If the band is alive and current, I can just buy a ticket next time they come to New York.
The OP is giving me a free pass to see any musical event in history. Of course I’m going to pick someone impossible, i.e. dead.
I’m pretty sure I still have the stub, I’d have to check the date. VH was out, they were probably touring on VHII, memorable concert to say the least. They were absolutely cranking, all sorts of personal effects being thrown on stage when DLR called for the band to stop. He bent down and picked up a Big Bamboo-sized joint that had been tossed on stage, took a drag, says “I guess everything really is fuckin’ bigger in Texas!” (apologies to the Texas haters of the board - which is about everybody), tosses the joint back into the crowd and the band fires right back up. Place went crazy.
I would like to have seen Pantera. Stevie Ray Vaughan. Bill Evans. Hendrix.
There’s a lot of space between “Alive and current” and the rock dinosaurs that seems to be * l’argent commune * in this thread. Which is fair enough, I think the board skews that way and I was including myself in that “fogeys”, I was just amused.
Also, impossible =/= dead. The Smiths are never playing again and even if Morissey got a personality transplant and they were, I wouldn’t want to see them - I want the musical gods of my youth that I never got to see live, damn it.
This one is easy.
Simon & Garfunkel
Metallica w/Cliff
Jimi Hendrix
Pantera
With opening bands:
Led Zeppelin
The Doors
Jellyfish
Honorable mention: Queen
MrDibble:. I’m surprised by how few of us are choosing stuff that’s NOT Old People Rock. So far just me, Chefguy, and RobotArm. I thought we had more jazzbos and classical nerds here.
No one wants to be there at the Vienna premiere of Der Zauberflote, with Wolfgang himself rocking out on the celesta?
Pink Floyd during the Syd Barrett UFO Club era London circa 1967.
Jimi Hendrix Experience in early '67.
Grateful Dead during the Ken Kesey acid tests era.
**Tool **during 10,000 Days tour 2007.
My friends still give me grief about choosing to see Shonen Knife on one stage over Tool on another stage at Lollapalooza.
My pick that I haven’t seen mentioned here is XTC. Partridge’s psych/emotional issues aside, they could conceivably play again, but probably never will.
Was the Wolfman any good on the celesta? Maybe his genius was as a composer and it took other performers to really bring something out of his music that he couldn’t. Are there contemporary accounts of his playing ability? As a piece of history it would be amazing to experience, and that was part of the reason I chose Rhapsody in Blue, but I think this thread has been more about the music than the history.
Old People Rock has an interesting niche. It’s new enough to have been recorded, old enough to know what were the really special moments, and also recent enough to trigger some nostalgia. We know who the great performers are. I’d love to have seen all them; The Beatles at the Cavern Club, Bruce Springsteen at the Stone Pony, Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, Glenn Miller at Glen Island Casino. Great is great, genre don’t matter.
I had a ticket a few years ago, fourth row center, to see Ennio Morricone with a 200-piece orchestra down in Brooklyn. He had to cancel for health reasons, and another chance seems unlikely at his age. I’m sorry I missed that one. And Bob Newhart has an upcoming date here in Boston. Would have loved to catch him in his heyday, but I’m not sure if the button-down mind still brings it.
You saw Shonen Knife? Lucky dog, was it the original lineup?
In many of the listed artists, you can get better sound by buying a CD. But there was no better concert experience than the Dead.
Twice, once on their own tour around '89 or '90, then at the '94 Lollapalooza. So original as far as I know.
Ask me in an hour and I’ll come up with something different, but how about:
Jethro Tull circa 1970
Charlie Parker circa 1945
Leonard Bernstein’s debut (shades of Magic Johnson filling in for Kareem)
Led Zeppelin
The Doors
KISS in the 70’s, the Love Gun tour.
I didn’t get to my first Dead show until 1978, when I was 17, and the oldies were already saying they were past their peak. Not sure if I’d want to go to a show during the Acid Test era, because the whole band was, well, on acid.
Of course, there’s that SMOKING “Know You Rider” from 1966, which showed up on the old BEAR’S CHOICE vinyl album. Just listen to Jerry’s guitar break starting at 1:24…
I’ll take Bird’s Town Hall concert (NYC) from June, 1945, with Diz, Al Haig, Curley Russell, and Max Roach.
Parker showed up late and stoned, so Don Byas filled in on tenor for the first tune. And Big Sid Catlett took over the drumset for “Salt Peanuts” and “Hot House.”
[ul]
[li]Mozart: premiere of Mass in C minor, Salzburg, 1783[/li][li]Beethoven: premiere of 9th Symphony, Vienna, 1824[/li][li]Dr. Liszt: end of Lisztomania, Kiev, 1847[/li][li]Beatles: beginning of Beatlemania, Scotland, 1963[/li][/ul]
(yeah, I chose 4. Sue me!)
Personally? Nope, I’m happy with other renditions of that music - I don’t think opera, symphony or other similar, orchestrated, styles are really comparable in nature to rock, jazz or blues. Not dissing the importance of the performers, there, just noting they’re not as improvisational.
Also, I didn’t get the impression the OP was asking for specific historic performances, just historic performers.
Thanks, Ukelele Ike, for embellishing my Charlie Parker idea.
Today I’ll go with:
Van Morrison in 1973
Ustad Ali Akhbar Khan circa 1980
James Brown in 1995, in Barcelona (mainly because I COULD have gone to this show, but I failed to convince my mother and girlfriend to change our travel plans a bit, to my everlasting regret)