BY KYLE KRAMER
Concerts are sweet. Here at Noisey, we love concerts. We even gotolotsofcoolones. But for every dope show we catch, there are tons of dope shows that we weren't in town for or weren't alive for or whatever. It would be great to see Blink-182 perform live in their heyday without having to travel back in time and revive your frosted tips or to catch Bruce Springsteen in the 70s without having to buy an expensive box set (although some of us have definitely bought said box set). Now, thanks to the power of YouTube, you can do this.
As The Verge reported this morning, Google and YouTube have made a new deal with Music Vault, a YouTube channel full of live concert recordings. In addition to 1,600 or so clips that are currently available, another 12,000 clips totaling more than 2,000 hours of footage are being added. Among the concerts that are on deck are classic shows from The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, The Sex Pistols, and pretty much any other sweet band you can think of, along with a lot of newer concert footage of bands like The Hold Steady and The Civil Wars. The first crop of these new videos went up this morning, and you can find them all here.
An immediate standout choice is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1978 (above), which took place on my birthday exactly ten years before I was born and is therefore the best thing ever. Other solid picks are Blink-182 in 1999, Lou Reed in 1986, and The Sex Pistols in 1978 (all below). Here is the musical education you always wanted, minus the cost of thousands of concert tickets, as well as the requisite aging and hearing loss that comes from 40 years of going to shows. Take advantage.
Kyle Kramer's first concert was a Bruce Springsteen concert in real life. He's on Twitter @KyleKramer.