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Runner-up: Randy Newman, solo, Alys Stephens Center, Birmingham, AL--2005
I'm from Chicago, Wilco's hometown, and have seen them perform here, but my favorite show was the time I saw them in Montreal, where I went to college. It was the day before their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out. The show was great--very energetic, and I had a very good spot--and I was so excited about the new album that I actually had trouble sleeping that night. The next morning I was waiting outside the record store before they opened.
That said, it's possible that I was the asshole, and that's why I didn't notice. That does happen to me.
today it's the Pixies in Atlanta at Club Rio on the Surfer Rosa tour.
45 minutes of bliss.
So, my friend Courtney and I headed to the show with high hopes. Maybe there would be slam dancing! We lived in a boring-ass town outside of Tampa called Brandon where Friday nights meant hanging out at Burger King and harassing our classmates working behind the counter. Finally, something new and different!
We weaseled our way to the stagefront so we could get a good spot. Friends of mine saw U2 open for the J. Giles Band a few years earlier and said they were energetic. (The J. Giles Band? Seriously?) After an overly emphatic opening by The Alarm (U2 wannabes), Bono and company took the stage by storm. The audience was enthralled. They strutted like they owned the place, but they didn't seem cocky or too full of themselves. (Remember, this was 1983.)
After about 3/4 through the show, Bono was feeling the need to get a little closer to his audience. He looked down from the stage, pointed at me and Courtney and said "I'm coming in!" Courtney and I looked at each other and said "Fuck yeah!" We had been pogoing and bopping all night, but this was going to make the show even cooler. So, in he jumped, right on top of us. I had never seen the lead singer of a band stagedive before, so naturally I was impressed. The girls all around us were screaming and pulling at Bono's hair (yes, mullet Bono). He looked over at me and said "Don't pull my hair!" I turned and shouted at the girls next to me, "Don't pull his hair!"
Then I thought, I'm not going to let this moment pass without a souvenir. So I grabbed the epaulet on his shirt and pulled as hard as I could. Bingo! I was now holding 1/4 of Bono's shirt in my hand! I passed Bono off to another person and quickly stuffed my prize into my pants pocket before the girls next to me could seize it.
Bono was passed back on stage, shirtless, and disappeared backstage for a moment. He came back on wearing the same type of shirt and climbed the stage light rigging waving a white flag.
The show turned out better than I thought. Who knew they would go on to become geezers of rock and yet still put on a helluva show? I haven't bought a record by them in years, but I'll always remember that concert.
We didn't know what to expect, but what we found was a gigantic campfire and about a dozen family/friends of the host. They gave us a tour of their old farmhand bunkhouse, shared their bug spray with us, and plied us with lemonade and smores. When the sun started to set, our host opened up with a few tunes and then Calvin Johnson played for about 30 minutes, starting with a wonderful a capella and lit only by the light from the campfire. The family offered us a place to sleep for the night since it was almost midnight, but we thought some of the surrealism of the night would vanish by morning, so we made the drive home.
It was great! Of course Wilco always puts on a great show but they were locked in that night.
I've been to dozens and dozens of shows over the years, but no show has captivated me more than this one.
Louder than I was expecting but right on!
Hmm, i think that must have been on Iggy's "comeback-tour" (blah, blah blah), in Copenhagen 86 (in Falkoner Teatret). A fantastic performer. He always delivers.
and
neil young & sonic youth, montreal, arc tour, 1991
However, if I had to pick a concert experience, it would be Uncle Tupelo on the Anodyne tour. They were at the top of their game and their cover of CCR's "Effigy" was mind-blowing.
I had just flown in a few days before from Australia, and desperately wanted to see this epic, textured band reproduce their sound live. I was sure it would be sold out, but I showed up at the venue the morning of the show anyway, and managed to successfully buy a ticket.
That night, I was treated to the best show I have ever seen. The venue itself was a beautiful old converted theatre. Seven members onstage, playing for their lives. Miniature wireless cameras were stuck all over the stage, on instruments and microphones, and there was a live video mixer side stage cutting between the 9 cameras, with the results being projected in black and white onto a screen behind the band.
After the show I bought a HOTS hoodie which they were selling off cheap. I hung out the back afterwards hoping to meet the band and ended up helping them load out!
A couple of months later, they broke up.
or there's the first major concert I went to...Bruce Springsteen at the Spectrum in Philly. I almost didn't get to go. A friend and I got dropped off in Atlantic City overnight after a night at the skating rink. I was 15, she was 16. We stayed out all night waiting in line for tickets. It was Winter and it was bitter & cold on the AC Boardwalk. I got busted by my brother, who was there, and at age 18 allowed to be out all hours. My parents only let me go when my older sister got tickets too, and luckily she did. It was the Tunnel of Love tour in March of 1988. I was grounded and not allowed to do anything else, but they did let me go to the concert, which was incredible! Some say the story itself, which I could tell much more about, is a Springsteen song.
Split Enz went on to become Crowded House a few years later.
Thanks so much!
nancyrobster@gmail.com
Ten feet away from my dear Zooey Deschanel at a She & Him show at Terminal 5 in NYC.
Tina Turner featuring Cyndi Lauper.
Saw them the week before at Roskilde at a 70 000 people venue, then at Quart at a 10 000 people venue. Blew my mind.
After hearing TPC's set, my friend Freddy turns to me and says, "Wow, I'm a believer."
Lotsa tall boy cans(one with Tad's autograph), lotsa high fives, and lotsa smiles.
I later found a good torrent of the show in which another friend screams to the band that he had just had an "accident" in his pants, in response to the last song played. Craig says, very humbly, that he would help out, but he has a show to play.
http://www.gigposters.com/poster/58081_Hold_Ste...
This is the poster from the show in ATL and from the Athens show the night before at Tasty World. I helped them load in for this show a little bit. There are like a dozen or so of this poster, on black stock, hand pulled, so no two alike. Thank you Henry Owings for the poster, and for the walking tour of downtown Athens.
Magical stuff indeed.
Lasers, UFOs, Cheerleaders, The Flaming Lips...you can't ask for much more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ8BjWTxrN0
Butthole Surfers @ Ackerman Grand Ballroom in UCLA circa 1989.
The right lineup, the right songs, the right drugs, I was the right age, so were my friends. Perfect combination of set and setting.
oh yeah, Wilco, they're pretty great live, too.
best concert experience, either seeing stevie ray vaughn or tom waits, both at toronto's massey hall, a great venue for an intimate concert experience
tatertot374@sbcglobal.net
Elliott Smith @ Bottom of the Hill 3/1/00
First Dead show- 12/9/88 @ Long Beach Sports Arena
Verve @ some tiny theater in L.A. before they got bloated and when they were still hungry. I think it was just before Storm in Heaven came out and they were fantastic.
And then there's every Alejandro Escovedo show...
Tom Waits, the Olympia, Dublin, in 1987 - the tour for Franks Wild Years ....was 19 - scarred me for life, but in a wondrous way.
take care,
Stephen
Runner up would be John McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra opening for Frank Zappa at Hofstra University in 1973.
Let there be rock!
Still haven't seen Wilco live, which is a shame. YHF is a life-changer for sure. And Summerteeth has proven to be quite the grower.
This show quite literally changed how I heard music. Gill's guitar was so abrasive & dissonant yet beautiful and otherworldly at the same time. And all in the service of songs with memorable (tho' unusual) melodies/rhythms/lyrics. Tho' I was already playing guitar, this show (and the encore of "At Home He's A Tourist" in particular) changed the direction of what I wanted to do with it.
60's when I saw at a small venue in San Francisco: CTA (the blues
band before they became Chicago), Santana (amazing set) and closer
Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis! Wonderful experience!
I hope to add Wilco and Gomez to the top of that list this year. And thanks for such an amazing blog. It's a music and book lovers paradise.
One of my favorites was the Beck solo tour from a few years back...a smallish show in an Ann Arbor theater...so quiet you could hear a pin drop...he alternated instruments from guitar, to piano, to wurlitzer, to harmonica...Jack White came out and sang the encore with him...and no, the mushrooms had nothing to do with the experience...honest.
Runners-up, for what its worth:
Jeff Tweedy @ Alabama Theater
Lenny Kravitz @ Beard-Eaves Col in Auburn (1991 - opened for the Cult)
Prince in Birmingham
Little did I know that my daughter had snuck out of the house to attend the concert- and she did not know I was there.
Security body-surfed me over the front railing by the stage-for the whole world AND my daughter to see.
We were both so busted.
beautiful summer weather + the company of good friends + Shuggie Otis and the Ink Spots (over the speakers, in between acts) + great set and 5 ENCORES!
they played for 2 hours and closed with a 10 minute
version of 'keep on rocking in the free world'.
Utah Phillips
Emmylou Harris
Talking Heads
Thanks!
agsweeps (at) hotmail (dot) com
In front of us sat 3 younger teenagers, all wearing Smashing Pumpkins t-shirts (about the diametric opposite of Pat Metheny). Of course, they had complained to their parents (who must have dragged them there scratching and crawling) before and throughout the show. Surely they were above this pansy nonsense, right?
Well, about halfway through, the group really started to play. And it got loud. Real loud. Louder than any rock show I had been to. So loud, in fact, that the Smashing Pumpkins kids had their hands over their ears for probably the second half of the show and continuously whined to their parents about how much "it hurt." Hopefully they enjoyed it.
It turned out to be AMAZING. The band was fantastic, and the lead singer sounded exactly like Michael Jackson cerca 1990. I wish I could remember their name! But the highlight for me, and what made it my best concert experience ever, was the fact that about a hundred of us students did the "Thriller" dance in the middle of the gym floor. I had never done it in public, and it was just amazing -- I didn't feel goofy or like a nerd at all, and it reminded me of the times when I was a kid and would put baby oil on the soles of my feet and attempt MJ dance moves on the hardwood floor of my parents' house.
But the all time greatest was a week long adventure to San Francisco to see the Cure. This was when Blood Flowers came out and I was 19. I ditched work and my buddy quit his job. Another friend ran away from home. There were four of us . Not even 20 minutes into our late night run we got a flat tire. It set us back a few hours. We had to be in San Francisco by 7 am and it was a 6 hour drive from my house.
By the time we got to the venue the line was around the building and we had no chance in hell of getting tickets. We ran to a pay phone and tried calling Ticketmaster and couldn't get through. Some girls next to us did and got tickets and didn't pass the phone off. We decided to stay anyways and go wait in line to buy the album and meet the band.
In the 2 days we waited we met LL Cool J and a bunch of other random dudes from smaller bands we liked. A couple hour long drives to and from San Francisco,$300 in cd's at amoeba by one of our passengers,a broken camera and a burrito.
We bought the album on Valentines day and came back the next night to get it signed by the band. Two days of waiting in line. We decided to write a letter to the band about how broke we were and about our buddy who's mom threw away all his cure stuff and not getting tickets and the flat tire. A long sob story.
By now it's been 4 days and this girl had been filming us and telling people our story.People started calling us the Detroit Rock City Kids.
Well the day of the show after we left our friends sisters house Simon from the Cure called looking for us. But since we didn't have cell phones no one could get a hold of us. We tried one last attempt for tickets by walking to a radio station and pleading with them. No dice. We walked back to the venue and some people said the girl who had been filming us was looking for us. When saw her and walked up to her but then the Cure's bus pulled up and we got blocked and as the band was walking out my buddy yelled to Simon and Simon looked and said "oh hey Keith 4 tickets right?"
We totally got in and people cheered for us. The band even nodded at us. We left that night and drove back to LA and saw them at Madtv the next day. We even almost got in to see them in LA that night but left to early. The girl filming said we were on the second list or something.
It was pretty badass. Being 18 and having everything fall in line like that was surreal.
A couple summers ago I saw !!! headline at the 9:30 club in Washington, DC. I fought my way to the front, next to the stage after the opener, Holy Fuck, finished their set. !!! were putting on a fabulous show getting the whole venue dancing and letting those of us in the front sing along when the mic was placed in front of us. For their final song they pulled up someone from the crowd on to the stage and her friend followed. Before I knew it, about 50 of us ended up on stage dancing and singing along for the finale. Standing on stage looking out at everyone else is something I'll never forget.
small church setting...
Dylan crowd...
does it get any better
I show up with some friends and low and behold...Radiohead. Then (and now) my favorite band. I was ecstatic. They were there to try out some of their new stuff from their unreleased next album (which would be OK Computer). Some of these songs probably played for the first time live.
Front of the stage, feet from Thom Yorke, who was joking with the crowd, many of whom were local buddies. Couldn't get better, right? Well...this cute English girl turns around, and starts kissing me! Thom even acknowledges us, making some joke about the kids making out in the front!
Love, rock, and youth. Best concert experience. Ever.
So… it poured rain most of the day but there was still a decent crowd, and they gave a really good show. Most memorable moment was some guy in the audience who looked just like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch screaming out “Five, Ten, Fifteen, Twenty, we don’t give a F@#K if we don’t get any.” That, and people throwing joints up on stage to the band.
Pouring Rain+Aging Arena Rock Band+Huggy Bear=Concert Awsomeness