930 Forums
=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: Bags on August 15, 2007, 02:51:00 pm
-
Of course, no Grohl is a pretty major oversight (although the list clearly is based on banter captured on audio). The online article includes sound clips and ful files from many on the list, so I urge anyone with additions to find and include audio links if you can.
More Talk, Less Rock: 15 Masters of Onstage Banter (http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/more_talk_less_rock_15_masters)
by Christopher Bahn, Aaron Burgess, Andrew Earles, Steven Hyden, Josh Modell, Noel Murray, Keith Phipps, Nathan Rabin
The Onion A.V. Club
August 13th, 2007
1. Venom's Cronos
The 10-minute recording of Venom singer Cronos ranting between songs in New Jersey in 1986 is perhaps the most widely circulated stage banter in history, and for good reason: The quips are insane and unintentionally hilarious. The show was recorded by Black Flag roadie Joe Cole (Black Flag was on the bill, inexplicably), who edited out all of the music and left only lunatic ravings. Thurston Moore released it as a single on his Ecstatic Peace label, and the Beastie Boys would later sample "You're wild, man, wiiiiiiiiild" on Check Your Head. Whether Cronos does this shtick at every show is immaterial: He became the king in just one night.
2. David Lee Roth
Ironically, the same propensity for non sequiturs and bizarre one-liners that killed David Lee Roth's Howard Stern-replacing radio show made him one of the most entertaining frontmen in rock history. And though much of DLR's banter during Van Halen's classic early period stemmed from his innate hyperactivity, his good friend Jack Daniel's probably helped. Roth routinely gave props to the bottle during concerts, often using the same line ("I wanna take this time to say that this is real whiskey here!") to drive home the point. But in one infamous ad-lib from the attendance-record-setting 1983 US Festival (for which Van Halen received a record $1 million to play, hammered out of their tits, for 90 minutes), Roth used his muse for a higher purpose, taking down the previous day's headliners and tarnishing punk's street cred by announcing, "The only people who put iced tea in Jack Daniel's bottles is The Clash, baby!"
3. Paul Stanley
A CD-length file of Paul Stanley's onstage yelling made the Internet rounds starting in 2005, and the Kiss guitarist's effeminate, positive-power ("You people are dynamite!") insanity made him sound like a hyperactive motivational speaker. The 86-megabyte file sounds pristine, too; if Steve Albini ever recorded between-song banter, it would sound like this. Named People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest, the 70-track collection features every rock 'n' roll cliché known to man. Stanley screams dedications to "young" women ("We got any little girls out there tonight?"), temperature (via the endless ways that "Hotter Than Hell" and "Firehouse" can be introduced), and booze (simply "ALLCOOOHAAALL!!!!"). Also: "How many of you gals out there like to get licked?! Okay, how many of you guys out there like to get licked?" And that's just the first 10 minutes.
4. Robert Pollard
Where other stage ranters have to suffer the indignity of their antics being released via underground cassettes and MP3s, former Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard has sanctioned the release of two vinyl-only compilations of his drunken stage banter. Relaxation Of The Asshole gathers quips like "To anyone who says we have a drinking problem, we say fuck you" and stories about Bob's mom beating up his next-door neighbor. Asshole 2: Meet The King covers Pollard's thoughts on Alien Ant Farm, as well asâ?¦ drinking.
5. Bruce Springsteen
When Bruce Springsteen reconvened The E Street Band for his 1999-2000 world tour, one of the nightly highlights was an epic-length performance of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," during which Springsteen delivered a rock 'n' roll altar call, exhorting the audience to follow him on the path to righteousness. It was an electrifying throwback to Springsteen's 1975-85 heyday, when he'd pepper his three-hour concerts with long, well-rehearsed monologues about growing up in New Jersey, squabbling with his parents, and seeking refuge in rock. He may have told those stories a hundred times, but he made them as new and spellbinding as each nightly run through "Thunder Road."
6. Lou Reed
Lou Reed makes this list for one reason only: Take No Prisoners, the 1978 live album which finds Reed bantering with hecklers and dishing for minutes on end about the ins and outs of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, while his band vamps behind him. Adopting his best New York street-punk accent, Reed bitches about Barbra Streisand, baits critic Robert Christgau, makes fun of Patti Smith, recites poetry, repeats conversations he's had with overeager disciples, and mocks people with plug-in fireplaces. Some of it's purposeful, and some purely stream-of-consciousness. One minute, he's asking the audience, "You ever put a quarter in one of those machines, man? Like, the bear that plays basketball?" Then, when no one responds, he moves on to another topic, griping, "What, do I look like Henny Youngman up here, man?"
7. Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme
You have been warned, Queens Of The Stone Age fansâ??don't throw stuff at Josh Homme. On the 2005 live album Over The Years And Through The Woods, Homme calls out a troublemaking fan at the conclusion of "Monsters In The Parasol" for being a "a total cocksmoker" and "throwing shit at me." He even describes the guy's white long-sleeved shirt and has the crew turn the lights on him, so "it's not just me and you that knows you're a fucking asshole, it's everybody." Homme caps his characteristically laidback rant with some advice for the total cocksmoker's fellow audience members: "When you see Mr. Cocksmoker later, just walk by and go 'Hey cocksmoker, eat a bag of dicks.'" Rock star 1, fan 0.
8. Robyn Hitchcock
Though he came to the fore with The Soft Boys during the rise of English punk in the 1970s, Robyn Hitchcock's sensibilities always leaned more toward quirky and psychedelic, influenced by the whimsical humor of Syd Barrett, Bob Dylan, and Monty Python's Flying Circus, not to mention his own novelist father. That comes out in his songs via surreal lyrics about humanity evolving into birds and jokey warnings about the Freudian implications of uncorrected childhood personality traits. Live, Hitchcock often pauses between songs to spin bizarre, off-the-cuff stories, including goofy tales about knights who keep forgetting what they're supposed to be questing for ("Seek ye the one known asâ?¦ Leo? Jeff? Dennis?"), macabre imagery ("I don't know what kind of church you imagine, but I like to imagine a church full of carcasses"), and dreamlike descriptions of workmen in the desert howling as giant glass cathedrals float past them high above.
9. Fugazi
Ian MacKaye takes no guff when it comes to annoying dancers who insist on crashing into each other at Fugazi shows; he and co-frontman Guy Picciotto have been known to stop songs mid-stream to question the motives of audience goons. "It sucks to have to tell people to behave themselves," says MacKaye in one of the greatest moments of the excellent Fugazi documentary Instrument. But Picciotto really takes the moment: "I saw you two guys earlier at the Good Humor truck, and you were eating your ice cream like little boys, and I thought, 'Those guys aren't so tough! They're eating ice cream.' I saw you eating an ice-cream cone, palâ?¦ You're bad now, but I saw youâ?¦ That's the shit you can't hide. You eat ice cream; everybody knows it. Ice-cream-eating motherfucker, that's what you are."
10. Billy Bragg
Outspoken British rabble-rouser Billy Bragg brings a lot more to his shows than leftist anthemsâ??he talks so much that his performances sometimes seem like a chatty, wry stand-up comedy act as much as a rock show. One of his funniest stories involves his increasing discomfort when a giant, tattooed skinhead in Arizona kept yelling what sounded like a slur against Bragg's socialist beliefs: "Red fag! Red fag!" Unable to ignore it any longer, Bragg stopped the show, pointed at the skinhead, and put on his most authoritative voice to ask, "What did you say?" The skinhead replied, "Play 'The Red Flag'!"â??the anthem of Britain's Labour Party, which Bragg had covered on the EP The Internationale.
11. Bob Dylan
Ordinarily, the standoffish Bob Dylan doesn't interact with his audience, but one incident has gone down in rock 'n' roll history. It's hard to believe now just how infuriated some folk fans got in 1965 when Dylan went electric and moved away from protest songs toward a louder, full-on rock sound. (The story goes that backstage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Pete Seeger was so offended by Dylan's set that he had to be restrained from cutting the electric cables with an axe.) Ultimately, the rock sound proved more popular for Dylan and more influential for music in general, but the anger of those who felt left behind is captured on the "Royal Albert Hall" bootleg (actually recorded at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in May 1966). Near the end of a set already fraught with tension between band and audience, a heckler takes advantage of a quiet moment after "Ballad Of A Thin Man" to shout "Judas!" The audience erupts with a combination of cheering and catcalls. Dylan snaps back "I don't believe youâ?¦ you're a LIAR!" Then, turning to his band, he commands them to "play it fucking loud," and steamrolls the naysayers with a furious performance of "Like A Rolling Stone." Advantage: Dylan.
12. Courtney Love
Courtney Love's history of onstage babbled nonsense and verbal hypocrisies could warrant an eight-disc boxed set, but two particular minutes of drug-addled, spoiled-brat profanity make for one of her better circulated live outbursts: Recorded sometime in the mid-'90s at a show in Holland, it begins with Love "singing" for a few seconds, her vocals like driving over a gravel road on the tire rims. Then she stops singing. "You throw shit on me and you don't get a fucking show; take your Bon Jovi shirt and go fuck yourself with Eddie Vedder's dildo, all right?" Then, presumably aimed at the offender, "Is little miss Dutch bitch mad cuz I fucked Trent? Is she mad cuz I fucked Brad Pitt? Is she mad cuz I married Kurt?" Then, later: "Kurt hated this fucking town, I hate this townâ?¦ Go fuck yourself." All in all, this might be the most creative performance of Courtney's career.
13. Lauryn Hill
After Lauryn Hill faded from the pop-culture landscape following the triumphant The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, rumors persisted about squabbles with past collaborators, legal woes, and substance abuse/mental-health problems. The release of her double-disc Unplugged 2.0 did nothing to quiet wagging tongues. "Fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need. I've just retired from the fantasy part," went one of her saner assertions. But plenty of people thought she'd retired from sanity and common sense as well. It feels like half of Unplugged 2.0 is devoted to stage banter that blurs the line between confession, rambling, and muddled self-help directives from the world's spaciest inspirational speaker. Hill later made headlines during a benefit concert at the Vatican, when she scolded the crowd: "Holy God is a witness to the corruption of your leadership, of the exploitation and abuses which are the minimum that can be said for the clergy. There is no acceptable excuse to defend the church." Even more disconcertingly, she claimed that the previous night's crowd "rocked way harder" and chastised Catholics for their unwillingness to throw their hands in the air and wave 'em like they just don't care. Audiences at Hill's infrequent live shows never know whether the good or bad Hill will show up, which is the danger as well as the appeal of her performances.
14. Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett has played with Art Blakey, Miles Davis, and others in a long, respected career that's spanned the classical and jazz worlds. He's also a huge prima donna when it comes to audience disruption, infamously walking out on a crowd for coughing too much. (He did at least pick up the habit of distributing cough drops to address the problem.) But Jarrett's greatest ire is reserved for those who would record or photograph him. His anger spilled over at this year's Umbria Jazz Festival, where he began his set with a rant about "assholes with cameras" and the caveat that he "reserve(d) the right to stop playing and leave the goddamn city." He ended by refusing to play an encore to a standing crowd due to flashbulbs. Jarrett was subsequently banned from future Umbria Jazz Festivals.
15. Cheap Trick
The roles in Cheap Trick are clearly defined. Robin Zander handles singing and hair-tossing, and Rick Nielsen writes the songs, plays an endless series of customized guitars, flings guitar picks into the crowd, and handles stage banter with the cockeyed, cornball charm of everyone's favorite goofy uncle. Nielsen's manic mugging and cheesy quips are highlights of Cheap Trick shows, and yet it was Zander who wormed his way into the annals of stage-banter history with his sparse chatter from Live At Budokan. "This. Next. One. Is. The. First. Song. On. Our. New. Album," Zander intones slowly and patiently to the ecstatic Japanese crowd, like a kindergarten teacher trying to reach an especially slow class. The banter was so dope that the Beastie Boys sampled it on Check Your Head.
-
No Ted Nugent? C'mon now!
Hell, a band even took their name from one of his recorded rants!
-
Ben Folds does some great between-song banter/storytelling/improv.
"Rock This Bitch!"
-
anton newcombe is king of onstage banter
-
the white stripes are better than the rolling stones.
-
I always liked hearing Speedo from Rocket From the Crypt talk between songs. Really brought people together and cooled some of the hotter heads so fights did not break out.
The singer of The Explosion still has one of my favorite onstage lines of all time: "My balls are coconuts sitting in the sand of time." Classic.
-
My favorite recorded banter is on Ween's Painting the Town Brown CD: Gene saying "I sit home and make flower bouquets and listen to Joni Mitchell" before kicking into a vicious version of "Dr. Rock."
-
Last time I saw Billy Bragg, he had strayed into the "shut up already" territory. But he and MacKaye (who can also be preachy) deserve to be on the list.
John Wesley Harding tells great stories.
Grohl's appeal is not the quality of his banter so much as it is the general sense that he is that dude you knew in high school who drove a Vega or a Corolla and spent 75% of his waking hours doing bong hits and playing air guitar.
-
Originally posted by le sonick:
the white stripes are better than the rolling stones.
Don't mistake onstage banter e-nonsense. You instigator. :mad:
Mrs. Sonick would be ashamed I say!
BTW, Eddie from Art Brut should be on this list.
Keith Richards gets honorable mention simply for the fact that I have to pay close attention to understand what it is that he's actually saying.
-
Originally posted by Bags:
1. Venom's Cronos
wow this is fantastic, it's exactly like spinal tap
-
Robbie Fulks should top this list.
-
fran healy from travis does a great job of interacting with the crowd - funny and charming, to the point, and not straying into "what the hell is he going on about" territory. maybe i have a thing for celtic banter, since i think gary lightbody can be funny between songs too.
i realize that the article above equates "best banter" with outrageousness, but the majority of alcoholic vocalists that go off on tangents are generally annoying or boring. i'd rather hear a quick witticism and have the band go back to what they do best - playing music.
-
Not really stage banter, per se, but Lou Barlow used to run some really funny commentary tracks/tapes during Dinosaur and Sebadoh shows.
-
Originally posted by ggwâ?˘:
John Wesley Harding tells great stories.
I thought of JWH as well...He's a love. Kind of a less weird and 'out there' Robyn Hitchcock.
-
dave wyndorf from monster magnet delivered the best impromptu response to a heckler (who was also throwing mud at the stage) i've ever heard: "i'm going to fuck your mom and kill you!"
mike doughty's live album "smofe and smang" has some great banter, including the advice that "chicks dig robots" and a spur of the moment song entitled "fuckin' yeah." he promises the crowd that if it becomes his big single, everyone there will get a gold record.
-
Yes! Josh Homme from Queens is in the top 10! There's lots of videos on youtube about him chewing people out, he even pushes a guy off stage. Just recently he popped a vicodin on stage and almost had to fight 3 guys in the crowd. Here's the video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EGXjTi0VemA (http://youtube.com/watch?v=EGXjTi0VemA)
It happens about halfway through the video.
-
"Does anyone remember laughter?"
Robert Plant during Stairway to Heaven in The Song Remains the Same. Hilarious.
Paul Stanley is my favorite though. He's so unapologetically cheesy that you're totally with him. "Looks like we're going to have ourselves a rock and roll party tonight!!!!"
Axl Rose is one of the all-time best - although he's more in the category of 'rant' than 'banter'
-
Originally posted by Mobius:
Axl Rose is one of the all-time best - although he's more in the category of 'rant' than 'banter'
Agreed. Axl and Courtney Love were the best two I've ever seen.
The "just shut up and play" award?: Fiona Apple.
Brian
-
Not really stage banter, per se, but Lou Barlow used to run some really funny commentary tracks/tapes during Dinosaur and Sebadoh shows.
Lou is a quick wit, undoubtedly. Once saw him introduce Sebadoh's cover of "Pink Moon" with an improvised oral biography of Nick Drake that lasted about 10 minutes and was totally erroneous. He capped it off by actually crying for about three minutes. So good it was surreal.
-
Not really stage banter, per se, but Lou Barlow used to run some really funny commentary tracks/tapes during Dinosaur and Sebadoh shows.
Lou is a quick wit, undoubtedly. Once saw him introduce Sebadoh's cover of "Pink Moon" with an improvised oral biography of Nick Drake that lasted about 10 minutes and was totally erroneous. He capped it off by actually crying for about three minutes. So good it was surreal.
-
I've heard some good stuff from Josh Homme in recent years but the all-time greatest performers of in-between-song banter are David Yow and Mike Patton. I'd buy a live show from either of their bands if the music was cut out entirely.
-
Courtney Love and Josh Homme, FTW.
-
so good I said it twice. *sob*
-
lex from daughters. if anyone was at the R&R show earlier this year, that pretty much explains it.
-
I'd give the shut up and play award to Phil Anselmo.
-
Some of the most hilarious schtick I've ever heard came from Greg Dulli. Probably the most hilarious concert moment I ever saw was him climbing one of the PA stacks at 9:30 (a la Eddie Vedder in one of Pearl Jam's early videos)....and halfway up he sarcastically growled into the mic "And he hit me with a surprise left" .....hysterical.
GG Allin was very funny live, as well as the Candy Snatchers, good drunken bloody fun.
-
Originally posted by Relaxer:
Not really stage banter, per se, but Lou Barlow used to run some really funny commentary tracks/tapes during Dinosaur and Sebadoh shows.
did he play any of his work from mtv's sex in the 90s series?
-
How funny. I've never heard anyone mention this, and had all but forgotten about it myself. Man, he seemed so wussy on that show.
Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
Originally posted by Relaxer:
Not really stage banter, per se, but Lou Barlow used to run some really funny commentary tracks/tapes during Dinosaur and Sebadoh shows.
did he play any of his work from mtv's sex in the 90s series? [/b]
-
Glen from the Frames is always entertaining.
-
All the guys in the Wombats were very chatty throughout the set. It was pretty funny when they were trying to get people in the audience to waltz. Didnt go over very well.
-
How long did GG Allin play for?
Originally posted by chaz:
GG Allin was very funny live, as well as the Candy Snatchers, good drunken bloody fun.
-
Originally posted by econo:
How long did GG Allin play for?
Originally posted by chaz:
GG Allin was very funny live, as well as the Candy Snatchers, good drunken bloody fun.
[/b]
About 30 min I think when I saw him. And I mean it when I say it was the most hilarious concert I ever saw. Certainly not for everyone though. The show I saw was low on bodily fluids, but high on the slapstick meter. He was dead a week later.
-
Originally posted by nkotb:
How funny. I've never heard anyone mention this, and had all but forgotten about it myself. Man, he seemed so wussy on that show.
Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
Originally posted by Relaxer:
Not really stage banter, per se, but Lou Barlow used to run some really funny commentary tracks/tapes during Dinosaur and Sebadoh shows.
did he play any of his work from mtv's sex in the 90s series? [/b]
[/b]
i saw him solo a couple years back. as i was waiting in line for the bathroom, someone was taking for fucking ever, and um...snorting loudly. out comes lou.
during the set, lou started a story about he still "does pretty much anything" and how he did crystal meth for a year and then had a tick for like a year after he stopped
it ended with "fucking...speed...man"
-
Lauryn Hill followup:
http://www.avclub.com/article/miseducation-case-file-76-lauryn-hills-mtv-unplugg-246504?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds
-
Lauryn Hill followup:
http://www.avclub.com/article/miseducation-case-file-76-lauryn-hills-mtv-unplugg-246504?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds
she is such a horrible person I don't even want to read it all. I really loathe her...
-
Seu Jorge had some really good onstage banter earlier this week.. he told some stories before playing most of the Bowie songs.. the first one about his wife picking up the phone and talking to Wes Anderson before passing the phone to him was pretty funny....He had the comic timing down pat..
-
Reviving old threads makes me so sad.
It reminds me of how great this place used to be.....
-
^humblesmackdown
-
Reviving old threads makes me so sad.
It reminds me of how great this place used to be.....
#Make930GreatAgain
-
Reviving old threads makes me so sad.
It reminds me of how great this place used to be.....
Yesh...this thread is forum gold.
-
stupid kids . . . get, off my lawn. back in my day, we had good forums, and we liked it. None of this social media hubabaloo with your twitter and your Instagram and your facebook knock off posts. we came here, to post things, real things, and we liked it. now all you do is post moving photos and talk about your cats and Donald trump all day long. Back in my day, we had fights about important things, like morrisey and Rhett miller and who did the best covers. yeah, the good ole days of the forum.
-
I have enjoyed the vast majority of the covers performed by the Grateful Dead and family (and other ephemera).
-
The funny thing is, most covers of Grateful Dead songs (performed not by members of the family) are horroble.
-
The funny thing is, most covers of Grateful Dead songs (performed not by members of the family) are horroible.
FTFY
-
The funny thing is, most covers of Grateful Dead songs (performed not by members of the family) are horroible.
FTFY
I concur.
-
From Julian's favorite Nobel Prize for Literature laureate:
?There?s no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player. I don?t think any eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great, much more than a superb musician, with an uncanny ear and dexterity. He?s the very spirit personified of whatever is Muddy River country at its core and screams up into the spheres. He really had no equal. To me he wasn?t only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he?ll ever know. There?s a lot of spaces and advances between The Carter Family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman?a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There?s no way to convey the loss. It just digs down really deep.?
-
Fans Bail As Lauryn Hill Is 3 hours Late For Pittsburgh Show
http://www.pollstar.com/news_article.aspx?ID=829264
-
Fans Bail As Lauryn Hill Is 3 hours Late For Pittsburgh Show
http://www.pollstar.com/news_article.aspx?ID=829264
I can't believe people still pay money to see this joker.
-
what is the real reason behind her downfall? I have heard multiple things, from she is just a downright pain in the ass to work with, from she done lost her mind. It seemed to happen when she had her first kid? Or was it that her first solo album was very good and she could not come close to replace it?
-
its performance art
also no one mentioned shellac in this thread?! or maybe someone did and i just skipped over it
-
what is the real reason behind her downfall? I have heard multiple things, from she is just a downright pain in the ass to work with, from she done lost her mind. It seemed to happen when she had her first kid? Or was it that her first solo album was very good and she could not come close to replace it?
popping out like 7 marleys in 7 years will make anyone crazy...
-
its performance art
also no one mentioned shellac in this thread?! or maybe someone did and i just skipped over it
THEY WIN. Hands down.
-
I guess i could put this in post show banter, but this thread fits as well.
Match the artist to the stage banter. (Sorry, if I'm misrepresenting the quotes, don't remember the exact words)
1. Erika Wennerstom
2. Lucinda Williams
3. Drive By Truckers
a. "THis week would have been Trayvon Martin's 24th birthday. And I got on the internet and i saw that motherfucker that killed him has his own website and he's wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt selling autographed Skittles."
b. "I wrote this song as i was walking in the Amazon Rainforest on my way to do some psychedelics."
c. "Let me introduce you to my band, they're called Buick 6. They play music without me, it sounds like this, but without my vocals. And they put out entire albums. I could just listen to them all night long. It's hip. Groovy. Groovelicious. I listen to everything. Theiver-i Corporation. The Gotan Project. I'm not just an old fogie folk singer. I think we've shown that here tonight. Over here is Stuart Mathis on guitar.."