D'Artagnan, I saw Dave Edmunds & Nick Lowe around the same time... with Rockpile. Great concert.
Yes, Violet, it was Rockpile when I saw them, too. A great show! Shortly thereafter, Lowe and Edmunds had a falling out. I never knew why. I somewhere have an EP they did of Everly Bros. songs. Really good!
I was still in high school... sheesh
I saw the Dead several times. There was and still is nothing like a Dead concert.
I live very close to the Shoreline Ampitheatre here in the South Bay, which gets national acts and seats about 20,000. You won't see the Stones there but it's big enough for most people.
Two years ago at Neil Young's Bridge school concert I saw:
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Pearl Jam
REM
Dave Mathews (solo)
Ben Harper (solo)
Billy Idol
Tracy Chapman
Jill Sobule
That list is in reverse order. This was all accoustic, so it was surprising that Billy Idol gave the second best performance of the evening. Dave Mathews blew them all away. When Tracy Chapman came on all the guys got up and went to take a leak. I know because I was one of them and the line was a freakin mile long.
When I was about 17 I saw Blue Oyster Cult at the Lansing Civic Center in Michigan. Awesome show - at one point seven guitarists blasting away in front of dual drummers "Godzilla", the arena awash in a giant tornado of disco ball lights - lots of people puked from the effect.
James Brown. Once in the early 70's, again in the early 80's.
Oops, Slappy, I didn't respond to you. Yeah, Plant was kinda odd. And I was, um, that person in the audience, the one standing just behind one of the fights.
Oy, Blue Oyster Cult, I saw them at the Boston Garden in 1979 - my first ever concert!
John Farnham. 1990, 93, 2002 and last Tuesday night. Outstanding.
One of the funnest concerts I ever went to was the B-52's at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston, about 1981. We sat in the balcony and the thing was bouncing up and down, literally several inches of motion. They were desperately trying to get people to sit down.
BPB - it was Greensboro on a <gasp!> sunday! They picketed the show, but they did it from far away because they thought maybe the earth would open and swallow all of us up.
the most powerful show i can remember was the stones at boston garden '69 or '70. dylan was always good wherever he played. dead, airplane, the who, cream, beck. it was all good.
Saw Ray Davies about 5 years ago. He was on his Storyteller tour. Just Ray and his guitar in a tiny, very intimate theater. He interspersed lots of stories about his childhood and the early days of the Kinks. It was magical. I love that guy.
My favorite concerts have to do with frustration.
You see, when I was a teenager, rock was an "imported ideology, alien to our idiosyncracy", according to our government. Rock stars were hardly ever allowed to perform (and then only in smallish, ritzy, places). But it was the absolutely favorite music for all of us rebellious kids.
Some guys with enterpreneurship decided make a Mexican equivalent of Woodstock, and disguised it as a motor racing competition, to be held on September 11-13, 1971, in Avándaro, 100 miles from Mexico City.
We were 200 thousand strong. 90% of the groups sucked. We smoked. It rained. We had fun, and had beaten the system.
"It was a bacchanal, not a worker went there", declared the septuagenarian national union boss. The Minister of the Interior declared that the "Heroic Cadets" of the National Military School represented Mexican youth, not those "hippy imitators".
Rock concerts in the open were forbidden for over a decade. But, boy, did we have fun!
On March 11th, 1974, I saw one of my favorite non-rock groups: Incredible String Band, in Modena Italy.
On 1990 I could finally see Bob Dylan in Mexico. He was 50, but still Dylan.
And on October 19th, 2001, I could finally see Eric Clapton perform. It was great. He should've played "Sunshine of your Love" thirty years before, in Avándaro.
Wow, fbaezer! I didn't realize that your government was so oppressive!
I forgot a concert. Stevie Ray Vaughn at the Lowell Opera House. It was so civilized, as far as my concert going had been up to then (and for some time after), and it still rocked! I was entranced.
Swimpy I saw Todd Rundgren in the same setting a couple of months back. I'm sorry to report it was very disapointing.
Hey BP, about 15 years ago I saw Todd at a nightclub in San Jose. He performed all by himself, said that he didn't want to deal with the egos anymore and that technology had advanced to the point he could go it alone. The club sucked - smoky as all hell, but he put on a good show.
I had almost forgotten about ever going.....
....
fbaezer, I also saw the Incredible String Band, right around the same time, in upstate NY. It was a fun show. Oddly enough, I recently picked up a double CD of their early stuff. "A Very Cellular Song"--blew my mind all over again!
I remember they ended the 1974 concert with that song. They bid us goodbye, as we left the theatre with this very cellular words:
"May the long time sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide you all the way on."
Yes, very sweet it is, too...
How about "Douglas Traherne Harding"? These lines are from that song (and originally by the poet Thomas Traherne):
You never enjoy the world aright,
Until the sea itself floweth in your veins
Till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.
Album as "The Big Huge" if memory serves...
"The Big Huge" it is, and I'm a huge fan of ISB, D'ARt. I guess they can count us with the fingers here in Mexico. I prefer their earlier works, before Malcolm LeMaistre joined the group (But "Maker of Islands" is among my favorite ISB songs):
"Need someone to take the wheels at night
Someone to navigate till light comes
But most of all I need
A maker of islands."
I would imagine you're right, fbaezer, about there not being a large number of ISB fans in Mexico, or anywhere else these days.
Another of their songs I've rediscovered is "Painting Box" from "5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion". It's also quite nice...
