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

Thinking about some of the 70s and 80s acts still touring made wish the tv show ViNYl wasn't such a misfire. The Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll thing has been done to death, literally and figuratively. A show showing the same band in say 1976 and 1986 would be fascinating. Figure the band is starting out in '76 Top40 is king and then just trying to hold on and still be relevant in the MTV era. You'd have interband rivalries and feuds, maybe one member has a solo career/writes an academy award winning song, the drummer refuses to play synth beats, another guy hates that they have a "visual" consultant in the later years.
The Dennis Leary comedy had a little bit of it, but the humor was too self-aware.

 

I was a writer for a small music mag when I was given the assignment of going to see the Dead when they came through Toronto and interview Deadheads. Talked to some eclectic, interesting people who had seen them all over the world. One of my fave assignments ever.

 

A fun read, with some interesting details about that song I didn't know (and I know WAY, WAY too much about Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship/etc.) Cool to see that the lead singer of the Motels wanted nothing to do with that song.

Seeing Mickey Thomas and Donny Baldwin hamming it up for a publicity photo is hilarious, considering Baldwin would literally break Thomas' face in a fight a few years later.

 

I still have that jacket. Doesn't fit anymore but I still have it.

 

I was an usher at Dodger Stadium in 1984 when the Jackson's Victory Tour came through. There were six identical shows, even the ad-lib was the same each night. The only difference was Michael thanking the stage crew at the end of show 6.

My two memories were seeing OJ and Marcus Allen come up behind me in a hallway and watching the band escape at the end of the show. They played the final song and went right into a van. They were out of the parking lot before the fireworks were over.

 

I've got Frank Turner, The Decemberists, Jason Isbell, The Menzingers, John Prine, The National, Willie Nelson/Sturgill Simpson and Weezer/The Pixies on my schedule this summer.

 

I've got Frank Turner/Lucero/The Menzingers tickets. Cannot wait.

Next up is U2.

 

This isn't really on point - but a DJ from my youth died recently and I was listening to some of his airchecks and other airchecks from the station (I don't know why they're called airchecks, don't understand the sweepers term either) anyway - it really took me back to a time when just listening to a radio station made you feel like you were at the coolest club in the world, that the only place to be was listening to that radio station at that moment.
Listening to radio now, you can almost hear the loneliness of the host(s) through the radio - that they would be talking to themselves or each other whether there was a mike in front of them or not.

 

Saw the Decemberists last year at Brooklyn Steel, which only holds 1800 people and has great acoustics. I wasn’t very familiar with their stuff before going, but they’re in the pandora rotation now.

 

I knew someone who was a receptionist at a corporate radio station in the early 2000s (a position that's surely been eliminated now. No one answers the phone, door or email at the local radio stations).

Anyway, at that time there was a local morning show, and the rest of the day was canned DJs from Atlanta or wherever. She had to keep up the fiction when people called for one of the taped radio hosts ... "sorry, Jim Jackson can't come to the phone right now. Can I leave him a message?"

 

I don't want to threadjack this into a radio thread, but I remember when even the music stations had news departments. Now some of the "news stations" barely put together a morning and afternoon drive report at the top of the hour. I really wonder how effective having a transistor radio would be in an emergency. Heck, there used to be caps on how many minutes of commercials you could run an hour.