Best Live Rock Shows You've Ever Seen.

[Ridgerunner]

Jethro Tull
Passion Play
1973
Indiana Convention Center, Indianapolis, IN

The Rolling Stones with Billy Preston
The Meters
Robin Trower
Kokomo
John Miles & Little Feat
1976
Neckar Stadion Stuttgart, Germany

Ozark Music Festival
July 19–21, 1974
Missouri State Fairgrounds
Sedalia, Missouri

I can't claim to say I seen all of these bands perform... Most of the time I couldn't see at all... But life was good...

 

[there4eyeM]

Woodstock.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

Ah yes, I forgot Jethro Tull (1st American tour) - Alexandria Roller Rink - 1969.

They opened for The Jeff Beck Group and burned the place down. Half the audience left after the Tull set.

 

[Pilot1]

The Kinks, West Chester State College, West Chester, PA, 1978.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden. 1972 or 73 and then what became The Song Remains the Same.

Blackmore's Rainbow at Beacon Theater their first US tour.

 

[Lysistrata]

You know what sucks and is great about threads like this... Now I'm going to be up to about three or four am listening to music.

Actually, that doesn't suck!

Thanks to Lysistrata, I'm beginning with a vinyl copy of Nantucket Sleigh Ride.
Looking forward to a whale of a good time...

☮

I don't think that politics or organized religion actually expresses who we truly are. in our hearts when we are alone with our our selves.

The Rolling Stones, New York Academy of Music, 1965?
Bruce Springsteen at Largo (Md.) Arena
The Alvin Brothers and the Blasters (1980's when?)
Roy Orbison (1980s. Fox Trap)
Bruce Springsteen, RFK Stadium
Bruce Springsteen, Constitution Hall (accoustic)
Bruce Springsteen, DC Convention Center

I saw Springsteen at the Hampton Coliseum in 1981 on the River Tour. Very good show except at times he got kind of preachy and political. I am like Bruce....just play some music buddy.

He plays and writes from his background and what he has learned. He came from a poor family in Jersey, his father a poor man of Irish background who was depressed and couldn't keep a job.. His mother ,the daughter of Italian immigrants ,who supported the family. He grew up in a duplex in south Jersey. He had a sister, some two years younger, but when he was a young teenager his parents then came up with another baby A few years later, his parents moved to California, his sister married at a young age, so he was alone. He rings true. He's just telling it true. This is why I like him. He fought himself out of his roots with just his guitar. This takes an amazing amount of fortitude. It takes an amazing amount of character. I love Bruce Springsteen because, whatever his faults, he is rock-solid;

I read his biography as well. I only saw him once. It was a very good show. Darkness on the Edge of Town is my favorite album of his. I understand why you like him. I personally do not like a mix of entertainment and politics, no matter what the politics. But that is just me. But no doubt he is very, very good live, I certainly enjoyed the show I saw

I remember when I was in law school, at night after after working a full day at my job, working by day and going to school at night. I used to blast Springsteen on the radio when I was driving home, The message was DON'T QUIT!. Hang tough, even if you have to power through the darkness. Springsteen's music certainly helped me get to hang tough and graduate.

I truly understand. I went to graduate school while working night shifts in a psychiatric hospital. I still don't know how I did it. It was an unbelievable grind. Springsteen was big for me in my late teens to mid twenties. I still remember drinking beer with some buddies listening to Racing in the Streets and Candy's Room. Atlantic City is an amazing song. So is Brilliant Disguise, Thunder Road, and many, many others.

What Springsteen did was ring true with everybody. What his writing told me was to go forward and let no one bring me down. Atlantic City brings me to contemplate sadness, but also the deep love that one can have for another. Springsteen's gift was/is to empower us, and make us know that we are mighty.

 

[Lysistrata]

You know what sucks and is great about threads like this... Now I'm going to be up to about three or four am listening to music.

Actually, that doesn't suck!

Thanks to Lysistrata, I'm beginning with a vinyl copy of Nantucket Sleigh Ride.
Looking forward to a whale of a good time...

☮

I don't think that politics or organized religion actually expresses who we truly are. in our hearts when we are alone with our our selves.

The Rolling Stones, New York Academy of Music, 1965?
Bruce Springsteen at Largo (Md.) Arena
The Alvin Brothers and the Blasters (1980's when?)
Roy Orbison (1980s. Fox Trap)
Bruce Springsteen, RFK Stadium
Bruce Springsteen, Constitution Hall (accoustic)
Bruce Springsteen, DC Convention Center

I saw Springsteen at the Hampton Coliseum in 1981 on the River Tour. Very good show except at times he got kind of preachy and political. I am like Bruce....just play some music buddy.

He plays and writes from his background and what he has learned. He came from a poor family in Jersey, his father a poor man of Irish background who was depressed and couldn't keep a job.. His mother ,the daughter of Italian immigrants ,who supported the family. He grew up in a duplex in south Jersey. He had a sister, some two years younger, but when he was a young teenager his parents then came up with another baby A few years later, his parents moved to California, his sister married at a young age, so he was alone. He rings true. He's just telling it true. This is why I like him. He fought himself out of his roots with just his guitar. This takes an amazing amount of fortitude. It takes an amazing amount of character. I love Bruce Springsteen because, whatever his faults, he is rock-solid;

I read his biography as well. I only saw him once. It was a very good show. Darkness on the Edge of Town is my favorite album of his. I understand why you like him. I personally do not like a mix of entertainment and politics, no matter what the politics. But that is just me. But no doubt he is very, very good live, I certainly enjoyed the show I saw

I remember when I was in law school, at night after after working a full day at my job, working by day and going to school at night. I used to blast Springsteen on the radio when I was driving home, The message was DON'T QUIT!. Hang tough, even if you have to power through the darkness. Springsteen's music certainly helped me get to hang tough and graduate.

I truly understand. I went to graduate school while working night shifts in a psychiatric hospital. I still don't know how I did it. It was an unbelievable grind. Springsteen was big for me in my late teens to mid twenties. I still remember drinking beer with some buddies listening to Racing in the Streets and Candy's Room. Atlantic City is an amazing song. So is Brilliant Disguise, Thunder Road, and many, many others.
[/

We look back and don't know how we did it. It's just one hour at a time, another day to get through. Darkness On the Edge of Town was what I blasted when I was in law school. It was about getting through the worst of it and emerging victorious and taking the sadness and the exhaustion along the way. You might say that I had a crush on Bruce, but it wasn't just that he was physically attractive and played a guitar. I grew up at the same time as he did (he's the same age as my brother), and in some rough circumstances and saw some of the same moments in my house that he did. He has incredible empathy, which has been revealed in his work. I would love to talk with him. He has an incredible mind. He says what I feel. He has a gift of empathy, understanding, and gentleness.

Everything dies, baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies, some day comes back.

Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz
Between what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded, not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland

Good grief. How did this all emerge from the mind of a little poor kid from Freehold?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Been to quite a few when I was young... but the best was John Mellencamp in Bloomington, IN.
It was a "homecoming" outdoor concert (he lives in Bloomington) So it was a "relax and have fun" kind of thing for him and the band.
Best moment was when they started playing Jack and Diane... the crowd was singing along so loud that he stopped singing and the band played the music for the rest of the song (which was most of it) with the crowd doing all of the singing. He was visibly moved by it and said this was the best moment of a concert in his career.

 

[Natural Citizen]

In my younger years I never really went to concerts for the music. I always went for the fun and the party. So, hard to say. The ones that were the most fun, unfortunately, are the ones that are really, really hard to remember. Outdoor concerts were always the most fun, as I recall.

If I had to try to recall my favorite fun times at a concerts, and everybody's probably gonna laugh here, it would probably be the Billy Idol concerts. That was always a fun time, for sure.

In my older years, I'd probably agree with what flac mentioned about Jimmy Buffett and those types.

I used to go to Hammerjacks a lot.

Looking back, I'm just glad to be alive. Ha.

 

[Desperado]

The Who Miami Beach Convention Hall 1971
Led Zeppelin Pirate's World 1969
Jimmy Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band Miami Marine Stadium 1985

 

[Desperado]

Almost forgot

Dec 1968 Jan 1969 Miami Pop Festival | The Strip Project

www.thestripproject.com

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The father of my son's friend swears he was at the Boston Tea Party for Led Zeppelin's first show.

Pretty sweet.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

List #2

Fusion -

Saw all these guys in the 70s-80s, all memorable. Either at the Cellar Door, Meriweather Post Pavilion, The Capital Center. The Kennedy Center, Warner Theater, or the Smithsonian.

Weather Report

Mahavishnu Orchestra

Herbie Hancock

Miles Davis (once)

Larry Coryell Eleventh House

Return to Forever

Soft Machine

Tony Williams Lifetime

Kraftwerk

Michael Urbaniak

The Residents

 

[norwegen]

A couple memorable ones I've seen:

The Violent Femmes - Crow's Nest, Iowa City, 1986(?)
Jimmy Buffet - New Orleans Jazz Fest, 2017

 

[norwegen]

Do I fess up to a couple Jimmy Buffet concerts or not here? Don't want to get laughed at.. It's WILD FUN.. More fun than getting bumped black/blue at a metal-head concert... LOL...

Jimmy Buffet's okay when you're over the hill.

In fact, it's expected.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Jimmy Buffet's okay when you're over the hill.

In fact, it's expected.

Hey!
I resemble that remark...

 

[Harry Dresden]

Spirit w Cream 68
Free/Traffic in 70
John Mayall/Traffic 71
E.L.P. in 71
West, Bruce & Laing in 72
Pink Floyd in 73
ZZ Top in 73
Thin Lizzy/Queen in 76
Journey/Queen 78
Motorhead/Metallica 91

 

[Lysistrata]

I worked on stage crew when I was in college. I had to stand at the side door and check people's back-stage passes. My dear roommate stopped Jim McGuinn of the Byrds. I had to tell her who he was. No Jim McGuinn, no Byrds, no Byrds, no concert. I did have a member of ShaNaNa ask me if I wanted to come up to the dressing room. Not. Decades later I had a work colleague who guarded the stage at the University of Richmond, who was impressed with the guitarist from Steel Mill. It was Springsteen.

 

[alang1216]

Okay, let the fun begin. My all time favorite shows live.


1. The Who Hampton Coliseum 1980

2. Eric Clapton/Graham Parker Richmond Coliseum1985

3. Robert Plant Richmond Coliseum 1990.

4. Elton John Target Center Minneapolis 1998

5. Judas Priest Hampton Coliseum 1983


Please list some of your favorite shows.

Saw the Stones twice and they were amazing, as was Johnny Winter in a small club. Hands down, the best concert was the Grateful Dead in the Felt Forum (are they even a 'rock' band?), they played for 3 hours and it was broadcast on an FM station. I think I still have the tape. No tape player but can't let go of the tape. The New Riders of the Purple Sage was the warm up band and they played for an hour.

 

[Lysistrata]

Okay, let the fun begin. My all time favorite shows live.


1. The Who Hampton Coliseum 1980

2. Eric Clapton/Graham Parker Richmond Coliseum1985

3. Robert Plant Richmond Coliseum 1990.

4. Elton John Target Center Minneapolis 1998

5. Judas Priest Hampton Coliseum 1983


Please list some of your favorite shows.

Saw the Stones twice and they were amazing, as was Johnny Winter in a small club. Hands down, the best concert was the Grateful Dead in the Felt Forum (are they even a 'rock' band?), they played for 3 hours and it was broadcast on an FM station. I think I still have the tape. No tape player but can't let go of the tape. The New Riders of the Purple Sage was the warm up band and they played for an hour.

The first time I saw the Stones, Brian Jones was alive and kicking. I was maybe 13? Mick was in his early 20s. My mom dropped my friend and I off at the concert and then went to her favorite NYC stores. Lord & Taylors, Bloomingdales. That. I had a camera, a gift for my Catholic Confirmation. As I remember it, I was dressed in my Sunday suit to attend a concert in the city. I always had white gloves. A bit later, we were crossing the GW bridge as my mother's uncle had just died and the family was gathering. My brother looked out and noticed that there were no lights on in Manhattan.