Last night I saw a They Might Be Giants concert in which they did a theme of playing at least one song from EVERY one of their albums (and they have A LOT of them now…some which usually get pretty neglected at concerts). It didn’t even occur to me until it happened during the show that this would include selections from the band members’ solo projects, including Mono Puff’s Unsupervised and The Statesmen’s West Virginia, which normally NEVER get played at TMBG-proper concerts. It also didn’t occur to me until on my way home that this was especially unique because the songs were being performed by other band members (aside from the band member who wrote/recorded it) who neither recorded nor, to the best of my knowledge, have ever performed it it before!
This inspired me to start a thread asking about your knowledge/experience of seeing live shows that mixed in stuff from other projects…how much they do it, if they do it at all, if they’ll go for obscure stuff or the song that bought them their first mansion?
Les Claypool - he did about 3 Primus songs, but not til the very end of the show. Two was with the band, one was done solo. I’ve only seen him once, but as I understand it he does mix in different Primus songs each night.
Eric Clapton - performs all the big songs from Cream, Derek & The Dominos, etc…I mean, most people say that Layla is a Eric Clapton song anyway!
Pearl Jam - on a rare occasion (once or twice per tour, and on totally random spots), they’ll do a track from Mother Love Bone or Temple of the Dog. The odds increase if Chris Cornell is in town.
Velvet Revolver - They performed one or two Stone Temple Pilots and Guns N Roses songs, but they weren’t any of the big singles. I’m actually having a hard time remembering what they were…I think Mr Brownstone was one.
I saw Audiolave at the Hurricane Festival in 200…er…6? No, 2005. They played some stuff from Soundgarden as well as some from Rage Against the Machine - that was a nice mixture.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer: During the live version of “Tarkus” on Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends, Greg Lake throws in a verse of King Crimson’s “Epitaph.” The band also was known to perform an encore of “Rondo” from Keith Emerson’s previous band, the Nice.
CSNY’s Four Way Street includes songs from the Buffalo Springfield (“On the Way Home” for Young, the rewrite of “For What It’s Worth” as “America’s Children” for Stills) and Hollies (“King Midas in Reverse”) repertoires, plus a song that David Crosby tried to record with the Byrds but ended up giving to Jefferson Airplane instead (“Triad”).
Asia always made a point of NOT doing songs from their members’ old bands… with one big exception. They never played ELP songs or King Crimson songs… but each member of the band used to get his own solo segment, and Steve Howe often played his old instrumental “The Clap” from “The Yes Album.” That was an up-tempo acoustic piece, and not one of Yes’ famous numbers, so it didn’t seem out of place.
During his solo years, Don Henley used to play mostly his own stuff, but would close the show with “Hotel California” and “Life in the Fast Lane,” then do “Desperado” as an encore. As Henley put it back then, “I don’t mind taking a walk down Memory Lane, I just don’t choose to live there.”
Robert Plant is on tour now with Allison Krauss, and they actually do a FEW Led Zeppelin songs together… but they do the songs in Allison’s folky style, rather than in the metal style:
Keith Richards, in a 1989 Playboy interview, had harsh words for Mick Jagger’s solo tour, “playing Stones tunes with an ersatz band.” Personally, if I saw a Jagger concert and all he played was crap from his solo albums, I’d feel pretty cheated.
Actually, I was just going to say that the original four members of Asia recently reunited and did a world tour, followed by a live CD & DVD, and they played one song from each band member’s past – “Roundabout”, “Fanfare for the Common Man”, “Court of the Crimson King”, and…“Video Killed the Radio Star” (This was in addition to Steve’s acoustic segment and Carl’s drum solo.)
Ronnie James Dio always performs a few Rainbow & Black Sabbath songs on his solo tours – occasionally he’ll even break out “Mistreated”, which is actually a Deep Purple song, a band he’s NEVER been in! (Except he used to perform that song frequently back in the early Rainbow days, so that’s the connection.)
Bruce Dickinson performed several Iron Maiden songs on his solo tours; I think Rob Halford did the same with Judas Priest material.
Jethro Tull often throws into their live set a few songs from Ian Anderson’s and Martin Barre’s solo albums.
Delaney and Bonnie and Friends in their album On Tour with Eric Clapton played “Only You Know and I Know” by Dave Mason, who was part of their band.
Also, Mason played a couple of his solo songs when he rejoined Traffic for Welcome to the Canteen. Steve Winwood also played “Gimme Some Lovin’” from his Spencer Davis Group days.
The Grateful Dead often performed live songs from Jerry Garcia’s solo albums.
I watched that video in your link. I liked the new arrangement of “Black Dog” in its mellower form but couldn’t help thinking that the way they were singing the lyrics made me think they could have been singing the words to the “Hokey Pokey”: “You put your left foot in; you take your left foot out…”
On the ‘There’ part of Elton John’s “Here and There” live album (‘Here’ was recorded at a London concert), he’s playing Madison Square Garden and has John Lennon show up as a surprise guest.
Together, they did Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”, plus The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” For the latter one, John tells everyone that the song was “a number of an old, estranged fiancee of mine called Paul. This is one I never sang, it’s an old Beatle number, and we just about know it.”
Tomas Kalnoky recorded “Keasbey Nights” with Catch 22, and later rereleased it as Streetlight Manifesto when he left Catch 22. He also did some songs from one or both bands with Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution. It looks like he also took “Supernothing” from his first band, Gimp.
One reason I’m so adamant about seeing Maritime whenever they’re in town is to see if they ever cover The Promise Ring, which two of their members were in. No dice, so far
When I saw Evan Dando open for Fountains of Wayne – well first of all this is off topic but I thought it was funny that they are both best known for songs about MILFS (Lemonheads’ cover of Mrs. Robinson and Stacy’s Mom respectively.)
Well, Evan did a cover of Rudderless at that show, and only myself and one other member of the audience were able to sing the backup when it came to the verse with the backup singing. When that verse came I was excited about being able to sing in the background “tired of getting high,” but Evan sang that himself. I can understand since he certainly seemed to have partaken before the show himself.
I suspect this happens so often it’s almost not worth mentioning. Off the top of my head I can think of three concerts I’ve been to just in Toronto where obscure indie bands/artists played stuff from previous acts (The Joel Plaskett Emergency playing “Before You Leave” by Thrush Hermit, Peter Elkas playing “Fill Them In” by the Local Rabbits, Pernice Brothers playing “Grudge Fuck” from Scud Mountain Boys).