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Your 5 Fav Rock Concerts

There are certainly more than a few geetar fanciers among us judging by all the threads on guitar bands and best guitarist. This thread is about the best rock shows you saw. Let's limit it to the rock shows. Not Blues or Jazz or solo performers. The concerts that raised the hairs on your neck or made you want to take up an instrument or raised your pulse through their sheer energy or just moved you through their performance on stage. The only ones that count are the ones you've seen. After making a list in my mind of the many rock concerts I attended, most from the late 1960's through early 80's, I have come up with mine. It was tough, I’ve seen well over 200 rock concerts over the years and it is really hard coming up with a top 5 but we have to limit this so here go mine. "Yes" - This group stands out as the 2nd best concert I ever saw with Steve Howe and Chris Wakeman. They opened for Emerson, Lake and Palmer and after their set I do feel that EL&P were disheartened and knew they couldn't match it; they didn't. Funny thing is like most, I was there to see EL&P. They were forced to have another concert the following night by popular demand. Virtuoso musicianship, “Poco” - This group could put on a show. I saw them 4 different times in the many various stages of their evolution. They never had the commercial recognition of some of the other great bands of their era but they sure made up for it in their live performances. No one stayed seated during a Poco concert. “Rod Stewart and Faces” - Ron Wood on guitar and Rod Stewart strutting all over the stage. Rod was probably the greatest natural Rock showman I ever saw, including Mick Jagger. His uninhibited manner and constant movement and soulful vocals brought the house down. The crowd wouldn't let him go after the 5th encore so he invited everyone ("especially the pretty young ladies") to his hotel to “party on”, and so they came; Led Zeppelin I had to include them because next to the Doors and of course Jimi Hendrix they were my favorites of that era and I never did get to see either of the other two. The acoustics were bad and they played so loud you couldn’t really hear the music. But they were great none the less and it was special to me. The best should be kept for last. "The Who" was acknowledged as the best concert band at the time. Getting tickets meant getting in line and waiting. I imagine at the time the only tougher ticket would be the “Beatles” and they weren’t even together then. They didn’t disappoint. The reaction of the audience was beyond anything I ever saw at a live concert before or since. The band was so cohesive and the energy they put out put them into a different realm. They just have to be on a very short list of the best live bands ever.
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drubin
3,274 posts
 
The Spellcheckers, English 101 tour.

Not much fun, but they sure are effective.
jeff_l
24 posts
 
The 5 times I have had the great fortune to see Jeff Beck in concert. What a "gunslinger"!
rpf
76 posts
 
When I first came upon this thread a couple of years ago, I hadn't been to a Rock concert in around 15 yrs. They're just too loud for me now and that and the fact that my favorites were all a long time ago made me feel too old to want to post a response.

But over the last couple of yrs. I made an exception for two performers I really wanted to hear and who joined my favorites, so here goes. From earliest to latest.

Commack Arena (a roller rink), Commack NY - 1968. Savoy Brown Blues Band was the headliner - and the only one of the three groups to have released a record to that point - and they were really good. But they were eclipsed by the two opening acts. The first was Mountain, and Leslie West's guitar playing was incredible. And then surpassed by Jeff Beck's. The Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart blew us away and I still love the "Truth" album they performed that night.

Fillmore East - Late show, 1969. A five hour show that opened with Keith Emerson and The Nice, followed by The Byrds and ended with the Jefferson Airplane. All great music and performances.

Various venues, Late Sixties to Mid Seventies. The Incredible String Band. The "founders" of World Music always put on fantastic shows unlike anything anyone else was doing at the time.

Stony Brook U. Gymnasium, 1972?. The Holy Modal Rounders. An amazingly inventive band, their live show far surpassed any of their albums. Doubly memorable for the fact that three of the group crashed the night before the concert at the house I was living in at the time.

Madison Square Garden, 2006. Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band. What more can I add to what's been said?

And not A Concert, of course, but I can't leave out Woodstock.
gslone
274 posts
 
I just came back from seeing Asia... They played Sunday night the 17th, at Hard Rock Live in Orlando, and were absolutely fantastic. The four original members have reunited last year to do a 25 year reunion tour. The group also performed old songs from each members other band from the 70's. John Wetton played bass and sang all of the tunes including Roundabout...If you could just imagine playing Chris Squire's bass lines and then singing Roundabout on top of that in the original key.... and to be honest I prefer the way Wetton sang the song over Jon Anderson. JA is just not my favorite vocalist, even though I do like Yes.
Wetton also covered In The Court Of The Crimson King (which Greg Lake sang originally), Fanfare For The Common Man by ELP, and Video Killed The Raidio Star - if you can imagin that with the JW voice. It was a wonderful evening.

The other 4 favorite rock concert were:
Chicago, when Terry Kath was still with us, with Steely Dan opening that Show in Tampa Stadium.

Yes, they always did put on a great show...saw them when Bill Buford and Tony Kay were in the band, and saw them again with Alan White and Rick Wakeman. That was in Orlando and then Tampa

My last is Dan Folgelberg. I saw them in 04, here on Hilton Head. What I noticed about that show was how well the drummer played. Later that evening I found out his name was Mike Botts, who played with Bread, who I ironically always thought was a great drummer. The sad part is I later read in Modern Drummer that he had been battling cancer, even during that show in 04.... He passed away about a year later.
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