When a band REALLY loves its trucking company, they give a free acoustic concert at a company party

[highplainsdem]

I'm having another of my "I love YouTube" days, since that site's algorithm added a very unexpected gem to the first videos I saw when I looked at YouTube this morning. 30 minutes of one of my favorite bands performing live for a transport company's employees and their families at a company party when they'd just moved to a new building.

The band is Golden Earring, and at the time of the party, in 1998, they'd already been hiring that company, Bode Scholten, for 35 years (so that working relationship would have started just two years after the band was formed in 1961).

The video was posted to YouTube a few months ago by a member of the family that owns the company, but it's had fewer than a thousand views and hadn't shown up in any of my earlier searches of YouTube for Golden Earring videos.

It's an acoustic concert -- Golden Earring had started doing a lot of acoustic shows several years earlier -- and the performance shows just how great they were live. Flawless performance, in front of employees and family members of all ages, including some little kids who loved the show. They did 9 of their hits, at least -- I don't know how many songs they did that weren't taped, and this 30-minute video includes only part of some of the songs. The setlist includes Buddy Joe, Bombay, Another 45 Miles, Johnny Make Believe, Weekend Love, Long Blond Animal, When The Lady Smiles, Like A Burning Stuntman, and Radar Love. All hits in Europe, with the last song a huge international hit, and this performance includes Cesar's great drum solo.

And again, this was a free concert, for the company that had helped them with so many concerts. Golden Earring typically did 100-200 shows a year. Msybe other bands have done free shows like this for their support staff, but if so, I haven't heard about it. I thought it was a great gesture from a great band.

[highplainsdem]

1. Just listened to this again. I get such a kick from the video, not just the music but the crowd,

the employees and their families, from the older people dancing to those adorable little kids (who'd be about 30 now, and who might have taken little kids of their own to Golden Earring concerts before the band's last concert in late 2019, their last tour before Covid hit and then their lead guitarist was diagnosed with ALS in late 2020).

I just noticed that at about 9:08, Barry calls "Another 45 Miles," which George had just finished singing, a "trucker song," which gets laughs from the crowd. It isn't really about trucking, of course -- it's about hitchhiking home, with bad weather and nightfall about to make that worse.

The song was a huge hit for the Earring in the Netherlands the winter of 1969-70, peaking at #3 on the Dutch charts and staying there for three weeks, spending months on the charts, and it stayed a concert favorite throughout the band's career. Music video from 1969, before Cesar, their drummer for more than 50 years before they disbanded, had joined them.