- The talent and unspoken rapport of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn's collaborations.

 - Watching all of The Old Grey Whistle Test's videos of Dutch band Focus I find myself reinforcing a thought long held: that Focus may have been the best/most talented progressive rock band ever.

 - That bass virtuoso Danny Thompson made every single song he touched ten times better just by his passionate presence.

 - That Tal Wilkenfeld's talent and genius are unsurpassed--one of those once-in-a-generation kind of phenoms.  

 - Pip Pyle was an amazing drummer. 

 - Jan Akkerman, Robert Fripp, John McLaughlin, and Allan Holdsworth were unique talents.

So my question for the PA community: Can you / Would you please cite/send me references for other YouTube videos that you think might "knock my socks off"--especially old archival footage?

You mentioned Focus and The Old Grey Whistle Test, which led me to "Focus - Broadcasting Live at the BBC" which seems like as good a place as any to start. 

CAN f'ing rulez!!!!

Thank you! Jaki rules! (And he makes it look so f'ing easy!)

Thanks, Paul! I happened to have already seen this one before--and just yesterday, too. I thought it was The Old Grey Whistle Test as well!

Tarkus at the first ProgStock

Rachel playing Little Arabella a few weeks ago

Spain - Joe Deninzon (Stratospheerius), Rachel Flowers, & Alex Skolnick (Testament)

Awesome! I've already seen all of these but they are VERY worthwhile. Rachel is a phenom!

Thanks, Steve! That was fun! I've always loved the band--in all its incarnations (I just love East-meets-West confabulations)--as well as the solo work of Ralph Towner and a lot of Paul McCandless' contributions to other jazz (ECM) artists' albums.

Hi,

The Hamburger Concerto done with Rachel Flowers is also wonderful.

I don't have all the DVD's for the live performances by TD, but there are some really far out ones out there, and I have to tell you, that if there is one musician, actually two ... that I really miss? Edgar Froese and Frank Zappa. 

Frank's stuff is on the tube, but most of it is already on DVD, although it is believed that it is not even a third of what the vault has and if it will EVER be heard by anyone else, other than just wasted. The "perfection" required for the concerts were historical, and you can see the same/similar aspect in King Crimson, and I'm pretty sure that TD also had it, since the CD's, specially the ones with Linda and Iris, are spectacular and very well done, including the new renditions of some older material.

I've watched a lot of stuff off the tube, but the listings and organization of it, is really poor. There are a couple of things by AD2 in there, apparently one in Italy that they do "Apocaliptyc Bore" (the only time I ever heard of them actually doing it), but the show had some really poor sound moments with Karrer not being able to get his guitar working, as a bad example, but the 2 drummers in it, were excellent. Don't even know who they are. Some other AD2 material is not great, and in some cases (later CD's) the material is free form and not "focused" in my book, and it ends up seeming poor compared to their early material.

Klaus Schulze had every thing recorded that he did in concert, as he could easily do it off his own mixing board that he worked with ... no externals would be necessary, and my thoughts are that there are over 100 shows that likely will not be heard from! And likely more material along the lines of the WROKS series with a lot of experimentation and free form stuff, which did not seem to bother him much.

A couple of things, although they are not complete for my tastes ... a couple of shows by Ryuichi Sakamoto are nice, specially the piano stuff, and I was hoping to see it all done with an orchestra, but I don't think it will happen. His soundtrack stuff, even on piano, is excellent. At the same time, the guitarist from the Sadistic Mika Band, kinda became well known in Japan and still gets ovations from playing that one piece from the "Hot Menu" album, although it is thought his material is more jazz related.

The CAN material with Damo is really good, and you get to see him do his thing, and hopefully the special about his work will be just as good, and I'll be able to see it ... the only sad thing is that I think he ended up limiting himself a bit too much and he is not the only one. The same fate went for Flora Purim, and likely others whose "sound" was not based on lyrics. The only one that "survived" it, was Gilly Smith, although she could (and did) also wrote lyrics usually within the concept of the piece she was doing, but her live stuff with Harry W. and Daevid A. and her friends was usually very good. The stuff she did in SF with a band whose name I can not remember is also not "recorded" to my knowledge, and she was very special in that hour between the breaks of the show ... it was about 30/45 minutes long and had a slight Celtic feel, probably because of the harp player. The film itself from that SF Progressive Music Festival, was probably a mess and the folks shooting it were very badly directed and did not know the music whatsoever ... the worst curse for something known as "progressive". I would have fired the fudgers within 10 minutes! it was ridiculous ... Magdalena was doing a solo (Per Lindh show) and they got her violin for 5 seconds and then went to catch the drummer and the guitar, and they did not even watch Per's hands and get some good shots. Who gave a f**k about the music, right?