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

As expensive as seeing what was left of a Flock of Seagulls play in an elementary school gym in my part of the Toronto 'burbs? Asking for a friend.

 

Yes, but minus the ambiance.

I saw someone on Facebook complaining that prices for that show ranged from $89 to $250. That's insane for three county fair acts.

 

Starship's frequently maligned "We Built This City" was written by Bernie Taupin. Martin Page, Dennis Lambert and Peter (not the J.Geils one) Wolf. A quartet that has written some of the greatest hits of Elton John, Heart's These Dreams, the Four Tops "Aint No Woman like the One I got", "Rhinestone Cowboy" among others...
I kind of think the video only adds to its poor reputation.

We Built This S#!tty: An Oral History of the Worst Song of All Time

It's an interesting read. For all of the talk about their "artistry" musicians know they need hits. Nobody will care about their credibility without them. And they pay bills.
Read an interview with Huey Lewis that kind of echoed a bit of the above article. In the 80s the money was getting really good, and bands knew they needed hits to stay in the business and artists above 30 weren't getting many record deals. The band used processing on most of Sports, an album he admits the band wrote with heavy radio hit potential in mind.

 

The Grateful Dead were legendary for, "never playing the same show twice," which was true, but in the last half of their career, they developed a formula where certain songs would always be played in certain slots in the show, and they rarely deviated from it. They might play with the order some from one night to the next, but if you listen to enough of their shows, there's usually a recognizable formula they followed, and, frankly, they mailed in a lot of performances in the last five years to the point where some shows are all but unlistenable.

 

Their tours after "Touch of Grey" must have been interesting. 15 years grooving with 50 year old hippies.

 

I saw that tour, I am certainly no Deadhead but I thought it was great

 

I lived in Eugene, Oregon from 1985 to 1995. It's pretty much Deadhead central. I had a lot of Deadhead friends.

When the dead came to play Autzen Stadium in '92 or so, I was working as a TV news photog in town. I got to go in and shoot the first couple of songs.

The staff working for the Dead were the nicest, most accommodating people I have come across in the business. They were friendly, helpful, generous, and they had no real need to be. It's not like they needed the publicity. I could not have been more impressed. They went above and beyond to help me do my job.

The crowd was a hostile load of phony douchebags.

 

As someone who tends to mainline “American Beauty,” sometimes I feel like more of a genuine fan than half the douches and douchettes who go to the shows.

 

Worked one of those "staff security" jobs in college, spent a few years doing concert shows. The Dead fans were a trip. They'd give you sage, crystals whatever if you answered a question for them. Usually the answer was "I don't care, do what you want as long as it's not right here."

 

We saw Steeley Dan as part of Classic West at Dodger Stadium last summer and did not enjoy them at all because they played few hits.

You can get away with that when you are playing a show for your fans, but when you're the number 2 or 3 act at a festival type show, you need to play stuff people know to keep their interest.

 

Saw them at the Meadowlands in 1992 and they sounded okay, not great. Mostly I remember an interminable rendition of Dark Star. I’ve really grown to love the Dead, but it took me a while bc I hated the McDead phonies I knew in high school and college, so I came to them begrudgingly.

Meanwhile, got tickets today to see Clapton and Tedeski Trucks at Greenwich Town Party on Memorial Day weekend.

Lineup | Greenwich Town Party

Small outdoor venue in Greenwich, which should be interesting. I saw Clapton at new haven coliseum like 30 years ago and he was newly sober and ripped it. Don’t expect so much from a septuagenarian, but tickets were only $85 and venue only holds 9,000 people, so should be cool.

 

A buddy of mine worked event security in Philly in the early/mid 80s. You can pull up YouTube videos of Sixers playoff games and see him on the baseline in the yellow windbreaker. In the broadcast of Live Aid you could see him standing next to Jim Kerr of Simple Minds during "Don't You Forget About Me." Pretty good college gig.