There are always those bands that you’d wish you’d seen live—bands that seem like they’ll go on for­ev­er (maybe so long you wish they’d quit already). But then you nev­er get around to it, and, Bam!, one day the chance is lost. One of those bands for me is R.E.M., the only U.S. band in my book whose ear­ly work stood up to almost every­thing The Smiths put out. Since I was such a young lad when I first heard them cir­ca-Doc­u­ment, it wasn’t easy for me to get out to con­certs. And by the time I was old enough, they’d moved on some from their ear­ly jan­gle and stomp, garage-rock, post-punk sound, and I’d moved on to oth­er favorites. That’s a shame, in hind­sight, but now thanks to the heav­en­ly mag­ic (or dev­il­ry) of YouTube, I can (and do) spend hours catch­ing up on con­cert film of bands like R.E.M. that I was born too late to see live in their prime.

Whether or not you had the priv­i­lege of see­ing Michael Stipe and com­pa­ny in per­son, there’s lit­tle chance that you were at the show above (if so, speak up!). It’s prob­a­bly one of their first, at the 688 Club in Atlanta, open­ing for Tex-Mex “Nue­vo wavo” gui­tarist, Joe “King” Car­ras­co.

This gig took place on either Feb­ru­ary 2oth or 21st, 1981, a full eigh­teen months before their debut release, the EP Chron­ic Town. There are a few tunes here that nev­er resur­faced in lat­er record­ings (“Nar­ra­tor,” “Dan­ger­ous Times”) and a cou­ple that became clas­sics (“Gar­den­ing at Night,” “Radio Free Europe”). The film opens with them in the midst of cov­er­ing the Son­ny West-penned 1950’s clas­sic “Rave On” (one of Bud­dy Holly’s last hits). And of course it makes per­fect sense that they would owe a debt to this sound, but they trans­formed it so com­plete­ly in their orig­i­nal song­writ­ing that it isn’t always evi­dent. They pull it off with panache.

The whole gig is a tes­ta­ment to what a togeth­er band they were even at this ear­ly stage. It’s all there—Stipe’s vocal quirks and full-body dance attacks, Mike Mills’ bounc­ing bass lines and angel­ic vocal har­monies, Peter Buck’s right-hand­ed Rick­en­backer arpeg­gios (and dap­per vest), and drum­mer Bill Berry’s ever-reli­able back­beat. Nev­er known as over­ly tech­ni­cal musi­cians (an over­rat­ed qual­i­ty in rock, in my opin­ion), what R.E.M. may have lacked in vir­tu­os­i­ty, they made up for in per­son­al­i­ty. Anoth­er com­plete con­cert film below, from Octo­ber 10th, 1982, shows them on a high, two months after Chron­ic Town’s release. Filmed at the Raleigh Under­ground, this gig includ­ed a num­ber of songs that would appear on their first full-length, the moody, con­fi­dent, and time­less Mur­mur.

via Slic­ing Up Eye­balls

Relat­ed Con­tent

R.E.M.’s Final Live Moments in Mex­i­co (and a Vin­tage Ear­ly Con­cert)

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Here’s some­thing to get your week start­ed on the right note: John Coltrane in 1961, play­ing his hyp­not­ic, dervish-like modal arrange­ment of the pop­u­lar Rodgers and Ham­mer­stein song, “My Favorite Things.”

The per­for­mance was record­ed by Ger­man pub­lic tele­vi­sion in Baden-Baden on Novem­ber 24, 1961–the same year as the release of Coltrane’s break­through solo album, also named My Favorite Things. The quin­tet includes Coltrane on sopra­no sax­o­phone, Eric Dol­phy on flute, McCoy Tyn­er on piano, Reg­gie Work­man on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. You can see the com­plete TV broad­cast, along with two oth­ers, in our Novem­ber 21 post, “John Coltrane: Three Great Euro­pean Per­for­mances, 1960, 1961 and 1965.”

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Relat­ed con­tent:

John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ Ani­mat­ed

John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot (1945)

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

In 2006, Anti- Records, home of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neko Case, Kate Bush (and so many more favorites of mine, this list is already too long), pub­lished the tons-of-fun com­pi­la­tion Rogue’s Gallery, a selec­tion of sea shanties and pirate songs as inter­pret­ed by an ensem­ble of lumi­nar­ies from the pop, indie, and folk worlds. The two-CD, forty-three track release is avail­able on YouTube (I’d rec­om­mend Nick Cave’s “Fire Down Below,” but he’s an old hand at this kind of thing).

Both CDs are pro­duced by Hal Will­ner and curat­ed by Will­ner and Pirates of the Caribbean star John­ny Depp and direc­tor Gore Verbin­s­ki; Son of Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Bal­lads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys is set for release on Feb­ru­ary 19th. Will­ner told Rolling Stone in Decem­ber that this new release “seems happier—not as much about tor­ture, sodomy and death.” Hard to imag­ine a sea song with­out those three things, but here we are, with “Shenan­doah” (above), a nos­tal­gic hymn to old Vir­ginia, sup­pos­ed­ly sung by Mis­souri Riv­er flat­boat­men in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, then export­ed ‘round the world on clip­per ships. The ver­sion above by Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards turns the maudlin bal­lad into a drunk­en funer­al dirge. A com­menter on the video puts it per­fect­ly: “If a song could smell like whiskey….” Richards’ spare elec­tric gui­tar work near the end adds a clean, melod­ic coun­ter­point to Waits’ down-and-out growl. Won­der­ful stuff.

The song has long been a favorite of clean-shaven choral and vocal groups like the Statler Broth­ers and Mor­mon Taber­na­cle Choir and was the title theme of the 1965 Civ­il War film Shenan­doah, with Jim­my Stew­art. Waits and Richards do the song a much-need­ed service—they reclaim it for the drunk­en, dirty boat­men and rum-soaked, lone­ly sailors who sang it at sea.

* Cor­rec­tion: a pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this post stat­ed that Rogue’s Gallery and Son of Rogue’s Gallery were asso­ci­at­ed with the Walt Dis­ney com­pa­ny and part of the Pirates of the Caribbean pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign. As you can see from pro­duc­er Hal Will­ner’s com­ment below, nei­ther project is asso­ci­at­ed with Dis­ney or the mar­ket­ing of the Pirates films. We apol­o­gize for the mis­take. 

Relat­ed Con­tent

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Josh Jones is a free­lance writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness