The best show I’ve ever seen. They rocked so hard, I couldn’t believe it. I had only heard a little of their music prior and pegged them as effete geeks. Which they are - but they can fucking rock. A+ showmanship and performance.
The Cult, many, many times, but the best show was probably in Buffalo in May of 2006. Tiny little club that couldn’t have held more than 1,500 people. No pit in front of the stage, just a rail.
Lenny Kravitz before he went weird. Saw him open for The Cult when he still had a 5-piece horn section on stage with him.
The Tea Party also many, many times, but the best show was probably at a college hall right when their 3rd album came out (Transmission). There couldn’t have been more than 600 of us in the room.
I’ve been to a bunch of Lollapalooza’s and EdgeFests and assorted other festivals, but for sheer magnitude the festival that stands out the most is probably the “Toronto Rocks” (SARS relief fund) festival in Toronto. Half a million people assembled in an abandonded military airfield to see AC/DC, The Guess Who, Rush, and The Rolling Stones among others.
Other noteable festival appearances: Green Day, The Foo Fighters, Ministry, and Pearl Jam (first record had JUST come out, and grunge was just hitting -they had a daytime slot).
Captain Beefheart 1974
Doctor Feelgood 1976
Van Der Graf Generator 1976
**The Residents/b] 1983 (The Mole Show)
American Music Club first time I saw them in the late 80s/early 90s
The Mutton Birds 2000-ish, the final time I saw them
Heaps of others that nearly make the short list, but these were the best/most influential
The 70’s:
The Who with Moon and Enthwistle
Jethro Tull (numerous, including the one at Red Rocks–they overcame the tear gas)
Grateful Dead in Boulder, the one with the pot & papers kits thrown into the audience
Springsteen at Red Rocks in '79
Also saw The Doors but it wasn’t among the best, ditto the Rolling Stones
The 80’s and 90’s:
Every single Warren Zevon concert, but the one with the Patrician Homeboys was my favorite
Los Lobos
The Chieftains
Since then
White Stripes at Red Rocks
Mark Knopfler at Red Rocks
Neil Young with Crazy Horse at Red Rocks
Richard Thompson at Botanic Gardens
Life-changing concerts:
**Pat Metheny Group ** at the community theater in morristown, NJ '79. They rocked.
**Laurie Anderson ** in Denver (Mr. Heartbreak tour '84). Totally different than anything I had ever seen or heard.
**Frank Zappa ** at Manley Field House in Syracuse '81. Fantastic band. Played non-stop and just rocked the house.
CSN at Red Rocks '86, '87 or thereabouts. Never thought it would be that good.
**Baaba Maal ** at SOB’s in the early '90s. Senegalese superstar in a club downtown. Everything was tight and swinging.
**Cassandra Wilson and Papa Wemba ** at Central Park Summerstage early '90s. Stumbled onto this concert and was blown away.
**Ivo Popasov and his Bulgarian Wedding Band ** at Central Park Summerstage early '90s. Within 30 seconds of the first song half the audience fled and the other half were in total awe of this band. It was like Klezmer jazz-rock fusion with women singing and dancing in traditional garb.
I’ll be seeing them as headliners at the Magic City Blues Festival in two weeks & I am very excited, not that I traditionally think of them as a blues band. Glad to see a vote of confidence for their performance!
–Beck
The three best shows I’ve ever seen -
Ministry, the Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste tour
Skinny Puppy, Too Dark Park tour
Butthole Surfers, any show, anywhere
Human Rights Now! Tour 1988 (Springsteen, Sting, Gabriel, N’Dour & Chapman)
The Band
Little Feat
A Flock of Seagulls (but mostly because we rushed the stage during the encore and shared the mike with the lead singer during “I Ran”)
Sua
Oh, that reminds me. They did an outdoor show here a few years back. There was a double bill with Nickel Creek, with Great Big Sea opening for them.
The weather was phenomenal, a cool-ish summer evening on the beach. Everyone was having a blast.
Well, at least 70% of the crowd was there just for Great Big Sea. They put on an awesome show, and when they were done I’d guess that close to a third of the crowd left. Nickel Creek was ok, but they didn’t hold a candle.
The Crowes roots are in blues, so you shouldn’t be disappointed. They rocked the house… I did see them 15 years ago, though!
I also wanted to mention The Cult like a poster above. Great show! (though they did play with Bonham and Dangerous Toys 
)
The 60’s
Jefferson Airplane at a love in (yes I am that old) I sat on the lawn right up against the fence. This was right after White Rabbit became a hit.
Jimmy Hendricks 13th row floor tickets 1968 IIRC
Simon and Garfunkel I scored 4th row center tickets. The guy next to me asked Paul a question in a normal tone of voice and got an answer. That is close to the stage.
The Beatles on their first tour In San Diego. Man could those girls scream.
The 70’s
Elton John Great showman
Bette Middler’s first tour @ the Universal (It was still outside then).
The 80’s
Steppenwolf Used to see them evey year in LA
Bachman Turner Overdrive Played with Steppenwolf Great Rockers
The 90’s to current
Weird Al @ the Greek Fun, fun, fun. We were in the 4th row. One lady that was with us had never been to a concert before. Al came into the audience stopped at our row, took her hand and sang to her. Great first concert.
Phil Collins That boy can play the drums!
Jimmy Buffett A party like no other. You have to go early so you can tailgate a Jimmy concert.
Dream Theater in July 2003 after the release of their Train of Thought album: this is the best live I’ve seen as far as raw musicianship. The four Berklee College alumni can seriously jam with super-human skill.
**
Les Claypool** (bassist from Primus) was…um…interesting; though, I was quite inebriated at the time.
**
The Wailer**s - former back-up band to Bob Marley: I have always liked reggae but never loved it so much until I saw them perform. All the instruments/vocals were so perfectly balanced and crisp.
I envy many of you Dopers. I wish I was old enough to have seen Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Zappa among others during their respective primes.
YES, I concur. Big time.
I thoroughly enjoyed hearing them live 3 weeks ago; though, I cannot direct compare to their hey day from personal experience.
R.E.M. and The Replacements, various shows in the 80s.
Sugar, The Warfield, San Francisco, 1992.
Fishbone and Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians, various shows in the 80s and early 90s.
Midnight Oil, 1988 & 1990 - much better live than on record.
U2, Oakland Coliseum Stadium, 1987.
Sleater-Kinney and Yo La Tengo, various shows late 90s-2000s.
Belle & Sebastian, The Warfield, San Francisco 2001 & The Greek Theatere, Berkeley, a couple years ago.
The Divine Comedy at Cafe Du Nord, San Francisco on the Absent Friends tour.
A 1990 reunion show at Slim’s in San Francisco with Chris Stamey & Peter Holsapple (The dB’s*), Difford & Tilbrook of Squeeze, and X.
Several Bob Mould shows, solo & with a band, 90s-2000s.
Cinerama, The Ladybug Transistor and The Lucksmiths, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, 2000.
The Magnetic Fields, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 2004.
The Pixies, 1989.
I’ve been to more Jimmy Buffett concerts than I can count, dating back to the “White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean” days. in high school, my best friend’s brother lived next door to Jimmy in Key West, so we got turned on to his music early. I remember when his touring band was just him and Fingers Taylor!
For consistency, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band take the gold. I’ve never been to a mediocre concert by Bruce. He always gives it his all and he plays for 4 hours, to boot!
One of my favorite concerts was up in a small club in Reseda, where I stood right at the front of the stage and played with Annie Haslam’s toes throughout a Renaissance concert. (She only tried to kick me twice.) 
John Fogerty- a great show, we’ve seen him 3 times in 3 years and loved every second of it. I just wish I could have seen CCR back in the day.
Alice Cooper- though I might have just been young and starry-eyed. It was the Billion Dollar Babies tour.
Paul Simon just awesome. Bob Dylan shared the bill and was great, too.
Daft Punk at the last Coachella Festival
Various Queen shows (late '70s)
Various U2 shows
Chemical Brothers (2005 Coachella)
Tiësto In Concert (August 2005 in Los Angeles)
Armin van Buuren in San Diego a couple of years ago
Moby @ Area:One
the Cure back in 1992 just after wish came out. In fact, the first real concert I ever saw. My girlfriend (still together) took me, and it remains one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. That was their last, great album, and it was the best line-up they ever had. Forest went on for like, twenty minutes until there was nothing but a huge wall of feedback and they all laid their instruments against the moniters and walked off the stage. I was immediately converted to the cult of Robert Smith.
The Smashing Pumpkins, also from back in the day. Pumpkins concerts were either mind-blowingly awesome or complete shit. I saw two from the Mellon Collie tour and got one of each. The did a show in Michigan that was magic. I just remember them coming back for the encore with a second drummer, pounding out either XYU or Bodies, and then improvising one of the most gorgeous, psychedelic instrumentals I’ve ever heard, for the next forty minutes. It ended when Billy Corgan and James Iha had broken allof their guitar strings.
Moe Tucker at a dank little basement club with twelve people in the audience. She was much tinier than I expected, but rocked in that sweet, endearing way she always had.
The Flaming Lips. I’ve been lucky enough to see them a number of times, but my favorite is still at a little club just after The Soft Bulletin came out. I’ve never seen a band that honestly looked so amazed and thrilled to be playing for you. They’d just introduced the disco balls and furries and bleeding and confetti, and nobody was expecting it, so it was really freaky. The werid thing was how incredibly inclusive and moving the whole thing was.
The Breeders have always been a lot of fun. I stood next to the guy who played Hedwig at a show and kept thinking he looked familiar, and then he climbed on stage and sang Angry Inch with the band. The Pixies reunion was just fucking awesome from top to bottom, too.
I saw Sleater-Kinney three or four times, and every single time I thought there was no way I would ever see a better concert, until I saw them again. They were, in my mind, the greatest band on the planet, and it kills me that I won’t get to see them perform again.
Of Montreal are another band that seem to be having as much fun on stage as the Flaming Lips. They’re kinda twee on record, but they rock amazingly hard in concert. Plus, they ususally wear funny costumes.
The Animal Collective are indescribably transcendant. Tribal and psychedelic and weird and unlike anything else.
Others that deserve mentioning:
Camper van Beethoven
Landing
The Microphones
Violent Femmes
Oneida (you need to see this band)
Cat Power
Camera Obscura
Blonde Redhead
Brian Jonestown Massacre
Stereolab
Elf Power
Placebo
Hopewell
Mercury Rev
Le Tigre
The Rapture
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Yo La Tengo
Asshole!
That would have been a fun show!
My favorites have been …
Depeche Mode The Devotional Tour (1993)
VNV Nation The Futureperfect Tour (2001)
Dead Can Dance The … not named tour (2005)
Nine inch Nails The Self-Destruct Tour (1994)
My first concert ever was Weird Al my senior year of high school in 1999. It was awesome. Awesome to the max.
And I’ve seen Guster twice, both times kicked all kinds of ass. The first time I saw them, the opening band was Guster in disguise.
Out of the many many gigs I been to over the years, these are the ones that burned the brightest impression in my mind for being something more than just “live music”…
Jesus Lizard – incendiary hardcore gods (I wish I had got chance to see Big Black though) – saw these at a little, now sadly demolished, club in Manchester (UK) called The Boardwalk.
The Fall – many many times,many many different venues, and never once have they ever disappointed.
Galaxie 500 – spectral aural swoonyness. At the now sadly demolished International club.
Yo La Tengo – fantastic! Saw these the last time they played here, at the University, and when they played again, later the same year in Liverpool (I loved the previous gig so much I drove all the way there to see them again)
808 State (supporting Happy Mondays at Manchester G-mex many years ago – totally and completely blew them off stage – then saw them again at the Manchester .v. Cancer gig at the M.E.N Arena back in January, and again, they were just incredible… there should be a DVD of this gig coming out soon, and if they show the audience, you just might catch nemesis dancing his happy dance ).
New Order – at the aforementioned Manchester ‘v’ Cancer gig – I have seen them live before, and on record they are one of my fave bands, but never did it for me live… until January this year at that gig… they came on, and Bernard gave it “Hi, we are New Order, and we are playing Joy Division”, and they went straight into Transmission, and I was just like… WOW… and indeed, they just played Joy Division songs. And they were stunning. And I was happy.
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Coruscating and … err… explosive.
The Chills – these were just incredible, Martin Philips has written some of the most wonderful pop tunes EVER. And live…they were even better!
The Chameleons – another group who I think wrote some of the most wonderful songs ever… and again, live, songs that on vinyl \ CD knocked me out suddenly took on whole new dimensions live.
Stereolab – I’m running low on hyperbole… let’s just say the were mesmericaly hypnotically awesome.
Maria Mckee - Saw her live with Loine Justice back in… 87 I think it was… and also seen her live solo a few times too – knocks me dead without fail.
Jeff Buckley – I liked Grace, but was not like a massive fan etc… but still, I went to see him live… and after the gig, I could barely speak (which is a good thing). 
I notice in the thread that some have seen some groups \ artists I would love to see, but never managed to… so far (and in some cases never will see due to splits \ deaths etc)… the main ones being:
Bon Scott era AC/DC, Led Zep, The Pixies, Big Black, Smashing Pumpkins, Cat Power, Beastie Boys, Tom Waits