Ten Concerts You Must See If You Are a Time Traveler
Hey gang, it’s me again Agent 99. Most of the time my good friend Agent 77 does these listicles, he gets a bunch of the guys together in the Illuminati Ganga offices and they sit around getting drunk and doing drugs and probably jerk each other off, who knows, a bunch of sick degenerates with nothing better to do evidently. but watch great movies and pretend they’re lousy or watch lousy movies and pretend they’re great, but never have one honest, non-ironic moment because they’re too cool for that shit.
Of course now that Agent 81 is in charge she said no more of this boy’s club crap, which made my pal and his harem have a sad.
But anyway, when my buddy Agent 77 does his stupid shtick he ends up telling you a bunch of stupid shit that is wrong, fake, or just purely 100% idiotic without any of that annoying dilution of dumbness that intelligence can sometimes bring to the table.
That ain’t my style — I figured I would give you some info here you really can use. Also when Agent 77 makes a list he often does some weird mind games stuff so you can’t really figure out what the actual rankings of anything are, but I am above that kind of tawdry elitism and prefer to just present a good old fashioned ranked list, from least to best.
So without further ado — my list of 10 great concerts you should see if you’re a time traveler. Enjoy!
10. Woodstock — Sure this is a good one although gotta admit a little foreseeable. If you’ve seen the movie a couple times you’ve been there, although with more personal cleanliness.
This concert will make you repeat Prince’s ending slam from All The Critics Love You In New York, to-wit “Take a Bath, hippie”.
In fact it’s basically here because it’s cool, but it does not measure up to its reputation, so while it is nice it can’t help but underwhelm and leave you disappointed.
A lot of people, especially socially conscious younger folks, like to try to go to Altamont instead and save Meredith Hunter from being killed by The Hell’s Angels
I don’t recommend this as it can only lead to trouble. I’ve definitely known a couple clueless kids that ended up getting fucked up for their trouble. In one case someone brought back an Enfirbion blaster, which Sonny Barger ended up getting a hold of and shooting a bunch of people in L.A in his bid to conquer California until Nixon had him whacked.
What an idiot.
All that said if you don’t want to go to Woodstock and are willing to talk shit to back up your decision when someone questions it, you might like to try Live Aid. And now you are going to ask the obvious question — which one — London or Philadelphia, and I answer with the obvious rejoinder — Hey, schmuck, you’re obviously not thinking straight. You’re a time traveler — you go to both! Attendance at both venues is a pretty sweet comeback if some annoying person wants to make hay at your expense about not bothering to go see a bunch of hippies while standing in manure and mud.
9. OK, this one you also have to go to so that people will leave you the fuck alone. Basically if the subject of concerts comes up and people know you’re a time traveler you would have to defend yourself as a worthwhile human being to people who probably haven’t even been outside of their country, much less timeline if you did not go to this concert, and to Woodstock. So that’s why it’s here — ok so now you know what concert I’m talking about or you will if you think about it for a second, so before I actually drop the name here is a big, unrelated picture of Jimi Hendrix from Woodstock to give a visual break.
Ok, you ready. The concert in question is of course The Beatles at Shea Stadium.
Now before you start oohing and ahhing and maybe yeah, yeah, yeahing about how great that would be let me list the downsides
- you probably won’t be able to see shit unless you’re up front and you won’t get up front and you wouldn’t want to be upfront anyway
- There are tens of thousands of screaming sexually enraged teenage girls and young women who will trample you to death if you try to get upfront
- Because of number 2 and also technical limitations of the time the sound quality was shit.
- If you are a woman you are competing with these tens of thousands to get laid, so you are statistically speaking not getting laid.
Now the benefits:
- If you are a young man and have even a modicum of game and reasonable appearance — you are getting laid.
That’s it, other than of course the benefit of saying that you’ve been. And then when people ask you how it was you say it was ok but.. and you bring up one of these other concerts that follow to really show off your stuff.
8. Choose a minor Prince gig. Either the George Harrison induction ceremony at the Rock and Roll hall of fame or the Superbowl. Obviously the George Harrison is not a Prince gig, but he was there and people like to say he owned it so you sort of have to describe it as a Prince gig even though technically it wasn’t one. It’s complicated. On the other hand the Superbowl halftime show was a full Prince show, although short, but come on.
If you like football — or are a Colts fan — the choice is obvious.
A lot of people like to say the Rock and Roll hall of fame induction because they think when Prince throws his guitar up in the air they can use their time travel tool of choice to zip up there and get it — well guess what SUCKERS, old Agent 99 was way ahead of you — it’s already been got.
My recommendation Superbowl but either one is pretty iconic and cool.
7. You should also take in some Mozart — I would suggest one of the Sunday Academies in 1786 where as well as playing the piano Mozart also sang, he had a pretty nice tenor, which of course is why much of his music was written for that voice. Also in 1786 there was a musical competition between Kapellmeister Salieri and Mozart at the Orangery of Schönbrunn Palace which is a little pompous place,, you need to get dandied up to be allowed in, but the refreshments are top-notch, I’m mentioning this one because of the movie there is a certain frisson in seeing these guys compete.
Although, as always with time travel you should consider that people you know from one centuries popular culture may be different in their actual life and own cultures
Go forward a few more years for some coffee at the Cafe Frauenhuber and you can see Mozart doing small concerts there. If you get the chance to spend time with him I suggest having him show you some card tricks, he’s great! Also his favorite subjects outside of music involve animals, he appreciates funny animal stories. In the interest of keeping the timeline problem free on no account expose him to the music of Little Richard OR, god forbid, Prince.
6. Buddy Holly and Little Richard. In 1957 Holly and Richard were on tour together. This will be when That’ll be The Day was charting.
It was also year where Little Richard’s album Here’s Little Richard was out.
Now actually I really like to see Little Richard by himself in the 70s, because I really like the songs he was doing from that time, especially “My Wheel’s Are Slippin’ All The Way” but as I keep getting told by all the guys around here who spend a lot of time thinking of their obligations as critics and whatnot I shouldn’t just focus on what I like. So that said the performances on this tour were pretty hard and out there by two young guys who felt they had something to prove. So that’s the reason you should see them, basically Buddy Holly is sort of faded away, so most of the bragging rights is about seeing Richard, but there is a lot to be said for Buddy Holly, and he may surprise you.
If you find you like him, you may also like to go see him in August of 1957 he when became the first white act to play The Apollo. Be cool. But also consider no matter how cool you are you probably won’t be this cool:
5. Prince Sign O’ The Times 14 June 1987 — Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy. I prefer earlier Prince, like before 1999 (the album), but you have to admit this is a great show and it is necessary to get the full experience, not just the cool little microgig I recommended earlier — those microgigs give you good street cred on both the musical fronts and the time traveler front, but at some point burnishing your cred stops being interesting.
Furthermore there is a reason to recommend this show especially, which is the New Morning Aftershow, which — if you’re a time traveler you should practice up getting into aftershows.
4. John Of Wessex — The Fiddler And OX Pub — 1310 September, Hampshire. This pub was a dark, dingy, cramped and foul smelling place like just about any place common folks could go and get a drink the 1300s. It’s in Gynge lane, near a communal well, and among a few other shops. It makes a nice stew, for the times and the beer was strong with a somewhat nutty taste, and when John of Wessex was singing there it seemed a warm, convivial and open place, filled with light.
John of course knew every song the people loved and did wonderful versions of them, it was rumoured he was a bastard of John Wycombe himself, which explained the musical talent, and when you heard his version of “Sumer is icumen in” — damn, you believed.
John had a five octave range, he could play both the violin and the flute, but most compositions he favored the lute.
But while he could do every song that was known, he was most greatly loved for his own compositions, amongst which Westron Wynde is perhaps the best remembered — a song often thought to come from the 1500s where it was first written down, it was one of John of Wessex’ original compositions, and it laid in the memory of folk for centuries because he made music that lasted.
I recommend September as it is likely bad enough weather he may play another of his originals — Wynter wakeneth al my care. At any rate John played his last concert there on the first of October that year, went outside to escape the crowding inside and perhaps meet with a young maid, which he was known for, and was stabbed to death by two ruffians evidently in the employ of a powerful nobleman who had been offended by one of John’s protest songs and / or his aforementioned way with the young maidens.
The old pub went down hill in quality after that very quickly, and it burned down the year after, as these kinds of places often do.
3. Cab Calloway — Club Zanzibar, 1940. Everybody is always going on about seeing Calloway at the Cotton Club. But for my money it was when he went to Club Zanzibar he was doing some real cool shows. I recommend !940 because you will probably still get a version with Doc Cheatham and Dizzy Gillespie joining in. Obviously the year after things with Dizzy got too tense to continue. Maybe Cab Calloway isn’t your style so as a fallback — Duke Ellington 1929 — The Cotton Club. If Both Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway aren’t your style, it may be time to consider that you just have no worthwhile style whatsoever and not listen to music because it isn’t actually what you’re on this Earth for.
2. An Early Beatles concert. No, The Shea Stadium concert was not early Beatles, that was the beginning of the middle Beatles.If you’re going to be a time traveler you are going to have to get this stuff straight or people will think you’re an idiot.
An idiot like my other esteemed colleague, Agent 19, who wrote about The Beatles ‘old sound’, it’s clear this daft prick thinks a song like Help would be old.
It’s also true he name checks Please, Please Me — which I accept as being older coming from 1963 — so like the end of their old period. 1964 — The U.S. That is middle period.
And he has a picture of The Beatles playing in the Cavern. The Cavern is definitely a place to go to, however if you go a little bit back to 1960 you could catch them in Hamburg — for example the show where John played in his underwear wearing a toilet seat is always good for a laugh. So all-in-all Agent 19’s not as stupid as some people you find in the order of Illuminati Ganga, which I guess is why he doesn’t hang out with Agent 77 during one of his funny little ironic list making parties.
But when you go see them in the Cavern in 1963 though, there is the raw energy when you know someone is going to break big in just a bit. Obviously you know because Time Traveler, but the rest of the crowd knows as well because incredibly obvious.
And there is another thing about seeing them in the Cavern in 63, given the ambiance — you are definitely getting laid.
I know what you’re thinking — is this Agent 99’s thing — goes across time and space to different performances of some of the greatest musicians the world has ever known (albeit with a very decided and obvious preference for Western Civilization’s musical styles it would seem), and doesn’t really give a shit about the music, just rates it by how much nookie he can get?
The answer to which is no, you condescending idiot who will probably end up dead soon if you go wandering through time with that attitude.
But some points.
Much of musical performance in human history has had a ceremonial or liturgical purpose and as such can’t really be put into the conceptual set ‘concerts’, which concept I already stretched quite a bit for John of Wessex and Prince at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
In a lot of non Western cultures if you were going to see the best music performed for much of history you had to be spending time at the courts of rich and powerful people, generally Emperors and what have you. I have done a bit of that, as you can read here regarding Mozart, but as I believe you can see from my other entries that’s not really what I am about.
Finally I will admit I am not as attuned to music outside the loose agglomeration of cultures that is usually thrown together into the confusing mix of leftovers people like to point at and call Western Civilization.
As far as getting laid at concerts — no, it’s not the only consideration but it is something that definitely adds to the experience. Generally one night stands picked up at concerts are better and more interesting than one night stands from a bar, because when you hook up with someone at a bar you and they are probably drunk and when you hook up at a concert you may be drunk but also you can be wired up and excited from the music or on other forms of stimulation that make sex far more interesting than alcohol.
So — you are definitely getting laid at the Cavern in 63. I suggest 3 August 1963, which is their final appearance, just after the recent release of She Loves You.
AND NUMBER ONE TO SEE
Scott Joplin at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1893 — this is important because you are probably not going to get any really good performances of Joplin in many other venues. In the last entry on the Beatles I remarked about the importance of energy and here you will get the energy of a new musical genre being unveiled to the public.
Now really you should probably also see lots of other things at the World’s Fair, but Joplin is a must. Let’s think of it as the Lollapalooza of its time but with more impressive non-musical exhibits
The other acts to see — Antonín Dvořák conducted a bohemian day concert, John Philip Sousa′s Band played there as well, if you catch that and there’s a young jackass on the sidelines shouting “Play 76 Trombones” I apologize in advance, but I was a bit dosed and acting sort of foolish.
Besides Joplin there were a number of other African American musicians that should be appreciated, including violinist Joseph Douglass and opera singer Sissieretta Jones, sometimes known as the Black Patti which is insulting, but Ms. Jones made her way anyway and used the name to further her career. You make do with what you got.
Well that’s it. Obviously there is a whole world of wonderful music to explore throughout the history of humanity, and don’t let my recommendations be the only thing that guides you — you go see the things that interest you. And there are a lot of shows, artists, and whole tours I left out. For example you will note there wasn’t any Rolling Stones — why not? The Stones are basically hampered here by how good they are, there is lots that is great, and so really the only iconic Stones concerts are the ones where things fuck up — a la Altamont. When should you go to see The Rolling Stones, I think the Rolling Stones American Tour 1972 — if you dislike the Early or mid-period Beatles and don’t care about the bragging rights slot in a couple dates from this tour.
A Playlist for This article has been provided by Illuminati Ganga’s Musical Curatorial service
This article was written by Agent 99. It also makes mention of some other Agents and their articles, which may be of interest.
