It will always be Pine Knob to me, dammit!
Even speaking as a fairly rabid Yes fan, that’s kind of an insane choice for the first three songs at a concert.
Absolutely. I don’t even know what it was called then (or now), but everyone just calls it Pine Knob except for the people who are paid to do otherwise.
I might not be entirely accurate as to those being the first three songs (although I did imply as much), but the show was truly a slog for the uninitiated, and what I wrote is basically what I remember of the show, as hazy as it is 20 years later.
Two days before I saw him. It should be the concert I linked to above (that’s cued up to Don’t Come Around Here No More).
I was going to say a Police concert in Buenos Aires in about 2007, sound was all messed up, but it was REM in london on the Up tour. It wasn’t a great album to start with , and as you say, not an exciting band live and the sound mixing was all a bit echoey and incoherent.
I saw Yes during the 90125, Big Generator and Union tours. Maybe a couple of other times. Each time was an amazing concert.
This was the exact script of the John Lee Hooker show I saw. But it was cool when he would whip his dark glasses off at the end of the song (maybe the two or three he actually played) and swing them around. I have since perfected this move.
BB King’s tour bus ran over my wife’s neighbor’s German Shepard. It’s tragic, but a fuckin’ hilarious story when told in an English accent.
“He… He… He… Owes me a She-pod!”
I saw Rod Stewart on his Hot Legs tour at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena. Sold out show and a rowdy crowd.
Opening act was a band nobody had heard of, and wasn’t in the mood to listen to. They were called Air Supply, and they got booed from their first song on.
So you were all out of love after their first song?
Precisely.
Gotta wonder who the genius was that picked them as Rod’s opening act.
Pretty good memory!
Close to the edge
Starship trooper
Gates of delirium
Leaves of green
In the midnight hour
Heart of the sunrise
Ritual
I’ve seen all good people
Roundabout
OK, so they did have “Starship Trooper” (one of their signature songs) early in the setlist. Even so, it’s bookended with two noodly, twenty-minute tracks, which is still a funky way to start a concert, even by Yes standards. 
When I saw David Bowie, his opening act was Macy Gray. Figure that one out.
As far as I can tell, they’ve been booed their entire career.
Apologies if I posted this in one of the earlier threads. Partly because their live shows are so legendary, mine would be Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Sprint Center in Kansas City. It was a bucket list concert for me and my wife, neither of us had ever seen Springsteen live before. IIRC this was the tour for “The Rising”. 8 pm show on a Sunday night. Lots of people there with their kids.
First of all, because of security and the fucked up layout of the Sprint Center, there is basically one entrance and they only had two metal detectors set up, so it took over an hour just to get in the doors.
The 8 pm show (no opening band) didn’t start until well after 9. And when it finally did start, they sounded like crap. It took about the first half dozen songs for them to get the mix right.
It was pretty well known at the time that Clarence Clemons was in poor health, so he just stood off to the side in the shadows for most of the show
They played their usual 3-hour set but it seemed to me that about half the songs were unnecessarily padded out with audience sing-alongs and endlessly repeating choruses. And of course because of the late start it meant the show didn’t end until after midnight. People gotta go to work the next day, kids gotta go to school, y’know?
I found out later that the reason for both the late start and the shitty sound (no sound check) was because Bruce and the band had spent the day in St Louis at a Cardinals baseball game before hopping on a plane to KC.
Am I glad I got to see Springsteen? Yes. Would I ever pay money to see him again? Hell no.
- Pearl Jam and Neil Young in San Francisco. I loathe Neil Young, but loved Pearl Jam. I agreed to go with friends, because I’d finally get to see them. We went very early, but the crowd swelled to 50K,. Parking suuuuuuucked. Merchandising and food prices were outrageous. Hot, sticky day. Hot, sticky people. The opening act was good. Neil Young came on, so some of my friends and I just wandered around, looking at booths and staring at people in the back. They announced Pearl Jam. We made our way back to the crushing audience, waiting to see them. They came on for four songs, we were amped. Then Eddie says he was sick, and walked off. We thought it was just a joke… Until Neil Young came on for two fucking hours. Hate the man, hate his music. The crowd turned at the beginning, lots of people booed, lots left. Being sensible, we waited until things calmed down, and traffic looked calm, and left before Neil Young finished because I hate him. Worst ever.
I guess it would be Morrissey in Austin around 1991, I think. I was there with a bunch of indie goths and pretty into the guy, but butch enough to seem tough around the crowd. We were lined up in front of the City Coliseum, and a buzz starting circulating that Moz had a rough show in Dallas the night before and probably wouldn’t come. Someone came out about 30 minutes later and told us he wasn’t coming. Buzzkill. I did see him in Santa Barbara around 1999 and it was a good show until the emotional teenager ran up and hugged him, and he ran off the stage before the encore. BOO!
How about a concert I didn’t want to go to, but ended up being pretty awesome? I had a friend whose buddy was some high ranking member of the Dave Matthews Band fanclub and it turned out he couldn’t come to the show at Fenway Park. It so happened the opening act was Sheryl Crow, who I adore, so I figured I would go with my buddy to see Sheryl and duck out for the DMB because… I can’t stand them. However I was at a show in Fenway with really good seats, and I actually enjoyed the musicianship and energy of DMB. As long as their tour bus didn’t drive past, I have to give some begrudging respect for their show. It was excellent.
When I saw the Grateful Dead, the opening act was a guy with a monkey.
Insert Simon and Garfunkel, Hall and Oates, John and Yoko joke here: