The best approach to the perfunctory encore I ever saw was at a Metric show several years back. They just put a timer up on a screen that counted down the five minutes until they came back out. That struck me as perfect, because it was completely transparent about it being a pre-arranged break rather than something spontaneous, didn't obligate the audience to carry on clapping and cheering for some indefinite amount of time, and allowed the excitement for the "encore" portion of the show to build and peak at just the right time.
― JRN, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 19:40 (four years ago) link
I accompanied a friend to a 2004 Decemberists show at some tiny venue; there were five members and enough instruments on stage that the band couldn't leave the stage without removing it all, so just told us to pretend they left, and chatted with each other for a few minutes before doing the encore.
― blatherskite, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 20:16 (four years ago) link
Doesn't all of this depend on the act? Unless they were laying down a couple of hour-long choogles in there al la Rallizes or Endless Boogie or whatever I can't imagine wanting to sit through three live hours of CCR...there's just not enough variety in what they did to pull that off.
Comparing CCR to Zep in this regard is kinda dumb
― Suggest Banshee (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 20:44 (four years ago) link
I can't think of any band I would want to hear perform for three hours, Zep definitely included. Maybe P-Funk, but there was a fair amount of widdling between the gems in their shows too.
― A breezy pop-rock feel fairly typical of the mid-'80s (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 20:54 (four years ago) link
I've only ever seen two bands play for more than two hours - the Mars Volta in 2005 (no opening act and I feel like they were up there for about 3 hours) and King Sunny Ade (played from 8 PM to 4 AM). In both cases there was definitely a "it's all one song" feeling, and I wouldn't want to listen back to recordings of either show but I had a blast while I was there. I agree with Hadrian that Creedence, or any band playing one discrete song after another for three hours, would be intolerable for me after 90 minutes or so.
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 20:59 (four years ago) link
Heh, I was curious, so did the math, and the sum total of the first five CCR album runs just under three hours.
Every time I've seen Springsteen he's gone on for around 3 hours, and it's never seemed too long ... or too short. I'm trying to think who else I've seen who goes three hours. Even Rush I think stopped around 2.5.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:12 (four years ago) link
Fwiw, btw, those epic Zeppelin sets were like half drum/guitar/organ solos. Basically "Dazed and Confused" and "Moby Dick" and "No Quarter."
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:14 (four years ago) link
I've always wondered about this. I've read books about Led Zeppelin where they describe concerts and it's like "and then John Paul Jones took a 40-minute organ solo before 'No Quarter'" and I think, who the fuck would even stick around for that? But at the same time, I'd kinda like to hear even one bootleg just to see how unendurable it really is.
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:23 (four years ago) link
"Man, I ain’t believing that shit about Bonham’s one hour drum solo, man. I mean one hour of drums, you couldn’t handle that shit on strong acid, man."
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:27 (four years ago) link
vampire weekend went 2 hrs 45 when i saw them at msg earlier this year lol
― jacquees, full of cobras (voodoo chili), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:28 (four years ago) link
All I know is that, as a huge Zeppelin fan, I've never felt compelled to listen to any of their bootlegs for that very reason (plus others). But Springsteen, otoh, I can easily listen to a 3.5 hour show by him. Once I picked up a friend when I was listening to a Bruce show (during a Sirius promo), took him to a real concert, and the Bruce show was still on for the ride home.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:30 (four years ago) link
How The West Was Won is a great live document and you don't have to try to track down weird bootlegs
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:54 (four years ago) link
The '69 live show on the expanded Zep I is great too--They were absolute hungry beasts onstage then.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:58 (four years ago) link
Some of those 77 Presence tour Zep shows are insane: guitar player all strung out, sounding like a shreds vid part of the time & part of the time like the greatest guitar player ever, singer seemingly bemused/befuddled by the whole thing, No Quarter devolving in a boogie-woogie piano scales exercise, all going on for 3 fucking hours, sometimes brilliant, sometimes stupid, always 100% Led Zep.
All bands should play 20 minutes MAXIMUM
― chr1sb3singer, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:00 (four years ago) link
My uncle ditched my sister's 3rd birthday party to go see Zep in 77 in Chicago. She thinks he made the right choice.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:08 (four years ago) link
i feel like i saw the allman bros approach the 3 hour mark in the late 90s(?) but it's very possible i'm misremembering
― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:08 (four years ago) link
xpost Yeah, the official futzed with live Zeppelin document is pretty awesome, especially the DVD version. But that seems kind of an outlier. whereas there are probably 5-10 Springsteen bootlegs I listen to as often as the albums themselves.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:12 (four years ago) link
CCR!!!
― Peaceful Warrior I Poser (Karl Malone), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:21 (four years ago) link
I saw Public Enemy go at least 3.5 hours... in Columbia, Mo.... on a weeknight.
Even being 19, I had to throw in the towel around 2 a.m.
― pplains, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:42 (four years ago) link
And before anyone asks, no, there was no 40-minute Terminator X scratch solo.
― pplains, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:43 (four years ago) link
One of the best shows I've ever seen was a four hour Prince show in 2011. Somewhere in encore 4, we realized that we were already at the afterparty and we jumped down to the floor of the Forum to dance along with the remaining audience who stayed behind. You don't leave until Prince leaves.
― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:48 (four years ago) link
One other thing CCR had going on that I want to say a lot of rock acts had abandoned was an allegiance to the country side of early rock and roll, not just soul or the blues but rockabilly. Did many other bands dip into rockabilly between CCR's end until the late '70s/early '80s revival?
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:03 (four years ago) link
Flamin' Groovies.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:06 (four years ago) link
Same city!
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:07 (four years ago) link
Only bands I saw do more than two hours were the Who, whose set was around 3 hours in 1989; and George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars a few weeks later, who played a solid 4-hour show that did not let up AT ALL. I didn’t even know much of their material at the time, and was transfixed.To bring it back to CCR and encores, at one of those ‘89 Who shows, they played “Born On The Bayou,” introduced by Daltrey as “the only thing I remember about Woodstock.”
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:19 (four years ago) link
Nice to see some love for P-Funk’s marathon sets, none of which involved 40-minute drum solos
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:24 (four years ago) link
― Suggest Banshee (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:35 (four years ago) link
In the UK at least glam def reached back to early r’n’r/rockabilly
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:52 (four years ago) link
To bring it back to CCR and encores, at one of those ‘89 Who shows, they played “Born On The Bayou,” introduced by Daltrey as “the only thing I remember about Woodstock.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjrIb1WdOVg
― pplains, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 01:39 (four years ago) link
― Elvis Telecom
Oh yeah I've got a bootleg of that one. Definitely one of the hottest shows I've heard Prince do, which is, uh, a significant compliment.
There are some pretty excruciating Zep shows from '75 and '77. There's one from Seattle '75 (there's a video of this I'm told) where Jimmy stretches out "Dazed and Confused" for _45 minutes_. It's absolutely unbearable, total torture (and I'll rep hard for the 26 minute Dazed and Confused from Offenburg two years earlier!) Then by '77 there's the infamous Tempe gig.. the "Achilles Last Stand" from that gig is one of the biggest trainwrecks I've ever heard, probably still terrible even if you find a tape running at the right speed (which most of them don't). Of course the flip side is that Page could play that completely terrible and nobody would fucking care. 100% arena ennui. A lot of it is, I think, down to the sound systems of the time... they probably sounded terrible for similar reasons to those that made the Beatles sound terrible - it wasn't the fans per se, it was the technology wasn't there to allow them to sound good!
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 02:46 (four years ago) link
I saw Public Enemy go at least 3.5 hours... in Columbia, Mo.... on a weeknight..
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 03:20 (four years ago) link
I dunno, PAs had come a very long way by ‘77, and a number of bands designed, developed, and lugged around their own PAs as a means of avoiding being stuck with inadequate house systems. It seems weird that Zep either a) didn’t use their own system, or b) that they designed and used a crappy one.But apart from maybe ‘68-‘69, Zep just wasn’t a great live act. They’d have great moments, but then ruin everything with 90 minutes of “LOOK AT THIS VIOLIN BOW.” It’s telling that How The West Was Won is compiled from multiple shows, sometimes within a single song (“Stairway” alone has bits from three shows). They couldn’t find one Zep show that was decent from beginning to end?xp
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 03:31 (four years ago) link
this discussion sent me to the extras on the 2009 reissues of Bayou Country through Cosmo's, but also to the songs I was not familiar with from Pendulum: and man, "Sailor's Lament," "Chameleon," "Hideaway," and "It's Just a Thought" are really really bad. JF really ran outta gas at the same time that he wanted to expand the sound of the band, although I admire the chutzpah of "Rude Awakening" which is so bizarre and ill conceived that I'm glad he put it on the record. "Born to Move" and "Molina" are okay, but no patch on "Hey Tonight" or "have you ever"; that last one still the least of his hot streak.
― veronica moser, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 21:22 (four years ago) link
Hard disagree about those Pendulum tracks
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 21:34 (four years ago) link
I call Pendulum the Organ Album. Fogerty took to it hard. Sometimes the songs exist as excuses for organ grooves ("Sailor's Lament"). But "It's Just a Thought" is a better bit of rumination than "Have You Ever..." -- my least favorite of CCR's singles, I'll agree.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 21:46 (four years ago) link
Something's gotta be last, right?
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 21:54 (four years ago) link
Hard agree with your hard disagreement. "Hideaway" and "It's Just a Thought" are great!
― I've Got A Ron Wood Solo Album To Listen To (Tom D.), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 22:45 (four years ago) link
I really love "Rude Awakening #2" as well, their most overtly psychedelic track
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 22:56 (four years ago) link
"Pagan Baby" also such a killer riff, underrated non-single.
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 23:03 (four years ago) link
picked up a copy of Chronicle Volume 2 on CD at the used bookstore this weekend, thanks to this thread
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 23:05 (four years ago) link
That second volume led to my appreciation of CCR.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 23:09 (four years ago) link
1972 is a hazy memory, but I would swear I remember my local top 40 station playing “Molina” a bit. It was never a single in the US though. I really like everything on Pendulum except “Rude Awakening,” but one person’s “overtly psychedelic” is another’s clanking and banging for 6 minutes to fill out the album. “Pagan Baby” is amazing.
― A breezy pop-rock feel fairly typical of the mid-'80s (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 5 December 2019 00:06 (four years ago) link
"I dunno, PAs had come a very long way by ‘77, and a number of bands designed, developed, and lugged around their own PAs as a means of avoiding being stuck with inadequate house systems. It seems weird that Zep either a) didn’t use their own system, or b) that they designed and used a crappy one."
ehh, i'm not a gear-head, i've just heard lots of stadium rock boots, and the performances tend to be pretty crap on all of them. if there was a band in '77 that was playing absolutely top-notch balls-out rock in stadiums (which is something that's absolutely completely doable today), i'd think maybe it was just the drugs, but as i haven't heard such a thing i'm figuring there were unique challenges.
"But apart from maybe ‘68-‘69, Zep just wasn’t a great live act. They’d have great moments, but then ruin everything with 90 minutes of “LOOK AT THIS VIOLIN BOW.” It’s telling that How The West Was Won is compiled from multiple shows, sometimes within a single song (“Stairway” alone has bits from three shows). They couldn’t find one Zep show that was decent from beginning to end?
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)"
i'd argue that zep were inherently (even in '68-'69) _inconsistent_ - they took chances, they fluffed, and the live stuff (as has been exhaustively chronicled by eddie edwards) is edited to leave out the stuff they fluffed. an unedited release of that stuff, were it possible (the bbc stuff is edited for copyright reasons - they had a predilection for launching into blues songs and not crediting the original authors, and have paid out enough on those grounds that they're pretty careful), would still be an all-time live album, at minimum on par with "live at leeds". i'd also argue that zep were operating on an extremely high functional level as a live band through the end of '72 at least... over the course of '73 robert plant proceeded to completely blow out his voice, and it wasn't until after zep was a done deal that he learned to adapt and deal with what he lost. "how the west was won" was recorded towards the tail end of the '73 shows. you can complain about the violin bow stuff all you like but i was listening the offenburg "dazed" last night and that is absolutely a compendium of "heavy rock", finding room for both hendrix's "machine gun" and holst's "mars"
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Thursday, 5 December 2019 01:10 (four years ago) link
Semi-related, I bought the new box that has as much as was releasable of all four Band of Gypsys shows and you can really hear them feeling their way into and through the material - the first set on Night 1, the songs are a lot shorter, on Night 2 there's a real feeling that they've gelled as a band and everyone is more confident, hitting harder, stretching out more, and they're having fun with old songs like "Wild Thing" and "Purple Haze" not out of nervousness or a need to win the crowd over, but just for the hell of it.
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Thursday, 5 December 2019 01:20 (four years ago) link
I find myself inexplicably humming "Molina" as much as any of their hits.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 5 December 2019 01:57 (four years ago) link
you can complain about the violin bow stuff all you like but i was listening the offenburg "dazed" last night and that is absolutely a compendium of "heavy rock", finding room for both hendrix's "machine gun" and holst's "mars"
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 5 December 2019 02:06 (four years ago) link
"There are Who boots from ‘75-‘76 and Floyd boots from ‘77 that are crystal clear. Granted, much of that has to do with where the taper was sitting, but those two bands (Floyd especially) pioneered large PAs that also delivered clarity."
I'm not talking sound quality or how well the audience could hear them, I mean the extent to which they could hear each _other_. Which neither Pink Floyd in '77 or the Who, well, probably ever, could.
"My favorite “Dazed” — in fact, my favorite Led Zeppelin performance/moment — is the 1969 Supershow dealie. But for me, when Page gets too quotey, and loses focus (sometimes simultaneously), I lose interest. There seem to be more of those moments in the lengthier “Dazed”s.
To me the Supershow Dazed is just painful... because of the cut. God knows how long they went on for or how good it might have been. I rightly wouldn't mind another ten minutes or so, given that even by '69 standards they're playing shit-hot.
There's a certain overlap between his quoting and losing focus, but it's not 1:1. Offenburg to me is less "hey let's quote some other songs" and more the band attacking them with the same _transformational_ approach they went after all those blues songs with. Kind of along the lines of the "White Summer/Black Mountain Side" from Montreux '70 - yeah obviously he's ripping off Jansch, but there's so much individual flair to what he's doing that I can't rightly get terribly fussed over it.
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Thursday, 5 December 2019 02:44 (four years ago) link
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 5 December 2019 03:25 (four years ago) link
Man, I was watching one of those rig rundown videos, and apparently Angus Young doesn't use in-ear monitors, so they just had a wall of amps at full blast across the stage so that he could hear everything no matter where he was standing.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 5 December 2019 04:04 (four years ago) link
Cosmo's Factory released 50 years ago today.
― "...And the Gods Socially Distanced" (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 16 July 2020 22:31 (three years ago) link