Cannonball - The Breeders

After Kim Deal left the Pixies and formed her own band, The Breeders, their second album, Last Splash, contained several hits, "Divine Hammer", "Saints", and "Cannonball. Released as a single in August '93, Cannonball was an instant indie anthem, with its Flying Monkeys from Wizard of Oz-like vocal layer, grungy riff, and kitschy beat. Wikipedia

The Breeders played this live on TV several times, seen here November 15, 1993 on the Jon Stewart Show --

-- on NPA in France in 1993 --

-- my favorite version, in Tokyo, on a reunion tour in 2003 (the crowd is really into it at this show) --

-- and then recently at the SXSW 2008 show, semi-live --

-- and just for good measure, a little rapping to the backbeat by Lethal Bizzle at the same '08 South by Southwest.

Intro

I love live performances of my favorite songs. I've always been fascinated with multiple performances. I have a friend with similar tastes. He's collected 75 instances of Springsteen singing "Born To Run." He's also collected 46 instances of Dave Matthews' "Ants Marching." This guy is a big fan of the performances of the Third Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto. I myself have an entire CD of "You Shook Me All Night Long."

Back in the day, I was a Napster fiend. I acquired lots of great stuff, from Zeppelin bootlegs to audio recordings of TV shows, such as MTV Unplugged feeds. Then, they shut it down. My collecting days were over.

Then YouTube showed up.

And really, Napster was reborn, but a thousand times better. While certainly the audio material on Napster was wider and deeper, the YouTube experience is superior, due to video. Even the mashups I liked five to ten years ago have videos now. Songs without videos have videos.

It's just that keeping track of the video presented a complication. How do I now I'm getting that similar experience? Thus, this blog, cataloging my adventures on YouTube.