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

Interesting. My first Dead show was the night before 10/28/77 at Kansas City, at an old music hall on the Kansas side. Wasn't the best of my dozen shows (that would be 10/19/80 at New Orleans), but it was a pretty damn good introduction to the Grateful Dead in concert.

I went to the Meet at the Movies night on Tuesday (GD at RFK 7/12/89) and Phil sang Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues that was probably as good as anything I've ever heard him sing. I even remarked to the wife that, "if he'd sung like that more often, maybe they'd have let him sing more."

 

We're seeing Kings of Leon on Saturday night.

 

Saw Neil Diamond's 50th anniversay tour. He can still sing and at 76 still has a lot of energy.

I set a record for longest time beteeen seeing a performer -- 1983 to 2017.

 

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in Vancouver on August 17th was a visual and audio pleasure trip. A couple of songs from Wildflowers cooled the crowd but otherwise everyone stood and sang for the entire concert. Most concert goers were 30ish so at 64 I was one of the oldsters. They knew all the words, though. The set list has been the same for the whole tour so I knew what to expect but was disappointed they left out "Breakdown". I know everyone has heard it a million times but it's a great song. Classic Petty sound for me is "A Woman in Love (But it's not Me) and "Runnin Down a Dream". "Woman" hasn't been played in concert since 2003 I believe, WTF? It's an incredibly underrated tune, one of his best. Oh, and Mike Campbell just might be one of the best axemen ever in rock. Co- writer of a lot of their best stuff.
Lumineers opened and their sound sucked plus every song seemed a repeat. They started out as a Petty cover band.
My ears were ringing well into the next day.

 

I'm seeing Green Day tonight. My brother last saw them in 1994, so you have him beat on this by 11 years.

 

This is so funny. I said the same thing when we saw them open for U2. I've come around a little bit since then. There are some good songs on "Cleopatra," and I can even tell them apart now.

 

The just independently released Brand New record is so good...well worth the 8-year wait.

Supposed disbandment is coming in 2018, so I'm hoping I'll get to see them live for the first and, seemingly, only time.

Brand New Bound for First No. 1 Album on Billboard 200 Chart

 

Stubborn Love is an all-time favorite song. The rest I can take or leave.

 

I know that Green Day has largely been playing the same show for 20 years in many ways, but seeing them for the first time at Wrigley Field last night was pretty special. This was a band, more than any others, that I grew up with. When they were immature - or at least pretending to be (I wasn't pretending) - so was I. As they were coming into their own, getting "woke," so was I. I love how long they were able to stay relevant. They opened with "Know Your Enemy" and opened the second encore with "21 Guns." These are songs that came out 15 years after "Dookie" broke. Just great to see a band grow.

Billie Joe Armstrong, to me, is on the short list with Plant, Jagger, etc., as one of the top front men in mainstream rock history. A slacker front but probably a top 5-10 lyricist of all-time.

Also, I feel so sheepish now for acting like some band that I'd never heard of before the summer of 1994 was "selling out" a kind of music I wasn't familiar with before they hit.

 

This makes your take on Bush seem less convincing.

 

They aren't in the same solar system. I mean, I get it. This is like when I used to defend M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening." I'm in the minority here among a certain type of music fan. But, fuck, he is a great, great, great song writer. They broke big in a sub-genre where part of the deal is you aren't permitted to break big. And they liked it.

 

My dad is the king of these layoffs. He saw The Who in 1971 and then waited until 2014 to see them again. He went from 1976 to last year between Bob Seger concerts.

I can't really make fun of him too much for it, though. I'm kinda the reason he didn't have free time enough or the money to keep going to concerts.