At Wolfgang’s Vault, we’re constantly adding new material to our sites, and the Concert Video section is no exception.  As a special holiday treat, we’re offering an early glimpse of just one of the incredible new concerts we will be bringing you in 2012, this one from the recently acquired Metropolitan Archive – Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band live at the Capitol Theatre, 1978.

Beginning as a Vaudeville theatre in the 1920s, Passaic’s Capitol Theatre became renowned as a beloved music venue under the management of John Scher during the ‘70s and ‘80s, hosting a who’s-who of artists of the era.  The Metropolitan Archive contains many of these great performances captured on video, and as our restoration project continues, we will be adding these rarely-seen concerts to our site.

And who better to start with than the Boss?  While the video is in its rawest form, not yet enhanced in any way to improve audio or visual quality, it is still an outstanding document of Bruce and his band in top form, bringing a little holiday cheer to the Capitol Theatre.

This video, along with the entire concert from which it came, will be painstakingly restored and digitized to guarantee the best possible quality for online broadcast.  Check back with us in the New Year to see this and others from the Metropolitan Archive and all of our collections.

We are very grateful for the continued support of our online community, and we look forward to bringing you much more exciting content in the year to come.

Cheers!

[Merry Christmas from Passaic, NJ! is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

[Wayne Kramer, MC5, Detroit and Metal is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

The Robinson brothers, Chris and Rich are brilliant together, and individually as well.   Chris is on tour with the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, while Rich is touring in support of his own record: Through A Crooked Sun.

“The sun was a fitting metaphor to examine my life, because in many ways what was going on both nourished me and blinded me at the same time,” says Rich. “I was living this life that was askew. My relationships with the people that were supposed to be my closest seemed damaged. My marriage was not a good fit for either of us and we weren’t facing up to that. Though I love my brother, the fact that my working environment can be challenging has been well chronicled. Nothing was working like it should have been, but by many people’s standards, it was a dream come true.”

Check out more of Rich’s music on his FB page.

Meanwhile – CRB – Chris Robinson Brotherhood is on tour with their own distinctive sound.  Check out this Otis Redding cover.

[The Black Crowes – the Robinson Brothers is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Fred McDowell played Newport Jazz on July 27, 1968.   Here is a track from that show:

It is our pleasure at Wolfgang’s Vault to keep alive the important musical performances of Fred McDowell all these years later.  Read more about this great bluesman, and enjoy the whole Mississippi Fred McDowell performance at Newport Jazz 1968 right here.

[Mississippi Fred McDowell is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

For years, Paste Magazine has been a ground-breaking music and pop culture magazine. Their history is described here.  Earlier this year, Wolfgang’s Vault proudly added Paste Magazine’s editorial team and archive to our family of music sites.  Today, thanks in part to the support of Wolfgang’s Vault, the Paste team introduces the mPlayer: the reimagined magazine in an innovative, new and digital format.

With this introduction, the Paste team brings long-form content, Paste Samplers and interactive media to their digital magazine offerings.  Check out the first issue here.

[Paste Magazine mPlayer is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

For those of you unfamiliar with them, mojam was a concert finder – you could search for a band and find out where they were currently on tour. Or you could search for a particular city and find out who was playing on a given date. musi-cal was a sister site to mojam, a back-end system into which promoters and club owners could upload their schedules.

As a site dedicated to live concert recordings we felt mojam was a good companion that could be useful to our visitors, but the small number of visits it drew told us that you were using other tools for finding upcoming shows. There are a few; one of our favorites is songkick.com, a superb site with an excellent new iOS app; if you were using mojam before we highly recommend songkick.

Managing our vast concert recording archive is our most important task, and we’ve chosen to dedicate our resources to doing that. We hope you’ll understand. Cheers!

[Closing mojam.com and musi-cal.com is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

In the beginning, there were tapes — literally thousands of tapes of every format used in the capture of moving picture and sound from the last 50 years.  Some were in such a state that they may only have had one more play-back left in them before the footage they contained was stripped away forever, while many others suffered from dubious labeling practices, making it difficult to determine what sort of content they might hold, where it was filmed, or even when.  It has taken four years and millions of dollars to archive and restore this content so that it may be preserved and presented in the best possible form for your enjoyment, and we are proud to announce that the time has come for the great unveiling — the Concert Video section of Wolfgang’s Vault has arrived.

Bringing these aging concerts into the Internet era was painstaking work from beginning to end.  Utilizing the best facilities available, we sought to gently improve the quality of our video concerts without robbing them of their natural vintage flavor.  Once restored, each video was reviewed by our team of music experts to assess quality and catalog information about each performance, including exhaustive research to verify dates and venues of performances, as well as titles and cue points for each individual song — tens of thousands in all from the Bill Graham Archive, the King Biscuit Flower Hour, and the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals.

During the course of this process, we uncovered a huge spectrum of performances from some of the biggest names in music at legendary venues across the country: we found the Who at Tanglewood when Bill Graham brought the Fillmore East to Massachusetts, we found Ray Charles casually joining Aretha Franklin at the piano during the recording of her landmark live album at the Fillmore West, Lynyrd Skynyrd playing the Oakland Coliseum just a few short months before their tragic plane crash, even the Sex Pistols performing their last concert ever at Winterland — and that’s only the beginning.

We found hours of terrific concerts by lesser-known acts stretching all the way back to the ‘60s, and we have treated these with the same care and attention given to their more famous contemporaries.

Our goal is always to be as true to the live source recordings as possible, and we have maintained that commitment with our video content.  In exploring the Concert Video section, you will immediately notice a wide variety in recording quality, even in videos from the same era:

Excellent Audio and Video

Excellent Audio / Dark Video

Poor Audio / Dark Video

When considering these concerts in their historical context, we simply couldn’t justify not sharing some of them due to these flaws.

It is important to remember that most venues were not lit to maximize the quality of video recordings, and the equipment available at the time offered little to compensate; consequently some of the content appears quite dark as stage lights change or come down altogether between songs.

Luckily in most cases, the audio portions of these videos are spectacular, so using the music as our guide, we have included even concerts or portions thereof that are less than perfect visually.  Likewise, there are rare occasions where the audio suffers due to degradation or limitations of the recording method, or even simply from the unavoidable complications of live sound, but we have chosen to feature these portions as well.

We’ve also included some live concert ambiance whenever available — you’ll see the audience filing in and hear Bill Graham introducing the band; you’ll even get the rare glimpse backstage.

All of this has been carefully preserved and curated in an effort to bring you the most authentic live concert video available.

And because we love live music, all of this incredible archival footage inspired us to create new concert videos, too.  The best in indie rock from San Francisco’s annual Noise Pop Festival and Austin’s SXSW have been added to our already stellar collection of videos.

Plus, we’re adding more all the time with upcoming location shoots across the country, and with our Vault Sessions series, which offers a little peek inside the Vault with some of the best performers on tour from yesterday and today.

To showcase all of this outstanding material, the Concert Video section of Wolfgang’s Vault has been designed for easy browsing and sharing.  From any video page, you can share videos via Facebook or Twitter or simply by email, and registered users have the added benefit of saving their favorite videos to their MyVault page for easy access.

As you browse through the Concert Video section you may notice some familiar scenes along with the rarely and never-before-seen footage.  Wolfgang’s Vault owns the copyright to 98% of the content featured on the site, and we have licensed parts of these concerts for film and television, including productions by MTV, VH1, CMT, CBS, and A&E.

All copyrights have been filed with the Library of Congress, and the few videos that we do not own have been licensed from a third party.  Licensing is an important part of our business, so please contact us directly if you are interested in using some of this content in an upcoming project.

Once again, dear friends, we find ourselves at the beginning of something truly wonderful, and we are honored to share it with you, our faithful community.  In the coming weeks and months we will continue to add new videos and feature classic material from our collection.  We also understand that maintaining this vast archive is an on-going process, and we will be making improvements to existing content and site features along the way.

Please enjoy this latest addition to Wolfgang’s Vault, and thank you for your continued support.

Cheers,

Braden Towne
Director of Video Programming

Watch videos at Wolfgang’s Vault

[Announcing the Arrival of Concert Video is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

In this photo, Graham strategizes with Francis Ford Coppola and Marlon Brandon.

As is typical of San Francisco in March, the weather was cold and foggy, but the events and performances of the day were, by all accounts, warm and passionate. Rock photographer extraordinaire Michael Zagaris captured this great image of Bob Dylan on that day, among many beautiful shots:

Neil Young performed with The Band.

Listed on the event poster designed by Randy Tuten are:

Randy Tuten rendered the SNACK Benefit Poster

• The Doobie Brothers
• Graham Central Station
• Mimi Farina
• Jefferson Starship
• Jerry Garcia & Friends
• The Miracles
• Joan Baez
• Santana
• Tower of Power
• Neil Young
• Frankie Albert
• John Brodie
• Rosie Casals
• Werner Erhard
• Cedric Hardman
• Willie Mays
• Jesse Owens
• Gene Washington
• Rev. Cecil Williams

Ultimately the SNACK Benefit Concert successfully funded San Francisco after-school programs for an entire year and stood as a testament to the power of music to draw attention to an issue, and in some cases, even provide a solution — a legacy much more lasting than the funds it raised to temporarily offset the school budget problems.

Explore Wolfgang’s Vault for all the performances and memorabilia by searching for ”Kezar”, or start right off with Neil Young’s performance with the Band.

[S.N.A.C.K. Benefit Concert 1975 is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

I met Bill many times and, during one interview, heard him talk about the two sides of being a concert producer, of the things he felt he had to do, and the things he loved to see. Here, from a piece I did for “The City” magazine, is Bill Graham:

If an artist was on stage, opening up, and they were yelling for the headliner, I would go on stage and say, “If you can’t wait, go downstairs and I’ll give you your money back.” If you were at the bar dealing, I’d threaten you with your life. I never wanted to make friends at the expense of people. I was very, very strong on those (principles), and sometimes, overly zealous.

Graham once made a deal with Leon Russell’s manager for a tour of large, outdoor concerts. For each show, Russell would get 85 percent after expenses; Graham’s company would get 15 percent.

Well, it turned out that the first date down in San Diego didn’t work out. We only had 29,000 to 30,000 people, and a tremendous expense. It was a loss of some $60,000 to $70,000. We come up to San Francisco, did a tremendous gig in Oakland. It was a good $100,000 after expenses. I was asked to come into the trailer, and I was told by the agent, “All right, we netted $100,000 and here’s your 15 percent.” I said, “Wait a minute, there’s the loss and all the bills down there.” He said, “Oh, no.” I said, “The most stupid man in the world wouldn’t accept that kind of deal.” They took me off the other dates, fired me from the rest of the tour because they had that one big loss.

I drove into San Francisco. I called Leon’s room. He knew I was in the lobby, but he refused to speak with me. The only time this man exists is if he’s in need of food or drink. Other than that he is not in my world. You have no right to do that. We were good in what we did. We didn’t draw what we thought we would do. We did a brilliant production, but there was a loss.

And then there was Sly Stone, who was notorious, late in his career, for no-shows at his concerts. And even when he did appear…

There was a situation at Fillmore East when the public had waited a half hour for him to come on. He finally came down the steps and headed on to his dressing room. Then he looked at his pants, and the crease wasn’t perfect, so he went back upstairs and had his pants pressed — another half hour.

Come on, you owe them. Part of owing isn’t making them wait for an hour.

“We’re in the dirtiest business,” Graham said. “The harshest word I can think of is ruthless… We all bend in relation to what we can get back. It’s the almighty dollar, and it’s fame, and it’s power.” So why did he stay in it?

There’s the other side. To stand in the wings and watch the audience getting off on Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, and Ray Charles is one of the genuine orgasms of my life.

What you go through to put that thing on, with Aretha asking for a color television set, fresh orange juice, pink towels, you wind up hating everybody. And then the show starts, and she comes out, and that audience is at a revival meeting. For the first time, I was able to do something that I’d always dreamt of — to have an audience, 50 percent black, 50 percent white. At the end of the night, Ray and Aretha are on stage, hand in hand, bouncing back and forth, and Curtis is playing and I look out in the audience… You can’t buy that. That’s why I’m in this business. It happens less and less. But it still happens…once in a while.

[Bill Graham: ‘It Still Happens’ is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Leon Russell

Now, here in October, we hear that Leon and Elton did an album together (The Union), and that, as part of the hype for it, there’s a Sirius XM channel, “Elton!” Unfortunately, the channel, which offered new and vintage Elton and Leon music, plus a Cameron Crowe interview of him and Leon, plus guest DJs (including Robert Downey Jr.; not sure why), had a shelf life of only a week, and the satellite network didn’t send out the news until a day before the launch, on October 15th.

So it’s gone, as of Friday night, October 23rd.

But there is that new album, produced by T Bone Burnett. It’s a long overdue reunion for the two (they shared a concert bill back in 1970), and it’s drawn raves. “The Union often feels like a conversation,” David Fricke writes in Rolling Stone. “The two trading sober and grateful reflections … on the costs and prizes of a life at the top.”

It was at the top that I met and interviewed Leon, back in 1970, for a Rolling Stone cover story. You could call it the big top, in fact. He’d completed his tour as the ringmaster of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, had produced hit albums with Cocker and Delaney & Bonnie, and issued his own first album, with help from Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Charlie Watts, Stevie Winwood, Ringo Starr and many others.

We met in Denver and went on and on about rock and roll, his past, his influences, his politics, his plans. But it always came back to rock & roll.

At one point, I reminded him that, when we met on the Mad Dogs tour, he’d said that his kind of rock music “was tribalization — to have the performers and audience together trading songs.” I asked, “Is that working?”

“It’s working throughout the country,” he said. “The audience is why they have rock and roll concerts, because that’s the only missing element in the tribal culture. An analogy to more primitive cultures would be “the only thing missing is the drummers.”

I recalled how energetic he was throughout the Mad Dogs tour. “It’s a circle,” he said. The only time you stop is when you die.”

“It sounds like some kind of addiction — a music addiction,” I remarked.

“Yes, it’s definitely an addiction. I just was talking to some people in the band, but at one point something happened on the stage, and the crowd just exploded, and they transformed their energy on stage, and I could actually feel it … I could see how it could get to be an addictive practice.”

Russell said he was into symbolism; his long hair was part of it. I asked about the basketball jerseys he liked to wear.

“It’s a few things,” he said. “It’s teams, it’s spectator activities, which I’m not convinced is the best sort of activity — voyeurs — but I’m willing to take the role of the musical football player until such time that people realize that they can make music themselves.”

But, I said, instead of a pro team, his shirts were emblazoned “Gil’s Barbershop” and “Holy Trinity.” “Makes people wonder,” I said.

“Well, that’s the hope,” he replied. “The wondering wanderer. That’s the whole bag — the songs, the performance, the whole lifestyle. Make people wonder. Make myself wonder, too. And it’s great.”

[Leon Russell: Still wondering, after all these years is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]