In Wolf­gang’s Vault, you’ll find Van Mor­ri­son singing “Cyprus Avenue.” But it won’t be the orig­i­nal track from his 1968 album Astral Weeks; it’ll be a dif­fer­ent, near­ly eight-and-a-half-minute ren­di­tion, which you’ll watch Mor­ri­son per­form onstage at New York’s Fill­more East on Sep­tem­ber 23, 1970. Those who have seen Mor­ri­son per­form live in any era tend to describe it as an expe­ri­ence high­ly dis­tinct from hear­ing him sing on record, and ulti­mate­ly a nec­es­sary one for those seek­ing to ful­ly appre­ci­ate his work. Unlike so many musi­cians who rose to great pop­u­lar­i­ty in the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties, Mor­ri­son con­tin­ues to tour, and so these oppor­tu­ni­ties remain avail­able. But how many of Mor­rison’s fans could pos­si­bly have made it to his shows at the Fill­more East back then? How many, for that mat­ter, were alive back then? Those of us who weren’t have Wolf­gang to thank, I sup­pose, for mak­ing avail­able these his­toric con­cert clips that deep­en our under­stand­ing of artists like Mor­ri­son.

Yet Wolf­gang him­self, it turns out, is no longer among us. Known in full as Wolo­dia “Wolf­gang” Gra­jon­ca, he rose to promi­nence when, after a name change and a try­ing relo­ca­tion from Berlin to San Fran­cis­co, he became the west coast con­cert pro­mot­er and icon­ic coun­ter­cul­ture rock impre­sario Bill Gra­ham. Small won­der, then, that the inter­net archive which bears his name con­tains so much com­pelling vin­tage con­cert footage. Browse it by per­former, and you’ll spot many of the names you’d expect to: Jef­fer­son Air­plane, The Band, The Grate­ful Dead. But dig even deep­er and you’ll find real sur­pris­es, like Yoko Ono play­ing Giants Sta­di­um in 1986 and a vast cache of songs, cap­tured on thrilling­ly lo-fi video, per­formed by visu­al­ly pio­neer­ing and media-sat­i­riz­ing new wave band The Tubes. An after­noon spent in Wolf­gang’s Vault makes a fine primer on the most endur­ing rock played in Gra­ham’s hey­day, but also yields some delight­ful­ly odd per­for­mances you’d nev­er expect to see today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Archive

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Here’s a Fri­day night dou­ble fea­ture for the die-hard rock and roll fan: two full-length Led Zep­pelin movies.

Both films grew out of band man­ag­er Peter Grant’s dream of bring­ing the expe­ri­ence of a Led Zep­pelin con­cert to the big screen. And although both were essen­tial­ly attempts at the same thing, the two films were shot more than three years apart, so they show the band in two dis­tinct peri­ods of its career.

Led Zep­pelin Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall:

On Jan­u­ary 9, 1970, less than three months after the release of Led Zep­pelin II, the band played the his­toric Roy­al Albert Hall on the third night of an eight-show UK tour. By all accounts it was a high-ener­gy show. When the con­cert was over, Nick Logan of the New Music Express wrote:

I spoke to Jim­my Page after the show and he con­fessed that the whole band had suf­fered extreme nerves before­hand, main­ly because peo­ple like John Lennon, Eric Clap­ton and Jeff Beck had request­ed tick­ets. “But it was just like it was at the Albert Hall in the sum­mer,” said Jim­my, “with every­one danc­ing around the stage. It was a great feel­ing. What could be bet­ter than hav­ing every­one clap­ping and shout­ing along? It’s inde­scrib­able; but it just makes you feel that every­thing is worth­while.

You can read Logan’s review of the show, along with oth­er press reports, at LedZeppelin.com. The con­cert was filmed by Peter White­head and Stan­ley Dorf­man. But the band was unhap­py with the qual­i­ty of the footage, and it was put away until the release of the two-disc Led Zep­pelin DVD in 2003. The film (above) cap­tures the pow­er­ful ear­ly phase of the band’s career. Here’s the set list:

1. We’re Gonna Groove
2. I Can’t Quit You Baby
3. Dazed and Con­fused
4. White Sum­mer
5. What Is and What Should Nev­er Be
6. How Many More Times
7. Moby Dick
8. Whole Lot­ta Love
9. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Break­down
10. C’mon Every­body
11. Some­thin’ Else
12. Bring It On Home

The Song Remains the Same:

Unhap­py with the Roy­al Albert Hall film, Grant wait­ed sev­er­al years before try­ing to pro­duce anoth­er con­cert film. With lit­tle more than a week left in the band’s 1973 North Amer­i­can tour, he hired film­mak­er Joe Mas­sot to doc­u­ment the final three shows at New York’s Madi­son Square Gar­den. Mas­sot scram­bled to assem­ble a film crew before the con­certs, which took place July 27–29. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the pro­duc­tion was a dis­or­ga­nized mess. Again the band was unhap­py with the con­cert footage. Even­tu­al­ly Mas­sot was fired from the project and Peter Clifton was hired to com­plete the film. In 1974 the band rent­ed space at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios in Eng­land to film sup­ple­men­tary con­cert footage.

The movie was final­ly released in Octo­ber of 1976. Fans loved it but crit­ics found the film ama­teur­ish and self-indul­gent. The con­cert footage was inter­spersed with “fan­ta­sy sequences” filmed by Mas­sot of Grant and the band mem­bers play­ing dif­fer­ent roles. “The Song Remains the Same is not a great film,” Page said lat­er, “but there’s no point in mak­ing excus­es. It’s just a rea­son­ably hon­est state­ment of where we were at that par­tic­u­lar time.” The con­cert cap­tures the band at the height of their fame. Here are the songs played in the con­cert scenes:

1. Bron-Yr-Aur
2. Rock and Roll
3. Black Dog
4. Since I’ve Been Lov­ing You
5. No Quar­ter
6. The Song Remains the Same
7. The Rain Song
8. Dazed and Con­fused
9. Stair­way to Heav­en
10. Moby Dick
11. Heart­break­er
12. Whole Lot­ta Love

Bob Dylan and John­ny Cash had formed a mutu­al admi­ra­tion soci­ety even before they met in the ear­ly 1960s.

“Of course, I knew of him before he ever heard of me,” Dylan wrote short­ly after Cash’s death in 2003. “In ’55 or ’56, ‘I Walk the Line’ played all sum­mer on the radio, and it was dif­fer­ent than any­thing else you had ever heard. The record sound­ed like a voice from the mid­dle of the Earth. It was so pow­er­ful and mov­ing.”

When the young Dylan arrived on the scene in 1962, Cash was impressed.

“I was deeply into folk music in the ear­ly 1960s,” he wrote in Cash: The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “both the authen­tic songs from var­i­ous peri­ods and areas of Amer­i­can life and the new ‘folk revival’ songs of the time, so I took note of Bob Dylan as soon as the Bob Dylan album came out in ear­ly ’62 and lis­tened almost con­stant­ly to The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan in ’63. I had a portable record play­er I’d take along on the road, and I’d put on Free­wheel­in’ back­stage, then go out and do my show, then lis­ten again as soon as I came off.”

Cash wrote the young Dylan a fan let­ter, and they began cor­re­spond­ing. When they met at the 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val, Cash gave Dylan his gui­tar as a ges­ture of respect and admi­ra­tion. Five years lat­er, when Dylan was in Nashville record­ing his ninth stu­dio album, Cash was record­ing in the stu­dio next door. He decid­ed to drop in. On Feb­ru­ary 17 and 18, 1969, Cash and Dylan record­ed more than a dozen duets. Only one of them, a ver­sion of Dylan’s “Girl From the North Coun­try,” made it onto the album, Nashville Sky­line. The oth­ers were nev­er offi­cial­ly released, but have long been cir­cu­lat­ing as bootlegs. In the video above, Dylan and Cash work on one of two ver­sions they made of “One Too Many Morn­ings,” a song orig­i­nal­ly record­ed by Dylan in 1964 for The Times They Are a‑Changin’.  The out­takes Dylan and Cash record­ed togeth­er are all scat­tered around Youtube. One Youtu­ber post­ed a com­pi­la­tion back in 2013.

A few weeks after the release of Nashville Sky­line, Dylan and Cash per­formed “Girl From the North Coun­try” on The John­ny Cash Show. It was taped on May 1, 1969 at the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in down­town Nashville. A rough video clip (around the 30 minute mark) cap­tures the moment. Despite Dylan’s report­ed ner­vous­ness, the per­for­mance was well-received. “I did­n’t feel any­thing about it,” Cash said lat­er. “But every­body said it was the most mag­net­ic, pow­er­ful thing they ever heard in their life. They were just rav­ing about elec­tric­i­ty and mag­net­ism. And all I did was just sit there hit­ting G chords.”

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Rus­sell Fall­stad and Adam DeGraff come from Lewis­burg, West Vir­ginia. The two fiddlers/violinists have been close friends for 20+ years. They trained togeth­er at the same music schools, steep­ing them­selves in clas­si­cal music. Then, they decid­ed to move in a new direc­tion and explore the brave new world of “vio­lin rock,” where “clas­si­cal train­ing com­bines with siz­zling ener­gy and a raw impro­vi­sa­tion­al cre­ativ­i­ty.” Above you can watch the Duel­ing Fid­dlers pre­pare for their debut con­cert, per­form­ing an AC/DC mashup of “Back in Back” and “Thun­der­struck.” Maybe one day you’ll find them on tour with 2Cellos, who per­form G ‘n R’s “Wel­come to the Jun­gle” below.

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