Best live concerts

For sheer spectacle- Roger Waters plays The Wall at Sprint Center a couple of years ago and The Rolling Stones at Arrowhead with their Steel Wheels tour in the 90's

Any show that Alice Cooper does

Procol Harum at the Music Hall in 1972. Somebody kept shouting "Rock and Roll" from the audience and the singer said we're too old to rock and roll and they just kept saying "no, we're much too reserved to do that" and then they come out in the encore and rock out with "Tutti Fruitti", "Good Golly, Miss Molly", etc and the crowd goes wild! Three encores and this was before encores were pre-programmed.

Frank Zappa, my hero, at the Uptown in the 80's...he made balloon animals through out the concert.

Mojo Nixon at a grimy Westport bar- hilarious and you could stand right next to him.

Leon Redbone at the Uptown in the 90's with a tuba player and a violin player. Very funny and an awesome talent.

Blue Oyster Cult in the late 70's at Municipal Auditorium in their prime! Very evil and powerful sounding. And they could lawfully have the lasers on the disco balls back then.

And as several people have mentioned, The Who in 1984 at Kemper with Keith Moon. The most powerful drummer that I've heard...and the rest of the band was pretty powerful, too!

One more: Mott the Hoople at Memorial Hall in 1975. I still get goosebumps when I hear "All The Young Dudes" and think how Ian Hunter prowled the stage pointing and yelling at the audience during that song. Oh and Queen was the opening act!

WOW, what a great question.
As a guy also devoted to live music in venues large and small this is not an easy question for me to answer.

I have forgotten more live music shows than I can remember. I have seen Sinatra, Elvis, AC/DC, Pink Floyd (early and The Wall tour), Bob Dylan, The Stones (several times)..... Zappa at the Uptown previously mentioned and a whole lot of shows at the Grand Emporium. Sorry the fingers kinda took off on their own.......

My all time favorite memory is being a teen-age, white kid with a date going to a Parliament/Funkadelic show in Birmingham Alabama in the late 1970's. When the space ship landed the place went wild....... For a live show at a large arena, that has been the yard-stick that I have measured against for 40 years.

Again great thread ......

PS- my uncle was last at Woodstock for about a week told me to save all my ticket stubs. And I have about 3 coffee cans filled with stubs in envelopes sorted by year. My kids seemed to look at me differently when I showed them the stubs.

I too have collected many ticket stubs throughout the years, but it's just not the same now where you print a barcoded sheet of paper from an email.

Billy Joel - Miami jai alai Fronton -1977Grateful Dead - Florida State University - 1978
Simon and Garfunkel - Central Park NY - 1981
Grateful Dead and Jefferson Starship - Englishtown NJ - 1975
Joni Mitchel and James Taylor - Madison Square Garden NY - 1973
Bruce Springsteen - The Bottom Line NY - 1975

Best concert I ever saw was Stevie Wonder in Shreveport LA. Funny thing is I wasn't even I fan before then, but he worked the crowd so much. He even got up and danced. I was like he is gonna fall off the stage.

Best all around concert for me was seeing TOOL for the first time in 2002. I would quite happily pay $500 to experience that night again.

Close second is the yearly outdoor festival that came to my home town in 2005. Beastie Boys (RIP Adam Yauch), Chemical Bros, System Of A Down, Hatebreed and Slipknot were standouts. Originally Posted by Bcdrummer

That sounds like a pretty amazing lineup. I saw the Beastie Boys at Kemper back in the mid/late 90's and that show was pretty unforgettable. Slipknot is great live, and I've seen Hatebreed probably a dozen times.

Speaking of the Beastie Boys, they were my first ever concert along with Run/DMC when I was in 7th grade. I had to go with my mom lol.

My favorite show, without a doubt, was I was lucky enough to see my all-time favorite band the Red Hot Chili Peppers play a show in Serbia in 2007. I still get goosebumps thinking about that night.

Yes Longer, Lemmy's a motherfucker. Originally Posted by mojoworkin

He's only 49% motherfucker.

Wonderful concerts often happen when you have never heard the band play before. I remember I was in Singapore at the Hard Rock Cafe and Bob Marleys No Woman No Cry was played. I instantly became a fan, I would have loved to see him in concert.

In addition, the best concerts happen when you are surrounded by cool people.

Nice list topgun, I would have loved to had seen Springsteen in 75 when Suki Lahav was playing with the band.


Stevie Wonder/ The Rolling Stones 1972 at Municipal Auditorium

The Grateful Dead under a full moon at Starlight 1982

The Mavericks at Memorial Hall 1995

Magic Slim at Miss. Valley Music Fest. 2002

North Mississippi Allstars at Beale St. Music Fest. 2007

The National/ Arcadia Fire at Starlight 2011

Ok, I keep thinking of other great moments!

Humble Pie at Municipal Auditorium in the early 70's with ZZ Top as a opener. ZZ Top had just come out with Tres Hombres and wowed the crowd with no special effects at all, but Humble Pie was amazing! I still remember them playing "I Don't Need No Doctor".

Emerson, Lake, and Palmer also at Municipal Auditorium in 1976. I remember Emerson taking a knife to an organ and it screaming bloody murder as he ripped wires out of it and eventually started humping it!!

Pink Floyd at Arrowhead Stadium. My chest was vibrating and the lights were so bright that it was blinding!

The concerts at the old Cowtown Ballroom. All of them, hard to remember who. But remember how hot it would get.

I've got tickets to go see Joe Bonamassa when he's here in April 2014
I'm hoping that his guitars are smoking that night.

That is a very worthwhile concert

Air Supply & Celine Dion rocked the house....

What was the best concert you ever attended?
So what are some of your most memorable nights of music? Originally Posted by Bcdrummer

The best concert I ever attended with Pink Floyd's "The Wall" at Nassau Colosseum, back around 1979, I think. Another incredible concert was Paul Simon's "Graceland" concert at Radio City Music Hall.

A band that's really great to see in concert is Rush. My first concert ever was Rush on their "Farewell to Kings" tour. I've seen them a number of times since then, including seeing them 3 times in 8 days while in NY... The Palladium, Madison Square Garden, and the Nassau Colosseum. I think that was their "Permanent Waves" tour. As long as they've been together, you can tell these guys love to play, and they're having a lot of fun on stage.

Mark