For me it was Wolfmother at a major German festival. I didn’t really know them before and did not expect too much, but was totally blown away by their performance.
Depeche Mode at the United Center in Chicago is definitely the one that blew me away the most. Their opening act hit the resonance point of the building and shook the whole thing, and Dave Gahan is such a showman. Everyone in the audience was reaching toward him and singing along with Personal Jesus.
Seeing the Red Elvises is always a treat too, but my partner and I caught them fresh off of touring with The Reverend Horton Heat and they played an incredible set that included a cover of Let Me Teach You How to Eat, and their songs from the movie Six String Samurai (Love Pipe and Boogie on the Beach). They even did a cover of Misirlou that night!
Las Vegas, early June in the early 2000s they used to hold “JuneFest”. $10 to get in for the day, all day outdoor event with everyone from REO Speedwagon, Joan Jett and Jethro Tull to Kansas, Jefferson Starship and Bad Company and more. It was a who’s who and who’s still alive of the classic rock genre in 2003. But it was one hell of an event. I think it got killed due to lax id checks at the vendors and some violence and heat related injuries.
I saw Swedish rapper Timbuktu at a local festival some 10 years ago, but he brought a full orchestra with him. It was an absolutely incredible mix that I’ll never forget
One evening in 2002 I saw In Flames, Soilwork, and Pain on the same stage, one after the other. It was while In Flames were small enough to stick to the smaller and more intimate concert venues, so the crowd was small enough that you could greet anybody there if you wanted. Met a lot of cool people that night. And the night finished with the entire crowd jumping in unison to In Flames - Only For the Weak.
I saw that tour too. I was so disappointed I never listened to melodeath ever again :D. To each their own I guess.
I’ve really only been to a bare handfull of live performances, but the one that stands out was Blues Traveller. Their second album had just come out and one of the guitar players turned 21 at the show. Proceeded to play the fastest version of Johnny B. Goode I’ve ever heard in my life.
This was, Jesus, 30 years ago now? 1991… so shit… 33 years ago.
I caught Thursday doing the 20 years tour for Full collapse, they played full collapse one night then war all the time the next.
It was the lead singers birthday and collectively we as the crowd sang him the most enthusiastic happy birthday ever.
At the end of the set his girlfriend came out PISSED because she’d planned to ask us to sing it to him while they dropped balloons, we had no energy left and it was basically just a crowd barely chanting it. He called it “the funeral birthday song”
Not my best show, but related and hilarious.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
WITH GOOD TIDINGS AND GOOD CHEER
YOU’LL BE DEAD THIS TIME NEXT YEAR
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
My first concert at IIT Delhi by KK. It was the best I’ve attended.
Sonu Nigam is my favorite but in his concert, I was like 3-400 m away and he was practically not even visible!
KK Slider?
No. Indian singer KK - Krishnakumar. He is no more.
Motörhead
Recency bias: Tool - I hadn’t been to a concert of that caliber in years, it was exactly what I was craving. Setlist was incredible and the band were on top of their game. 9.5/10 wish they’'d played vicarious instead of the pot.
Favorite band: Rush - saw them back in 2012 on the Clockwork Angels tour. There’s no way these guys tour if they can’t play, show was great despite a lackluster setlist. I’m a 70s/early 80s rush fan and that era of their discography was largely unplayed.
Childhood: System of a Down - I was a massive fan of these guys and a young teenager and my old man took my brother and I to see them in '05
Honorable mentions: Black Sabbath, Slayer, Rob Zombie
I know it doesn’t really count - but I saw The Lion King the last time they toured before sticking to Broadway and man. I get really emotional with live music and cried through the whole thing, damn frission lol. Still, an utterly incredible performance and one that I would happily see again even if it meant going to NYC.
For an actual concert, gosh there are so many to choose from. But I saw Shawn James in a tiny little venue in Seattle where I stood on a balcony and watched the show from on high. I’ve never been one for psychedelic music and his definitely isn’t that, but there were a few times where the energy in the room and the music and the atmosphere was absolutely transcendent in a way I can only describe as psychedelic. Truly incredible.
Saw Panic! At The Disco in 2012 after they released their third album. They’re one of the few groups that borderline sound better live.
They also did a cover of I Believe In A Thing Called Love which I wish they’d release as an actual single. Kinda sucks that Bohemian Rhapsody got that treatment years later but this didn’t.
I saw them when they released the first album, and the whole stage performance was like a gigantic circus, very elaborate and quite a spectacle. Everything they played was tight, was even impressed with the piano solo. I wish that era was captured on dvd and released, it was so good.
Jack’s mannequin opened up for them.
Finntroll live in a small venue in Belgium called Biebob. The hall is barely bigger than a decent café, so that means everyone is very close to the band. Once they started playing, the ENTIRE hall went absolutely berserk. Including the staff behind the tables and technical materials. Everyone was so completely enthralled that it was an almost religious experience. I’ve never before or after seen anything like it. Must’ve been over 15 years ago though.
Similar experience seeing Ghost in de Vooruit in Ghent. Must’ve been 2016, back when they were called Ghost BC. Don’t really follow them much anymore, but that venue was on fire.
Edit - Also amazing:
- Florence and the machine: amazing voice
- Ocean Wisdom: whole club bouncing up and down
- Macklemore: creates a rarely seen vibe with everyone
- Cypress Hill: such legends even after all these years
- Hooverphonic: insane voice and they are sometimes guided by an orchestra, so much power
- Parov Stelar: with an orchestra as well and my god it’s really something to experience live
A lot of artists sound way different live, I’ve been disappointed as well but these definitely stand out.
I’m so jealous of your Ghost concert. I had been following those guys since 2014 or so and loved everything about their music. I tried so hard to go to concerts but nothing ever lined up.
Finally saw them last year, but it was a huge venue and seats were $$$ so I couldn’t get very close. Still, love their music.
Awesome you got to see them as well! They got big really fast, I saw them a year later at Alcatraz festival and that was at least 20x bigger and they were headlining IIRC. At that concert they had a canon shooting 666$ bills, I took some snaps for you. Tucked away between my record Ceremony and Devotion, the full live set just as I remember it but recorded in San Francisco.
I haven’t been to a true big stage concert before. I “saw” new kids on the block many years ago, but they were free tickets and we were in such a terribly sounding area of the stands. The best performance I saw was blue man group in Vegas. The PVC pipes and big drums in such a small theatre were quite amazing.
Crash Worship. They did sort of tribal industrial experimental music from the mid-80s through (I think) the mid-00s. I don’t know if they came out of the OG Burning Man crowd, but they very much had the Burning Man vibe from back when the Burning Man experience still included shooting guns. I saw them play a NYE show at a 1920s-era movie house turned music venue called the Aztlan, and it was bonkers.
The show started with a massive floor-to-ceiling fireball, and kind of escalated from there. There were a lot of drummers and fire performers moving through the crowd flanked by a phalanx of nubile people in various states of undress carrying alcohol whose mission seemed to be to get as many people as possible as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. At one point I was so soaked with kerosene and alcohol that I was genuinely worried about lighting my own cigarette. Fortunately I was shortly put at ease about it when I got hit with a stray firework and didn’t burst into flame.
It was a pretty intense experience. It’s not surprising that Crash Worship has been banned from just about every venue they’ve ever played (and I think maybe some entire cities as well). There’s no way the owners of the Aztlan knew what they were signing up for when they made this booking. I’m glad I got to be there to see it though.
There have been quite a few good ones since, but the first concert that my parents let me go by myself to was a Primus NYE show in Oakland, some time around '94. I was, maybe 15? It was the coolest thing ever. Why was it so amazing? I mean, it was Primus, there was weed everywhere, and I was 15.
Yeah, but Primus sucks.
Fuck yeah, it does!
Hella Mega Tour: Weezer, Fall Out Boy, Green Day What made it the best: the music
