All time greatest medleys (vs. segues)

[Willie G. Moseley]

Anybody with formal music training is welcome to correct me on the terminology, but the way my peers and I have always thought about mixing various songs into our performances, "medley" meant starting off with one song, segueing into another (or more than one more) but then returning to (portions of) at least one of the previous songs (usually the introductory one). The more you mixed it up, the more impressive it usually seemed...but that might have differed from how impressed yer audience was...

"Segues"--to us, at least--meant going from one song to another in a cool way, period; no return to previously-heard riffs.

With that in mind, the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star"-"St. Stephen"-"The Eleven"-"Turn On Your Lovelight" juggernaut (three of the four sides of the first LIVE DEAD album) was chock fulla segues, on accounta it didn't swing back to something heard earlier. But there are some classic "medleys" (using the definition cited herein) that still hold up decades after they were done, and I can think of two as I'm composing this:

"The Bomber" (James Gang): Interpolates "Bolero" and "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" before crashing back into those glorious introductory power chords. It has to be the original version before the Ravel composition was edited out, dammit---but "Bolero" was reportedly re-inserted for a Joe Walsh box set some years back.

"Rattlesnake Shake" (Fleetwood Mac): 25-minute live version from the Boston Tea Party sessions. All songs from THEN PLAY ON; starts with "Rattlesnake Shake", shifts gears to a jam on the "Madge" riff, then slows down with "Underway" then there's a build-up to "Madge" again, and this time it gets so frenetic that it sounds like Peter Green's Les Paul is literally screaming (and it probably was, as Little Feat's Paul Barrere once said of Green: "His soul came out through that guitar.").

I'm sure I'll think of some others later and will add 'em if someone else doesn't first.

Please advise.

[tomteriffic]

I'm shot at the moment too, Willie, but going by by that distinction between the two, Most Esteemed Redhead and I went from Adie Grey's "Grandpa's Advice" to "Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad" to Timbuk 3's "Gotta Wear Shades" in one swell foop. It was unplanned, unrehearsed and had only one big-production Barry Manilow style key change trick. You just cant do much of that stuff as a duet.

[lonechicken]

I'm being lazy and not going to wikipedia or dictionary.com, but I'm pretty sure what you said is typically what I think of the two terms. I'm not sure that in a medley, you'd necessarily have to come back to a previous song. In a segue, I think of it as the current song is 80-100%finished and you transition somehow to the next song. Medley, the percentage can be much less. Uh, yeah, talking out of my ass.

Let's see. From my pop metal files... Tesla going from "We Can Work It Out" segueing into "Signs." Def Leppard going from "Photograph" straight into "Armageddonit" by way of a very similar riff both songs share. Whitesnake does a Deep Purple medley of "Burn" and "Stormbringer". And not so rockin', Pet Shop Boys did a "Where the Streets Have No Name"/"I Can't Take My Eyes Off You" cover medley.

Then there's that little known segue by the Beatles going from some song about some army dude into some song about getting by.

[atquinn]

Abbey Road side 2 medley. Obvious, but surely one of the greatest medleys of all time?

[Hackubus]

My band does "Billie Jean" up til the end of the 2nd chorus, plays a bridge riff then it's off to "Word Up" in it's entirety, slight return to bridge riff, then seamlessly into the out chorus of "Billie Jean". It's utterly brilliant live. And the riffage is FOOKIN BROOOOTAL.

It's a best of both worlds situation, IMO. The girlies get to shake it, you get to see them shake it, you still get to riff like a madman, and they can shake to it.

We also slam dunk from "Darling Nikki" into a very metal version of "Wicked Game".

+1 to Abbey Road.

[Brooks]

me & dave have a lot of fun w/ medleys on our acoustic gigs.

we go back & forth every verse on our stones/lennon medley

"you can't always get what you imagine".

that then segues into the 80's hit "melt w/ you".

same thing w/ stones/andrew lloyd weber's

"sympathy for jesus christ superstar"

(w/ a verse from outkast thrown in).

we took monty montgomery's zep/skynyrd idea and expanded it

to include jimi, as "all along the stairway to freebird".

we go thru jack johnson's "bubbletoes" into

bo diddley's "who do you love" into

bow wow wow's "i want candy",

then back to JJ.

we also play steve miller's "the joker" into

"wild thing" & "louie louie" and back to SM.

[mathman]

This is only slightly related to this thread but reading about Bobby "Boris" Pickett who has died, I saw this quote about his one hit " Monster Mash"

He would be about to perform and say " Now I will play a meddly of my hit"

Sounds like my kind of guy!

[tafkathundernotes]

Cherry, Cherry (Neil Diamond) into

R-O-C-K in the USA (Mellencamp) into

What I Like About You (Romantics)

My band used to transition "Ballroom Blitz" into "I Want You to Want Me" quite smoothly.

[Willie G. Moseley]

My outfit done a buncha medleys like the others listed here, and I listed a couple of them in a previous thread some months ago.

But whaddabout famous/notable RECORDINGS of medleys like the two cited in the original post? That's actually what I was hoping to find out in this thread.

[tafkathundernotes]

You mean like No Sugar Tonight - New Mother Nature by the Guess Who?

The Sgt. Pepper album has a few classic segue's

We Will Rock You - We are the Champions. Can't be played separately IMO.

The Load Out - Stay by Jackson Browne

[Willie G. Moseley]

+1 on "Loadout"/"Stay"---what I perhaps shoulda clarified was that the medleys/segues should utilize songs that are/were "individual" before being melded. Accordingly, the Guess Who and Queen anthems probably wouldn't fit the profile, as that's how they were originally released.

[Rechts]

No one is gonna mention The Cars first album?

"You're All I've Got Tonight" into "Bye Bye Love" into "Moving in Stereo" (Pheobe Cate's Tits) into "All Mixed Up"....

It was the whole second side of the LP, back when people used to buy those things.

[MCChris]

I never heard "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'" on Detroit rock radio without "City of the Angels" immediately afterward.

[Bass Guy Dave]

Hands down, the funniest I've ever seen and heard was at the '94 or'95 NAMM show, cramped in the Peavey booth.

Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa, Mike Keneally and I forget the bass player's name, although he was very good.

I just found this on YouTube and thought I'd never hear this again... Apparently this one was a at a private party, later.

(in five parts (divided by decade,) ...the thing was like 20-30 minutes long!)

Best Wishes

[Ranger]

Too many Dead shows to recall the ones where the band started a song and played one or two others before coming back to finish the first.

As you're likely aware, the dark side of hard drugs leached the life not just from Jerry and the band, but from the whole scene. Teenage junkies, abandoned babies, smash-and-grab thieves, and 250 mean drunks in a mace fog tearing down the walls at Deer Creek. Ah, why couldn't we all just be content with Alice D. and N2O?

Saw a funny Dead sticker on the net recently -

[center]"Jerry's Dead. Now cut your hair and get a job."[/center]

[RobB]

Devil w/the Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly/Jenny Take a Ride (Springsteen/EStreet Band) from the NO NUKES soundtrack. Can't admit to being a huge Brooce fan (ahhh, it's an Eastcoastthing...), but they really shred those tunes up.

[Willie G. Moseley]

+1 to Springsteen's Mitch Ryder tribute. I'd sign my name to what RobB wrote.

[Camstone]

Todd Rundgren's four song medley off of "A Wizard, A True Star" 1973

I'm so Proud, Ooh Baby Baby, La La Mean's I Love You, Cool Jerk

[ScottM]

ZZ Top - Waitin' For the Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago

[Submariner85]

I like Twisted Sister's Horror-Teria to Captain Howdy to Street Justice.

[stobro]

The first ones that come to mind are Joe Jackson mixing the Yardbirds' "For Your Love" into the middle of his "Fools in Love" and "The In Crowd" with "Down to London" on one of his live releases a few years ago.

[BCR Greg]

Here's a great Medley...

[lonechicken]

Speaking of the Dead, that same Tesla album I mentioned earlier, they went from their usual opener "Comin' Atcha Live" straight into covering "Truckin'" without missing a beat. Very nicely done.

And speaking of "Billy Jean", I remember back in the day, Madonna used to medley back and forth between "Like a Virgin" and "Billy Jean". It was pretty cool, until I got tired of her.

Anyway, Dream Theater had a couple of monster medley/segues on their "A Change of Seasons" EP. One was simply titled "Big Medley", and went from Kansas, to Queen, to Journey, to some other stuff. Very well played, and they did well in avoiding their main weakness. Which was background vocals (or the lack of it), by avoiding those parts in each song.

Me, I'm working on a Beatles into Oasis segue/medley (original, I know ). I'll link it whenever I finish it.