The internet has been particularly generous to us this week, with a healthy number of rare and previously unseen live performances making their way online. From old TV shows to awards ceremony highlights to contemporary livestreams, here are 13 remarkable highlights, with a disclaimer: be quick, because at least a couple of these clips might not remain online for long.
1. The Beatles – Live At The Coliseum, Washington
In February 1964, at the height of Beatlemania, the Beatles played a sold-out show at the Coliseum in Washington, DC. The 12-song set was filmed by CBS and broadcast the following month, and has subsequently appeared on DVD. This latest (unofficial) clip of three songs upscales the video to 4K, colourises the footage and remixes the sound, and it shows the “lovable mop-tops” in complete control as carnage unfolds.
Famously, this is the night the band were pelted with jellybeans after professing a love for the popular sweet in an interview. “We were on a circular stage, so they hit us from all sides,” said George Harrison. “Imagine waves of rock-hard little bullets raining down on you from the sky. It’s a bit dangerous, you know, ’cause if a jellybean, travelling about 50 miles an hour through the air, hits you in the eye, you’re finished. You’re blind, aren’t you?”
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2. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Live at the Royal Albert Hall
Jimi Hendrix‘s shows at London’s iconic Royal Albert Hall in February 1969 were both captured by an American company, McCann Filming, and released as a concert movie later that year. This hour-long compilation uses the best available video and audio sources from the second of the shows (from February 24) and features some rare and previously unseen footage of Jimi backstage and after the show, an interview at Jimi’s London flat, and two acoustic covers filmed at the same location.
3. Can – Halleluhwah (Live on Beat-Club)
Last week we made some noise about a known-but-previously unreleased version of Black Sabbath’s N.I.B. filmed for the German TV show Beat-Club in 1970, and now here’s something from the following year as Krautrock lynchpins Can perform an eight-minute version of the classic Halleluhwah. This performance is a full ten minutes shorter than the studio version on Can’s Tago Mago album (thanks to standard television programming being unable to accommodate a 20-minute avant-garde jam), but Jaki Liebezeit’s relentless drumming and Damo Suzuki’s stream-of-consciousness vocals are still a treat.
4. Family (ft. Roger Chapman) – Part Of the Load (Live on Beat-Club)
Another 1971 gem from the Beat-Club archive as Family mix three different kinds of rock (progressive, blues rock and jazz) into something truly adventurous, with Roger Chapman improvising on vocals and a stellar rhythm section in the shape of bassist John Wetton and drummer Poli Palmer, who, presumably via some kind of post-production video magic, also appears on vibes. Palmer was filling in on the stool for regular sticksman Rob Townsend, who’d been bitten by his dog.
5. Uriah Heep – Return To Fantasy (Live on The Midnight Special)
Since launching its archive on YouTube in early 2023, The Midnight Special has uploaded hundreds of clips and dozens of full shows, thus adding to the total sum of international enjoyment by a significant factor. This footage comes from the summer of 1975, when Uriah Heep were promoting their Return to Fantasy album, and features Mick Box & Co. (including our old friend John Wetton, who’d replaced Gary Thain earlier that year) playing the title track. This mix isn’t the best (too much bass, not enough guitar), and singer David Byron may be what they call “worse for wear”, but it’s undeniably full-on.
6. Thin Lizzy – The Sun Goes Down (Sight And Sound In Concert)
Thin Lizzy‘s Sight And Sound In Concert was filmed at the Regal Theatre in Hitchin in early 1983 and featured the band’s Thunder And Lightning lineup, with the late John Sykes fitting in beautifully alongside Scott Gorham on guitar. This footage of The Sun Goes Down finds Phil Lynott at his most melancholic, and has found its way to Thin Lizzy’s official YouTube channel in the footsteps of two other songs from the same show, Cold Sweat and Jailbreak.
7. King Crimson – Sleepless (Live at Tokyo’s Kani Hoken Hall)
Three Of A Perfect Pair might not be the best 80s-era King Crimson album, but the band were still absolutely monstrous live, as evidenced by this 1984 clip, which was filmed on the final night of a three-performance residency at the Kani Hoken Hall in Tokyo, and features some utterly heroic bass playing from the great Tony Levin.
This is the latest in a long line of songs released from the show (elsewhere you’ll find Discipline, Frame By Frame, Sartori In Tangier, Elephant Talk, etc, etc), which was filmed for Nippon TV and later issued on LaserDisc as Three of a Perfect Pair – Live in Japan.
8. Pink Floyd – The Great Gig in the Sky (Live in Venice)
Such is the celestial splendour of Pink Floyd’s Great Gig In The Sky, it’s easy to forget that this performance – filmed in Venice in 1989 – only took place after three months of bickering with the local authorities, led to the resignation of the town’s mayor, and took place on a barge. Backing vocalists Rachel Fury, Durga McBroom and Lorelei McBroom sing Clare Torry’s original freeform part brilliantly, much to the presumed delight of the estimated 100 million people who watched Pink Floyd in Venice: A Concert for Europe when it was broadcast worldwide.
In the last few weeks, Floyd have also released Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Time, Learning To Fly, The Dogs Of War, On The Turning Away, Yet Another Movie, Sorrow and Round And Round from the Venice show.
9. David Bowie – Rebel Rebel (TFI Friday)
It’s easy to forget the cultural dominance of Chris Evans’s show TFI Friday, but for a while, back in the late 1990s, it was the UK show to appear on, with everyone from Bon Jovi to Slipknot, Tina Turner and Prince appearing live (and it was very live). The show’s official YouTube channel was launched earlier this year (more than 300 clips have already been uploaded), and the latest batch includes a pair of David Bowie performances, China Girl and Rebel, Rebel, from a broadcast in October 1999. Eagle-eyed viewers will note the presence of Helmet‘s Page Hamilton on guitar.
10. Tom Waits and Neil Young – Get Behind the Mule
Back in 2011, Neil Young inducted Tom Waits into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. “I didn’t bring my teleprompter or my notes, and I don’t have any real thoughts,” Young joked. ‘I will say that this next man is indescribable and I’m here to describe him.”
After doing so, the pair went on to perform Waits’ Get Behind the Mule, from his 1999 album Mule Variations. Waits has only played one significant show in the years since, when he completed a 10-song setlist at a Bridge School Benefit show in 2013. Quite why the Rock Hall have waited until now to release this clip is anyone’s guess, but we’re not complaining.
11. Tedeschi Trucks Band – Live At Red Rocks
If there’s a more sublime combination of band and venue than Tedeschi Trucks Band and Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre, then it surely must be in heaven. This twenty-minute teaser (you can skip five minutes of audience preamble) was filmed late last month and opens with a pair of rapturous Sly Stone covers in You Can Make It If You Try and Everyday People, plus their own Don’t Let Me Slide and the beginnings of Crazy Cryin’, before the footage fades. If you want to watch the whole thing, it’s available via TTB’s deal with streaming platform Nugs.
12. Smashing Pumpkins – Lollapalooza 2026
Filmed on the same night as Tedeschi Trucks’ Red Rocks show, but across the country at Grant Park in Chicago, this clip features Smashing Pumpkins’ entire Lollapalooza 2026 set, which includes a host of classics (1979, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Disarm, Tonight Tonight, Cherub Rock and more) plus a trio of cameos from Yungblud, Olivia Rodrigo and Melissa Auf der Maur. It seems as if Billy Corgan (dressed here as Nosferatu, it would seem) is enjoying himself these days, and that comes across in a set that’s sonically spectacular and ultimately triumphant.
