Don’t say Queen at Live Aid. Their performance was good but it was as much time and place as actual quality of performance. Not denying it was great but lets highlight some others.
My nomination: Nightwish - Ghost Love Score from Wacken 2013. Its the go to reaction song now for youtube reactioners. Its a thing if your not aware. People pretend to be hearing songs for the first time and react to them. With Nightwish, since they are sorta obscure in the United States, it might actually be true. Its ten minutes long but its well worth the listen, especially from about 7:00 on as its the Floorgasm heard round the world culminating in at the 9:22 mark. Literally, Floorgasm is what its what its called. The lead singers name is in fact Floor so its play on her name and what she does vocally will blow your mind.
And just to give you a taste of what Nightwish’s lead singer is capable of here is another example of something everyone is familiar with to some extent. Floor Jansen is from the Netherlands and every year they have a music reality show where established Dutch singers come on the show and sing songs by the others. One of the guys on the show, Henk Poort, was a theater singer best known for his run on Phantom of the Opera. So they got Floor up there to do Phantom of the Opera with him. Watch in awe and wonder how many other pop or rock singers could do this. While I don’t speak Dutch this show was still amazing to me as Floor over the season sang songs in four different languages (English, Spanish, German, and Dutch) and blew everyone away every time.
Another nomination. The Gathering - Travel from TG25. While they barely made a blip in the United States, The Gathering were huge in Europe and were hugely influential to a lot of 2000’s European female fronted metal bands like Nightwish, Within Temptation, etc. This concert from 2014 was amazing for many reasons. First the performance: this song just makes me want to sit back, drink an adult beverage, and be swept away. Then the fact that this even happened. The Gathering are on their 4th lead singer at the time of this concert yet all three singers showed up for this concert. Regardless of any reasons for changing they all got together for this concert. This song was by their 2nd and most popular lead singer, she is the one singing throughout most of the song, but by the end all of them come out and sing. How many other bands do you know that have gone through such lineup changes would be able to put aside differences and all come out together like this?
Also, props if you recognize this singer, Anneke Van Giersbergen, at all but if you sort of recognize her but are confused she has sung lead with several other groups as well, primarily the Devin Townsend project.
Soul Sacrifice at Woodstock, that’s the obvious one.
For a subtler response, I might nominate any of Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest shows. The episode with Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry and the episode with June Carter and Johnny Cash would be high on the list.
But if live TV doesn’t meet the criteria, I might go with The Weaver’s Together Again, which is a personal favorite, but has more personal value than objective value.
Let me just vote for Deborah Coleman’s Brick (Live). (“Best” music is silly concept, but a fun way to share music)
I think this is Stevies best solo, starts at about the 4:10 mark. Even Tommy Shanon ( bass player) knows he nailed it. Watch the reaction on his face. I saw him 3 times…
