It was a good show. The main memory was that I went with my brother, his g/f (now wife), and his friend. We took spots in the front row, just right of center, well before the show, and held that spot through. I still have scars on my forearms near my elbows, though they’re barely visible now, from holding my spot against the wooden barrier wall. At one point, some older guy started pulling my leg up to try and lift me over to security so he could get my spot. “You’re going over.” Fortunately, I was still pretty strong from high school athletics, and I basically stamped my leg down, said hell no, and kept him farther away than me. Bastard.
Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep, sometime around 1970, in the Woodinville Dome. The Woodinville Dome was a large horse arena located in Woodinville, at the time a small town northeast of Seattle. This was in November and the arena was open on the sides and the cold wind blew through the place the whole concert. The strange part is someone thought a dance floor was needed and one was put in right in front of the stage over the dirt floor. Needless to say, there was no dancing.
My dad tooke me to see ELO on their “Twilight” tour in Pittsburgh sometime in the early 80’s. Hall & Oates were their opener and we had one helluva time. It was a blast seeing a 60 some year old guy singing along to everything
I guess that would have been Jethro Tull, at the Boston Garden, during their Thick as a Brick tour in 1972. I was a junior in high school, living a pretty sheltered life in suburban Rhode Island, and going into the middle of Boston at night with a group of friends to see Tull was quite a heady experience. IIRC, Wild Turkey opened for Tull. On our way out, we happened upon some crowd-control action – police with dogs… the only time I’ve ever seen that.
I saw Herman’s Hermits sometime in the 1960s at the Ballroom on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City (the original one, before the fire and they replaced it with the geodesic dome ballroom. I also saw the Cowsills and the Supremes at the Steel Pier, but they were on the stage in the other theater, and I’m not sure that counts.
If that doesn’t count, it was Rick Wakeman at the Boston Opera House (later renamed the Wang Center) in 1975.
My first rock concert was Kiss at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in '78. I was nine, in third grade. I went with three of my brothers…our mother took us. She had made a deal with us that if all four of us could get report cards with nothing less than a ‘B’ grade on them, she’d take us. Years later, she admitted that she never expected us to really pull it off - she figured one of us would get a ‘C.’
My first concert, sans parents, was the Clash at the University of Buffalo in (I think) '81? My brother & I were allowed to go along with our college-aged sister. Mom, of course, was unaware that we were smoking pot & drinking beer with our sister and her friends before & after the show.
My first real concert was Kenny Rogers in San Diego, back in 1982. I think it was at the Sports Center. I am not a huge Kenny Rogers fan, but my fiancee was, and so I bought tickets. We were up in the nosebleed seats, about 4 rows from the back and 2 miles from the stage. I think they were selling mixed drinks at one of the concession stands, or else the drunk girl behind us had sneaked in a bottle of Jack Daniels.
This drunk girl spent the entire time screaming, “Sing Lady!!! Sing Lady!!!” in our ears, and literally drowned out Kenny Rogers and Dottie West. Every single song he sang was ruined by the incessant, “Sing Lady!!!”
And then, near the end of the concert, his voice started in on that song: “Lady, I’m your knight in shining armor and I love you …”.
The drunk fool behind us immediately started crying and screaming, “Oh my God … He’s singing Lady!!!”. Over and over and over.
Made me want to kill someone. Only the sight of Dottie West in whatever tight clothes she had poured herself into kept me from strangling the girl behind us.
I’d have to go up by my Ma and dig through my stuff in storage. I don’t remember what the face value was, but I’m thinking we paid more than $10 from the guy we got them from.
Did they play as long for you as they did for us? Maybe my memory is bad but I could swear they played for almost 3 freaking hours.
Sometime in the 70’s I was at a show with my parents and one of the acts was Lou Rawls. This was in the early 70’s but I don’t consider it my first concert experience as I hated it, didn’t want to be there, and was bored out of my mind.
Plus I was with my parents. THAT can never count as a first concert experience. My rules, I make them up!
Good lord, well here we go. My first concert experience was at the age of 12, to see … The Monkees, in September 1968. Couldn’t hear a note over the constant screaming of the girlhorde, and was so far back in the old Sydney Stadium I couldn’t see all that much either. But I remember it - or at least scraps of it - vividly, and it didn’t stop me going to scores of rock concerts in the 70s.
My very first concert experience was Sha Na Na as well. I must’ve been around 7 or 8, which would have made it '78 or so. I was big into their tv show and '50s music in general at the time, and loved it. It was at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD., and I went with my dad.
Actually, now that I think about it, my first “grown up” concert also had a '50s vibe to it – it was The Stray Cats in '82 or '83 on the Built For Speed tour.
