As I reflect on it. my old Bose 901s sucked!

Acoustic Research AR-9'S WILL ROCK WITH LIVE MUSIC

Magnepan Speakers are unreal for live music. Live music is what I primarily listen to on my 1.7i’s because the soundstage is so vivid and all the nuances of the vocal inflections and crowd interaction are really brought out and bring to make it an immersive experience. 3.7i's are in your price range and are phenomenal.

A big grateful thanks to all that replied! An apology for not listing my budget (which is around 6-8k) I had a feeling JBL would be a recommendation as Jerry Garcia used jbl speakers in his cabinet, and the infamous ‘wall of sound’ was filled with jbl speakers. Not sure what speakers Phish plays through or the many other jambands I listen to use. The subs sound very important as both Phil Lesh  (the dead) and Mike Gordon (phish) really capture the very low end frequencies. Feel free to keep chiming in, and a happy day to all you audio heads!

I am a grateful dead fan and I agree that you want the system to have a very clean tight base to reproduce Phil‘s baselines. I just recently replaced my JL audio subs with a swarm sub system. I really like it. Very clean and tight and integrates well with my speakers if you have the room for it, I would consider that. You can Google it.