Ten Best New Releases Of 2011

So far in 2011, we have opened our archive to release some fabulous concerts by some of the biggest names in music. Ten concerts have stood out as our favorites and we are turning the spotlight on these shows again this week in our blog. Plans to release more outstanding concerts through the year are being formulated, and if the first half of 2011 is any indication, we promise you will not be disappointed.

Bob Dylan & The Band
1/14/74
Boston Garden
Sure, Bob Dylan and the Band’s 1974 tour was just another highlight in a series of highlights in their respective long and storied careers, but this stellar night on their celebrated comeback tour is something special.

Don Henley
11/2/91
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Don Henley turned in a terse and tidy little set at this 1991 Bridge School Benefit, opening with a smash from his solo years and closing with an Eagles chestnut.

Jack DeJohnette
10/10/75
Great American Music Hall
By 1975, drummer Jack DeJohnette was just a few years removed from his sideman stint with Miles Davis and was deeply immersed in his own search and discovery mission as a composer and bandleader in his own right.

Journey & Friends
10/1/78
Automatt Studio
One of the most unusual and ambitious King Biscuit Flower Hour recordings occurred during the Fall of 1978, just as the San Francisco-based group Journey was breaking big with their fourth album, Infinity.

McGuinn, Clark & Hillman
2/9/78
Boarding House
One of the most groundbreaking American bands of the 1960s, the Byrds, had been influenced and in turn influenced nearly everyone who came in contact with their music, including Bob Dylan and the Beatles.

Stephane Grappelli
3/19/76 - 1st Set
Great American Music Hall
An elegant improviser whose lilting lines are imbued with a vivacious spirit of swing and tender lyricism, legendary violinist Stephane Grappelli had a long and distinguished career that began in the mid ’30s with the Hot Club of France Quintet (featuring Gypsy jazz guitar great Django Reinhardt) and continued well into the 1990s.

The Flying Burrito Brothers
2/21/77
Franklin Pierce College
The epicenter of country music had been Nashville for decades, but by the late 1960s it was Los Angeles that was becoming a magnet for young musicians devoted to bringing country music into a modern rock context.

The Who
12/17/82
Maple Leaf Gardens
Phase two of the Who’s extraordinary career essentially began in 1978, with the death of their drummer Keith Moon and ended on December 17, 1982 with a pay-per-view television broadcast and global radio transmissions of what was billed as the Who’s “Final Concert” at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens.

Thelonious Monk Quartet
7/4/63
Newport Jazz Festival
Monk came to Newport in 1963, to celebrate the 10th year of George Wein’s annual summer festival with a group which by that time had become solidified as his longstanding working quartet featuring tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse and the reliably swinging rhythm tandem of bassist Butch Warren and drummer Frankie Dunlop.

Van Morrison
9/5/71
Pacific High Studios
One of the most enigmatic songwriters of our time, Van Morrison first gained recognition as the lead singer of the Northern Irish band Them, writing their seminal 1964 hit “Gloria.”