Music Videos & Concert Films

By mrgoodsound 

In grade school, I identified as a visual learner. My period of adolescence came at the tail end of the MTV era and boom of music videos as a promotional format for the record industry. I consider myself a very nostalgic person, to the degree of feeling sentiment for periods, places and music that I was not alive to experience when new. I think this is why music videos and concert films can sometimes elicit for me greater emotional response than just the music itself, as the musical message is now aided with visual stimulants (music video) or greater context of how it was performed (concert film).

I sometimes have listening sessions with my Vanatoo desktop speakers or headphone system where I exclusively cycle through various music videos or watch a concert film. Although I have a few saved, I primarily watch music videos on YouTube. I have no reservations about listening to music on YouTube in general, even though I have thousands of dollars of audio equipment, it doesn't really matter. I would say there are worse music killers out there. It can sound better than Spotify for instance, if the uploader took some care with the PCM track of their video upload.

Below are some examples of music videos and concert films that get an emotional response from me.

Sinead O'Connor is one of my favorite pop artists. I own most of her CDs and have a large poster in my bedroom. In The Name Of The Father (1993) is one of my top 10 movies of all time. It is a dramatization of the story of the 1974 Guildford pub bombings and pursuant wrongful convictions. Although this song was composed for the movie, it was played only briefly in it, but would enjoy some success as a single release the following year.

O'Connor's singing is at first subdued and anxious, before an intense emotional outburst exactly halfway through the track. The music video is also shot by the same director as the movie, Jim Sheridan, and features cuts of the film in-between scenes of Sinead being locked up or interrogated, before eventual spontaneous freedom. It is powerfully done, and difficult for it to not get a rise out of you if you have seen the film. One can easily identify the representations between the development of the song/video and the film's plot.

Do-Re-Mi was an Australian pop/rock band in the mid-80s. Outside of some new wave, post-punk & jangle/C86 I am not really crazy about the rock of the 1980s. Every era of course had its own sound and rows of copycats, but for whatever reason the 80s sticks out to me as a sore thumb. This video makes it here because of it's unusual progression and relative lack of mass appeal, anti-1980s in these regards. The band members appear deadpan and somber in-between cuts of a man who appears to be unraveling a conspiracy theory. The tension and anxiety builds from each verse until an eventual plot twist at the end.

My favorite concert film is 1968's Monterey Pop, a showcase of performances and b-roll footage from the 1967 Montery Pop Festival. This festival was a who's who of the 1960s San Francisco psychedelic music scene: featuring Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Mama's & The Papa's, among others. I love all these artists but the standout performance is from Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother & The Holding Company. The performance is powerful and one can see the audience in sheer awe of what they were witnessing. The original mono mix of this film sounds fantastic, full and dynamic. The stereo mix is artificially re-channeled and not worth listening to.

Of course, the music video and concert film is largely a product of popular music. There are great classical and jazz performances that were captured on film or televised including historic ones, but I have yet to compile a mental library of many. Perhaps doctorjohn can add some videos of classical performances worth watching!

I leave you with a televised broadcast of Gould playing Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 31, and the original Bill Evans Trio playing Waltz For Debby; neither of which require introduction or commentary from me.