Think of 10 concerts you attended that stand the test of time, are so memorable you can remember every song played, the date of the show, the venue, your view of the stage, the cost of the official black t-shirt, etc… Shows that were worth sacrificing your hearing to. Made you want to play air guitar in front of total strangers.
Got this from AmBo; her additional comments:
** As I was coming up with this list, I realized that it wasn’t really the show itself that was memorable, but the events surrounding it. Here’s my list in chronological order…. Please don’t feel obligated. If I’ve tagged you it’s probably b/c you’re part of the memories.
Chris M Adds: George Benson sweated all over me and Susan! (see below) I’m going to need help with the exact dates, but Susan has all the ticket stubs saved in a shoebox somewhere in our closet.
1. Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, July 4, 1977
The crowd for the July 4th fireworks exceed the Bicentennial the previous year, with over 1/2 million people on the “Esplanade” along the Charles River, including people in boats. The culmination of the concert is always when the National Guard fires the cannons during the climax of the 1812 Overture. Then the big fireworks display over the Charles river while the Boston Pops play “Stars And Stripes Forever” and a medley of patriotic tunes. I was 17 years old, and my friends and I walked over the Mass Ave Bridge and got as close to the Hatch Shell as we possibly could. It felt like we were part of history. The only reason I did not go the previous year, 1976, was because I was at my cousin’s wedding, but the July 4th fireworks play a prominent role in that story also…. save for another note.
2. Yes, the “Tormato” tour, in the round, at the old Boston Garden, 1970s
It’s hard to remember the exact date without doing a little research, but it was definitely while we were still in high school, and most of my Andover friends were there. Seeing and hearing “Heart of the Sunrise” performed “in the round” was amazing (or “Roundabout,” “All Good People,” etc etc). They also had an incredible laser light show. This video of a show in Philadelphia in 1979 has the round turning stage, so maybe it was this tour? Ac2ly I think we all saw it together in 1977 when they had a normal stage, then Mike and I (and maybe Dan) went to the “In the Round” (Tormato) concert in 1979. Mike and I saw a lot of concerts together back then.
3. Bad Company
This one was as memorable for the events as for the music. The acoustics in the old Boston Garden were really not that great for concerts. The crowd at this concert was rowdy- someone threw a cherry bomb down from the balcony into the crowd below, and it exploded at face level, injuring someone; I couldn’t see much from where we were sitting/standing, since everyone was on their feet at that point; but I could see the medics bring in a stretcher- then the crowd separated around the place where the guy was down. After the concert, we made our escape on foot through the north end, as the BPD in riot gear tried to control the crowd. Boston is the only place where they fire tear gas at a civilian crowd leaving a concert and call it “crowd control.” Like they did after the Sox won the world series and killed that one girl who got hit directly in the face. I would call this “a life changing experience,” just because I lived to tell the tale.
4. The Plasmatics, “The Rat” (club*) in Kenmore Square, 1979
Saw Wendy O. Williams perform “Butcher Baby” with a real buzz saw, wearing a black tee-shirt with holes cut for her breasts and black electric tape over her nipples. If you ever see “Reform School Girls” on cable, that movie is tame compared to the Plasmatics live shows. My only regret is that I never got to see “the Cars” when they were still playing the local punk/new wave clubs like the *Ratskeller in Boston before they made it big.
OMG this is a great video– I only saw them chain saw a guitar and a baby doll in half, not blow up a car (the Rat was too small a space) but it was definitely OUT OF CONROL! It is more like performance art than music, but it was still INTENSE!
5. B-52s, “Party Out of Bounds” tour, Houston Hall, Penn Campus, 1980 or 1981
Beehive hairdos so close you could poke an eye out… one of my all time favorite groups. They were still playing colleges and local gigs when “Rock Lobster” was the only real “hit” that got airplay on college FM stations, or “alternative” rock stations like WBCN in Boston. I was standing right in front of one of their amplifiers during most of the show. Couldn’t hear a thing for days afterwards. Check my YouTube page for some recent videos of the B-52s live.
6. George Benson, Mann Music Center (aka Robin Hood Dell East), Fairmount Park, Philadelphia
Sometime in the 1980s… Susan used to keep the ticket stubs in a shoebox- hopefully I will find it this week. Anyway, we had front row center seats. I’m not sure we realized it ahead of time, when the tickets said box seats, row AA, seats 8 and 9. But when we got there and realized where we were… it was amazing! Close enough to see the sweat flying in the spotlight. More details to be added after I find the ticket stubs.
7. July 4th Concert, Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, 1989, Omaha NE
Here is a map that shows the location of the concert in Memorial Park near the UNO campus on Dodge Street. You may recognize the location if you remember another important story that happened on the same spot. On July 4th 1989, my last full year out in Omaha, my friend Steve and I drove down to the UNO campus where I taking classes. The weather was perfect, the crowd was peaceful, and the music was big band/swing Benny Goodman kind of stuff. Steve and I were sitting on the green, relaxing, and then I looked over my shoulder and realized that Governor Kay Orr, one of the first woman governors was sitting only a few seats over from us on the next row, next to Senator Bob Kerry who had been governor before being elected to the Senate. Everything was peaceful, pleasant, perfect. An overwhelming feeling of peace and well being came over me. I felt like I belonged there, like I was at home. Everything was perfect, but something was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. My eyes kept gazing around the crowd, trying to figure out what it was. I had been in big crowds before, in Boston on the Esplanade, or in Philadelphia, but something here was different. Was it just the atmosphere or the music? I had heard big band music plenty of times- it definitely puts you in a different mood than a loud rock concert. But it was more than that. What was different?
8. Farm Aid III, Cornhusker Stadium, Lincoln Nebraska, Fall 1987
This one was as memorable for the experience as for the music. The base commander had secured a number of tickets for the morale and welfare of the guys stationed at Offutt AFB, so we were essentially “ordered” to attend this concert, a practice we used to call “mandatory fun.” The lineup included Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Lou Reed, and Joe Walsh among others. I distinctly remember “Rocky Mountain Way“- we were in that crowd!!
This was shortly after Susan and I were married, in the fall, and it was COLD sitting on the concrete benches in the Nebraska Cornhuskers football stadium. We had a giant bag of flavored popcorn that we bought at a popcorn store in Lincoln near the campus- we were still eating that same popcorn a month later. Another thing that was “memorable” if you want to call it that… the most vivid memory I have of that entire day was the MEN’S ROOM. The line was so long, by the time we got inside, I was surprised to see that instead of individual urinals, there was just this big communal trough. As if it wasn’t embarrassing enough doing your business with 100 other guys and no dividers between the stalls, there were a couple of GIRLS who decided the women’s room line was even longer, so they tried to charm their way into the men’s room line. We let them “cut” to the front of the line, mostly so they would be done first and not still be standing there waiting when it was my turn to whip it out.
9. Mannheim Steamroller, “Concert for Yellowstone,” Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, Vienna Virginia, circa 1999 or 2000.
I’m working on the date, I should be able to get the exact day from an old Wolf Trap schedule. Previously, we had seen Mannheim Steamroller live at the Omaha Opera House in 1988. Chip Davis is from Omaha and Susan met him because she worked at the law firm that handled American Gramophone’s account. They did a benefit concert for the Fontenelle Forest Foundation, a nature conservancy where Susan and I both volunteered as teacher/naturalists, leading hikes through the woods along the bluffs of the Missouri River, and once a month I led an astronomy night at the nature center, giving a small lecture with a slide show, and then taking people outside to look at the stars through a variety of telescopes. If you ever come across any of the old “videos” Mannheim Steamroller made for their early albums, most of them were filmed in Fontenelle Forest. After the Yellowstone fires, they did a tribute album, and the proceeds were to go to a non-profit foundation. During the concert tour, they projected slides of Yellowstone in the background while they performed their version of “Pines of Rome” and other classical compositions, as well as neo-classical “new age” compositions.
10. Earth Wind and Fire, Patriot Center, George Mason University, Fairfax VA, 1995
Philip Bailey has still got it. I am pretty sure of the year because Susan was expecting Elisabeth and during the concert she felt the baby move. So we tell Elisabeth that she was at that concert and “dancing” to the music.
Other Memorable Concerts
11. Electric Light Orchestra (ELO)- emerged out of a big UFO- Boston Garden- “Don’t Bring Me Down”
12. Emerson Lake and Palmer (ELP)- Boston Garden, 1970s, incredible guitar, vocals, and keyboards, but Carl Palmer’s DRUM solo was particularly amazing! Carnevil and Brain Salad Surgery were amazing.
13. Toto, another concert hall in Boston, 1978 or 1979, saw with Mike Michaud- had an out of body experience, you could call that “life changing” as well as “mind altering”
14. Talking Heads, the Berkeley Performance Center, Boston, 1979 “Take Me To The River”
15. Neil Diamond at the Worcester (MA) Centrum, with Susan and my mother, who LOVED Neil Diamond. This was a couple of years after “The Jazz Singer” came out, it had to be 1984 or 1985 while Susan and I were living in Boston. “They’re coming to America TODAY…” “Hello My friend Hello…” oh yeah baby that’s good stuff! “Love On The Rocks, aint no surprise, just pour me a drink and I’ll tell you some lies…”
16. George Strait with opening act Nicolette Larson, in 1986 at the old “Aksarben” arena, which has since been knocked down and replaced by the new Omaha Civic Center where they held the American Idol Tryouts last year. Say what you will about country music, but George Strait is the consummate showman. Nicolette Larson was known as a “one hit wonder” for her single “Lotta Love” but years later she recorded an album of lullabies called “Sleep Baby Sleep” that we used to play for Elisabeth every night at bedtime. She died of a cerebral edema at age 45 in 1997. I am glad I got to see her in person in the old Aksarben (Nebraska spelled backwards) convention hall while it was still standing. Another case of “mandatory fun.”
17. “Squeeze” live at some club on the Norfolk waterfront in the winter of 1993-94. This place had chain link fencing and a mosh pit. Most of the AMS crew were there, including Ellen Chang. I mention the Squeeze concert in my greatest hits CD for that year.
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