Best Concert

[matt986]

Originally Posted by rokdog49

Far, far too many good ones to really settle in on any one.
Here’s a list of the ones I can remember.

Eagles - Three times
Rolling Stones
Journey/ELO/ Foreigner
Boston
Led Zeppelin.
Heart two times.
Doobie Brothers.
Dan Fogelberg
Neil Young.
Bonnie Raitt.
Jackson Browne
Bad Company- twice
Joe Walsh
James Gang
Kansas
Eric Clapton -twice
John Mellencamp twice
Poco
Survivor
Buddy Guy
Kenny Wayne Sheperd
REO Speedwagon
Ted Nugent
Black Crowe’s
ZZ Top
Left Banke
Chicago
Bryan Adams
Def Lepperd
Queen
Paul McCartney
Sheryl Crow
Melissa Etheridge
Pink Floyd
Yes
Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Crosby, Stills and Nash
Travis Tritt
Charlie Daniels
Buckinghams
Grassroots
Raspberries
Michael Stanley Band
Strawberry Alarm Clock

I quit, there’s too many.

I was reading through your list and saw the Michael Stanley Band and immediately wondered if you were around the Cleveland area. Then I saw the location in your signature and my suspicions were confirmed. I lived in Cleveland in the late '70s and early '80s so I'm pretty familiar with them (although I never did see them live). They were one of those bands that was big regionally but could never quite break on a national level.

[kentwinterton]

Guess I'll add my .02.

The Carpenters
Kenny Loggins
Billy Joel
Elton John
James Taylor (Seen him 9 times and have tickets in May)
John Denver (Greatest acoustic show!! He dismissed his band and played
solo for 1 1/2 hours. It was awesome)
Queen
Foreigner
Foghat
Van Halen
Buddy Guy/Jimmie Vaughn
The Beach Boys
Neil Diamond
Chicago
Eagles
Journey
ZZ Top

I'm sure there are more I can't recall at the moment. Yea - I'm a music lover.

[The Watchman]

Bruce Springsteen sometime around '79-'82 Five encores and the crowd sincerely wanted more.

More recent - solo acoustic Nick Lowe at a local outdoor bar.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

I am, a very old man ans started going to shows ad concerts in the early '60s.
So many great nights that are now archived in the prts of my brain that i no longer use I expect, so, I just let my mind go blank and saw what I could find in there.

The Hammersmith Odeon about 1976 - Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band with Guy Clark and Rodney Crowell. THEY were having so much fun, that the concert overrun by a hour (ish). It was a great evening.

Fairport Convention in the late '60s. local college.

Free - with my band, interrupted by an ex girlfriend begging me to take her back. Embarrassing but good for my ego.

Spirit, Love with "arthurlee"

Pink Floyd, in a pub!

King Crimson at the Marquee on the night of the Moon landing.

The Who - only kinda saw them as we opened for them, and couldn't easily get back into the audience.

Led Zeppelin - from a hill overlooking the stage at the bath Festioval (1970?)

Jethro Tull - 2 or 3 times

The Yardbirds - loads of times, local band opened for them two or three times

Downliners Sect - They "managed" us for a time - i.e gave us the gigs they didn't want to do.

Simon and Garfunkel from the Royal box of the Albert Hall

The Beatles with the rest of the Epstein stable - Christmas Eve - -horrible - just screaming.

Spencer Davis Band (w Steve Winwood)
The Bonzo Dog Doodah Band

Used to go to the Cambridge folk Festival for many years, so many great names, but most influential - Tom Rush, Guy Clark, many American bluegrass bands - Alison Krauss, Country Gazette, . Saw Townes Van Zandt the summer before he died - he looked very ill. Dave Bromberg Band

Saw Fleetwood Mac in London but frmo the back of an enormous stadium - unenjoyable.
Ah, saw CSN&Y, Joni Mitchell and some others in a similar venue but we were in the front so not so bad - 70,000 audience - not my kind of gig.

Peter Rowan, Bill Keith, and Jim Rooney - locally, we opened for them. great night.

Rolling Stones of course - local club.

ELO to whom I blame for my hearing loss and tinnutus. (Terrible, ridiculous, self absorbed bunch).

More recently - and locally, The Wiyos, Pokey Lafarge, (twice) Front Country (x2 and a half times - walked out last time - sound too bad)

Loads more, I'll have to go deeper, but I need food.

Bravo, SM, Bravo! If you don't win the Internet with this post, you should at least have one of those T-Shirts that says "I may be getting old, but I did get to see all the cool bands"

[FrankHudson]

OK, I did relate to the "It's like 'Who's your favorite kid?" post upthread. I've had many that I treasure, and I don't use the word loosely. It's odd because I doubt anyone (and certainly myself) "remembers" a concert from years ago even to the level of being able to reconstruct the setlist much less every note played by every musician on stage. What we remember is the impact, the overwhelming degree of pleasure.

Two that stand out for me, and both were primarily acoustic instruments.

Richard Thompson at 7Th Street Entry. Small space that was a former cloak room for the larger First Avenue, and the place that many a Twin Cities punk, New Wave, or Alternative band played on their way up, or in the course of whatever small-time career they had.

Solo, just Richard and acoustic guitar and I think 1982. Now if one has seen let's say vintage Husker Du in that same room, imagine a concert at such a volume level that I kept whispering to a photographer there to stop taking pictures with his motor-drive camera as the noise was drowning out the music. Given that memory I think it's possible that the show was actually acoustic through and through, no mics or pickups, but I'm not sure. I had most of Richard's post-Fairport records at the time, and he played a good mix of material from that portion of his career, including songs that had featured Linda Thompson on vocals. I've seen Thompson half-a-dozen times since, and he's always great, but this was just mesmerizing.

The second is more recent, 2013, and Bill Frisell playing Telecaster into a Deluxe Reverb with a couple of stomp boxes on a chair next to him, but with the otherwise acoustic Big Sur album band of violin, viola, cello, and the splendid Rudy Royston on drum set at the Cedar Cultural Center. Again, I've seen Frisell several times, and he's always great, but this set of music and combinations of instruments was overwhelming.

I'm not much of a musician, but I've tried to capture some of that feeling with compositions after that concert.

Odd how many "best concerts" in this acoustic guitar forum are electric bands. I love that music too, so I understand. And I can think of a couple of concerts that were highly memorable from factors outside of just the music.

[Ryan Alexander]

Originally Posted by Mr. Paul

Mid Size venue: Tom Waits at the Paramount Theater in Denver

Of all the legendary names in this thread, this one has me the most jealous Mule Variations tour? I'd do just about anything to see Tom live.

So many shows come to mind for me, but here are my stand-outs:

Paco De Lucia at the Montreal Jazzfest in 2011 - I bought front row tickets for my wife and I assuming it would likely be my only chance to see him. I was right What an unbelievable show! Watching the communication onstage and being so close to one of the greats was quite an experience.

Glen Hansard at Massey Hall in 2016 - what can you say about Glen? He left it all on the stage that night as he usually does. Heard many great tunes including great covers of Astral Weeks and Coyote.

Tedeschi Trucks Band - my face hurt after from all the smiling (plus a bit sore from dancing!).

Bruce Cockburn - Bone on Bone tour, 2017. Not my first time seeing Bruce, but certainly the best show of his I'd witnessed.

Wilco 2006/2010 - both great shows. Also saw Jeff Tweedy solo a few years ago and had another great experience.

Dave Matthews Band - saw DMB several times, best show was probably 2001 at the Molson Ampitheatre. Also saw three nights in a row with w/ Bela Fleck and the Flecktones opening and guesting and those shows were packed with great moments.

[_zedagive]

Had to be Led Zep in 1977. Just wish I could remember it.