Thanks to
@mancity2012_eamo for putting this concept together.
I know he spent a fair bit of time agonising over how to present this and worrying about the format, but I think a couple of weeks watching some live performances
on YouTube will make a nice change.
I don't think people will be learning too much from my selected clips but hopefully it will reinforce how good they all are live. Following on from
@threespires idea, I'll call mine the headline stage - minimum 50,0000 capacity for my acts!
"Enter Sandman" - Metallica
I'm not a big Metallica fan but I do love this song. My wife actually found this version one day and I just love the outdoor setting in Trondheim in the summer.
No doubt it was about 11PM local time, but still light. Of course, the band's performance is great, with added pyrotechnics.
"Youngstown" - Bruce Springsteen
I was originally going to go with "Badlands" from the same show, but went for this song instead.
Not only is "Youngstown" one of his great songs, it's an electrifying performance that is bolstered by accordion and fiddle and lit up by Nils Lofgren's incendiary solo.
Lyrically, I think Bruce Springsteen is a much better songwriter than many give him credit for. On this song, he takes on the history of the iron and steel industry in Youngstown and the surrounding area. In the chorus, when he sings "My sweet Jenny I'm sinking down", most listeners would assume that Jenny is the protagonist's wife,
but it's actually the nickname of the Jeanette Blast Furnace, owned by Youngstown Sheet and Tube, which shut down in 1977.
Some of the lyrics reference the bitterness at how the mills provided what the US needed for its wars but then were shutdown by "the big boys":-
Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from world war two
Now the yards just scrap and rubble
He said, “Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do”
These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country’s wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we’re wondering what they were dyin’ for
"Fingers of Love" - Crowded House
My favourite Crowded House song from the end of their Farewell to the World concert on the steps of Sydney Opera House in November 1996.
Of course, they would come back a number of times over the years in various configurations but they never matched the magic of those initial four studio albums.
The original trio of Neil Finn, Paul Hester and Nick Seymour is here bolstered by American Mark Hart, who played guitar on the Together Alone album from where this track comes.