Kate Bush Before The Dawn, September 2nd, 2014.
And this is after a life of seeing great concerts. Nothing compares to what Kate created that night.
For pure density-of-coolness, the triple bill of Pixies, Primus, Jane’s Addiction was hard to beat. All bands were on peak performance form as well.
I don’t know that this is the GREATEST concert I ever saw, but it’s one of my favorite memories. To me, concerts are as much about the company, and circumstances, as the music.
May 31st, 1994 was an uncharacteristically hot day for the time of year in Pittsburgh. At the time I was working stock at a big-box discount store called Phar-Mor, and I had an early shift. It was a good day, as I recall: no problems, just steady work that made the day pass quickly. At 3PM, I clocked out and walked out from the fluorescent lighting and air-conditioning into the blazing heat of the day, blinking as I went. No particular plans for the day, but glad to be free of further obligations for the moment.
As I crossed the parking lot to my car, I saw someone approaching me in a purposeful manner. I was a little wary, but as he approached, I recognized my best friend from high school, Kev. When we had graduated, he had gone to Boston to attend the Berkelee School of Music. When he quit after a couple years (in the great Berkelee tradition), he continued to live there, and so I only saw him two or three times a year. He hadn’t told me he’d be in town, so the day took a sudden, unexpected upturn.
After the startled, excited greetings were out of the way, he asked me what I was doing that night. I said,“I dunno. Take a shower, watch TV I guess.” He said, “No. You and I are going to see Pink Floyd tonight!”
Now, I was, and still am, a huge Floyd fan, and I’d never seen them live. My friend and I had a tradition of seeing concerts whenever he was in town - BB King, Bonnie Raitt, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Dr. John, Roy Buchanan, some of the better local bands, etc - and now Pink Floyd. The day had gone from just another workday to BEST. DAY. EVER. So I went home, showered, grabbed some food out of the fridge to fill the hole, then headed out to meet with Kev.
The tickets were a gift from his fairly well-off stepfather, and came with the stipulation that we had to take his two, mid-teens cousins with us, as they were also in town visiting. Oh well. The “boy”, as it turned out, was 15, about 6’5" 250 lbs, somewhat rowdy, dumb as a box of hair, and without redirection seemed capable of making poor life decisions in an instant. The girl was a year older and dangerously attractive, but she seemed better equipped to navigate the world safely than her brother, so that moderated my concerns about looking out for her during our outing. Both, of course, came with the instructions that they return home in the same condition that they left.
In the interest of alleviating any anxiety, I’ll disclose at this point that neither of the cousins were much of a problem. Both mostly behaved themselves, though the boy did require some redirection periodically. They don’t feature much in the rest of the story, but they were there, and it was their first concert, so good for them, huh? 
We parked in a garage downtown. It was a hot, beautiful evening, and the sun hung low as we enjoyed a breezy walk across the bridge to Three Rivers Stadium. As we walked, the vocalists rehearsing, “The Great Gig in the Sky” floated across the water to us, scoring the moment like a soundtrack. The stadium wasn’t the best place to see or hear a concert, but it was what we had, and besides, we’d heard that Floyd worked hard to get the best sound from a venue. We got our tickets torn and headed up to the outfield seats. Oh well. Seeing Floyd from the outfield at Three Rivers is still seeing Floyd.
We baked in the uncomfortable, too small and too-close-together stadium seats, fielded concert/band questions from the cousins, and caught up as the sun began to set below the confines of big cement ashtray that was Three Rivers Stadium. There was no opening act. When the show finally started, the visuals were more than I’d ever experienced. Quite a spectacle, with the circular screen behind the band playing snippets of video, the flashing, rotating lights, the lasers, and the iconic, giant inflatable pig flying out over the audience. The 10x binoculars I’d brought helped with seeing the stage itself.
The first part of the show was kind of a sonic wall. It consisted of a lot of the newer material I was unfamiliar with. That, coupled with the relatively poor sound that the stadium allowed made it difficult for me to make out much detail. Damn, I wish Floyd played smaller venues, like Star Lake amphitheater . A little before the scheduled end of the first set, the power went out in the stadium. GAH!
After about 30-45 minutes of sitting around, hoping it was something they could fix in time, and worrying that it wasn’t, the power came back, and the second set began. They started in with older, more familiar material that I could better follow. They ripped out a blistering version of, “One of These Days”, which, in a darkened, echoey stadium, was far more ominous, eerie, and kick-ass then it is when listening at home. They then launched into most of, “The Dark Side of the Moon”, with some cuts from, “Wish You Were Here” and, “The Wall.” “The Great Gig in the Sky” fulfilled the promise it made on the trip across the bridge - just unearthly.
After the encore, which was, “Run Like Hell”, and “Comfortably Numb”, we filed out of the stadium and across the bridge with hundreds or thousands of other concert-goers, all of us still floating on the music high (and of course, for many others, the usual concert enhancements). I don’t really recall the rest of the night. We corralled the cousins and got them across the bridge despite their post-concert excitement, everyone got home, and that’s the end of that.
It’s still one of my favorite memories: Seeing a friend I hadn’t seen, nor had expected to see, for months, and suddenly a normal workday turns into the day I saw Pink Floyd. I’ve had few days in my life turn around that well, that fast.
I think it was the same tour when I saw Pink Floyd (for the one and only time) in Philly. That’s actually the first concert that came to mind when I read the OP. The disco ball thing that opened up as it lifted high above the stage during Comfortably Numb was friggin’ awesome. As was the entire show.
Cool, that was just 2 days after the concert I saw. Wow, Veteran’s Stadium holds 3x the people and you had 3 concerts, we just had the one. What was it like seeing Floyd in a stadium that huge? How was the sound?
One of my guilty pleasures is watching reaction/first listen videos on youtube. The other day I watched a bunch of people reacting to the Pulse version of Comfortably Numb and the overwhelming response was one of awe. Some listeners were even brought to tears by the emotion in Dave’s solo.
I’ve seen some. Do you know any that aren’t pretty obvious BS/clickbait made to attract fans who love the material, who want to see others like what they like?
It stretches credibility when 30-year-old Americans claim to hear Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time. . .but actually getting first-listen reactions to material would be cool.
Hmmm (don’t want to hijack the thread, but…) I can’t speak for the click-bait-y-ness of the videos (I just searched youtube for “reaction Comfortably Numb Pulse”) but the reactions I watched seemed pretty genuine for the most part. Of course, like anything else on youtube, there’s a lot of chaff sprinkled throughout the video wheat.
There’s an Indian couple who do a pretty good reaction channel called Enoma. It’s clear that a lot of stuff is genuinely new to them, and they tend to be a bit more eclectic that some of the other channels. In the past few days they’ve done Phil Collins, Tim Buckley, Staind, Andy Williams and Mazzy Star - so it’s not just generic shouty metal like a few of the others.
That’s fair, thanks.
I’ll look in to that, thank you. As they are from a different culture listening to Western music, it seems easier for them to have avoided wildly popular songs.