As a ten-year old, trying to be cool like my twelve-year old sister, I spent one day in September of 1980 rummaging through her album collection—something I would do through my twenties. She had excellent taste in music back then. My very first encounter with rock and roll—aside from hearing Chuck Berry, Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis in my Dad’s car—was pulling out a record from some band called Van Halen.
My curiosity piqued by photos of four crazy looking rockers on the frontispiece, I looked at the back of the album settling on the cool sounding ‘Eruption.’ Turned the record player on, dropped the vinyl down and found the track. “Why not give the band a 1:47,” I mused: watch the ten-year old brain at work, minimal investment of time.
That two minutes changed my life. Not only did I become a lifelong fan of anything Eddie did, I immediately began a decades long discovery of some of the best music ever made. Some of which I will highlight for you in very new and unique ways.
Musical discovery is similar to the intellectual process. You read a giant, then his or her footnotes, or if its literature, you read the academic preface, introduction or forward. If your curious enough you see the path of their influences and follow it, acedemically you begin discovering the secondary or primary sources and accumulate knowledge while your analytical faculties grow as your mind expands. The process of musical discovery, especially if you are a nascent musician (I play the guitar), is basically identical to that of intellectual discovery. You begin with a scorching Eddie Van Halen guitar solo and soon you’re deep into AC/DC, the Pretenders, Phil Collins, Foreigner, Bad Company, Free, Deep Purple, REO Speedwagon and many more. (I promise, we will get to Queen.)
Dive-bombing into big sisters LP collection, fingers flicking LP after LP until Sad Wings of Destiny—I loved the cover art—by Judas Priest, presented itself. It wasn’t actually big sister’s, a friend lent it to her and she hated it. But not me. Victim of Changes sounded like a good place to start. The arrangement and transitions from heavy metal to bluesy ruefulness back to hard rock beyond any insanity Ozzy could muster blew me away, as did Rob Halfrod’s amazing howls, screeches and soul. Horizons expanded with the Scorpions, “Still Loving You,” which still gives me the chills, especially those guitar interludes. (I am, after all, a guitar man.)
One day in January of 1983, mom asked me to grab her favorite pair of shoes—my parents had finally divorced by this time—from her closet. Now, I’d never rummage through Momma’s closet, or purse for that matter. I respected and had a healthy fear of my mother. She’s a good woman and raised me well. But in that closet I found solid gold: her LP collection from the late 60s through the early 70s. Smack in the middle of the Beatles and Cream—what ever happened to alphabetizing things!?— were four LPs by Led Zeppelin. “Damn,” I realized, “my mom was a total hippie!’
Led Zeppelin was its very own revelation, indoctrination and revolution, like waking up in a new house, with a rock god’s voice piercing closed windows, a throbbing door with each kick of the bass drum, subtle hum of the bass in my heart and the various tchotchkes and bric-á-brac of boyhood rattling around and falling of the shelves to the ever insistent riffs of Jimmy Page’s defiant, vital guitar. Harmonies, melodies, and crushing choruses all.
Even thought I was drawn to heavy metal—I saw Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, Saxon, Metallica, Whitesnake and many others multiple times—as a matter of protest at the mess of a relationship between my parents and generalized early-teen angst (13-16), even then my taste in music was thoroughly catholic.
There wasn’t a genre a music I would not listen to if the music ‘sang to me.’ The college music my big sis was now listening to was fantastic. REM’s Cold-War anthem ‘Radio Free Europe’ and follow up hit, “These Days,” are two of the best songs of the genre, not to mention the era. Indeed, I loved RunDMC, LL Cool J and Public Enemy—partly because their breakouts came near the end of the Apartheid era in South Africa. More importantly their music compelled me to reexamine and then escape the narrow minded bigotry of my elders. Music and politics should be as vital now as they were then. Sadly they got a divorce when the Dixie Chicks, Kanye West and others called out Bush the Younger out on national TV. Still, my youth was divine, as I danced many a night away to the sounds and rhythms of the English New Wave. Even today when I hear Erasure, Simple Minds or Australia’s INXS I smile and sing along.
Then grunge exploded onto the scene and American music entered its silver age. The music of the nineties and early ‘aughts is second only to the golden age of the late sixties and seventies. By the time Nirvana repudiated the glam-metal bands I was a junior at university. I didn’t particularly like their sound, but I did appreciate them on an intellectual level. Pearl Jam had some great moments and Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack to Into the Wild will forever recall images of my year-long walkabout across the globe in 2008-2009. Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and the Presidents of the United States of America all climbed the charts and inhabited the CD player in my 1985 Toyota Supra 5-speed manual transmission with a straight six. Lord, I loved that car. But the true grunge standout was Soundgarden. Let me say it now, loud and clear. This live version shows off Chris Cornell at his finest, and validates his inclusion into the pantheon of rock gods. Cornell puts on a master class of vocal range and power the equal of but different to both Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant.
This is as good a place as any to wrap up this long winded preface and introduce you to to something that is hopefully new to you: YouTube™ Reaction videos. I’ve chosen seven performances and first time reactions, five of which are absolutely iconic, and two from the same artist who is new to scene and an example of a new generation of singer/songwriters. All this for your edification.
There is something hopeful watching Millennials and Gen Zs discovering the music of my youth. Like the intellectual process, musical discovery leads first to repetition then innovation. I doubt anyone will argue with my next assertion: every genre of modern music sounds the same today as it did twenty years ago. What was on the radio in 2004 sounds identical to 2024. The only change I see is the growing recognition of a group of singer-songwriters, rooted in folk, country and sixties rock, of which the premier member of said group is Jason Isbell—who we will watch. Hope springs eternal.
So, down the rabbit hole we go!
What makes these video reactions precious is watching a young white working class British rapper react to Soundgarden’s ‘Outshined,” for the first time. He follows Chris Cornell’s obliterating sonic pounding with Eddie Van Halen’s 1987 live performance of “Eruption,” which is without a doubt the greatest guitar solo of all time. Thank you Eddie, and rest in peace. Those two minutes you gave me forty-three years ago made my world a fuller, richer and better place.
Or watching two young African-Americans watch Freddie Mercury strut across the stage singing Queen’s incomparable hit “Fat Bottomed Girls.” Sadly, Body-postive activists raised enough of a stink to get the song removed from the latest release of Queen’s Greatest Hits album. What is the problem with people these days? Do they not understand that this song celebrates big bottoms? Brian May said he penned it for Freddie because Freddie liked girls and boys with big fat bottoms. So too do a lot of African-Americans and Latinos. We Gen Xers might be cynical—why not after inheriting a complete disaster from the Baby Boomers—but these children are cynically and hyper-self-obsessed. It reminds me of the failed movement in the early ‘aughts (2000s) to excise the word ‘nigger’ from the writing of Mark Twain. Why not edit Shakespeare too? But enough of that bullshit. We’re here to celebrate music!
Penultimately, please enjoy these two reactions by Millennial guitar teacher, Michael Palmisano, discovering the sumptuous and captivating stories Jason Isbell sings. My personal favorite is “Cover Me Up,” but Palmisano’s reaction to “Elephant” is proof positive of Isbell’s songwriting prowess. His voice is powerful and angelic at the same time. Indeed, I’m with Palmisano in seeing him as the greatest lyricist in America today. He’s like John Prine, Ryan Adams and Rik Emmet all rolled into one.
But, I’ve saved the best for last. This is a true gift. Just watch this young man from Zambia listen to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time. Watch the kids face and listen to the first words he utters at the end of the song, “Dear Lord . . . This. Is. Music.” You’re goddamned right, Bman. I envy your journey.
What all of these songs do is expressed best by an eloquent and gracious comment in the Bohemian Rhapsody thread. Mike Gutschow 8384 writes, “[Bohemian Rhapsody] really brings people together that would otherwise probably not know they had much in common and [it] bridges the gap between generations and cultures.”
Head over to YouTube™ when you get a chance and look up a reaction video to your favorite 60s-70s-80s or 90s song. There are thousands of them made by people from all walks of life. Folks from as far away as South Korea or right behind your California backyard, white female vocal teachers and Latino kids in the barrio. Please share your favorites in the comments.
Some are good and some folks make too many damned interruptions, but they all prove music’s unifying gift, begining with Mozart and consummateed by artists as diverse as Beethoven, LL Cool J, Robert Johnson, Aretha Frankin, Chuck Berry, Edward Van Halen and rock royalty, Led Zeppelin; there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music.
Enjoy!