Before the Clash, before the Sex Pis­tols, there were the Ramones. The mot­ley group from For­est Hills, Queens ignit­ed the punk move­ment, first in New York and lat­er in Lon­don, with an image and sound that cut to the core of rock and roll: jeans and leather jack­ets and two-minute songs played one after anoth­er at break­neck speed. As the band’s biog­ra­phy at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame web­site says:

The Ramones revi­tal­ized rock and roll at one of its low­est ebbs, infus­ing it with punk ener­gy, brash atti­tude and a loud, fast new sound. When the punk-rock quar­tet from Queens hit the street in 1976 with their self-titled first album, the rock scene in gen­er­al had become some­what bloat­ed and nar­cis­sis­tic. The Ramones got back to basics: sim­ple, speedy, stripped-down rock and roll songs. Voice, gui­tar, bass, drums. No make­up, no egos, no light shows, no non­sense.

On Decem­ber 31, 1977, the Ramones played a clas­sic show at the Rain­bow The­atre in North Lon­don. The music was pre­served on the 1979 album It’s Alive, con­sid­ered by many to be the best live album from the punk era, and a por­tion of the show was lat­er includ­ed in the film Ramones: It’s Alive 1974–1996.

The 26-minute film ver­sion (above) con­tains exact­ly half of the 28 songs on the album:

1. Blitzkrieg Bop
2. I Wan­na Be Well
3. Glad to See You Go
4. You’re Gonna Kill That Girl
5. Com­man­do
6. Havana Affair
7. Cretin Hop
8. Lis­ten to My Heart
9. I Don’t Wan­na Walk Around With You
10. Pin­head
11. Do You Wan­na Dance?
12. Now I Wan­na Be a Good Boy
13. Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue
14. We’re a Hap­py Fam­i­ly

The set list draws on mate­r­i­al from the band’s first three albums: Ramones, from ear­ly 1976, and Leave Home and Rock­et to Rus­sia, both released in 1977. The Ramones are still in their clas­sic line­up here, includ­ing Joey Ramone (Jef­frey Hyman) on vocals, John­ny Ramone (John Cum­mings) on gui­tar, Dee Dee Ramone (Dou­glas Colvin) on bass and Tom­my Ramone (Thomas Erde­lyi) on drums. Tom­my Ramone quit play­ing drums for the group a few months lat­er. Ramones: It’s Alive cap­tures one of the great­est rock and roll bands of all time at their absolute zenith. It’s a great way to get the New Year’s par­ty rolling. Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

The Ramones, a New Punk Band, Play One of Their Very First Shows at CBGB (1974)

The Ramones’ First Press Release: We’re Part Musi­cians, Den­tists & Degen­er­ates (1975)

“One man’s trash is anoth­er man’s trea­sure” — it’s a say­ing they’re tak­ing to heart in Cateu­ra, Paraguay, a small town where impov­er­ished fam­i­lies live along a vast land­fill. Cateu­ra’s res­i­dents can’t afford many things that Amer­i­can fam­i­lies often take for grant­ed, and that includes buy­ing new musi­cal instru­ments for their kids. Indeed, in Cateu­ra, your gar­den vari­ety vio­lin costs more than the aver­age home. But that has­n’t stopped the town from assem­bling a youth cham­ber orches­tra that per­forms music by Mozart, Beethoven and the Bea­t­les. The instru­ments they play are made from the trash that sur­rounds them. Oil cans become cel­los; alu­minum bowls get forged into vio­lins. And the music they make suf­fers not one bit. This inspi­ra­tional sto­ry will be told in an upcom­ing fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary called Land­fill Har­mon­ic. You can keep an eye out for the film by fol­low­ing its Face­book page, and learn more about The Recy­cled Orches­tra by read­ing this inter­view. H/T Kim

In the 1980s, Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an tore through the inter­na­tion­al music scene like a Texas tor­na­do. His amaz­ing­ly flu­id and dex­ter­ous gui­tar play­ing on a series of plat­inum albums estab­lished Vaugh­an as a house­hold name and helped spark a blues revival. But in the sum­mer of 1990 a heli­copter he was rid­ing on crashed into a hill in Wis­con­sin, and the whirl­wind had passed.

This con­cert film cap­tures Vaugh­an in full force. It was made on July 15, 1985, dur­ing Vaugh­an’s sec­ond appear­ance at the Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val. His first, in 1982, had seemed like a dis­as­ter at the time. Vaugh­an and his band Dou­ble Trou­ble had nev­er made a record and were vir­tu­al­ly unknown out­side of Texas in 1982, and their per­for­mance at Mon­treux was met by boo­ing from some mem­bers of the audi­ence. Vaugh­an was shak­en. He had nev­er been booed before. But the 1982 Mon­treux per­for­mance turned out to be the most impor­tant of Vaugh­an’s career, as Chris Gill explains in Gui­tar World:

David Bowie was in the audi­ence, and he made a point of meet­ing Vaugh­an and his man­ag­er in the after-hours lounge. John Paul Ham­mond, the son of record pro­duc­er John Ham­mond, also saw the show and asked for a tape of the per­for­mance to give to his father. Jack­son Browne caught the band’s per­for­mance in the after-hours lounge, and he sat in with the group until ear­ly the next morn­ing. With­in the next few months, Browne invit­ed Vaugh­an and Dou­ble Trou­ble to his L.A. stu­dio to record a demo, Bowie asked Ste­vie to appear on his next album [Let’s Dance], and John Ham­mond, who helped devel­op the careers of Bob Dylan and Bruce Spring­steen, helped the band sign a deal with Epic Records and offered to pro­duce their debut album. The rest, as the cliché goes, is his­to­ry.

So the 1985 Mon­treux appear­ance was some­thing of a tri­umphal return for Vaugh­an. There was no boo­ing this time. Vaugh­an had a pair of plat­inum albums under his belt, and he and Dou­ble Trou­ble were tour­ing Europe to pro­mote their third album, Soul to Soul. In the film, Vaugh­an and the band are intro­duced by fes­ti­val founder Claude Nobs, who gave them their big shot in 1982. The trio of Vaugh­an on gui­tar and vocals, Tom­my Shan­non on bass, and Chris Lay­ton on drums had just been expand­ed to include Reese Wynans on key­boards. They play 13 songs, includ­ing three with Texas blues­man John­ny Copeland, who joins them on “Cold Shot,” “Tin Pan Alley” and “Look at Lit­tle Sis­ter,” in which Copeland and Vaugh­an trade blis­ter­ing gui­tar solos. Anoth­er song, Copeland’s “Don’t Stop By the Creek, Son,” was appar­ent­ly per­formed that night but cut from the film. The rest of the con­cert appears to be intact. Here’s the set list:

1. Scut­tle Buttin’
2. Say What!
3. Ain’t Gone “N’ Give Up on Love
4. Pride and Joy
5. Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb
6. Cold Shot
7. Tin Pan Alley
8. Look at Lit­tle Sis­ter
9. Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
10. Texas Flood
11. Life With­out You
12. Gone Home
13. Could­n’t Stand the Weath­er

Relat­ed con­tent:

‘Elec­tric Church’: The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Live in Stock­holm, 1969

It has become some­thing of a new Irish tra­di­tion. For the fourth year run­ning, Bono, Glen Hansard  and friends took to the streets of Dublin — to  Grafton Street, to be pre­cise — to spread hol­i­day cheer and raise mon­ey for char­i­ty. Last year, the group per­formed a rous­ing ver­sion of the Mic Christo­pher song “Hey­day” and “Christ­mas (Baby Please Come Home).” This year, they added “Silent Night” and a ren­di­tion of U2’s “Desire” to the mix.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

The Won­drous Night When Glen Hansard Met Van Mor­ri­son

Bono Tells UPenn Grad­u­ates “Pick a Fight, Get in It” (2004)

It’s over 20 years ago now that Nirvana’s video for “Smells like Teen Spir­it” debuted on MTV’s 120 Min­utes and, for bet­ter or worse, inau­gu­rat­ed the grunge era. The video arrived as a shock and a thrill to a gen­er­a­tion too young to remem­ber punk and sick of the steady stream of cheesy cor­po­rate dance music and hair met­al that char­ac­ter­ized the late-80s. For every­one out­side the small Seat­tle scene that nur­tured them and the tape-trad­ing kids in the know, the band seemed to arrive out of nowhere as a total angst-rid­den pack­age, and the MTV video, by first-time direc­tor Samuel Bay­er, seemed brac­ing­ly anar­chic and raw at the time.

But a look at the first live per­for­mance of “Teen Spir­it” (above) makes it seem pret­ty tame by com­par­i­son. The video’s a lit­tle grainy and low-res, which suits the song just fine. Live, “Teen Spir­it’s” dis­turb­ing under­tones are more pro­nounced, its qui­et-loud dynam­ics more force­ful, and the ener­gy of the crowd is real, not the thrash­ing around of a bunch of teenage extras. Not a cheer­leader in sight, but I think this would have grabbed me more than the pep ral­ly-riot-themed MTV video did when it debuted a few months lat­er. Despite their anti-cor­po­rate stance, Nir­vana was a casu­al­ty of their own suc­cess, eat­en up by the machin­ery they despised. Their best moments are still the unscript­ed and unpre­dictable. For con­trast, zip back to 1991 and watch the MTV video below. Also don’t miss Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988).

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor. This video makes him feel old.