Youtube music night with the kids

I was bored last night so I had my sons join me for an evening of surfing music videos on youtube. We plugged a laptop into our TV and took turns choosing videos to watch.

I started off with U2 performing at the US Festival in 1983. It’s pretty amazing–Bono climbs onto the lighting rig above the stage with his white flag. Took me right back to being a teenager.

Of course, my sons are teenagers (well not technically, my oldest is 20 and my younger is 16), and all they did was make fun of it. They made comments about Bono’s mullet, etc.

We actually spent about two hours watching music videos, I won’t embed them all, but I’ll link to what we covered. After U2, my youngest son wanted to see the Judas Priest performance from the same festival (apparently there was a metal day and then a more indie/wave day):

Funny how much his outfit looks like something Michael Jackson would have worn. We saw Judas Priest live a few years back and he still comes out on a motorcycle.

Next my oldest son (a drummer) wanted to show us this video of the Melvins live:

They currently have two drummers in the band, one plays left handed, and their drum kits mirror each other. It’s a long video because in the middle they do a big drum solo, it’s pretty cool.

Then it was my turn again, so I showed the kids an old early grunge band called the U-Men.

I told them about how as a teenager in the 80s in Seattle I’d read about the U-Men in the local free music mag, the Rocket, and wish so badly I could go to their shows, but I was a little too young. But the articles had an address you could send $5 to for their EPs, which I did. Great stuff. And when I told the kids I’d only managed to see them live once before they broke up, my husband said no way, he remembered me going to a U-Men show where he and a friend of his were rolling around on the floor of the pit at a small all ages venue in Tacoma. I’m pretty sure what he was remembering was actually a Circle Jerks show, because the U-Men had broken up by the time he’d met that friend of his. They used to fall down in the mosh pit on purpose to trip people and tick them off. People would haul them back up thinking they had fallen on accident, and were going to get hurt, but they’d just drop back down again.

Next up was my youngest son, who wanted to watch Iron Maiden. You have to admit that this live performance is pretty dang sick.

At this point my oldest son had to leave, so I chose another old video from the 80s, Einsturzende Neubauten. They were an industrial band. As I explained to my son, they were the real thing–not this bubble gum industrial stuff that came out later, like Nine Inch Nails.

Blixa Bargeld has to be the scariest human on earth. Which led my son to share some stuff he thought was raw and scary and before it’s time:

Good stuff. That made me pull up Wolf Eyes, a current band who is basically noisy and abrasive like that:

Wolf Eyes – Human Animal

Then my husband joined us and wanted to see if we could find any early Beatnigs live footage. The Beatnigs were Michael Franti’s band before Disposable Heroes of HipHoprosy, and they were pretty dang unique–industrial hip hop. I saw them live once in the 80s and they had sheet metal and chains on the stage, the whole bit. It was awesome. Here’s a video:

Beatnigs live in 1988

This made me want to see if there was any footage on youtube from the Some Bizarre Show. In the 80s, our cable company didn’t carry MTV, so the only music videos we saw were on a show called Night Flight that was on at midnight on weekends. My brother and I would tape it and watch it all the time. One show that was on was called the Some Bizarre Show, named for a record label. They played the craziest stuff–including that Einsturzende Neubauten video, which is how I know of it.

My husband said to our son, “Imagine seeing that in the 80s, when all you heard on the radio was Rick Astley and Paula Abduhl.”

The only bit I could find from the Some Bizarre Show was Lydia Lunch doing spoken word poetry–in a rubber room.

I haven’t really seen it in 20+ years, but I still know it so well. “Exploiters, exploiters, exploiters…”

Not to be outdone, my son showed us this crazy jazz band:

Naked City – Osaka Bondage

He pointed out to us that it is not improv–they’re reading sheet music.

Then my husband wanted to see some old Fugazi live footage, and we found this:

Pretty dang rad.

I wanted to see some Replacements, so we watched some footage of them doing Bastards of Young at a soundcheck:

Replacements live – 1986

My son wanted us to see his favorite band, Death, from an early demo:

Death – Evil Dead demo

Recorded in 1984. That’s some early death metal.

We kept going for quite awhile. Here’s the rest of the list.

My husband: FEAR – Let’s Have A War
Me: Replacements – Bastards of Young (official video)
The video for this song is brilliant, made at a time when bands had to make videos–they obviously didn’t want to.
My son: Gorguts – Earthly Love
My husband: Bad Brains – Soulcraft
Me: Converge – Plagues live
My son: Atheist – Room With a View live
We were all tripping out because one of the guitarists is playing left handed with the strings on upside down and completely shredding.
My husband: David Lee Roth – Just Like Paradise
Me: Butthole Surfers live in 1987
My husband and I saw them on this tour–and it was exactly like this. Warning: there is some nudity.
My son: Mercyful Fate live in 1983
My son asked me what I would have thought of them if I’d seen them in 1983. I said I probably would have thought they were an Iron Maiden rip off, which totally offended him, so I had to explain that they’re not, but at the time it’s what I would have thought.
My husband: 38 Special live
Me: Mars Volta live
My son: Pantera live R.I.P. Dimebag.
My husband: Black-eyed Peas “Boom Boom Pow” live

At that point my laptop battery died.

So are we the only family to do this? If your family were to do it, what would your playlist look like?