The Yardbirds - Anderson Theatre, New York City 3/30/68
There are really quite a few Jimmy Page-era Yardbirds shows available, the problem is that most of them are so muddy and poor sounding they’re barely worth listening to, that is, unless you want to see the first seeds of Led Zeppelin. Fortunately there’s this Anderson Theater Yardbirds show, which is by far the clearest of the Pagebirds’ recorded dates. The Yardbirds really were a creative bunch of musicians whose contribution to rock seems largely overlooked compared to their status as a rock guitar god assembly line (Page follows both Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck). Their music ranges from the obviously beat-inspired early pop through the psychedelic experimentation on Roger the Engineer and onto the late version here that seems to be working on new ways to move the blues forward. Specifically the early version of Dazed and Confused here is of interest to the historian, although it’s easy to see why all the fixes were made, particularly on the lyrics end. An interesting and rather eclectic gig altogether, it’s easy to see all the directions finally disintegrating the band into its constituents.
Kyuss - Generator Party, Indio Hills, Palm Springs 5/18/93 (video)
Before Sleep and before the mighty and legendary Bongnaut came Kyuss, the band that practically defines desert rock or stoner rock or whatever you want to call this stuff, and I give Kyuss the credit over Black Sabbath just by view of the fact that Sabs were really never as one dimensional as so much of (this part of) their lineage. This Generator Party video is actually quite cool, it’s as if they and their fans drove into the middle of nowhere, set up the instruments and went to work with the audience arranged in a circle around them. The filmer, as part of the audience seems to be just on the periphery of the eye of the storm, occasionally with people in front keeping the view to a musician or two. It almost gives the impression the whole event is moving like a slow whirlpool. Kyuss themselves seem to be rather amped up, and while I recognize most of the music here from their albums, it’s delievered at a much more intense pace and quite a bit more exciting as a result, almost, ahem, “Snowblind” if you will. It makes this a rather great artifact overall, even if the very samey material starts to wear its welcome out by the end. Fortunately the show is just about at the right length.