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Your most memorable live show

As an audience member?

For me it's a tossup between three. The Roxy Music Country Life tour, Little Feat Dixie Chicken, or Gentle Giant touring Free Hand. Three shows I am amazed I had the opportunity to experience.

How about you?

Taking the family to see Iron Maiden when my son was seven.

He got more high fives in one evening than I have in a lifetime.
 
One more show comes to mind. I almost didn’t go. The 2 tickets came to me because a co-worker couldn’t go.

Saw Weather Report in 1980 in Davis, Ca. at the Exhibit Hall. They too were still at full strength. (including Jaco who looked and sounded very healthy).

They were 10th row tix, but 3 songs in, me and my buddy noticed a half dozen unoccupied front row seats. We immediately moved up and there we sat for the rest of the evening. Wow! Now that was an experience.:woot:
 
At the Texas Pop Festival just a couple weeks after Woodstock in 1969 I saw Janis Joplin,Ten Years After,Johnny Winter, BB King, Grand Funk Railroad, Chicago Transit Authority , Led Zepplin,Santana, Sly and the Family Stone and many other acts over 3 days and nights. I was almost 16 years old and had been playing guitar and bass a couple years so it was a big impression on me forever. In the late 80s playing bass with the Q102 Frontal Lobotomy Boogie Band with Bo Roberts and Jim White we opened for Cheap Trick and later Little Feat playing alternately both the Convention Centers in Dallas and Ft Worth. That was a special treat for me and my wife we will never forget.
Saw the Rolling Stones live in 1973 and they were awesome.
In 1999 I played bass with Jake Crawford on guitar and Mike King on drums at BB Kings club on Beal St in Memphis during a blues Festival there. Even though BB wasn't there it was fun and exciting for all being small town Corsicana Texas boys and asked to play. There were many bands there and we walked into another club and got up and jammed there. It was cool and felt like we were in a movie. I'm 70 now and still play in church and basically whoever will let me play locally. All these and others are great memories for me.
 
Oops. Can’t forget my very first concert.
My mom took me to this one because her girlfriend bailed on her. I was only 13 at the time. Lol! She was a bit of a newbie to the concert scene herself and not real hip to the scene. Especially when downbeat hit and the lights went dim and everything went “up in smoke” :roflmao:. If she had, she may not have taken me.

Saw War and the Climax Blues Band at the Sac Memorial Auditorium in 1974 as my concert initiation.:smug: Thanks mom!
 
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So, so many great shows since the early 70's...my goodness. A vast majority were in the Detroit area....was at the first Kiss Alive show, Cobo Arena, May 16, 1975. We're not talking about virtuoso musicianship here, but rather, it was the visceral anticipation and buildup at the time...explosions, smoke, lights, fake blood....a real spectacle. Saw AC/DC in October, 1980, Flint IMA Hockey Arena, pretty much right after Back in Black was released...debut of Brian Johnson.....you had a wall, and I mean a WALL of Marshall stacks from one end of the stage to the other....no fancy lasers, or lights, just balls to the walls sonic blasting from Angus's Gibby SG and company. So many more, but I'll leave it at that.
 
BB King, early 1980s at P.B. Scott's in Blowing Rock NC: 700 capacity tri-level rowdy bar in a domed structure. I was about 22yo and playing full time in a road-band, but not that night. It was the best show I've ever seen in a bar. Somehow my whole band ended up on BB King's bus after the show with Mr King and about half of his band where we guffaw'd and told war stories for about an hour. I have an autographed playbill from that show somewhere signed: Be Careful... B.B. King.
 
  • Black Flag / Meat Puppets / Black Flag roadie band with unprintable name - The Metron, Harrisburg PA, April 1984
  • Dead Kennedys / Butthole Surfers / Reptile House at the WUST Hall in DC a year later.
  • Kamasi Washington at the Royale in Boston, Nov. '18. He melted my face 3 times during "Change of the Guard."
 
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I was a frequent concert goer for many of my younger years, when you bought tickets by standing in line at some store for hours and all was general admission. So many great memories of people I met and the fun that was had. Most or those acts were hard rock and below the standards of many TB'ers but that's ok. KISS (25), Cheap Trick (10), Ozzy (2), Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Metallica (3), Scorpions (2), Van Halen, the Tubes, Krokus, Dokken, Judas Priest (3) and tons of opening acts. Lots of good times.

Now with Ticketbasher prices and $15 beers at shows the world is not as much fun.
 
  • Black Flag / Meat Puppets / Black Flag roadie band with unprintable name - The Metron, Harrisburg PA, April 1984
  • Dead Kennedys / Butthole Surfers / Reptile House at the WUST Hall in DC a year later.
  • Kamasi Washington at the Royale in Boston, Nov. '18. He melted my face 3 times during "Change of the Guard."

I caught Kamasi at the Bataclan in Paris. Unreal show, and haunting since it was after the terrorist attack there.
 
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Do I get another honorable mention? That'd be Psychedelic Furs back in the early-mid 80's but I swear I don't remember where that show took place. I was close to the stage, though. They had a cello player with them.
Jane Scarpantoni, one of these “played with everyone” types…
Jane Scarpantoni - Wikipedia
 
Yes -the “solos” tour with Patrick Moraz. Also their “in the round” tour with Wakeman a few years later.
2 completely different, but both state of the art, productions. And fantastic performances from all the players.
The original Allman Brothers in 1971 was my very first concert, and they were superb.
The Selling England era Genesis at Drury Lane Theater in London, complete with Peter Gabriel’s costume changes and levitating over the stage.
Bowie’s Ziggy and Alladin shows.
I realize all these were in the 1970’s, a time when I was still young and impressionable.:smug:
More recently in the 21st Century, Steve Hackett Genesis Revisited and Jon Anderson’s 1000 Hands shows were both great.
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  • Black Flag / Meat Puppets / Black Flag roadie band with unprintable name - The Metron, Harrisburg PA, April 1984
  • Dead Kennedys / Butthole Surfers / Reptile House at the WUST Hall in DC a year later.
  • Kamasi Washington at the Royale in Boston, Nov. '18. He melted my face 3 times during "Change of the Guard."
Black Flag, epic
What was the line up?
Ginn, Rollins, Stevenson and Kira on bass?
 
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