What's the best song you've ever seen done live?

Cafe Society
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Sorry to disappoint you, WordMan. The Who/Led Zep concert was great, but no one song stands out. There are two songs and one entire encore that stand out for me.

I saw the J. Geils band open for Emerson, Lake and Palmer in 1971. Their whole set was a high energy extravaganza like I had never experienced, but Looking For A Love turned it up to 11. The only performance I have seen that was in its league was the first time I saw Springsteen at Towson University in 1977. Rosalita that night was an ecstatic experience.

In a whole different way, the encore that Alison Krauss and Union Station did at the Ohio Theater in Columbus in 2012 was sublime. First of all, this is a great band. Krauss and jerry Douglas are both world-class players, and the other guys more than hold their own. After a great concert, they came out with their instruments and stood around one large-diaphragm microphone, like an old-time radio session. That mic picked up everything, and they moved closer and farther as needed to achieve balance and when soloing. I don’t even remember what songs they did, I just remember being transported by how beautifully they did them.

62

Siouxsie and the Banshees doing “Peek-a-boo” in the early 90’s. The studio version is a cute simple throw-away tune, a quirky footnote among a total catalog of much better music.

Live, however, they punched up the volume and complexity of the bass and drums, filled it with improv jams, and pulled the crowd into total song/dance participation, all with Siouxsie ringmastering in an unbelievable sexy catsuit. Magical.

63

The one that stands out for me is the Zac Brown Band performing “Free.” It was funny, because I never much liked the song until they performed it live. They performed it on this gorgeous summer evening, the sky was a darkening blue and there was a very gentle breeze blowing, and the combination of the song, the weather, and the vibe of the crowd just made me feel more like a peace-loving hippie than I ever have before or since.

64

So hard to say, I’ve seen so many gigs that have meant so much to me at the time. So I’ll go with two recent performances of the same song.

I’m an old shoegazer. I was listening to Slowdive, Ride, MBV, Moose, Chapterhouse and whatnot in the early nineties. Ride were always my favourites though, Nowhere was one of the first “alternative” albums I ever heard, back when I was 17. They’d pretty much disintegrated as a band by 1994 and all fans pretty much thought they’d never see them again. Of the four members the only one that really stayed in the public eye was Andy Bell, who amongst other things ended up playing bass in Oasis.

Anyway, Mr Andy Bell married a Swede and lived here for a while. Along with a few people from the Stockholm indie scene he started a club night called “Bangers and Mash”. I was there in 2014 for their 10th Anniversary party, at which we got a surprise concert by Andy Bell and the singer from the Weeping Willows. The gig mostly consisted of indie anthems, but they threw in one Ride song. THE Ride song. “Vapour Trail”. A song I never thought I’d hear him sing again.

I was in heaven. Or more precisely, about two metres behind the guy taking this video:


I’m certainly one of the people you can hear singing along.

But then in 2015 Ride reformed. Partly because Slowdive’s reformation had gone so well, partly because time calmed the reasons why they argued with each other. I didn’t make any of the warmup shows, as I live in another country and they were at short notice, but I made the first two nights of the UK tour. The first night in Glasgow was amazing. I was right at the front, enthralled. The second night was in Manchester and I decided to stand near the back so I could drink it all in.

It was such a party atmosphere. A few thousand thirty and forty something men who never thought they’d get the chance to see them live again. And when “Vapour Trail” came on, the crowd singing the cello parts was just magical. In the nineties we were all too cool for school, but now we didn’t care. We were older and wanted to celebrate.

And here’s the performance:


So yes. Those two for me.
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And in case anyone is interested, this is how the song sounded on record:

66

I have seen a fair number of shows, many of the rock gods.

Absolutely the best single song beyond a shadow of doubt was Muddy Waters performing his iconic Mannish Boy.

I think number two would have been the Dicks performing No War at the protest area of the Democratic National Convention 1984. The Dicks were a hardcore band originally from Austin with front Gary Floyd. They morphed later into Sister Double Happiness and now the Gary Floyd band.

I’ve seen the 1977 Zep, the 1981 Stones, Kinks a half dozen times, the 1980’s Who and a slew of others. And I’ve seen just about all of the hardcore bands, many several times over. But the above 2 really stood out.

67

Karn Evil 9, by Emerson Lake, and Palmer.

68

Selinas, Coogee Bay Hotel early 80s
The Angels on stage. Doc singing “Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again”
Not the acoustic ballard version.

69

The most magical live performance moment for me was when Buddy Guy was the opening act for George Thoroughgood at Wolf Trap a few years ago. I’d never heard of Guy, but apparently I was the only one. He was funny, when people tried to sing along, he kept shushing them. Like kind of a cranky old man. Then he came out into the audience and all the way up to the beginning of the lawn seating area (where we were). People gathered around him but with some unstated mutual agreement left a bit of space around him so as to not crowd him too much. They stood there raptly, watching him work his magic on his guitar. His “crowd bubble” escorted him partway back to where we were, and then most of the way back to the stage. It was exactly like Jesus among the masses, there was so much reverence for him.

70

Actually, I need to add two. One was Joe Ely covering Not Fade Away at the Berkeley Amplitheater around 1980 or 81. Magical. Warm up for the Kinks. The other was Jeff Beck doing Going Down as his encore, then busting the strings on his guitar two by two, also at the Berkeley Amphitheater, somewhere around that time but a different show.

71

Wow. I often surf Youtube for live performances of that song to watch. Sounds intensely primal. I’m jealous.

72

I don’t know that I can specifically name a “favorite”, but I can tell you the ones that linger in my memory:

Don Henley (solo tour, 1988?): Hotel California
Rush (in 1995-ish): The Trees
Lit (in 2013?): My Own Worst Enemy
Kelly Clarkson (2015): Heartbeat Song, with Pentatonix
Kenny Wayne Shepherd (who I’ve seen multiple times, but this was 2015): Oh Well
My Chemical Romance: Mama
Fall Out Boy: Thnks fr th Mmrs

I’m going to stop now. :slight_smile:

73

I made my wife take a road trip with me to Indianapolis (we’re in Madison, WI) to see The Devil Makes Three, at a smaller venue called Radio Radio. The opener was a band named Brown Bird, who I had never heard of before that night. They have a song Shiloh, and when they played it that night it killed the room. When the cello came in (about 1:30 in the clip below), the entire place stood up to see what was making that sound. Recordings don’t do it justice, but here’s a link (not the same place/time as I saw it):

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Side note: A year or two after that show, they (Brown Bird) came to Madison and opened for Trampled By Turtles. I bought tickets for my wife for Christmas as she had become a huge fan. After Brown Bird played their set, we left. On our way out we passed them in the lobby, I said “We came just to see you guys!” and dude shook my hand. He died just over two years ago from Leukemia. Pretty big bummer.

75

Ripples by Genesis with a blinding pulsating light during the haunting last 5 minutes of the song.

Circa: 1980 at the Saenger Theater in New Orleans.

76

Run River North was opening for the Goo Goo Dolls on their Otis Midnight Sessions tour, which they played semi-acoustic shows at small venues. This one was less than 500 people at a regional campus of Miami (OH) University. I had not heard of RRN, but loved their sound in general when they started playing. They asked the audience if we minded if they did a cover. Then said it was just a polite ask, they were going to anyway… and went into a slow, sad, somber, and chilling version of The Killers “Mr. Brightside”… just beautiful and haunting

77

Rock Lobster at Red Rocks.

78

About 15 years ago the Guess Who did a reunion tour and they went into a loooong, extended version of “American Woman”, with a long guitar riff and literally brought the house down.

79

The Who in St. Louis - Won’t get fooled again. Sometime in the 70’s
The most memorable point in the song was Roger Daltry swinging his microphone in a 30’ arc during the solo and then snapping the cord, letting go, catching the mic perfectly about 1" away from a broken tooth while screaming yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah!

And this is a hard one to admit. I had a buddy once who broke up with his girlfriend and talked me into going with him to a Bette Midler concert. Boy was that a pleasant surprise. For not owning one of her albums her whole show was a great enjoyment. Tremendous supporting performers. But at one point she rolled out onto the stage on a motorized wheelchair while wearing a mermaid costume. She sang one solo into a mic mounted on the chair. Then launcehd into “I will survive” as her backup singers came rolling down onto the stage in wheelchairs and also Mermaid outfits. The five of them including Midler, then continued singing all the while doing intricate weaving maneuvers. The sound quality, the set design, the crisp vocals, the driving skills all combined for a very memorable performance.

80

A couple.

I shot Carly Simon performing “You’re So Vain” on stage. It was amazing.

The B52’s doing “Rock Lobster” is as much theater as it is a song.

Billy Joel doing " Miami:2017 " at the Spectrum in the early 1980’s. Made me shiver.