Wolfgang's Vault

The Wolfgang's Vault site has been up for a while, and it's a tremendous resource for hearing classic rock (and other styles of music) performances that you'd never encountered before.

"Wolfgang" was the real first name of the man known as Bill Graham (1931-91), the legendary promoter who, to a large degree, is responsible for the rock concert as we know it. He accumulated a large archive of performances, and they've been prepared for streaming through the Wolfgang's Vault site.

The Concert Vault is where to find everything from a 1965 show by Jefferson Airplane, before Grace Slick joined the band, to a handful of 21st century concerts (obviously the collection extended beyond Bill's death). If A Flock of Seagulls is your thing, that one-hit '80s wonder is on the list, too.

My personal favorite is a Pink Floyd show on April 29, 1970, at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. I've had a bootleg of the concert for a number of years, but the Wolfgang's vault version sounds a heck of a lot better. The performance is from the pre-"The Dark Side of the Moon" era, when Pink Floyd did quite a bit of improvisation compared with the closely choreographed shows of later years.

Some of the shows also are available for download, for not too much money. So if you want to hear Peter Frampton as he really sounded live - as opposed to the augmentation that resulted in "Frampton Comes Alive" - this is the place to look.