That Bad Company Show…
Bad Company, Shooting Star, September 3, 2016, LA County Fair
If this doesn’t make you tingle from the inside out, if this doesn’t make you shiver, you’re no fan of rock and roll, you’re no friend of mine, you’ve got no idea what the experience really is, you’re too set in your ways and afraid of letting loose and enjoying the true power of music.
I’m against fan videos. I don’t mean they should be illegal, I’m just saying they never capture the magic. I could describe some technical mumbo-jumbo regarding mic specs, but…
When this dude sent me the link to these clips I was stunned.
The sound was imperfect, but it captured the essence, and then…what I experienced in my bones, what I felt in my heart, was right there in the above clip…the assembled multitude standing and singing along like this was the most important moment in their lives, like it was the only thing worth living for.
Don’t you know that you are a shooting star
Don’t you know
DON’T YOU KNOW!
“Shooting Star” was the last song on side one of Bad Company’s second album, so inconsequential, so irrelevant, not a single to the point where it doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page!
There are entries for “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” but this album track…THE AUDIENCE KNEW IT BY HEART!
And speaking of album tracks…
Are you ready for love?
Listen to the audience sing along here, to this even less-heralded cut.
Bad Company, Ready For Love, September 3, 2016, LA County Fair
They’re singing earlier in the video, unprovoked, but you can hear them here and then… Listen at 4:28, when Paul Rodgers lifts the mic stand and twirls it, the release of human emotion, the joy in attendance, walking down this rocky road of life and having such an exquisite experience.
If you want to hear the power of the band, that freight train that rock and roll specialized in, the turning up of the amps to the point it demolished everything in its path, check out some of “Gone, Gone, Gone”:
Bad Company, Gone, Gone, Gone, September 3, 2016, LA County Fair
But the mix is a bit off, the overall sound is not as good as it is in the previous clips, but that driving element, that power, it’s there.
And you can also check out a bit of “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” a gargantuan smash from the summer of ’75. Paul’s vocals are a bit buried, but those staccato guitars, they shoot machine gun fire like we’re still back then and the internet has not been invented and we know who the real heroes are, not the next door neighbor pretenders, but the stars on stage who’ve paid their dues and earned our fealty.
Like I said, I’m against fan videos. They’re curios, they’re souvenirs, evidence that those in attendance actually were, there, that is.
And I was.
And I’m loath to post them. For fear you’ll tell me I’m wrong, that I’m clueless, that the band wasn’t that good, that the gig wasn’t that great.
But then I watch and my body starts to tingle and how can I not share.
Feel like makin’ love?
I DO!
P.S. You can catch all the clips from the beginning here:
