10 Days - 10 Great Live Performances The Bangles

[Mr.Mystery]

1975-1985

Finally, after enduring the bleak Disco craze that utterly killed folk rock and anything interesting musically, a new sound emerges that wasn’t based on synthesized drum machines and laser lights: New Wave.

The Bangles, whom some might WRONGLY see as merely pop, started as a rocking guitar jam band and along with The Clash, Elvis Costello, The Ramones, and Devo took us back to a raw, defiant sound.

Here’s a high energy performance in Pittsburgh, PA, in which they perform their big hit at the time, “Walk Like an Egyptian.” Each member of the group gets a solo vocal part. Also, the promotion was apparently that some audience members got tee shirts, and one of those shirts gets tossed on stage and lands on a mike stand . . . Did not seem to phase Michael Steele, the bassist.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. That's great. I wish I'd been there. Here's a slower version I posted a few weeks back:

Last edited Sat Oct 15, 2022, 05:58 AM - Edit history (1)

Mon Sep 19, 2022: (Talk Like) An Egyptian

I had forgotten how good this song was until I watched the video.

#TheBangles #WalkLikeanEgyptian #OfficialVideo
The Bangles - Walk Like an Egyptian (Official Video)

The Bangles
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Official Video for "Walk Like an Egyptian” by The Bangles
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Ask your voice device to play The Bangles!

Lyrics:
Foreign types with the hookah pipes say
(Way-oh-way-oh, ooh-way-oh-way-oh)
Walk like an Egyptian

#TheBangles #WalkLikeanEgyptian #OfficialVideo

[Mr.Mystery]

2. Hah! Cool . . . Luv the video cuts

I wonder if they’re singing over the studio version here.

Anyway, fun to see.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. Good stuff, saw them around then, opening for ... someone, I forget who

Thought you're doing 1975-1985 ... this says 1986

Also, if your 1985 entry is not U2-Bad or Queen-Bohemian Rhapsody (both at Live Aid), your list is faulty

[Mr.Mystery]

4. I would have liked to have seen them

And a few others from that era—Elvis Costello, B52’s, but I was overseas for about six years then.

Had a chance to see Springsteen after his “Blinded by the Light” came out . . . But I hated that song, so I didn’t go. Big mistake.

[Mr.Mystery]

5. 1986 . . . Yes, you caught me.

I wondered if anybody would notice that. I figured I could get away with it because the SONG came out before 1986 IIRC, heh. On edit—I looked this up, and the song was released in 1986 too, so I was wrong again, heigh ho.

As far as Queen and U2, I am still thinking them over. I wanted to limit it to straight ahead rock, and they’re more what I’d call “alternative rock.” Same with The Grateful Dead . . . A lot of jazz and pop influences depending on the song. Was also staying away from Metal and Blues based stuff (Allman Bros).

But you’re absolutely right that those two gave great live performances at Live Aid.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

6. Well, it's your show, baby ;) Do what ya gotta do (nt)

[Hugh_Lebowski]

7. Also, in the event you struggle on 1978 ... Journey on The Midnight Special

Doing Feeling That Way/Anytime is pretty kick ass, and fits your theme

[Mr.Mystery]

8. That's a good idea -- one performance for each year

I had not thought of that . . . I was just going with ten live music performances from that time span.

Anyway, will check out Journey. It always seemed to me that Midnight Special performances we’re never the best for some reason, but this might be an exception.

Tomorrow is going to be Dire Straits at the Hammersmith Odeon.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

9. Dire Straits was on fire then ... I approve!

A major fave, though it's lip-synched, it's one of the best sync-jobs I've ever seen, only a couple obvious flubs.

That and the fact that Mark's brother should be on an acoustic (probably a National by the sound of it)

Still, it's a damn pro job, and I freaking LOVE this song.

Also, check out Midnight Special (if you've not seen 'em before):
Sanford Townsend Band - Smoke from a Distant Fire
Manfred Mann - Blinded by the Light

Cause those are both freaking killer.

[highplainsdem]

13. Curious about why you'd exclude various bands always considered rock, because of influences.

Last edited Sat Oct 15, 2022, 03:25 PM - Edit history (1)

Rock has always been a melding of influences. And good luck trying to find a short yet accurate label for artists, in many instances. I've noticed the descriptions of artists' music on both Wikipedia and AllMusic are often long and seemingly conflicting, both because you'll hear different influences with different songs and because critics/journalists don't always agree on what influences they're hearing.

Re Live Aid and Queen's perfomance - I prefer "Radio Go Ga" to "Bohemian Rhapsody." But "Bohemian Rhapsody" has never been one of my favorite Queen songs.

I loved Status Quo's "Rockin' All Over The World" - best possible opening for Live Aid IMO - and Bowie's performance of "Heroes" then, too, though I preferred his early 2000s performances of that song.

We all have different preferences, and I'm glad we do. It would be so boring otherwise...

[highplainsdem]

10. Mr.Mystery, if you're interested in great live rock performances,

I hope you'll check out videos from Rockpalast.

Wikipedia article on the show's history: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockpalast

YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/WDRRockpalast

And just searching YouTube for Rockpalast, with or without an artist's name, will turn up a lot more.

I've posted videos here of great Rockpalast performances (both individual songs and complete concerts) by the Pretenders, Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher, Dire Straits, U2, ZZ Top, the Ian Hunter Band, Stevie Ray Vaughan and others.

Including Golden Earring, whose Rockpalast performance of "Twilight Zone" was the video I found that made me aware of the show. Btw, this concert was a couple of months before the band recorded the song, and they hadn't yet decided on the final song title, as you can tell when they introduce it. But the hour-and -a-half concert this was part of was broadcast after the album.was recorded, so the final title appears on the screen, several minutes in.

If you want a great live performance of a song that was a megahit in 1982, this will do.

[Mr.Mystery]

11. :headbang:

[highplainsdem]

12. Great song, isn't it? And still sounds so good today, 40 years later. From

a Guardian article about the song 10 years ago, 12/13/2012, by Michael Hann, the Guardian's music editor then:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/dec/13/old-music-golden-earring-twilight-zone

Old music: Golden Earring – Twilight Zone
The best AOR record of the early 80s? Something by Fleetwood Mac, maybe? No, it was made by four Dutch blokes


Theirs is a fascinating discography. Their first records – made as the Golden Earrings – were in the style history has dubbed Nederbeat, that being the admirably tough Dutch take on the British R&B explosion of the mid-60s. They embraced the psychedelia and then the new mood of progressive exploration – their 1970 album Eight Miles High featured a 19-minute take on the Byrds' song that's surprisingly decent, as 19-minute takes on mid-60s pop classics go – and found themselves briefly famous outside their home nation when Radar Love became an international hit in 1973, the kind of boogie that seemed effortlessly find an audience in those distant days.

Then they disappeared back to massive success in Holland and relative obscurity everywhere else for another nine years, until 1982 saw the release of Twilight Zone, which became a US smash. Golden Earring were by now a different band again, producing slick pop-rock that was perfectly placed to capitalise on both the rise of AOR and the birth of MTV.

The usual explanation for Twilight Zone's success is that its stylish, cinematic promo clip became a staple of the young music network, and that's true. But it rather ignores the song, which is just about as good as AOR ever got. I'm not sure an American band would or could ever have written Twilight Zone: there's a very European edginess and sense of discomfort to it, both lyrically and muscially, which the faux noir video suits admirably. And you can hear the many and varied lives of Golden Earring folded into its construction – the beat group in its simple opening guitar figure and familiar chord changes and the progressive explorers in the guitar solos of the extended album version brought together into something slick and of its time.

Of its time, though, suggests it is mired in the 80s. But it's not. Twilight Zone has a clean and crisp production (probably helped by being just a little too early for the gated snare sound that ruined so many records in the second half of the decade) that's all but timeless – certainly, many of the groups who've been dabbling with 80s MOR in the past couple of years might learn something from its combination of rock's propulsion and pop's tunefulness: this is indisputably a rock band – that crashing chord, just off the beat, at "when the bullet hits the bone" is proof enough of that. Twilight Zone would work without the production bells and whistles, but they're restrained enough to complement the song, and I think a straight rock version wouldn't generate the same excitement (a part of me wonders what Trevor Horn might have made of it, given what he did to Yes's Owner of a Lonely Heart).

Editing to link to a post linking to more info here about the band, which did have a fascinating discography, as Hann said, despite their being almost unknown outside the Netherlands except for a couple of international hits.

https://democraticunderground.com/103480101#post2

And some more threads about Golden Earring since that was posted two months ago:

https://democraticunderground.com/103481003

https://democraticunderground.com/103481008

https://democraticunderground.com/103481502

https://democraticunderground.com/103482117

https://democraticunderground.com/103482262

https://democraticunderground.com/103483104

https://democraticunderground.com/103483173