They just played this on the radio. Thank god there’s YouTube. What an outstanding performance of Hurricane by the legendary Neil Young & the Crazy Horse (from the epic Live Rust album).
Only 6 days ago I saw Pearl Jam performing an excellent show at the Gibson Amphitheater. However, last night is by far the best rock concert I have ever seen and one that will probably become one of the most memorized and mentioned shows in Pearl Jam’s 2009 tour.
Reasons:
1. Set: plenty of non-hits you don’t hear often – Faithful, Unemployable, Footsteps are just a few example. Between yesterday’s show and last week’s show I saw them perform 35 different songs. Only 9 songs were played in both shows, 5 of them are from Backspacer (Got Some, The Fixer, the fantastic Unthought Unknown, Just Breathe and The End) so they still sound fresh, new and very exciting.
2. Fans: The fans energy level was a lot higher than last week’s first show and the band reacted well to this. When the special guest (see below) came on stage the roof exploded off.
2. Gibson Amphitheater Acoustic: I said it in my previous post but must say it again. The sound quality in this venue is fantastic. During the first encore opened with Eddie team with a string quartet and performed Just Breathe, The End and Lukin (you got to see the video). Unlike last week’s show, last night you could actually hear the strings providing incredible cover to Eddie’s voice.
3. Special guests: the highlight of they evening. Into the 2nd encore Eddie said something like “what makes certain nights special is the presence of one person in the room…” and then he surprised/shocked everyone and invited Chris Cornell to join the band. Their performance of Temple Of The Dog’s Hunger Strike was fantastic. Chris’s voice sounded so good and the band performed it so well.
And finally, right before we thought we have seen everything, in the middle of the final song, Alive, as the song’s guitar solo started, Mike McCready handed his guitar over to Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains) who made my ears bleed…
What an epic performance that I am so happy I captured on my Flip HD (all songs except for two). It was difficult not to sing & jump and luckily my battery lasted all the way to the end. When the bootleg will be released I plan to get it and mix the video with high quality audio.
BTW, looks like my Hunger Strike video was picked by the RollingStone. Nice.
Here’s the entire playlist embedded in this page. Just hit the play button, expand the video to a full screen mode and turn on the volume.
Update (10/8/09): My buddy Bill went to the last Pearl Jam concert in LA last night. He was gracious enough to take my camera and shot the entire show. After you are done watching LA3, you might also want to check out LA4 playlist. It was a fantastic night as well.
Let’s rock!
TheSound LA features the best rock music made to date. As simple as that. And it is great to discover (and re-discover) every day albums, songs and artists that have made rock music what it is. That’s why it is my favorite radio station.
I enjoyed listening this morning on my way to work to “Album Sides Wednesday” (and twittered about it, twice) that I wanted to continue listening to uninterrupted, dusty, classics vinyl albums, but, was so disappointed to find out that you can not do it online because “According to rules agreed upon with the Recording Industry Association of America, we are banned from presenting uninterrupted album sides on an Internet stream.”. So now I have to switch back to iTunes and listen to compressed and narrow spectrum MP3 files, at least I am back in the car.
Regardless of that, wherever you are located, and as long as you love rock music, you should add TheSound LA to your radio and bookmark the site so you could listen to it online- 24 hours, 6 days a week.
The past weekend in Los Angeles was all about Israeli music. As part of celebrating 60 years of independence to the state of Israel, a few Israeli artists came to town to perform.
The first concert I saw was by one my favorite Israeli band, Hadag Nachash (and if you insist to translate it to English — “the Fish Snake”). Hadag performed at Temple Sinai in Los Angeles at what seems to be a well kept secret among the people who live in the city. It was a fairly intimate show but an amazing one!
I stood right next to the stage, took plenty of photos (sorry for the poor quality – that’s the iPhone to blame), recorded a few videos and had a great time.
Here’s the opening song – Lotus. Two additional videos can be found here and here.
The second concert took place the following day at the world famous Kodak Theatre which was packed with excited crowd. It was an impressive and well organized event, with a few speakers (Kirk Douglas was one of them), dance shows and live performance by four leading Israeli artists and bands: Idan Reichel, Achinoam Nini (Noa), Rami Klenstein and Habanot Nechama (young, fresh — a great surprise for me).
Here’s Habanot performing Hachnisini, a classic song written by Israel’s national poet, Hayyim Nahman Bialik.
And more Israeli artists are coming to town. This coming Sunday, at Woodley park there will be a huge event to celebrate Israel’s independence day with a few artists, and last, but not least, another pop/rock legendary band, Mashina will be in town on May 27. I am going to be in both events.
What a great month for Israel music lovers.
