Your all-time best rock concerts

In My Humble Opinion
21

Stevie Ray Vaughn. The man was a genius with his axe.

Boston and Aerosmith at Texas Jam '86. And I’m positive the two hits of TurboX had nothing to do with it.

AC/DC. Before Queensryche opened the show, there was a thick cloud hanging in the air and EMT’s were carrying people out.

Loverboy. Believe it or not.

Rush. They used to stop here at least once a year.

Buffett. Though it’s one of those anytime, anywhere type deals, the best one I’ve seen to date was at Mud Island in Memphis. It’s just something about that venue. I don’t know if the beer is colder or just what.

22

I’ve also seen Bruce Hornsby in concert and was very impressed. Opening act Edwin McCain, and although I didn’t like that one popular song of his, he had a lot of other great stuff, and really connected with the audience.
Can’t remember dates or locations, but here are some of my favorite concerts:
REM
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Black Crowes
They Might Be Giants
2 Skinnee J’s (a rap-metal group, normally I don’t dig that style of music, but they put on a great show. . kinda like Rage, but less political)
Smashing Pumpkins (with Garbage as the opening act–they rocked, too)

23

Some of the best live performances I have seen… KISS, Garth Brooks, Aerosmith, Beach Boys, Jimmy Buffet, Journey. The worst, hands down was a group I saw in the mid 80’s… they couldn’t sing live to save theirs… Huey Louis and the News… They sucked!!

24

Hmm, let’s see now. So many to choose from…
4. Alice in Chains - The show was so bad that a Rolling Stone article about the band had the quote “Things fell apart in Minneapolis”. In any case, my friend and I were hanging around trying to get some tickets to the sold out show when we saw the bass player wandering around the side entrance asking for some valium. Well, I told him I could get him a tablet or two (left over prescription) if he put me and my associate on the guest list. He declared it a deal and I grabbed my car and prepared to run home (only lived a few minutes away). He saw me stopped at the intersection by the place (First Avenue nightclub, btw) and jumped in the backseat of my car!! To make a long story short, he was a total arrogant child, and the show sucked, but what a lead-in story.

  1. Tool - Undertow tour - First Avenue again (smallish nightclub). Got there early, stood about 3 feet from the band. Very intense show.

  2. Los Lobos - Any tour, anytime - One of my favorite bands to see live. My dream would be to have them as my wedding band.

  3. Pearl Jam - First Avenue again - Tour supporting “Ten”, they ahdn’t hit their popularity yet. Once again, arrived early and stood a few feet from the band. Enjoyed watching Eddie swing from the balcony and crowd surf. Good stuff.

25

In no particular order:

Counting Crows (Chicago,IL 2000) - A fantastic group of musicians who are constantly refining and redefining their songs. This show was a lot of fun, now that Adam Duritz has gotten over his “man doesn’t it suck to be famous?” phase.

Nine Inch Nails (Worcester, MA 1995) - The Downward Spiral tour absolutely rocked. A true spectacle with the lights and the video screens, etc. I have never seen a larger mixing board in my life as the one they had set up for this show.

Stone Temple Pilots (Tampa, FL 1997) - Scott Weiland had just gotten out of rehab (again) and kept it together long enough to tour for a couple months. An incredible show which they split into a few distinct sections. A second, smaller stage, lit entirely with candles dropped from the roof and they all climbed aboard and did an impressive acoustic set. Every time they played a song, I thought that they had managed to play all of their hits, but then they started the next one. Awesome. Local H opened.

Beck (Chicago, IL 2000) - A very versatile, very funny, and very short man. Pulled out all the stops for this show… had two guys on the turntables, two drummers, two back up singers, a bassist, two guitarists, and a three piece horn section. I didn’t know where to look.

Blind Melon / Meat Puppets (Oneonta, NY 1994) - In the SUNY school’s gymnasium. A lot of fun. Meat Puppets did a cool rendition of Helter Skelter using the slide trombone as the principle instrument. Blind Melon really rocked out, much to my own surprise. Too bad Shannon Hoon had to kill himself with the ol’ needle.

G. Love & Special Sauce (Ithaca, NY 1995) - In The Haunt, a tiny little club downtown. These guys are incredibly fun to watch. Guitar, giant upright bass, drums. So funky. The opening act was a band called Jaspar and the lead singer from that group came out at the end and they did a twenty-minute long improv rap/ blues thing. It was cool.

That’s all for me. Honorable mentions :

Queensryche - the U.S. leg of the tour that Coldfire mentioned earlier. Operation:Mindcrime was incredible

Third Eye Blind - not so much the group themselves, but it was on Clearwater Beach, FL, last Memorial Day. Half naked people dancing all over the place.

I’m done.

26

Grateful Dead, Shoreline Amphitheatre…it must have been around Spring of '94. An awesome run of Stagger Lee and a montstrous marshmallow fight, to boot! :wink:

Also, Primus, at The Phoenix, a tiny venue near my hometown. This was around '90, the Frizzle Fry tour. I was in the pit all night long, in a trance; Fell multiple times, but came out with not even a scratch!

27

Bad Brains
Nina Hagen
Sleep
Desmond Dekker
Some random baritone sax quintet

Note: not at the same time but in no particular order.

Am I the only one who loathes concerts in huge ampitheaters? If I have to go to one of those, I usually bring a book because the crowd is so annoying and the sound quality so bad.

Give me a small, intimate place where I can actually see what the musicians are doing and I’ll probably enjoy any show.

28

Hey LocalLoop-

I’m with you on Los Lobos. If my list had been any longer, they would have been number 11. I saw them put on a great show in Athens, GA a few years back. Tight set, and the crowd was rocking.

29

Smashing Pumpkins In a small place in San Diego before they were big. In fact, I played in the same bar a few weeks before. They carried their own gear in. I even helped the bass player (I don’t recall her name) carry some stuff in. There were maybe 100-200 people there and they rocked. Billy Corgan had long hair at the time and he reminded me of Jim Morrison; he was very charismatic.

Pearl Jam Also in a small place in San Diego. They had just formed from Mother Love Bone.

Primus and Firehose In San Francisco. My bandmates Jason, JT and I borrowed a car and drove from San Diego to San Francisco to check them out. I had never seen anything like Les Claypool; we were blown away.

Firehose In San Diego. A few weeks after the above concert, I saw that Firehose was playing at UCSD, so we went to see them. I saw the bass player (I can’t recall his name) walking around the campus before the show and talked to him a while, told him that we had driven to San Francisco to see them. They rocked. After the show, he came over to me and thanked us for coming.

Nirvana In Tiquana. “Nevermind” had just come out and they weren’t super-famous yet. There were maybe 500 people at the show. A week before, as a joke, my bandmate Jason had made some backstage passes to Hell, which were very cool looking. I wore it to the show. A friend gave it to Kurt Cobain while they were playing and he talked about it on stage, “So there are Satanists in the crowd”.

A couple bands I never saw in their prime that I wish I would have: AC/DC, Van Halen (v. 1), NIN

30

Okay, this is really pathetic on my part, as I’ve only been to about five concerts in my entire life (yessir, just one giant party animal, that’s me), and in one of them I was actually playing.

But the best concert I’ve ever been to had to have been Weird Al Yankovic at a small theatre in downtown DC this year.

Al is a frenetic and top-quality performer; there are plenty of video clips (from specials he’s done, UHF, and other sources) between and during songs, often the performance approaches theatre of the absurd, and you’ll hear songs that Al hasn’t yet (or won’t) put on an album.

(Second best was Meatloaf performing in NJ; third was Jethro Tull at the Merriweather Post Pavilion; and fourth was Rush at Merriweather Post. Last, and most sucky, was my garage band’s performance at the Sligo Creek Rec Center.)

31

Hmm, mine were all around the same time, same place, when I was at UC Santa Barbara, mid to late 60s. Wasn’t then and still amn’t a fan of huge crowds, so I haven’t gone to many since. But the venue at SB was pretty small, so I could get up close and personal with:

Cream. Yow. 20 feet away from Slowhand.

The Byrds. In a high school auditorium, because, IIRC, which is sometimes doubtful when refering to the 60s as the joke goes, Crosby was an alum and was doing the school a favor. They were just releasing “Eight Miles High,” and I believe this might have been the first concert performance of it.

Also passing through town were The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Doors, Ike & Tina Turner, The Loving Spoonful, and such. But I did study too, honest.

32

UncaStuart wrote

Wow; too cool. I was a zygote at the time and didn’t catch him till the early 90’s along with a gazillion other fans. Still a great concert, but not even in the same league.

33

There are two that really stand out:

  1. HFStival 2000 (five days ago), FedEx Field, D.C.: I saw Stone Temple Pilots and Rage Against the Machine, my two favorite bands, back to back.

  2. Metallica/Guns N’ Roses July 1992, RFK Stadium, D.C.: again, my two favorite bands at the time. Metallica were awesome, and so were GNR, even if it took em two hours to get onstage.

34

Led Zep in the open air on a warm summer’s evening in 1980. A thousand fires lit across the fields, finishing with ‘Stairway to Heaven’ at midnight. Still waiting to come down.

35

Fuckin’ A on the Spankers. I’ve seen them about four times now. When the man says they are acoustic musicians, he means it–they use no amplification whatsoever. They have (had) a “barker” with a megaphone who goes into the audience and tells anyone talking too loudly to shut the hell up.

I was worried that their demise was imminent–apparently Pops and Mysterious John (the barker) both left the band. They were having some real personnel trouble right before that as well, when Stan and Col. Josh left and they had to fire their bass player for being too stoned to make a gig in Amsterdam. (As I told Christina when she was telling me about all this, you could say he was “stoned like a bass player in Amsterdam”.)

They are back, with some new members and a new album all about the joys of intoxication called “Spanker Madness”. They’re on tour this summer–check 'em out.

Dr. J

36

Here’s the tour schedule for the Asylum Street Spankers, for those who are interested:

http://www.asylumstreetspankers.com/shows.html

Go see 'em if you can!

37

Here are this summer’s tour dates for BR5-49…

http://www.br5-49.com/

You want to see a great show, be sure to catch these boys if they come to a town near you.

38

Van Halen - great live band - I was smokin mad dope in the crowd.

Steve Vai (on Thanksgiving Night) was a blast, even let me tool his g-tar, was like 10 feet away from me the whole show.

I went back stage with Everything (you know that song, "You got the hooch…baby…) Got drunk and baked with the band and helped 'em out.

Few others, but those were the most fun.

39

Van Halen, March 1998–This was their first Chicago show with Gary Cherone. I was a little nervous before the show since Van Halen is my favorite band, but they didn’t let me down. Definitely the best concert I’ve seen.

Styx, October 1996–Their live album and video “Return to Paradise” was recorded at this concert. It was the third time I had seen them on this particular tour. Rumor has it that you can spot me for a nano-second at the beginning of the video.

Buddy Guy, Sept 1994 or '95–Performed at the Last Fling in Naperville, IL. This was the first time I saw him, and I almost didn’t go. I’m glad I did. Can’t beat seeing Buddy for free while standing 10 feet from the stage.

Smashing Pumpkins, (don’t remember the date)–Got front-row seats for free for helping a friend with his ticket brokerage. I think I was the oldest person there.

Jefferson Airplane, summer of 90–performed the same night as the Stones did, so great tickets were available. Sure, age had caught up with them, but it was still a great show.

40

No particular order:

Woodstock '94 : Bob Dylan was the best I’ve seen him, before or since (I am a HUGE Dylan fan- probably seen him 75 times)
Peter Gabriel was awesome, too.

Dylan, Dead, and Tom Petty: RFK Stadium D.C.('88?)

Shawn Colvin : solo acoustic show at 9:30 Club, Washington,D.C., 1994.

Lyle Lovett and his Big Band: George Mason University, “Joshua Judges Ruth” Tour. This guy is a great performer with a very tight band. See him if you get the chance.

Little Feat(w/Lowell George), Bonnie Raitt, Catfish Hodge: The Wax Museum, Washington D.C. (early '80’s)

I’ve been blessed to see lots of good concerts, but these shows seem to stick out for me.