Jun 072011
It’s supposed to get up to around 100 degrees in the Philadelphia area this week, and 100 degrees coupled with this area’s stifling humidity means at least one Townsman is going to be sweating his ass off! If I’m going to be drenched in sweat, then please let it be the joyous sweat pouring from the “Wicked Pickett,” Wilson Pickett, and his throng of adoring fans in this video. Check out the on-duty cop grooving along with the crowd at the 22-second mark!
Townspeople, in preparation for our first taste of the Dog Days of Summer, I invite you to post your most joyous, sweaty performances. Please limit posts to no more than 3 clips at a time, and please introduce your clips so your fellow Townspeople have an idea of what’s coming. Thanks!
It’s been said that the late Jackie Wilson would gulp down a big handful of salt tablets with a pitcher of water for a chaser before his performances. Supposedly that made him sweat bucketfuls intended to show the intensity of his performance. He ended up having a massive heart attack at the age of 41 which not only ended his career but left him pretty much comatose for the last eight years of his life. I have to wonder whether that pre-show ritual of his overtaxed his heart – it sure doesn’t sound healthy.
OUCH! I guess I take in enough salt on regular basis to generate convincing sweatensity.
I present one of the few respites in what is among the sweatiest movies of all time (according to Cliff Claven) Not a musical offering, just some good clean fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kliy32YWFcU
Bands that rawk are typically great to see sweat. Just off the top of me head, I’ve enjoyed tremendous sweaty performances from the likes of the Rye Coalition, the Replacements, the Lyres, the Minutemen, Husker Du. I wish I had seen the J. Giles Band sweat in their early 70’s heyday. Bands you wish wouldn’t sweat tend to be from the UK. It’s somehow not proper.
Joan Jett, all sweaty: http://youtu.be/2mquJsSWW14
Marvin isn’t quite as sweaty in this clip as I remembered (he may start to disrobe at the end for other reasons), but I would have been sweating bullets if I were performing with so many random characters wandering around the stage. I mean, what are all those cats doing? Check out especially the two who show up around 1:44 in the first clip. What’s Going On, indeed! And, likewise, where was this concert?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXZS-TRWSCA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZlkP0qNIDU
Elvis sweating in the black leather suit on the ’68 TV special is pretty iconic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tthEpLS69fo
The Pickett clip is from the documentary “Soul To Soul” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244807/), and was filmed in Ghana, so I’m sure it was plenty hot for the performers even without sweat-enhancing procedures.
That doc has a great lineup and performances, but is marred by fairly lousy direction – strangely enough, by the same guy, Denis Sanders, who’d done “Elvis: That’s The Way It Is” the previous year – which was very competently directed, if memory serves. He also directed “Invasion of the Bee Girls”, which is GREAT!
And joyous! That’s the thing: if I’m gonna sweat I at least want to feel joyous in my own fluids.
What a great scene, from the crowded stage to the crowd itself, which somehow all seems stoned.
THAT’S sweaty!
Interesting point, tvox. We may have to take this into RTH Labs for further examination.
I can’t see the sweat per se … but this is one of my fav live clips and it just looks hot and uncomfortable.
Bare chested-ness, too. And check out the pot smoking guy in the background at around :26.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KRLG1vM5Js&feature=related
Al Green, who seems to have forgotten one usually wears a shirt and tie with a three piece suit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICKToz7BLLA
Ray Davies’ sweating in the videos from the 1980 live One for the Road is a bit unseemly.
Oh man, that dude is totally busted!
Awesome – and does any singer make better faces than Al Green? He makes that one face, in particular, that Al Jarreau attempted to base his entire career around, but in Green’s visage it’s solid gold.
A good friend working up quite a sweat on stage in St. Louis, I think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0HPaHId7dY
It kills me when he says “In spite of conditions I’ve had a good time…” I mean, it looks like a concert broke out in the middle of a coup of some kind, or vice-versa.
There is always Gwen Stefani. I remember a music mag interview that mentioned her heavy sweating and she said she drinks so much water that it is odorless and tasteless “eau de gwen”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6xhJi4Dxjc&feature=related
Didn’t you get in some trouble way back before I got here with some misunderstood joke about naked pictures of Ms. Stefani?
Yeah, we were scammed, but we did apologize and posted the actual source tapes that some joker had doctored:
https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/index.php/all-star-jam-apology-edition/
It’s like that part in “Heart of Darkness” where Marlow runs into the Englishman in Africa wearing a full suit despite the heat. Sweating just isn’t done, my good man.
I take your chain gang and raise you one more. Caution: tasteless title:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXHro-e7qcA&feature=related
Not rock but sweaty….
http://a.espncdn.com/nba/columns/aldridge_david/1433088.html
I loved the fact that when he was at the foul line they would have to have a ball boy come out and wipe the area where he was standing between shots
We need that in Nixon’s Head!
We have a winner!
I’ve been giving this sweating Brits thing a bit more thought. I can accept the Clash and the Jam sweating, but perhaps only because of their punk/macho stances. Is there a class element to this as well? What about stances of refinement and propriety? Why can I accept a sweaty Who’s Next era Who and a Maximum R & B Who, but still hold the opinion that Who Sell Out Who shouldn’t sweat? Is that era somehow more androgynous? Is the logical endgame here that it’s not ladylike to sweat? Unless you’re are punk or belting out soul and blues? I feel a girly Brits vs macho Brits dichotomy coming on.
Tvox, you are definitely on to something here. So many rock/style conventions are wrapped up in issues of gender bias, and the intersection of those things with stylistic cues. I’m not smart enough to connect all the dots here, but you’re definitely onto something. More, please!