Most of mine are rather minor, actually, but post your majors too. Mine include:
k.d. lang singing “Johnny Get Angry” on SNL. The first time I’d seen her perform. back when she was in full-on androgyny mode with the horn-rimmed glasses and everything. She tears through it and shrieks out this loud “JOHNNY!” and collapses to the floor. Stunning.
k.d. lang singing “Miss Chatelaine” on Arsenio. She’s wearing this enormous flouncy frilly dress, swanning about like mad and even remembering it I start feeling giddy with how joyous the performance was.
Madonna performing “Vogue” on the MTV music awards in full Marie Antoinette drag.
Sinead O’Connor singing “Nothing Compares 2 U” on the same show. Dressed in a white shroud in total contrast to the multi-thousand dollar get-ups everyone else was wearing, she hits this sustained note that just tears me up with the power of it.
The Sugarcubes’ video for “Birthday.” Bjork hits that first chorus with that bizarre scream/yodel/growl thing and I knew even if I never heard another note she ever sang I was a fan for life.
These are all from TV but feel free to post from any genre.
Mid-1970’s. 16 years old. Penchant for Nugent and Aerosmith. Learning to play guitar. Was talking with a quirky substitute teacher after class after he mentioned Hendrix during class. Told him what I listened to and he said “well, that’ll never do - where do you live?”
He showed up that night with BB King Live, Disraeli Gears, Butterfield featuring Mike Bloomfield and a few others, including…Truth, by Jeff Beck. Listening to the 2nd track - Let Me Love You - changed how I thought about music, what I thought was good guitar, and what was possible artistically.
To this day, that is still the song I turn to as the standard for articulate blues guitar, and as the ultimate goal to play well…
There was a concert film from 1990 which, Googling, I find to be the “Silver Clef Award Winners concert in aid of the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy charity.” Pink Floyd ended the show in the midst of a thunderstorm. Between the thundering music and the thundering weather it was a perfect representation of the forces of good marshaling all their powers to fend off the approaching apocalypse. Closest thing to a superhero comic in real life that I can think of.
The Monkees. No, really. You have to remember what 1966 television was like to appreciate this.
Jan-Feb, 1980. Buying London Calling from the record section of the Consumers’ Grocery Store in Fayetteville, Arkansas with my allowance money, keeping it in the bag on the way home so my mom wouldn’t see the “offensive language” sticker on the cover (I tried to peel it off once I got home, ruining the cover), and slapping it on the turntable of my crappy little JCPenneys $90 compact stereo and cranking it up to full volume through my bitching Koss headphones. That’s pretty much when I quit listening to commercial radio. Within weeks I’d given up Rolling Stone for Trouser Press (unless there was a Hunter S. Thompson article in RS). Started spending weekend nights at Colonel Smuckers’ (what passed for a punk club in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1980 – no liquor license, so anyone could get in, but everyone knew there was a fridge in the basement with generic beer for $1 on the honor system, or you could bring your own).
Seeing Joe “King” Carrasco and the Crowns on an Austin City Limits episode at about the same time, including a cover of “96 Tears” prefaced by Joe saying "This song caused me to flunk out of school . . . ". I’ve wanted a Farfisa organ ever since. I had the presence of mind to grab my crappy little tape recorder and stick it in front of the TV after the first song or two, so I was able to relive the experience for years afterward.
My freshman year of college, I bought R.E.M.'s Murmur and the IRS “Radio Free Europe” single at a music store in Memphis during Christmas break. Played the whole thing on my first radio show after the break, and big chunks of it every show after it that year.
Also freshman year of college, pulling down The Rezillos’ Can’t Stand the Rezillos from the shelves of the radio station and giving it a spin. And another. And another. Repeat as necessary for four years. Four? Make that twenty-two and counting.
As for live music moments, there’s a thread on “Most Fantastic Concert Experiences” going on at the moment, and I’ve already posted there, so I won’t repeat myself.
Gosh, there are too many to list, both as a listener and performer. I don’t know if I can name specifics, because I’m always looking for that next moment…
It’s when the music is so perfect, when the conductor gives you your cue with a wink and a grin and your solo is so spot-on that you distantly wonder who that fantastic musician is - oh my god, it’s you! - and you still have time to look up at the maestro and experience a special, private little moment of shared joy - all in the twinkling of an eye - just before the audience erupts from a lingering, breathless silence into loud cheers and applause.
Man, that’s the sort of thing I live for. It’s fleeting, to be sure, and doesn’t happen everyday, but I’ve remembered every little moment I’ve had like that. It’s almost painful to actively recollect them because there have been far too few for my liking. Makes me ache that I’m not in the business full-time.
(Gee, I sure do get a little weepy when the current show I’m in is about to end its run! :rolleyes: )
Eve, Brandenburg holds a special place in my heart, too. My first billing as a soloist, but when does that matter, since it’s Bach? Bliss, indeed.
I was sitting in my dormroom all by myself one night after work and saw the original (and I think only) broadcast of Sinead O’Conner ripping up the picture of the pope. It was her second musical number of the night. In the first number, she sang “Am I Not Your Girl?” with a full symphonic accompaniement. It fell utterly flat, IMO.
The second number had her singing “War” by Bob Marley a capella on a blank stage next to a table full of candles. It was boring. I was actually losing interest in the song when I happened to glance at the tv and see she was holding a picture of the pope. I thought “why’s she holding a picture of -”, then RRRRIPP. No one applauded, and she blew out the candles in a silent set.
I wasn’t offended, but I thought it was a rather dumb move on her part. I remember thinking “she is gonna get chewed out for that!” but had no idea it was going to turn into one of the biggest controversies in the history of rock music, or that it was going to decisively ruin her career.
I’ve already recounted the first time I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers in another current thread. (“Greatest concerts” or something.)
One day a guy at work pulled up the Johnny Cash video of “Hurt” (originally from Nine Inch Nails), and I had to go buy the CD right away. I always knew he was great, but that cut is amazing. So is the rest of the CD.
These other two aren’t really discoveries like most of the ones above, but they both get me every time.
In Back to the Future, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) has just about collapsed during “Earth Angel” (Does anyone but me remember it was that song?), recovers at the end, and the band decides to do just one more. He tells them “It’s a blues riff in B. Watch me for the changes and try to keep up.” Those first few notes of “Johnny B. Goode” are such a rush! (I hear he played his own guitar on that, left over from his garage-band days.)
Patsy Cline’s release version of “Crazy” has a little break in her voice partway through that always chokes me up.
Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo performing “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” on Saturday Night Live. First time I’d seen anything even remotely like that.
The video to “Electronic Behavior Control System” by Emergency Broadcast Network, which is included on their CD Telecommunication Breakdown. EBN started out as more of a performance art group than anything else, editing together video feeds to make music; they did the video of George Bush from the State of the Union address doing “We Will Rock You,” that was shown at the start of one of U2’s live tours. They’ve also got a video that remixes “Jungle Boogie” by Kool and the Gang, including video of Harrison Ford screaming “Get Down! Get Down!” from Patriot Games. The video for “EBCS” goes beyond just a simple gag into actually saying something, and it’s just amazing.
The performance of “Llorando” (“Crying”) from Mulholland Drive. It’s just stunningly powerful.
The first four numbers of Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads, as they slowly build the band up, one member at a time for each song.
The OP reminded me of the first time I saw k.d. lang, performing “Pulling Back the Reins” on Saturday Night Live. It’s kind of gotten to be her “schtick” now, but at the time I remembered her voice as being just stunning.
And the first scene in the movie Akira where we see the kids riding their bikes through the city in the rain. The visuals were amazing for the time, of course, but the real power was in the music, which was like nothing I’d ever heard before.
The first time I heard Georgian folk music (Tbilisi, not Atlanta) was in a small church in Seattle, performed by a choir of teenagers from Vermont . Three parts, a capella. I could barely pick my jaw up off the floor.
A TV moment that I hope is not lost for all time: a Midnight Special in 1974 that had Sugarloaf appearing. They played “Green Eyed Lady”, segued into an organ improvisation by Jerry Corbetta, based on “Bach Doors Man” and segued that into “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You.” I hope I get to see that again someday.
And the first time I heard The Tubes’ first album. I still don’t care much for Side 1, but everything about Side 2 continues to blow me away. I was so dumbstruck by the excellence of those four songs, I asked the guy to play it some more. We must have listened to it six times in a row! Even today, I can’t just play one song from that side, I have to hear the whole thing. Considering how the group didn’t go on to massive fame, despite a string of albums and years of touring, this must have been yet another case of a potentially great band shooting its wad on the first record. And what a record it was!
I knew I’d leave one off my list and that was the one. I was almost completely unimpressed by the song itself, with the altered lyrics, but when she ripped up the picture I was stunned. As was the audience, apparently, judging by the dead silence (I recall seeing some VH1 special that said SNL was freaking out so bad that they shut off the APPLAUSE sign for the first time ever).
The next week Joe Peschi taped the picture back together and threatened to kick her ass. I still haven’t forgiven him for that.
And here, years after the fact in the wake of the priest child abuse scandals, turns out she was right all along.
Tori Amos performing her cover of Tom Waits’ “Time” on Letterman a couple of days after September 11th. I don’t know why the way she sang “It’s time…” got me like it did, I just know that it did. Must be something about her.
“Clocks” does have a certain magic, too.
Most of all, I’ve had a bunch of these moments while watching the Allman Brothers Band. In August of 2001, I went with my father and some friends to see them four straight nights in the Southeast. The last show, they closed with one of their definitive showpieces, called Mountain Jam. Our closest friend had been to 75 concerts and had never heard them play that song. I knew he was going to hear it one of those four nights and I continually told him so. After three nights of delay, he’d really given up on it, and he wasn’t getting any more optimistic as the last show wore on. So it was very emotional. A number of other times, I’ve had great views to see them play some of my favorite songs (front row once in 2002, second row twice last month, and I even watched from the stage for about half an hour).
hearing the “misterioso” section from the choral section of Beethoven’s 9th at the end of one of the Bell Science Series and being told what it was, firmly uniting classical music and the wonders of nature and science in my mind.
In Fantasia, in the last movement of Beethoven’s 6th, seeing the Greek gods and goddesses depicted to the music. Kitschy, perhaps, but I’m still moved greatly when I see it.
I’m glad you brought her up, 'cause I was too much of a coward to do it. (So many strong anti feelings toward her.) But yes, that was amazing. Also from Sinead O’Connor, when I saw her do a cover of Elton John’s Sacrifice in his Two Rooms documentary, it was… just… heavenly. She has the purest voice that can sustain a beautiful and perfectly pitched tone without any tremolo. She talked about how she selected it because it was a “singer’s song”. She sang it very slowly, and almost acapella — I seem to recall a lone, quiet clarinet or something. Stunning.
For those of you who’ve never performed, that’s a shame, because listening to a performance can never compare to actually performing, even if you’re just an amateur like myself.
But I was recently lucky enough to get to sing both Beethoven’s 9th and Carmina Burana, both of which approach orgasmic.
Also, in high school, I (along with the rest of the California Youth Symphony) was made an honorary citizen of Vienna, Austria, for our excellent rendition of The Blue Danube, so that’s kind of cool
As for music in movies/TV, perhaps my favorite moment is in the episode Self Esteem from My So Called Life, when a song by Buffalo Tom is playing at the end as Jordan holds Angela’s hands for the first time.
I’m a big ELO fan (duh!). In 2001, they did a concert to promote their newest album, Zoom. During the show, Jeff and company did some classic ELO tunes.
I enjoyed the audience’s reaction to Richard Tandy’s vocoder bit in “Mr. Blue Sky”, the vocal run on “Turn To Stone”, and the echo bits on “Livin’ Thing”.
An amazing moment, ruined (IMO) by stupid members of the audience giggling, thinking that she was doing some kind of act, then applauding, even though she wasn’t done singing the song.
I’ve been looking for a recording of her singing this song ever since, btw, and one doesn’t seem to exist. If anyone knows where one might procure such a thing…
On a personal note, I’ve always loved Kirsty MacColl’s In These Shoes? which is such a sassy, funny, sexy, silly song. The day that Kirsty was killed, I’d had a rotten day, and that piece of news was just the cherry on the charlotte russe, so to speak. My husband put on that song for me, and I realized that like so many others before her, death wasn’t ever going to silence that voice. And I danced, crying, to that song like I never had before.
