"X" "Y" and "Z" Artists and Bands
Just a Few Here I Can Recall Witnessing
This ongoing project will grow for as long as I continue to see live music.
Each letter can be seen at the link below if you want to delve into the earlier posts. I will update each ‘letter’ in each substack article to keep them up to date.
https://www.outsidemyinside.com/s/a-z-of-bands
At this point, I have seen over 1400 artists and bands live. These are the ones that I can recall easily. Through the years of festivals and opening acts, some have been dissolved in my memory.
Gone like sugar in coffee.
I can taste the sweetness still.
Approximately 3, 171 performances and that is a very rough guess. Many of the performers I have seen multiple times.
Call me obsessive.
I don’t regret any of it.
Well, maybe one night at the Academy Of Music in New York City when the walls were melting and the floor was lava, but that came with the territory in the early ’70s.
Xavier Rudd
Yeah Yeah Yeah's
YES- I loved this band’s early records, but never got to see them until 1974 at Madison Square Garden. This was The Tales From Topographic Ocean Tour. I do believe I fell asleep during the middle part of the show. They could have played most of Close To The Edge and the new TFTO album and I believe John Martyn opened, not that I recall any of his set. Rick Wakeman was drinking steadily. I think we were too.
Yo La Tengo-17 February 2010 The Basement Sydney. My mate Michael Ward had been fighting cancer for some time. He loved his music and I met him through other friends at a Steely Dan gig. I met him after the cancer had started ravaging his body.
He loved Yo La Tengo but his ability to get out and about was complicated by his treatments and energy levels. Really, he could not go to a gig and stand for it.
I got in touch with the tour manager for Yo Lo Tengo and explained the situation and they graciously got us an excellent table at The Basement.
Michael was not doing well but for the time we were at the gig he was able to find some enjoyment. Michael left us on 1-1-11.
If you do not know the story of how the band got their name, here it is:
They chose the name Yo La Tengo, Spanish for "I have it". The name came from a baseball anecdote from the 1962 season when New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield.
When Ashburn went for a catch, he would yell, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into Chacón, a Venezuelan who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, "Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!" instead.
In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish and had missed a team meeting that proposed using the words "Yo la tengo!" as a way to avoid outfield collisions. After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, "What the hell is a yellow tango?"
Ira Kaplan the lead singer/guitarist from YLT is a HUGE New York Mets fan. Just to tease them I wore my loudest New York Yankee shirt to the gig. He said to me, “I think we have to take that table back!”
Yo-Yo Ma
Yothu Yindi-The first time I saw YY was on the 24th of January 1988 at The Building Bridges Concert at Bondi on the 24th of January. This co-mingling of balanda and indigenous musicians grew much stronger from this point onwards. Also playing that day were Crowded House, Archie Roace, Coloured Stone, Midnight Oil Kev Carmody, and others.
2 days later we marched in the streets of Sydney at then the largest ever demonstration for Indigenous Rights.
The struggle continues as does Yothu Yindi.
You Am I
Zarsoff Bros
Ziggy Marley
ZZ Top-La Grange. What a top song.
