Best Live Music Experiences

Say Anything was probably my favorite because I was with my 5 best friends at the time and that was all we listened too.
Besides that Mushroomhead probably had the coolest show, or Mudvayne, or Nonpoint, or All That Remains. Its hard to say, I think it all depends on timing, company and venue.

 

I saw Foo Fighters in high school and they played for 2.5 hours straight, which was amazing. I am blown away any time I see Coheed and Cambria live (I think I'm up to 4 for them). I love seeing any ska bands live, and I see them a lot (Mustard Plug about 10 times, LTJ and RBF 4 each). AFI puts on a ridiculously awesome show, and so does MSI.

 

Carlos Santana, November 17, 1979 at the Warfield Theatre in SanFrancisco Ca.

Won a trip to meet Carlos Santana from WSYSP 94 radio station.
First class flight, hotel, money and all the albums he produced at the time.
Hung out with Bill Graham that night, went back stage. Totally awesome night!

I will post the tickets.

 

I believe we have a winner.

 

tran siberian orchestra, tool, megadeth, opeth have been my favorites.

 

I did a quick look here:

Bill Graham memorabilia


I mean, wow! Your winniing and enjoying the prize is stupendous ... can you tell some more about it?
I mean, some account of impressions leading up to it and during it. Wouldn't be as good as actually experiencing it but, heck, it'd be so nice to hear.

 

was carlos still in his coltrane period in 1979?
or was that the tour for that neo-santana band that was working "dealer" as one of their main singles?
the coltrane period is like the live show that you got on lotus or the white album with john mclaughlin...there was chemistry abuse involved during that period of my life, so things kinda float around in my memory.
but i may have seen the same tour as you.
without the meeting bill graham and all the other fun stuff of course.

 

I sent in a postcard on why I like Santana and listened to the radio on the day they were to pull a winner and a winner only if you called within 94minutes. It was 6:00am in the morning, and I was home alone in my apartment. When they picked the winner I called right away, heard my voice on the radio, and yes I was jumping up and down around my apartment. Got ready for work and ran all the way there so I could tell someone.

It was actually a reunion concert, the whole band was there. It is when he took the name Devadip.
Bill Graham was a nice guy, he took us backstage after the concert and we got to meet everyone. They had a huge spread of food, which was a thanksgiving meal, turkey and all.
Carlos was in a room way in the back by himself. Very soft spoken man, asked where we were from and told us a little about all the guitars in the room.
What I found to be stunning is it was family, kids back there or I should say down there. No groupies at all.

 

Check the price kids... a little over 9 bucks for tickets up front. Man those were the days. I have box somewhere with stubs (some old roach clips in there too) where bands like Aerosmith, Queen, Rush and many others were often $10 or less. None of this mortgage your house crap for nose bled seats where the concert is more rumor then actual show.

One of the first shows I ever went to was a .92 cent concert from KGON in Portland, Or. Like 1979, the bands were AC/DC and Cheap Trick. back then KGON and I assume about very FM album rock station in the nation would promote concert for real cheap and every seat in the house would be around a buck.

 

Just saw Sublime LBC, in a small bar in Grants Pass Oregon. Honestly, the best show I've been to, and I've seen some amazing bands. These guys brought it, and the crowd was incredible...of course partying with the band after the show just added to the experience. I am currently planning a rafting trip with these guys as well! Gonna be a blast!

 

i think i paid 20 bucks to see the who at boston garden in 1976 (ugh. so long ago)

 

Wow! $20! Were you on stage with them? I got a stub here for the Stones, J. Geils and Tommy Tutone at the Kingdome in Seattle 1980 for 15.50 Level 100 3rd row so just off the floor and the right of the stage. The thing that stand out about that show for me was a guy fell from one of the levels above us and broke his femur, compound fracture. As the EMT's wheeled him by our seats he was yelling "I'm fine, I'm fine just let me finish the show and I'll go with you!" My girlfriend, whom I later married, lost her meal and the booze we'd been drinking at the sight of his bloody bone sticking out of the side of his leg. They did two sold out shows there and we were at the first. The second night the news reported a guy fell off the outside of the upper level and did a header off the pavement. something about Stones concerts and people dying, weird.

 

In 2001, I saw Bob Dylan and Paul Simon on tour together, playing the Hollywood Bowl. They each did a long solo set, and in between, they played around six or eight songs together. I've seen Dylan a number of times live, and you just never know what you're going to get. When I saw him play in '88, he did 2/3 of the whole show with his back to the audience, never said a word that wasn't part of a song. But this time he was making corny jokes like a vaudevillian, and after each song he would croon, "Ooooh, ladies and geeeennnnlmen, thank you very muuuuch, you're toooo kiiiiiinnd, ladies and geeeeennnlmen!" Awesomeness. And worth the massive ticket price just for the utter incongruous weirdness of Dylan and Simon playing "Times They Are a-Changin'" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" together. Also awesome to see a huge crowd full of prosperous Hollywood people my parents' age wearing tie-dyes, old concert tees, and anti-Vietnam buttons and smoking joints. It was like the class reunion for the Monterey Pop audience.

I saw The Band play a gig once (way, way post-Robbie Robertson, and post-Richie Manuel), at a tiny club in Santa Cruz, CA, under the name "Special Guest Attraction." Fucking amazing show. Rick Danko was past his prime, but Levon Helm still sounded like the earth of Arkansas had split open and begun to sing. I actually went there thinking that the mystery guest was going to be Neil Young, who played there from time to time under various aliases, but I was not disappointed in the least. What a show. They did an absolutely legenday "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."

Mrs. Levite and I went to see the Beach Boys last summer on their 50-year anniversary tour. I wanted to go just to see them playing with Brian Wilson again, and it would've been worth it just to say I'd seen it happen. But what was really incredible was that this bunch of geezers in Aloha shirts come out, looking like rejects from Granddad Night at Margaritaville, and the music starts playing, and they open their mouths, and if you closed your eyes, it sounded like a bunch of 20-year-old surfer boys rocking the house down. Now, I've seen recordings of the Stones playing gigs today, and it's a joke: not only do they look like someone made Rolling Stones jerky out of them, but they sound like a cover band who swallowed an ash tray with a moonshine chaser. But the Beach Boys sounded like the Beach Boys, and what's more, they sounded like the Beach Boys at their prime. They played every hit, and it sounded as fresh, as clean, as fun, as energetic, as vigorous as seeing them play at the Whiskey in 1967. Totally worth it, an amazing experience.

Those are probably the biggest amazing bands I've seen. I've been to incredible shows from small bands nobody's heard of, though. Probably the top two would be a show at UC Santa Cruz in 1991, a NoCal band called the Bluchunks. Rocked my socks off. And then the second time I ever heard the Moshav Band play. The Moshav Band started off as Jewish folk music, with a little folk rock and reggae influence thrown in. They got more rock and reggae as time went on, and the second show of theirs I caught was the first time I ever saw them go electric, and it was the first time I saw them play a regular club instead of a rented room in some Jewish center or synagogue. In part, they just rocked. And in part, it was worth it to see a regular LA club invaded by hordes of screaming Orthodox Jewish groupies. Totally great show. If you're interested, this is one of their best-known songs, an adaptation of a Yemenite Jewish wedding song: , but you'll have to take my word for it, most shows I've seen them play, they rock this song like it was on fire, fast and hot and loud.

 

Sounds like the memory if fresh roachboy. I would have loved to seen the Who. I followed a cover band back then, totally awesome.

Note:Back in the 70's is was okay to smoke pot and drop some acid at concerts.