October 1951 Billie Holiday and Stan Getz at Storyville
#1 would probably be a Beatles gig at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg in 1961, or their show at the Litherland Town Hall on Jan. 5, 1961 (first show in Liverpool after returning from their first stint in Hamburg).
I would also be very interested in seeing the Mothers at the Garrick Theater, or the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, or one of Kesey’s Acid Tests.
(What I might like best would be to be a fly on the wall in Sun Studios the day Elvis started playing “That’s All Right”… but that gets into a whole other category of event.)
I came to this thread to post the same thing (though the “homecoming” gig at Litherland was actually December 27, 1960.)
Either that, or a show from Pink Floyd’s original (and very limited) tour of The Wall.
I would have liked to have seen Queen or, specifically, Freddie Mercury. Since I get to pick a whole concert, then I choose Live Aid because that means some other great acts get thrown is as well.
I’d love to learn what tune the Psalms were originally set to. So I guess I’d be listening to David and his lyre.
I hope I can bring along a recording device, or at least a scholar of ancient Hebrew.
The first performance of Haendel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, where everything caught fire and burned to the ground.
The first performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in Vienna.
Yes! Freddie Mercury/Queen at the Live Aid concert would be my first choice, too.
Second would be one of those private spontaneous Prince concerts, and third would be the free concert by Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park.
And I would like front row seating, of course.
This would be my pick as well. Easy choice, since I already did see the Beatles in August 1965.
If the Time Travel LSDP were already sold out, I’d settle for any performance by one of these…
- Duane Allman
- Art Tatum
- George Gershwin
I might want to check out one of those few concerts where The Jimi Hendrix Experience opened for The Monkees.
Thank you for the correction and the link!
This was my first thought.
The Doors, just before they hit it big.
Also . . . the premiere of Gershwin’s *Rhapsody in Blue *in 1924, especially since Gershwin improvised much of the piano solo, and didn’t write it down until after the concert.
Can I say the night the Beatles jammed with Elvis at Graceland? I know it wasn’t technically a “performance,” but what the hell. To be a fly on that wall!
How far back do I have to go? Because I’d like to see Hamilton, along with everybody else, so tickets to its premiere.
LOL! I found it !
Any of King Crimson’s 1972 tour dates with the almost-psychotic Jamie Muir.
Alice Cooper on their 1973 Billion Dollar Babies tour. And I’d like to have been about 19, hot and with a front row ticket.
It’s time travel. Time travel. I’d time travel back to any concert at all. I mean, time travel. I’d be so amazed by that that I likely wouldn’t notice the concert. anyway honestly.
If I got a second trip I would likely see Pink Floyd on their original Wall tour. I wen’t to college with a guy who had been a roadie on that tour and that would be my chance to hangout backstage at a Floyd concert.