Concerts thread: Best/Worst/Next/Last one you attended?

Dirty Hippies, I take it?

Congrats on your Championship.

Now, we come for you.

 

Saw Billy Joel at Dodger Stadium on Saturday night and there were appearances by Pink and Axl Rose.

Axl sang "Highway to Hell" and " Big Shot."

 

Saw U2 at the Rose Bowl Saturday night. Really great show, and the people who do the staging for U2 are the best in the business by a wide margin. The Rose Bowl is a beautiful setting, but kind of a pain in the ass. (Concert ended at 11pm. Got to my car at 1am.)

The Lumineers opened. OK, I guess, but I have limited interest in bands that seem to be doing some kind of Dust Bowl cosplay.

Next up: Midnight Oil in August, Jason Isbell in September. Thinking of getting tickets for Thundercat in August as well.

 

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, a venue near here had a series of concerts where every ticket cost $30, so naturally the ZZ Top show that was last Saturday night sold out quickly. Saturday morning, I was online looking for upcoming shows at other places and on a whim decided to see if there might be a couple of seats still available for ZZ, hoping the wife and I could get a sitter and enjoy a date night.

Instead, I found five seats on the fifth row and tried to buy four of them, figuring we could take the kids. Some website malfunction wouldn't let me buy four, so I just bought all five. Sold one through Facebook and made my money back on it, and the family had a great night watching ZZ Top up close. They put on a really good show. Ted Nugent came out for the final encore and they played Jailhouse Rock, and did a nice job of that. And, I found out when I got my phone back, my daughter is a really good concert photographer. She wandered up to the front row and a friendly drunk lady let her stand in front of her, right next to the barrier, and she got some nice shots. Drunk lady then led daughter -- I was watching the whole time -- to the middle of the front row and eased her in front of a few other people, where she got even better photos.

 

I'm seeing them on June 4 in Chicago. I've never seen them before, so that should be fun. Also hold tickets this summer to Dwight Yoakam, Rodney Crowell, and Sturgill Simpson. I'd like to make it to Green Day in August, as well.

 

Saw Green Day in Brooklyn a few months ago. They put on a helluva show. Really get the fans involved. Had people come up and play and sing with them from the audience. Then they make the people stage dive back into the crowd. Fun time. Also saw U2 for first time last summer. The amount of production they put into the show is way over the top. I get that that's how bands make money nowadays -- crazy high ticket prices justified by crazy elaborate sets -- but it didn't much add to my enjoyment of the show or the music. I'm always for pared down.

 

Funny, I said the same thing to my wife last night when we were watching "It Might Get Loud" and they showed a clip of Bono running around walkways above the crowd while The Edge was playing on a raised platform hundreds of feet away.

I said, "There's only one band in the world I can tolerate that shit from, and it ain't U2."

 

Saw Sunday's show; sounds like they were identical with the exception of the finale...we got a new song that was an OK ballad, Saturday's crowd got the band's very first single, "I Will Follow."

It was great to hear guitar(s) front and center; you'd be hard-pressed to not name The Edge as a Top 5 guitarist of our era. And, yes, the videos were amazing.

As for the entry/exit...you must have taken the same shuttles from Parsons that we did...the hour and 15 minute wait to get on the bus was epic.

 

Yep, it was the Parsons shuttle. We damn near walked back Saturday night instead of waiting for it. It would have been quicker, but walking up a hill didn't sound like a lot of fun after standing on the field for five hours.

I think it was essentially the same set with two exceptions -- you got the new song, we got "A Sort of Homecoming" and "I Will Follow."

 

It seems nuts to me that they are closing with a new song that no one knows. I noticed that right away from the Vancouver show coverage (first night of the tour).

You close with "I Will Follow" or "New Year's Day," period. It doesn't seem too hard.

Are they playing "Joshua Tree" start to finish the entire tour?

 

Last show I attended was Stevie Nicks in Baltimore. Great show.

 

Speaking of "It Might Get Loud," that film did not make The Edge look good.