Song Poor Tom
posted by on October 3 at 11:54 AM
Some songs never get played live.
The song may not fit into the live show or it might be too difficult to perform. The song could be purely a studio creation and the band feels it doesn’t translate to the stage.
Or maybe you are Led Zeppelin and the band has ended so you release a posthumous collection of out-takes called Coda.
Or maybe you’re the Beatles and you’re too big to tour. It’s a shame. Crowds miss out when a band doesn’t play one of their great songs live.
Did the Beatles ever play “Paperback Writer” live? It would have ruled to see and hear that song live.
“Poor Tom” off Zeppelin’s Coda is another song sentenced to life on an album. Page’s acoustic schemes and Plant’s eerie rant about “Anything that you can hide from Tom” should have been played live. Bonham’s snare shuffle and kick drum trip-hammer should also have a filled a live hall. I mean, he’s basically flying a helicopter from the drums.
But no, Bonham had to go and drink 4 quadruple shots of vodka and asphyxiate himself to death on vomit in his sleep. Talk about not drinking responsibly. 16 shots? Damn, dude.
Any songs you’re sorry never get played live?
Let's talk "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" as in the meanest man in the whole darn town...if I could stop time in a bottle, someone would bring Jim Croce back to the stage. He couldn't sing all his stuff even before the plane crashed. Too many musical crashes.
Tante
Here's a Line Out appropriate one: Jawbreaker never played Eye 5 live, or at least they didn't play it outside of a handful of early shows. Great early song for them, too bad.
"Wang Dang Sweet Poontang."
Did the Nuge ever do that one?
It would have been interesting if the Beatles had continued as a touring band after '66.
Given the post-Revolver material, they probably would have either taken a different musical direction altogether; or given their resources, crafted themselves into quite an elaborate traveling show.
A shame most of their best material never got to be played for an audience. At least not by the Beatles, anyhow.
As Trent well knows, the Kinchafoonee Cowboys are not afraid to run with B.B.L.B., among other select nuggets. Do you think "Black Betty" was ever done live? If so, it could not have approached the recorded version.
Robyn Hitchcock, "Autumn Sea".
long ago i read something michael stipe said about playing "flowers of guatemala" live and seeing people crying in the audience. i've seen them six times since then and never heard it, and doubt i ever will.
The Beatles did play "Paperback Writer" live. Have you seen the Beatles Anthology? There's footage of a televised concert from Budokan in 1966 with them playing. George plays the chords underneath the vocals so the guys can get the harmonies right. They don't, and a few seconds later you get all three of the then-remaining Beatles talking about how shit their playing had become at that point.
Well, the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing "1983(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)" would have been pretty cool...
Probably fits into the too difficult to perform category.
Um, it was actually FORTY shots. Bonham had four quadruple vodkas for BREAKFAST. 16 shots shouldn't kill anybody in good health, especially not a big alcoholic man, as long as you pass out and stop drinking.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2172
I knew he kept drinking after the 16 shots. But 40 shots, sheesh. Someone told me he had the equivalent of 2 gallons of vodka. That's a lot of vodka.
Kelly, #8: Interesting. I haven't seen that since it aired, and didn't remember that bit.
I'm glad the peoples stopped touring. We've got a handful of brilliant studio records for it.
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