Not that I recall. I think King Sunny was the only band on the bill. The venue was basically an old hockey rink with astroturf thrown down where the rink was and a huge dance floor in the middle. All kinds of folks there.
Funny, Perse, one of the shows this thread brought to mind was a John Mayall concert. None of us knew anything about the opener, Alice Cooper. What a surprise! Odd Combo - great show.
One concert that remains as a best in that it left me and my compadres floating for several days afterwards was Iron Butterfly on their In-A-Gadda-Vida tour. Hard to believe in this day of laser light shows and digital imagery that we got excited by the panning of spotlights across the crowd. Blues Image opened. Simpler times, I guess.
And one of my favorite finales was a Zappa concert at the (now disappeared) Music Hall where, after tumultuous clamor for an encore, our most underappreciated presidential candidate came out and said (paraphrasing), “It’s the last night of our tour, it’s my birthday, security was only payed for until midnight - you’ll notice they’re gone. We’re gonna play for two more hours and then that’s it. Be good then and go home.”
And play they did. Some of everything. And when the time was up the players walked off stage one-by-one and the grips removed their equipment. Finally, it was down to Zappa and the drummer. A couple of guys came out on stage with a handtruck and one of then unplugged Zappa’s guitar cord from the amp, and he froze in position. The grips put him on the handtruck and wheeled him offstage.
This left the drummer pounding away. Grips came and disassembled his kit until they dragged out a huge Anvil case (for I don’t know what) and deposited the still drumming drummer in it. As we all filed out, you could still hear the drummer playing away on the inside of that case as they dragged it offstage.
I saw Black Uhuru open for King Sunny Adé on their 1984 tour. It was especially cool since I had just been taking African dance classes with a Yoruba teacher. King Sunny’s concert was the perfect place to get down!
For a club show - Rammstein at The Docks, on July 21, 2001.
For a stadium show - Nine Inch Nails at Maple Leaf Gardens, April 28, 2001. Visually spectacular.
Studi
Best concert ever: December 6, 1996
Tool at the Grady Cole Ampitheatre in Charlottle, NC
Ok, I’ll be the first to admit I’m a little biased. Tool ,is after all, the best rock band since Led Zepplin (IMHO, anyway). I was approximately four feet from the stage for the entire show. I had been wanting to see Tool in concert for about 3 years before, so I was very happy that everything about the show was as good or better than I expected. One thing that suprised me though was that the fans there were very nice compared to all the other concerts I’ve been to… If you fell in the pit, people would actually help you up. It was suprising. Anyway, I give it five stars.
Novus Opiate
In 1986 I saw Shriekback perform at McAllister Auditorium in New Orleans. Unfortunately, even on a good day there are only a few Shriekback fans in the world, and the concert was horribly under-advertised. As a result, there were only about fifty people in the audience. I was disappointed and I’m sure the band was disappointed. However, the fifty people there were all big fans and so as a result the energy was great. We all had a fantastic time, and the band seemed to as well. The lead singer invited folks up on stage to dance, but security nixed that idea. The whole feeling was that this was a private performance just for us fans, and as a result it is one the the best shows I’ve ever been to. It was a great way to see one of my all-time favorite bands.
If you’re one of the six Shriekback left in existence, it was to support Big Night Music and they opened and closed with “Nemesis”, did a fantastic “Faded Flowers”, and gave previews of “New Man” and another song from Go Bang.
August 2000, Royal Albert Hall, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performing Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. We blew the roof off the place.
And FunGuy, I’ve seen Tony Bennett in concert too – he’s definitely best heard live. (And how about that drummer of his? Yowza.)
Two are tied, both from the early 70’s…
Ike & Tina Turner opening for The Who at G’town Univ.
and Brian Bowers (autoharp) opening for Leo Kottke
mack, I am so jealous you got to see Cassandra Wilson! She is amazing.
Peter Gabriel, Denver, 1993.
I was just in sync with the man for the whole show. We had shitty tickets, so we snuck down to 17th row, near the end of the platform that came out into the audience. I danced through the whole show, and at the end, while waiting for him to do an encore, I just knew he was going to sing Biko. So I started chanting “Biko! Biko! Biko!” and all around me people were saying, “Yeah! He’s gonna sing Biko!” And so we got the whole section chanting Biko!, and, of course, he came back and started singing it. Best show of my life.
The Smokin’ Grooves tour at Red Rocks, 1997. Cyprus Hill, Busta Rhymes, The Fugees, more…Great show! The whole audience was dancing from start to stop, everyone was smokin’, and being a white guy surrounded by the local gang population really didn’t seem to matter. Everyone was cool.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Prague, 2001. I just saw them about 3 months ago- great concert! That man knows how to put out noise! I never really considered his music to be in the category of “Turn it up! Way up!” but it certainly is.
-Tcat
I wont post the five page essay again, but I just want to reiterate:
rammstein, rammstein, rammstein.
I’ve seen them six times and counting, never been disappointed.
jarbaby
Howyadoin,
Rush, Test For Echo tour
Two full sets with no opening act. As the ticket said, “An Entire Evening with Rush”. Can’t wait 'til the new album comes out…
Ronnie Montrose/Joe Satriani, The Channel, Boston
'nuff said…
-Rav
Leonard Cohen Brilliant, absolutly brilliant. He told the audience who Chelsey Hotel was written for - very cool.