of “Sun Giant,” Fleet Foxes shows up at this intimate San Francisco show as being from Seattle and never having performed out of town. Their success on the indie scene is still in the future, but when the roar of the crowd fades into their lush harmonies, you can hear that the seeds for that success have definitely been planted and are about to bear fruit. [Amanda Hatfield]
For more of our favorite live videos, head here.
