5 Live Performances That Were Surprisingly Awesome

I spend a lot of time watching live concert footage, videos of talk show performances and the like on Youtube. Often, videos go in this article's hypothetical sister-article, "5 Live Performances That Depressed Me By Being Surprisingly Bad (Starring Tegan and Sara)." Sometimes I see a completely new side of an artist I thought I hated - or at least was ambivalent about - or gain a new appreciation for them. They end up in THIS article.

5) Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison and Prince - While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Sorry for the formatting. Wouldn't want to leave anyone out. Look at that murderer's row of guys who were awesome in 1978 (and whoever Dhani Harrison is. George's son?). This has everything I want to hate about a performance:

• Washed-up rock stars that are going to make me feel sad watching them try to sing
• A famous guy's son getting some shine for no other reason than his parents. 
• It's at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Randomly grouping artists that don't play together to play a song none of them sing/sang or wrote.
• Shoe-horning one of my favourite artists (Prince) into what will surely be a runaway trainwreck. 

But none of that happened. This performance had the benefit of Lynne and Petty, who had been bandmates ones (in The Traveling Wilburys) and had worked together for years. And I guess Steve Winwood doesn't suck, so he can follow along and riff a bit. He even gets a short solo and does ok.

And Dhani Harrison is there. 

The performance becomes great when everyone just takes a step back and allows Prince to have the stage. For the second half of the song.

I knew Prince was a virtuoso on several levels and instruments, but I'd never really seen it before this so I guess, in a way, I didn't truly believe it. It's impossible not to now.

4) Gnarls Barkley - Live at the Astoria/Roskilde/Everything

Gnarls Barkley is one of my favourite acts of the last 10 years. Period. I was all about Cee Lo when he was in Goodie Mob and DJ Dangermouse's "Grey Album" opened my eyes to a new way to make music. More than each individual though, I love the sum of the two: Gnarls Barkley. I'll start you off with my favourite moment from the Astoria. Keep in mind this is a band lead by a hip-hop DJ/producer (Dangermouse) and fronted by a former gangster rapper (Cee Lo). I give you: Gnarls Barkley does Radiohead.

The idea that this rap-pop experimental duo's live show could feel more like a rock concert than anything else blew my mind. They repeated the trick (or didn't. Not sure which show came first) at Roskilde in 2008. Here's them doing one of their own songs, but like...arena-rock style.

Also the idea of playing a Gnarls Barkley song live is just daunting to me. On the records, this duo is glitchy, weird and contains a ton of samples. How do Cee Lo and the Mouse do it live? Just hire a huge band and have them play the samples live. Love it. 

Beyond these two shows though, if you just type "Gnarls Barkley live" into Youtube with an hour two kill, you'll have a fun time. 

3) Miley Cyrus - On SNL and MTV Unplugged

Maybe the small stage at SNL's studio forced Miley to trim back her normal live show until it was just a band and her on stage, but whatever it was, it worked. Especially for "Wrecking Ball." 

 I'm not gonna bother defending this one. Haters gonna hate. But check out the last chorus, specifically. Hannah Montana can straight up sing. That's a tough song to sing too. Try it out. Requires some solid range. Then she played "We Can't Stop" in a weird, virginal shroud with a midget on (tiny) rhythm guitar. That was fun I guess. 

I think you can guess the surprise element: Miley Cyrus can actually sing pretty well. When she burst into my consciousness, it was as a Disney star and I didn't know much beyond that. Then she turned pop star and it was all twerking and controversy. I didn't know much about the music at all. Her antics I can take or leave (but if you're gonna get mad at famous musicians for doing drugs, you should reconsider your priorities), but at least she can sing. I'll leave you with her cover of "Jolene," originally by "Aunt Dolly."

2) Janelle Monae - This Performance in Rio 

And really, every time I've ever seen her do "I Want You Back" and "Cold War." So here it is. The first 11 minutes of whatever this giant show in Rio de Janeiro is.

Let's talk about the cover of "I Want You Back" first. Not many people in the world can cover a pre-puberty Michael Jackson song without transposing the entire song down a few steps. Grown Michael Jackson probably couldn't even do that. But Monae's high-end range carries it. It's just impressive that she pulled that off.

But the real gem of this is the performance of "Cold War." The ArchOrchestra (her band) brings the fury big time and Janelle works the shit out of the suit-and-tie (eat it, Timberlake) look.

The surprise came from my misconception of Janelle Monae. I knew her from features on Big Boi tracks and other rap songs. I figured she was like a Ciara or Ashanti-type: A pretty black girl who could sing well enough to do the hook for a big rapper but had little star-power beyond that.

I couldn't have been more wrong. Now I'm just a huge Janelle Monae fan. I even follow her on Twitter.

1) Bruno Mars - Everything

No, there's no song called "Everything." I mean all of the live performances of his I've ever seen. There was once a Max who thought "That Bruno Mars is a hack. He's so sappy. Totally not a real musician." Then I stumbled on to this video of him performing in Sao Paolo (what is it about Brazil?), which I thoroughly recommend you watch in its entirety. 

Yeah it's an hour long. It's an entire concert. If you want to follow along though, skip ahead to 54:30, for "Grenade," which is the first part of this video I saw (I was linked to it from some site that had it go straight to "Grenade"). It's not even my favourite Bruno song, but you can't watch that and maintain the "Bruno Mars isn't a real musician and he doesn't care about making good music" stance. That performance (and seriously, this show and every other one of his I've seen) is balls-to-the-wall enthusiastic entertainment. 

He's not the best looking pop star, he's not the best dancer (he's damn good though) out there, but he and his crazy-ass dancing band work as hard on stage as anyone in the pop game. Which brings me to why he's my favourite pop star: He doesn't have a backing band. He's in a band. He just happens to be waaay more famous than his band. Apparently they've been playing together for years while he wrote and produced hits for others. Now they're his touring band. He's not backed by them. He's part of the band. He's the front man. Which is why his live show is so cohesive and relatively gimmick free: The musicians on stage are just straight up good.