Option’s 10 Essential Live Online Videos

We scoured Youtube for the greatest live performances we could find of essential Option bands from the years 1985 to 2010. Then we picked the ten best. Wanna argue with us?

Sonic Youth brings the noise to Sweden's 2005 Accelerator Fest (photo by Anders Jensen-Urstad)

When Option began publishing in 1985, the music world was a very different place from what it is today. Major labels set the rules. Indie bands had to fight hard to be heard over the mind-numbing drone of mainstream radio and MTV.

That’s where we came in. Option‘s original mission was to break off the tip of the musical iceberg and give all those great non-mainstream acts beneath it — most of them on tiny independent labels — equal footing. We were all about democratizing music. Little did we know that 26 years later the Internet would come along and democratize music in ways no one could have foreseen.

It’s been a long, wonderful experience watching artists on tiny indies do it themselves, gain momentum, sign to majors and eventually sidestep the old-style record industry altogether by marketing themselves and distributing their music online. Last week, when Arcade Fire took home the Grammy for Album of the Year without ever having to leave their indie label Merge Records, the message to the corporate record industry was clear: We don’t need you at all anymore.

One thing that hasn’t changed since1985 is the art of the live performance. Bands are either able to pull it off or they’re not. Whether it’s an early Sonic Youth bash-and-burn, or more recent Roots or Jónsi shows, the live performance is one reliable measure of a truly great artist. So with Option‘s recent relaunch online, we thought we would pay tribute to some of the greatest live performances by bands we’ve followed, even during our hiatus, in the quarter-century since our first issue.

We looked at tons of live clips on Youtube and chiseled them down to the ten we believe capture the passion and creativity Option has looked for in music since our earliest days. We kept the focus on rock- and hip-hop-based music, because as much as we champion free jazz, the avant-garde and traditional folk musics from around the world, rock and hip-hop represent our bread and butter. (Besides, for an eclectic publication like Option, we needed to set some boundaries.) Another thing: we didn’t rank these videos. Their mere appearance on this list tells you that each of these acts ranks high in our estimation. We decided instead to present them chronologically, from 1985 to 2010.

Disagree with our choices? Tell us about it. This list is about creating dialog with longtime Option readers as well as those who have just discovered us since our return online late last year. We’re grateful to all of you.

1. Sonic Youth: “Kill Yr. Idols” (Mohave Desert, 1985)

What better way to begin a list of great performances from a new era in music than with a song about killing off the old-style rock idol? Of course today Sonic Youth themselves have become idols of a sort. Yet in 1985, these NYC icons of experimental post-punk noiserock were still very much underground, fewer than a handful of years out of avant-garde composer Glenn Branca‘s fabled electric guitar orchestra. Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo were just getting the knack of their nontraditional tunings and still trying to figure out where to stick those screwdrivers into the strings. Now considered an early SY classic, “Kill Yr. Idols” was a new song when they performed it at a noiserock festival (which also included the bands Savage Republic and Minutemen) in the Mohave Desert. The song had appeared two years earlier on an EP of the same name. Having killed off the old-style pop idol in this blizzard of noise, Sonic Youth would go on to influence a new generation of errant rockers including young Kurt Cobain of Aberdeen, Washington.

2. Public Enemy: “My Uzi Weighs a Ton” (London, 1988)
With a well-defined logo and their S1W security team decked out in berets and fatigues, Public Enemy invented the hip-hop rock show. And that’s just the visual part. The megablast of music is what ultimately made P.E. one of the most important groups in any genre of popular music. Their Bomb Squad production team brought an aggressive, adventurous new sound to rap that felt more like punk than funk, although it certainly incorporated elements of groove. In short, what P.E. was doing in 1988 sounded like nothing else that had ever come before. This performance of “My Uzi Weighs a Ton,” one of P.E.’s earliest songs, comes from the group’s first tour of England in 1988, the year “Bring the Noise,” “Don’t Believe the Hype” and It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back would make Public Enemy the most powerful force in rap, and Chuck D. the default political spokesmen for the Hip-Hop Nation.

3. Fugazi: “Turnover” (Lafayette Park, Washington, DC, 1991)

Speaking of political spokesmen, Ian MacKaye defined hardcore punk activism when, as a teenager in 1980, he formed Minor Threat and started the independent label Dischord Records. MacKaye and Dischord were so indie they wouldn’t put music writers on guest lists. If you wanted to review their shows, you had to pay to get in just like anybody else. They were all about democracy, and when the major labels began knocking on the doors of indies in the later ’80s, Dischord politely declined. MacKaye’s post-Minor Threat band Fugazi continued in the philosophical vein of their forebears, and even without offering perks to journalists, the band became a powerful (and popular) force in music. They were a little preachy, a little overly P.C., but Fugazi had integrity that was unmatched in ’90s music. And you couldn’t deny the force of their sound or the intensity of their live shows, as this clip from a D.C. outdoor performance proves. Fugazi went on to influence a whole generation of post-punk hard rockers, not the least of which was the mighty Rage Against the Machine.

4. Nirvana: “School” (Reading Festival, 1992)

What does one say about Nirvana at this point? They changed the rules of rock. They brought punk angst and attitude to the mainstream. They fought for Fugazi-like integrity in a major-label music world that would ultimately chew up, swallow and spit out the band’s charismatic front man, Kurt Cobain. They were sublime, they were tortured and they were one of the greatest rock bands ever. In recent years, there’s been a lot of revisionist chatter about Nirvana being overrated, and that’s understandable. It happens. But one look at this clip — or any other live clip from Nirvana’s heyday — nullifies such nonsense. Kurt Cobain was a songwriter’s songwriter and live performer’s live performer. He displayed as much passion as any rock star of any previous era, from Leon Russell and Neil Young up to Paul Westerberg or Ian MacKaye. Plenty of bands took the Nirvana formula and recorded big-selling albums, but what no one could recreate was Cobain’s soul. Not even his fellow band mate Dave Grohl’s band Foo Fighters, who were awfully good and became very popular, could hold a candle to Nirvana.

5. PJ Harvey: “Down by the Water” (Port of Haifa, Israel, 1995)

PJ Harvey. In Israel. Made up like a Kabuki doll. Crying out for Jesus and wailing about a “blue-eyed girl” who became a “blue-eyed whore.” That combination would be a shoo-in for any top live performance list, let alone Option‘s. Back when PJ Harvey was a band and PJ was just little Polly Jean, she carried a lot of the blues baggage from a childhood spent listening to John Lee Hooker, Captain Beefheart and the Pixies. Few of the many women-dominant bands of the riot-grrl ’90s displayed Harvey’s mix of brains, passion and tenderness all in the whir of abrasive blues-based rock. Sure, tons of female musicians of that era had the brains of Liz Phair or the brawn of L7, or mixed it all up together with passion (Hole, Babes in Toyland, Bikini Kill). But PJ Harvey had that one extra quality that nailed her music into your soul: vulnerability. She wasn’t afraid to reveal her humanity. And that made all the difference in songs like “Down By the Water.” Watch this and say you’re not moved when her voice breaks on the line, “Down by the water, I took her hand…”

6. Aterciopelados: “Bolero Falaz” (MTV Unplugged, 1997)

Along with Mexico’s Café Tacuba, Colombia’s Aterciopelados was among the more magical and adventurous bands of the ’90s rock en español onslaught. After beginning as a fairly straight-forward punk band with R.E.M.-ish tendencies, Aterciopelados singer Andrea Echeverri and her musical partner  Héctor Buitrago began branching out, exploring new musical combinations, adding electronics and mixing in traditional Latin styles from the vallenato of their home country to tangos, boleros and rancheras. Aterciopelados’ eclectic approach to music was topped only by its powerful, politically charged lyrics which updated the Latin topical protest genre known as nueva canción. “Bolero Falaz” blends all of that together into a powerful but gentle ballad with a seductive, melodic hook. Aterciopelados hit their stride in the late ’90s, and their appearance on the Latin MTV version of Unplugged was a milestone event. The band continues to put out consistently adventurous albums, as do Echeverri and Buitrago as solo artists.

7. Radiohead: “Idioteque” (Glastonbury, 2003)

A Radiohead show can be like a deep, dark, outside tropical shower in the middle of the night — warm and relaxing, but you get the feeling you’re surrounded by a bunch of bugs creeping around, ready to attack. “Paranoid Android” is one of those bugs that attacks with a ferociousness not felt in more low-key ballads like “High and Dry” or tensely churning Radiohead fare like “Airbag.” Another one of those bugs is the jittery “Idioteque,” wherein Thom Yorke actually gets his groove on (yes, he has a groove) after his steadily rising nervous twitches during the song’s electronic beginning give way to violent shaking during the extended moments of tribal percussion. By the end, Yorke is completely wigging out — and you are as mesmerized as this massive crowd gathered at the 2003 Glastonbury Festival was amid all the strobes and fireworks.

8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: “Pin,” “Gold Lion,” “Maps” (Reading Festival, 2006)

We’ve had people actually ask why the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ get so much attention. What is it about these NYC hipsters that’s created such a stir? One look at this performance from the 2006 Reading Festival and that question seems absurd. This may be the rock performance of the previous decade. It has everything that makes a great live-music moment: unbridled passion, unexpected antics, blistering music, a transfixed audience and bouncers who don’t seem to know what the hell  is going on. Karen O is rock & roll incarnate, rock at its purest and most primal, her performance displaying the kind of excitement you’d expect at an early-’60s Stones, James Brown or Ike & Tina show, or a late-’60s Doors or Stooges concert, or a late-’70s Pistols or Pylon performance, or an ’80s Madonna spectacle, or a ’90s bash with Bikini Kill. As one of the comments on this Youtube page asks: “Is there even a comparison between Lady Gaga and Karen O? Karen’s an icon in her own right.”

9. Questlove & GGALP: “Masters Of War,” Parts 1 & 2 (Guitar Center Drum-Off, 2007)

It took not one, but two — two! — videos to fit in the entire performance of this classic Dylan protest song from Roots drummer Questlove and his rock-jazz ensemble GGALP, which stands for “Go get a late pass,” a line that kicks off Public Enemy’s classic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back. Many have covered Dylan, but none like this. Guitarist “Captain” Kirk Douglas sings the same searing lines to today’s warmongers as Dylan did to the Vietnam-era vultures of violence: “And I hope that you die, and your death’ll come soon/I’ll follow your casket in the pale afternoon.” But Douglas does it to the melody of “Star Spangled Banner.” Never has a protest song sounded so in-your-face as this. And then, from the gentle national anthem beginning, GGALP careens into the original Dylan melody, but with rock instrumentation, spitting out the lyrics with righteous anger, repeating the line “Even Jesus would never forgive what you do” over and over to the guitar part from Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused.” And that is just clip #1. The second clip finds Questlove pounding his drums with both passion and subtlety, as though his life depends on it. GGALP’s 2007 Guitar Center Drum-Off performance offers more proof (as if it was needed) that Questlove is the greatest live hip-hop artist ever.

10. Jonsi: “Go Do” (Los Angeles, 2010)

It’s come to this: the talented frontman (Jónsi) of a highly adventurous Icelandic band (Sigur Rós) becomes the stuff of teary-eyed pop fans hanging onto his every delicate word. Don’t get all Styx on us here. He may be Iceland’s answer to ’70s prog-rock singer Jon Anderson of Yes, but Jónsi’s performances for his 2010 solo debut Go were absolute stunners, both musically and visually. At the Moogfest in the mountains of North Carolina, showers of light rained down over the singer’s earth-toned stage set while wildlife video-art danced around his band as they played. You get the same scene from this L.A. performance: Jónsi in Native American regalia, his angelic voice cooing the words of the album’s title track over toy-store-sounding keyboards, electronics and percussion. Not since another pixie-ish Icelandic eccentric – Björk – has experimental pop sounded so utterly enchanting.