Hi, musicaladin,
I came across your posting (18/6/2014) a few weeks ago. It was about a few examples of music that you considered to deserve the place in the musical Pantheon. I totally understand your point of view when you refer to best musical performances as ...the real magical moments of mankind...
I have been a music listener and a collector of recorded music for over forty years. I even had to immigrate from Leningrad in 1977 to England in order to have a chance to listen to live concerts on a daily basis. We had practically no modern music concerts in USSR in those days, especially by Western bands, and entertaining hopes that Led Zeppelin or Frank Zappa would turn up to play Moscow even once would have been a sure sign of insanity.
The only one concert of tremendous quality and power (apart from some rare and amazing early gigs by new local bands like DDT, St. Petersburg and Aquarium) I remember was by a Polish jazz/rock star Czeslaw Niemen and the superb band he brought to USSR with him. He played a concert in Leningrad in spring of 1973. Right in the center of our city, on a smallish stage of the respectable Theatre of Music and Comedy. How that was permitted and who was responsible for this aberration I do not know, but since I mentioned it now, I will investigate it further. Should be fun.
Their performance in Leningrad must have been very close in quality and power (if not better due to an ecstatic reception of Russian music fans, rather stunned by it all, but still able to clap, scream or sit calmly with their mouths opened) to this rare clip of the band's live show in Helsinki right before or after the show I witnessed. I have found the Helsinki show clip on YouTube recently. It appears that interest in C.N.'s music is growing as a lot more material has been unearthed. This clip appeared in 2013. I always liked Nieman after the impact of that powerful live performance, but as he is still practically unknown in the West (and in the East, come to think of it, apart from his native Poland... And even there...) He died, sadly, in 2004 from cancer. He was only 64. Still, more people may discover his work via YouTube now.
Here is the link to the event in Helsinki - a fierce attack on all of our perceptive faculties - aural and otherwise. A shear tour de force of music making... Frank Zappa would have been in the audience if he'd only knew what was about to unfold... Please listen to this loud. And imagine what this performance did for me. Live! The show in Leningrad was tremendous. I was twenty years old. Sitting in the first row with my best friend, who was a few years older and who was (and still is) the main record collector and modern music specialist in Leningrad at that time. The band was right in front, about six meters away. The sound was clear, loud and shimmering! Enjoying great music with someone who loves and understands it as well as you do or even better is, for me, the biggest source of joy. Nikolai came to London a few times and we went to some small rock clubs together. I liked to invite him to concerts without telling him who shall be performing and carefully hiding it from him so that he will only recognise them when they hit the stage... I remember when he nearly had a heart attack when he came to London for the first time and I took him to Half Moon in Putney. We were quietly standing near the stage when on strolled Stan Webb himself. Nikolai looked at his face with disbelief, but when Chicken Shack burst into the first number and he recognised the song and the sound of Les Paul hit him properly, he grabbed his head and rushed to the corner of the room and sat on the floor, clearly in shock... A great pleasure to have experiences moments like these!
Please select HD quality for better sound! 30 minutes of .... well, an apt addition to the clips that you have referenced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfwiG8161mE
----------- \\\///-----------
All I want to say is that I can send you some info about artists and records that you may not have heard as yet. I have a large LP collection and I was filming live music concerts since 1982. Recently I even thought about making a direct DSD recordings of vinyl albums that were superbly produced on top of fantastic music that they contain. For compilation to introduce music lovers to something that they may have missed. And to the sound quality too. I have a proper high end gear to do that. Usual Linn LP12 etc. and even Koetsu Red. Recordings are made on Korg MR-1000 DSD professional portable recorder.
If you still do not listen to DSD, try Korg's player for PC - AudioGate - free at http://www.korg.com/us/news/2014/0203/
I can put a few tracks - 1 bit sampled at 5.6 MHz on Dropbox for you to test. I actually formed a company recently to deal with the DSD sound issues (live recordings, digitising select old analogue masters and promoting the format) as I think that it offers the most dynamic and faithful sound compared to the real world music that I know of.
I would be interested to learn your opinion. Please let me know if you are interested.
Kind regards.
Sergei
da@interda.com
P.S. I have some high quality binaural PCM recordings and video live music clips with binaural sound. Please let me know if you would be interested.