August 13th, 2007
9. Fugazi
Ian MacKaye takes no guff when it comes to annoying dancers who insist on crashing into each other at Fugazi shows; he and co-frontman Guy Picciotto have been known to stop songs mid-stream to question the motives of audience goons. "It sucks to have to tell people to behave themselves," says MacKaye in one of the greatest moments of the excellent Fugazi documentary Instrument. But Picciotto really takes the moment: "I saw you two guys earlier at the Good Humor truck, and you were eating your ice cream like little boys, and I thought, 'Those guys aren't so tough! They're eating ice cream.' I saw you eating an ice-cream cone, pal… You're bad now, but I saw you… That's the shit you can't hide. You eat ice cream; everybody knows it. Ice-cream-eating motherfucker, that's what you are."
10. Billy Bragg
Outspoken British rabble-rouser Billy Bragg brings a lot more to his shows than leftist anthems—he talks so much that his performances sometimes seem like a chatty, wry stand-up comedy act as much as a rock show. One of his funniest stories involves his increasing discomfort when a giant, tattooed skinhead in Arizona kept yelling what sounded like a slur against Bragg's socialist beliefs: "Red fag! Red fag!" Unable to ignore it any longer, Bragg stopped the show, pointed at the skinhead, and put on his most authoritative voice to ask, "What did you say?" The skinhead replied, "Play 'The Red Flag'!"—the anthem of Britain's Labour Party, which Bragg had covered on the EP The Internationale.
11. Bob Dylan
Ordinarily, the standoffish Bob Dylan doesn't interact with his audience, but one incident has gone down in rock 'n' roll history. It's hard to believe now just how infuriated some folk fans got in 1965 when Dylan went electric and moved away from protest songs toward a louder, full-on rock sound. (The story goes that backstage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Pete Seeger was so offended by Dylan's set that he had to be restrained from cutting the electric cables with an axe.) Ultimately, the rock sound proved more popular for Dylan and more influential for music in general, but the anger of those who felt left behind is captured on the "Royal Albert Hall" bootleg (actually recorded at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in May 1966). Near the end of a set already fraught with tension between band and audience, a heckler takes advantage of a quiet moment after "Ballad Of A Thin Man" to shout "Judas!" The audience erupts with a combination of cheering and catcalls. Dylan snaps back "I don't believe you… you're a LIAR!" Then, turning to his band, he commands them to "play it fucking loud," and steamrolls the naysayers with a furious performance of "Like A Rolling Stone." Advantage: Dylan.
"You're A Liar" by Bob Dylan
12. Courtney Love
Courtney Love's history of onstage babbled nonsense and verbal hypocrisies could warrant an eight-disc boxed set, but two particular minutes of drug-addled, spoiled-brat profanity make for one of her better circulated live outbursts: Recorded sometime in the mid-'90s at a show in Holland, it begins with Love "singing" for a few seconds, her vocals like driving over a gravel road on the tire rims. Then she stops singing. "You throw shit on me and you don't get a fucking show; take your Bon Jovi shirt and go fuck yourself with Eddie Vedder's dildo, all right?" Then, presumably aimed at the offender, "Is little miss Dutch bitch mad cuz I fucked Trent? Is she mad cuz I fucked Brad Pitt? Is she mad cuz I married Kurt?" Then, later: "Kurt hated this fucking town, I hate this town… Go fuck yourself." All in all, this might be the most creative performance of Courtney's career.
"Stage Banter" by Courtney Love
13. Lauryn Hill
After Lauryn Hill faded from the pop-culture landscape following the triumphant The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, rumors persisted about squabbles with past collaborators, legal woes, and substance abuse/mental-health problems. The release of her double-disc Unplugged 2.0 did nothing to quiet wagging tongues. "Fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need. I've just retired from the fantasy part," went one of her saner assertions. But plenty of people thought she'd retired from sanity and common sense as well. It feels like half of Unplugged 2.0 is devoted to stage banter that blurs the line between confession, rambling, and muddled self-help directives from the world's spaciest inspirational speaker. Hill later made headlines during a benefit concert at the Vatican, when she scolded the crowd: "Holy God is a witness to the corruption of your leadership, of the exploitation and abuses which are the minimum that can be said for the clergy. There is no acceptable excuse to defend the church." Even more disconcertingly, she claimed that the previous night's crowd "rocked way harder" and chastised Catholics for their unwillingness to throw their hands in the air and wave 'em like they just don't care. Audiences at Hill's infrequent live shows never know whether the good or bad Hill will show up, which is the danger as well as the appeal of her performances.
14. Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett has played with Art Blakey, Miles Davis, and others in a long, respected career that's spanned the classical and jazz worlds. He's also a huge prima donna when it comes to audience disruption, infamously walking out on a crowd for coughing too much. (He did at least pick up the habit of distributing cough drops to address the problem.) But Jarrett's greatest ire is reserved for those who would record or photograph him. His anger spilled over at this year's Umbria Jazz Festival, where he began his set with a rant about "assholes with cameras" and the caveat that he "reserve(d) the right to stop playing and leave the goddamn city." He ended by refusing to play an encore to a standing crowd due to flashbulbs. Jarrett was subsequently banned from future Umbria Jazz Festivals.
15. Cheap Trick
The roles in Cheap Trick are clearly defined. Robin Zander handles singing and hair-tossing, and Rick Nielsen writes the songs, plays an endless series of customized guitars, flings guitar picks into the crowd, and handles stage banter with the cockeyed, cornball charm of everyone's favorite goofy uncle. Nielsen's manic mugging and cheesy quips are highlights of Cheap Trick shows, and yet it was Zander who wormed his way into the annals of stage-banter history with his sparse chatter from Live At Budokan. "This. Next. One. Is. The. First. Song. On. Our. New. Album," Zander intones slowly and patiently to the ecstatic Japanese crowd, like a kindergarten teacher trying to reach an especially slow class. The banter was so dope that the Beastie Boys sampled it on Check Your Head.
"This Is The First Song" by Cheap Trick
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