Off the top of my head;
Blue Oyster Cult before they got big, first concert that really blew my mind.
Brian Setzer Orchestra I’d call it a mix of rockabilly and swing rock.
ZZ Top when they were starting to break. I think Degüello was the new album.
Storyville At their peak, in a big bar with an excellent sound system. There was a great vibe in the room, unlike any I have experienced at a concert.
Robin Trower First time I saw him live, early eighties. Probably my best ever.
The last three were definitely blues based rock but not blues artists in my opinion.
Assuming bar gigs count and not just arenas and theaters.
Saw Led Zeppelin in 1970… My boyfriend sold his leather jacket to buy us tickets, just fucking amazing. Robert Plant sat on top of those enormous speakers while Jimmy Page fiddled around - literally - we walked home, him 2 miles, me alone for another 3 miles. Heaven! Worth it all.
ELP 1974 San Diego, the Brain Salad Surgery tour.
Thirded. Seen him twice
Not as exciting as most of these, that have me foaming with jealousy, but in 1977 I saw Jimmy Buffett at the Celebrity Theater in Phoenix. My sister had been living in Key West and told me about this crazy drunk that played good music. I noticed a small ad that he was in Phoenix, and so that same day, after work, I went to the Celebrity and bought a ticket. No line, no big deal. It’s a small venue, with a revolving stage, so there are really no bad seats. I think I paid $16 for my ticket. Sat down front since I was early. He and his band played for about an hour, and they left to take a break. Jimmy propped up his broken leg on a stool, and did a solo set for about 1/2 hr. Then the band came back for another hour. I loved it.
I was a huge Parrothead until, oh, I don’t know, his music became very sort of self-indulgent and phony because he was a rich as hell mofo, but that was the best show I ever saw.
Second best was Roger Clyne, same venue, the release party for Americano.
The three best/most influential concerts I’ve been to were
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Caley Cinema, Edinburgh June 6th 1974
The so-called ‘tragic band’ tour, but I had virtually never heard his music before seeing the gig, and I loved it! the support was Henry Cow, which even today I think was a somewhat odd choice.
Doctor Feelgood - Cambridge Corn Exchange, June 8th 1976
on top form, at the height of their success. As a prog fan, this was utterly different to the big gigs I had been to before!
Van Der Graaf Generator - Playhouse Theatre, Edinburgh, September 14th 1976
I was already a fan but this was the first time I managed to see them. The classic 4-piece line-up. Amazing stuff; they were touring for Still Life, but World Record was due out soon and I saw them touring that as well only a couple of months later in Glasgow… The support was Brand X, which I remember almost nothing about…
(Already giot my tickets to their Edinburgh gig in Spring next year… )
It would likely be one of the dozens of Springsteen shows I’ve seen over the years. But since the OP discounted anything that smacked of folk, that eliminates the *Benefit for Steve Goodman *concert. So I’ll pick the Los Angeles ARMS concert.
Lesser known but big band… I saw Fishbone in Atlanta in 1988 and I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. A black punk/funk/ska hybrid, I about died when they started doing Van Halen covers better than VH themselves.
Based on this thread, I need to seriously re-evaluate my concert going experience.
The Becker benefit sounds like it was beyond amazing, wish I could’ve seen that, or at least, I wish there was a live CD made.
Greatest rock and roll concert I ever saw was KISS on the 1996 reunion tour. I’d never seen KISS in full makeup prior to that, but spent most of my youth staring at magazines with their photos in them, and buying KISS trading cards.
It’s a personal experience, but finally getting to see the original 4, with all the fireworks and special effects that I’d only read about, was really special.
Congratulations, Dopers! For the first time in a while I wish I were older (I missed a lot of hippiedom and classic concerts; my friends’ older siblings went to Woodstock, but I was in middle school).
For a long time my best concert was Tull, right before Aqualung was released. Totally dark theater, lone pianist in white tux comes out and plays ten minutes of classical piano… leading into that powerful hook that kicks off Locomotive Breath. Lights come up, whole band’s onstage. They did the entire album… that none of us had heard before.
But then this guy I’d just met in Florida said “C’mon, after this show we’re gonna drive to this bar and see a kid from New Jersey.” Yep, Bruce (and the young E Street Band). For a while he was playing atop the stack of speakers a foot in front of us, and the wind was parting my hair.
Years later, I told a girl that she had to see him before we got married (she did, we did).
Thought that was the pinnacle. But fast forward to me as a dad, taking a minivan full of 8th graders to… Green Day.
Hey, American Idiot had just dropped, I figured it’d be okay… but holy shit! The energy, the punk-gone-pop-but-that’s-okay, the unselfconcious fun! At one point during the three-hour party they pulled kids up on stage and gave them super soakers!
Whole night was full of stunts. My favorite was when they got a good beat going, and Billy Joe asked everyone to crowd-surf a young girl (who’d raised her hand when they asked who could play bass) and taught her the part, had the crowd send up a grade school drummer, then pass a kid down from the balcony and put a guitar on him. Kids got jamming pretty well, and the band popped a couple cans of beer and lounged onstage nodding their approval.
Nothing beats seeing your kid at his first concert, being passed up to the stage (on his back, pretending to swim). While his best friends in the world are losing their voices cheering for him.
I saw them on the Destroyer Tour in '76, bought my ticket on the day of the show and got 12th row center. Bob Seger opened, a great, great show!
In personal order of preference:
Talking Heads at Red Rocks outside Denver, August 1983, during the Stop Making Sense tour
Fleetwood Mac, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (PA), Oct 1975
The Who, Pittsburgh Civic Arena, Dec 1979: I’ve mentioned elsewhere that this was the night before the infamous Cincinnati show.
I think it was 1991, 4th of July, the city of Dallas decided to do more than just fireworks at the Cotton Bowl/Fair Park. Not sure why. So in addition to fireworks, they added a Cotton Bowl concert by Cheap Trick and Styx.
But in the afternoon before the concert, they opened the fairgrounds and had a second stage with several artists, including Joe Walsh and Bruce Hornsby. And a third stage with local acts that hadn’t hit it big, I recall the Dixie Chicks being on that stage.
Free admission, I think I paid $10 for parking, plus whatever concessions cost at the time.
Boy howdy but isn’t that a t-shirt?? I used to live in Monroe, NY. That’s far southern Orange County. Exit off of the NYS Thruway onto Rf 17 heading up into the Catskills; that’s about the 2nd exit up.
Everyone who drove that far passed that exit. I lived there for 15 years, and damned if I didn’t meet quite a few folks older than me ( I’m 57 ) who said they’d gone up to White Lake for the show. Turned out quite of few of them were telling the truth as well !!
Some interesting stories. Turns out that left to their own devices, and with some serious planning ( not all of which crashed and burned ), 400,000 young people were perfectly capable of caring for one another, lining up for food, enjoying music, doing some non-lethal drugs and leaving and getting themselves home.
My favorite show? I’m a Prog Rock fan, and so here goes:
Hands down, Anderson Rabin & Wakeman, 2016. Beacon Theater, NYC
ABWH ( an iteration of YES ), 1990, NY.
Billy Joel, The Spectrum in Philly, 1982.
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Roger Waters - Dark Side of the Moon
I saw the London side of the Live Aid concert in 1985. What a lineup!
[ul]
[li]Paul McCartney[/li][li]Elton John[/li][li]The Who[/li][li]David Bowie[/li][li]Queen[/li][li]Dire Straits (with Sting wanting his MTV)[/li][li]U2[/li][li]Bryan Ferry (with David Gilmore)[/li][li]Sting[/li][li]Phil Collins[/li][li]Elvis Costello[/li][/ul]
All on one glorious day!
Caljam II-Ontario Motor Speedway, March 18th '78.
Aerosmith, Foreigner, Heart, Mahogany Rush, Dave Mason, Jean-Michel Jarre, Rubicon, Santana, Bob Welch and Ted Nugent. I was in the U.S.A.F. at March AFB and my good buddy David scored a couple of tickets, so I grabbed a helmet and hopped onto the back of his KZ-650 and joined over 350,000 fans for one hell of a concert.
California Jam, 1974 at Ontario Motor Speedway.
In order of appearance:
Rare Earth
Earth, Wind & Fire
Eagles
Seals and Crofts
Black Oak Arkansas
Black Sabbath
Deep Purple
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
A close runner up was The Who at Angel Stadium in 1976.
jaycat, I guess we saw the Stones on the same “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out” tour. I saw them in October 1969, with Chuck Berry as the opening act. That’s still the greatest rock concert I ever saw, largely because it was the first time I heard “Midnight Rambler.” The “Let It Bleed” album hadn’t been released.
Seeing David Bowie on his “Ziggy Stardust” tour in the spring of ‘73 at War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville is a close second.
Other memorable acts were The Who in 1970 around the time of the release of “Live at Leeds” and again in ‘72 after the release of “Who’s Next.”
And, of course, the Atlanta Pop Festival in 1969, about a month and a half before Woodstock. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Booker T & The M.G.’s, Canned Heat, Chicago Transit Authority, Joe Cocker, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Spirit, Johnny Winter, and a bunch of others I don’t remember!
How about a fan shot video of the headliners? Shot from the balcony with the very best of 1996 technology. VHS quality and the sound sucks, but believe me, it was much better live.