fun for unemployed people

As Wendy said to me the other day, "YouTube is the devil." If you are a geek of any kind, you can lose all sense of time and/or responsibility with your diversion of choice. Since I'm a music geek, that's how I spend my time whenever I choose to cross over to the dark side.

A perfect example is this little gem I came across by accident the other day. One of the most memorable shows I ever saw in my adolescence was Black Sabbath in 1982. In fact, shockingly now that I stop to think about it, it's the only time I ever saw Sabbath live...and it almost doesn't count because it was the Dio/Appice lineup. Anyway, I found this clip - not from the show I saw but a London show from that same tour. The sound is atrocious, but it's so cool for me to witness the visuals in motion from that show and that song. It may look ridiculous now, but trust me...if you were a little metal dude in junior high in the early 80s, it did not get any cooler than this...



All the gushing over that show aside, though, this is still the only Sabbath that counts as far as I'm concerned. Great footage and sound quality, too...



One of the fun things about some of the folks at Unfair Park is that they can be nostalgia geeks just like me. They dug these clips up the other day from an old Genesis show in Dallas that I was definitely not at but would have loved. Actually, I have to admit still liking a great deal of old Genesis stuff...and I think I've figured out why: out of all those bands from 70s-80s prog-rock heyday, Genesis was probably the least pretentious of the bunch. Which is a back-handed compliment, for sure. But they were also the least concerned with showing off flashy, self-indulgent musicianship in favor of focusing on songs. A novel concept in the prog world. But how many other bands from that genre willingly spared their audiences from those ridiculous twenty-minute solos that folks like Carl Palmer, Chris Squire or Rick Wakeman would never dream of? And it's not as if Genesis couldn't have diddled us to death if they'd have wanted to. That's actually the neatest part of these clips...being reminded how truly great they all were as musicians without having to witness them beat us over the heads with solos and stupid shit like that. I had forgotten (or maybe never knew) that the band had ever toured with Steve Hackett playing guitar after Peter Gabriel left. It's also fun to watch to be reminded of what a truly extraordinary drummer Phil Collins was (I personally rank him in the all-time top five or so). And then there's Tony Banks, who I still think is perhaps the most underrated keyboard player from that time. Like the rest of the band, he wasn't flashy and he didn't play for the sake of making himself look good...he played what was needed for the songs. Back when I was first playing guitar, I remember deciding I wanted to play guitar the way Tony Banks played keyboards. It was a style that was concise and melodic...it functioned as a "lead" instrument without being overly obnoxious about it...

But whatever. I'm babbling. Just watch the shit.

And then I stumbled across this...one of my favorite songs from one of my all-time favorite albums (Faith No More's Angel Dust). I had no idea they ever made a video for this song, but it's wonderful...may be the greatest video I've seen years. Fucking hilarious.