Remember the Jonny B. Goode moment with Michael J. Fox from Back to the Future, when he basically blows their minds with the Chuck Berry song Jonny B. Goode, especially the guitar solo.
Assume for the purposes of this thread you have the skills to play any song you wanted. What you play?
Mine is currently is:
Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns and Roses. I would probably go with this one, just to wear the top hat.
Those poor hicks will never by the same! Although having my teenaged mom hitting on me would be a little weird. . .
“Slave For You”, Britney Spears. I’d lead into it by yelling “THIS IS WHAT YOUR FUTURE HAS IN STORE FOR YOU!”. I wonder if the suicide rate would increase?
Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd. Or “Birthday”, by the Sugarcubes, but that shouldn’t count since it’s my favorite song. But either would blow the crowd away even moreso than JBG.
Don’t forget that Marty DID rock out at the end, in a way that Chuck Berry didn’t quite envision, and the entire auditorium was left staring, speechless, at him. He offered, weakly, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet.”
I don’t think they’re ready for “Immigrant Song” (but it couldn’t hurt to try!) Because they’re a little less heavy-metal, I think they just might be able to handle “Traveling Riverside Blues” or “Good Times / Bad Times”. “Sultans of Swing” wouldn’t shock them but it would open their minds just a little, but only if, in addition to traveling back in time, I am allowed to have Knopfler-style chops.
If they were pretty open-minded, maybe yank them forward into the 1990s with some REM (“Shiny Happy People”) or Nirvana (“Lithium”) or possibly some Pearl Jam (“Evenflow”).
And if I don’t care whether I break their primitive brains, then Smashing Pumpkins’ “Rocket”, Cake’s “Sheep Go to Heaven”, and Britney Spears’ “Oops! I Did It Again” (I’d want a laptop and a projector – the song isn’t complete without the video).
Garth Brooks’ “Ain’t Going Down (til the Sun Comes Up)” is remarkably simple and similar to the basic three-chord rock they’re used to, but the language implies a very… uppity young lady. They might be shocked just by the lyrics, but they’d tap their feet for sure. And if they’re not shocked I can always go with my Britney plan as above.
You would really need the entire band to do most of these songs but given that.
Smells like Teen Spirit for the blow them away song.
Micky (maybe then I wouldn’t have to hear it in the future)
Come Dancing The crowd would be into it, as long as they didn’t listen too closely to the lyrics.
Stacy’s Mom what the heck, it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.
Baby Got Back (is that the name of that song) That would get a great reaction.
Actually, I suspect that a lot of the references would be completely bewildering, to say nothing of the slang. It just wouldn’t have the same effect.
Personally, I think Johnny B Good was an excellent choice, but I might go with Free Bird, just so I could make a cliche even more overused when I returned to the future.
A Fifth of Beethoven, that disco-y version of Beethoven’s Fifth. But only as part of an elaborate scheme involving traveling backwards through time, killing Beethoven, stealing the original draft of the Fifth, then revealing the real Fifth years later and claiming Edgar Winter (or whoever it was that wrote it) was a psychic. Kind of like those guys who claimed they wrote Blowin’ in the Wind while they were in high school then Bob Dylan stole it from them, only he didn’t because they later admitted they were lying.
Ace of Spades. Then I’ll be worshipped instead of Lemmy. And the idea of yelling “THE ACE OF SPADES! THE ACE OF SPADES!” at a gym full of 50s kids is too funny.
Much as I can’t believe I’m putting this in the same bracket as Hendrix and Zeppelin, I firmly believe the apex of 20th-century rock and roll was U2’s Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me. There, I said it.
