I dated a boy that was wild for seeing bands, saw tons of concerts, Bob Dylan twice, Rolling Stones twice, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, John Mayal, ELO, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Beach Boys,Tom Waits, Ronnie Hawkins, Tom Connor, Three Dog Night, Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Marley, BB King, Peter Tosh, (and some I’m sure I’ll remember later!) last year we saw Steve Earle.
The only ticket stub I kept was Bob Marley!
I’ve been to a fair number of concerts, though I haven’t had the chance to go to one since prior to COVID. And, there aren’t many artists which I still want to see live, whom I haven’t had the chance to (and who are still possible to see).
The particular concert I’ll share here is Motorhead. I’m not a big metal fan, but one of my best friends in college was, and when Motorhead came through Madison, WI in 1985, he wanted to see them, and asked me, and another friend of ours, if we’d come along.
We did not recognize the name of the venue; it was a couple of miles off campus. It turned out that it was a “Turner Hall” – a building owned by a German-American gymnastic club, which were common at one time in the Midwest.
Motorhead was playing in the hall’s gymnasium, which was, literally, an old-school gym, no bigger than a basketball court. The band was on a small stage, which had been set up on the court, and the audience simply stood in front of the stage (i.e., there were no seats). We were probably no more than 15 feet away from the band’s amps, and it was so loud that you could barely hear the actual music – it was all just raw noise and distortion.
Before that night, I had pretty good hearing. After that night…not so much. 
The best shows I’ve been to probably include seeing Redd Kross this past summer at a smallish (under 500 person) venue. Wet Leg were also pretty spectacular live, though I don’t know what in the hell has happened to them since they just took over the indie scene for about a year a few years back. LCD Soundsystem was incredible, though I only knew a small handful of songs. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed them live. And I was in absolute bliss a year or two ago when Liz Phair was on her Guyville tour. (I never had a chance to see her during her heyday.) New Pornographers I’ve seen a few times, and they’ve been an endorphin rush almost every time, although when Kurt Dahle (the drummer) left the band, they just didn’t quite do it for me and I haven’t seen a show since (well, I had tickets to the tour before he quit, so I saw them with the new drummer who, mind you, is very good, but just doesn’t bring me joy the way Kurt Dahle’s drumming does.) Those are the ones that immediately stand out to me, and those are all pretty recent.
Oh, and Sleater-Kinney. One of my favorite bands and I just kept on missing them coming through town in the late 90s, early 00s. I finally saw them like in 2015 with Lizzo opening for them, before Lizzo became big. I remember my friend saying, hey, you gotta pay attention to this one, cuz she’s going to be big. And he was right.
My ticket collage is missing quite a few concerts. One stub I really wish I still had was from a 1975 Winterland Peter Frampton show that ended up being pretty famous.
I saw a lot of those bands/people. I really really with I would have gotten to see Bob
My dream show I WAS NOT at… was the Dead closing Winterland.
Royal Marine Band + Black Watch Pipes & Drums and Band – 1976
Jury’s Irish Cabaret of Dublin – 1978
Victor Borge – ca 1980
Blake Shelton – ca 2005
“Down from the Mountain”: Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, &c – 2002
Missed Johnny Cash twice. 
I saw a LOT of Grateful Dead concerts in the 80s/90s. In fact, I saw Jerry’s last concert ever (we didn’t know it would be the last at the time though).
The Police was the fist concert I saw.
ELO is in there too as well as The Eagles.
I’ve seen many more but those were the big ones.
One of my biggest regrets was being offered a free ticket to see Stevie Ray Vaughn at Alpine Valley that I had to refuse cuz of some family thing. He died after that concert (helicopter crash). So, I never got to see him.
I kid you not, My first real concert was Seals & Croft…opening for Charlie Daniels.
Most of my concerts were in the 90s.
First concert was Steve Miller Band at Pine Knob Music Theater north of Detroit.
First time smoking pot was at an Offspring show at Cobo in Detroit
Saw Bush at the Palace of Auburn Hills, with this one-hit-(at the time)-wonder opening for them. It was No Doubt. Everyone was there to see Bush, so they got booed mercilessly until they played “Just a Girl.” Then once that was done, they got booed right off the stage.
Saw Page/Plant, also at the Palace, during my Zeppelin phase, so that was cool. The only song I remember from that show was “Ramble On.”
Saw Kiss’ first show back in full makeup in 1996 at Tiger Stadium. The opening act was supposed to be either Stone Temple Pilots or Alice in Chains. Whichever is was, the lead singer had just checked himself into rehab, so the other band came on instead as a last-minute replacement. I don’t remember if it was Scott Weiland or Layne Staley who was doing the the rehab thing at the time.
Saw Green Day at Joe Louis Arena. Billy Joe was in rare form shitting on Detroit in general, and the Detroit crowd specifically. Lot of booing, but also it was a blast. This would’ve been in support of the Dookie album.
Missy Elliott, Beyonce and Alicia Keys went on tour in '04, and a couple of work friends and I went to see them when they played at Allstate Arena in Chicago. We really just wanted to see Missy. We figured we could spend a little extra time pre-concert drinking at my place, because we figured Alicia would be the opening act. Nope. Missy was, and we missed her.
Saw some corporate events with Alan Jackson, Toby Keith and Beyonce at Ford properties around Dearborn in the late 90s and early 00s. Alan Jackson was great, Toby Keith was a racist piece of shit and Beyonce was fresh out of Destiny’s Child so she had very little recognizable material which made for a really boring show.
Also saw Garth Brooks, Aerosmith, David Lee Roth/Sammy Hagar, Boston, Eminem, Poison and Motley Crue over the years. I also went to one of those pop music festival-type shows sponsored by a local radio station, but I’ve got no memory who played there.
The Doors, just before they hit it big, in a small concert venue at Berklee College of Music in Boston, in 1967. I was seated in the second row center. The band was tootling on stage, seemingly warming up, then Jim Morrison leaped screaming from the wing and the show was ON.
Great stories so far!
I saw them, gonna say, maybe very early 90s. I had heard they had some really bad shows in the past due to drinking and drug problems among several members, but they had recently cleaned up at the time, and put on a great, tight show.
Are you saying you were actually there at Woodstock and witnessed it? 
Didn’t happen, according to Hoffman.
Cool! So, how were the Doors live? In '67 Morrison must have been on his game, but I head that later he’d often be so drunk onstage he could barely sing (or didn’t bother trying to).
I love the “I saw (musician / band) at a tiny venue before they hit it big” stories.
I used to date a girl who said she saw the Chili Peppers before they hit it big, at a tiny dive bar in
Hamtramck, Michigan. They performed naked back then, with only socks covering their penises. Not sure how they would have kept those socks on- rubber bands? 
Did you see a nondescript-looking guy riding around the Pine Knob parking lot on a 10-speed bike? I heard that back in the day, since nobody really knew what he looked like, Steve Miller would ride a bike around before the show, checking out the tailgaters and maybe hanging out with them. Never got recognized.
Speaking of first concerts, mine was Kansas when I was 14.
@blondebear , very cool ticket stub display. I have a friend who used to keep his in a photo album-style binder, but that’s way more impressive.
They’ve always been great. The first time I saw them though, it was a different lineup than all the other times. It was the Worlds in Collision tour, so it was the Thomas/Maimone/Krauss/Jones/Feldman configuration. All the other shows were Thomas/Wheeler/Temple/Mehlman with various different guitarists.
Thinking about some notable/memorable ones:
Mel C. in London, 2012. I was over there on a trip, and had never seen a show in London before. Tried to get a ticket to Amy MacDonald but they were sold out, so I snagged one for this kind of on a whim. Mel didn’t have a new album or anything, just wanted to do an intimate London show, and there was a ton of love int he room for her. And she rocked the house, really dynamic and fun onstage. She brought out Emma Bunton to duet on “I Know Him So Well” from the musical Chess (Geri was in the balcony as well). Never would I have ever thought that the best show I saw that year woulbe a solo Spice Girl, but there you go.
I was at Lollapalooza 1994, and ran into Nick Cave in the crowd before his set. I told him how much I loved Wings of Desire, which may have surprised him, coming from a sunburned twentysomething in a Ramones t-shirt. The Bad Seeds were amazing that day (though it somehow seemed wrong, seeing them at mid-afternoon), but the stars of the day were George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars, who just levitated the crowd.
Loudest concerts I’ve ever been to were, in descending order of deafness:
I saw the Cowboy Junkies on their first big tour, playing in a high school auditorium. It was part of the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s concert season, but after they’d been booked, The Trinity Session started exploding on the charts, and the GCTC had to find a bigger venue. The next time they played Ottawa, I’m sure it was the NAC or someplace similar.
One of the most fun shows I remember was Imelda May at the Park West in Chicago. She was rather pregnant at the time but full of energy and went hard for the set, dancing around and belting them out. Just a real strong sense of power. I think that was the last tour (US, at least) before she divorced and changed her sound but I’m glad we got to catch her during that point in her career.
I caught Paloma Faith at… Shuba’s, I think? She was telling everyone to come on stage and dance with her towards the end of the show. Multi-Platinum selling artist in the UK but never really hit it big in the US and playing in a bar. When we were waiting outside the venue, we were talking to a couple who drove from Canada to Chicago to see her as this was their one chance to catch her live.
These days, most of the acts I’d think about seeing are minor shows that require standing around a small venue for hours on end. Which I’m still up for but my wife is a much harder sell and I’m not really interested in driving out to the city to hang out with a bunch of 22 year olds on my lonesome. As a result, my live music attendance has gone down pretty sharply in the last five years.
I came late to the party, so that lineup was the one I first saw, on David Sanborn’s Night Music.
I assume you’ve seen that, but if not there’s more from that show.
Oh man, don’t get me started, like others I’ve been to hundreds and hundreds of concerts in my life, from the very biggest names (3x Stones, 2x Dylan, 2x Neil Young, 2x Van Morrison, 2x ZZ Top, Pink Floyd and so on) to local bands in tiny pubs and bars nobody out of my home region has ever heard of .
I have shared some of my best concert anecdotes here over the years and don’t want to repost them (and I’m too lazy to search and link to them), but the one concert I’m most glad to have seen was Townes Van Zandt in Lüdenscheid, Germany in 1993 or 94, shortly before his untimely and useless death.
Back then, I only knew him as a legendary, almost mythical figure from some articles in music magazines. I had never heard any of his music or knew how he looked. When I heard that he played in Lüdenscheid of all places, a 70,000 town only 50 km from my home, I instantly got tickets for my girlfriend and me.
Until very shortly before the concert, I had assumed that it would be at the Schillerbad, a great concert venue where I had seen some great shows, just to notice to my shock that instead the venue was a communal center of the local Lutheran church. I thought “Oh shit, they won’t even have beer there, and it will be seated”. I hated seated concerts without beer.
When we arrived near the place and were hunting for a parking space, we saw a haggard, long-haired middle-aged guy with a Native-American styled shirt and jeans walking all alone towards the venue, and I immediately said to my girlfriend “That must be him”. He sure was, and I looked and dressed very similar at that time, only I even had longer hair and was only 25.
The place where he played turned out to be a small room on the second floor, and of course it was seated, but to my relief they sold beer. The audience was not much more than 100 people, half of them guys like me, rockers and music aficionados, and the other half middle-aged school teacher types who wanted to check out real authentic American folk music. And authentic folk music we got! The concert was wonderful, and the contrast between the setting, audience and Townes’ persona was striking. At one point he said “Thanks, you’re a very kind audience. The usual places I play have nets in front of the stage to fence off the beer bottles”. I had only ever seen something like that in the Blues Brothers movie.
The high point for me was when he played the Stones’ “Dead Flowers” from “Sticky Fingers” and announced that this was his favorite album. I was thrilled because it was (and still is) my favorite album, too.
Too make a long story short, this Townes Van Zandt concert is my dearest memory of all the hundreds I’ve been to, and I’m glad to have those memories. Sadly, two or three years later he was gone.
Oops, too late to edit. That should have been “outside of my home region” of course.
My most disappointing show was Cake, small club in San Diego. Disappointing cuz the show got cut short. Prince had a big show nearby and wanted to use the club for the after party. Cake, and all of that show’s audience got kicked out at around 11:30.
I think I’ve mentioned before that my first live rock concert was Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs in the 60s.
Seen a number of jazz/blues artists: Wynton Marsalis, Abbey Lincoln, Ray Charles, Oscar Peterson, Jane Monheit, Charlie Byrd, Trombone Shorty, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Tuck & Patti, and many others.
A couple of folk artists: Buffy Sainte-Marie at Carnegie; Judy Collins, The New Christie Minstrels
The oddest combination of artist/venue was Dave Brubeck in Moscow, USSR in 1988, and I had no idea he was there until I walked in.
I saw Mark Knopfler with his band (post Dire Straits) a few years ago. Excellent concert.
Other great guitarists: Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin, Al Dimeola, Mimi Fox, Tuck Andress, and a very long time ago Carlos Montoya gave a short free concert at my high school gym. He was passing through the Anchorage airport, got delayed, and wanted to do something for school kids.
Foreign artists: Ali Farka Toure, Habib Koite, Salif Keita, Amalia Rodriques, Lila Downs
I was at the Weird Al concert at Six Flags St. Louis where he tried to call his parents to wish them a happy anniversary. This was c. 1999, before the ubiquity of cell phones, so they brought him a landline phone, likely via from some backstage office with the help of multiple extension cords. Between the crows noise and the likely terribe signal, they couldn’t hear a word he was saying and probably were just confused for the rest of the night.
In my youth I went tl several concerts per year, with a particular emphasis on Contemporary Christian Music because that’s where I was at the time (I’m not there any more). I also saw my share of rock/heavy metal acts that were popular at the time.
A few memorable moments:
DC Talk (c. 1991) made New Kids on the Block look like Gangsta Rap. Utterly disappointing concert, and I was a devout Christian at the time.
Yanni (c. 1995) – Laugh all you want, but Yanni put on a hell of a show. Saw him at an outdoor ampitheater in Kansas City and I was just amazed at the diversity of the crowd. There were young hippies, old squares, and everyone in between.
Weird Al – I’ve seen him twice, and what has been said upthread I can absolutely confirm. This guy’s shows are amazing, and he pulls out all the stops.
Styx - my first concert, I was 13, it was the Mr. Roboto tour. I remember coming home with a raging contact high.
I haven’t gotten around to seeing Metallica, I’m hoping the day will come when they play in St. Louis and I have the time, money, and wherewithal to go see them. Ditto AC/DC and Van Halen (although with the latter, it appears that ship has sailed since the death of Eddie).