The Greatest Concert You’ve Ever Seen (long)

[Georgia Avenue]

The Greatest Concerts You’ve Ever Seen

Apology if this has been done before, search function revealed nothing:


Here is mine, though it’s close…if I think of others that are in contention I’ll add them to this thread…

1. John Spencer Blues Xplosion, winter 1997, Barrymore Theater Madison WI

After some so-so opening bands, the huge crowd surged into the small orchestra pit before the first row of seats. This is an old classic theater with a curtain and such, really not built for rowdy rock shows…Everybody was standing, so it was impossible to tell where the seats started in the front. I am pressed against the stage itself hard and cannot move at all. The pressure builds as the bands walks on stage and fiddles with the Theremin etc then walks back off. Suddenly I feel a jab in my ribs…it’s some kid of deranged frat boy with a scraggly beard and packers hat twisted sideways and wild drunken fury in his wide eyes. He’s elbowed his way to the front and wants to be where I am. Incapable of human communication he reaches out and grabs my face. I free one arm and swat him away, cursing. He laughs, but in connection to something else that I cannot see. He focuses on me again and tries to twist off one of my ears…the people in between us are confused and scared. No-one can move enough to actually fight, not that either one of us would or could. If we had space we might waltz, delicately…I understand his anger, where the f__K is the ROCK?!!!

Finally the boys stride on the stage and open with a medley of jams from the first few albums…Bellbottoms into Backslider etc…This is a staple of their live act and I sometimes think they improv the song choices…John just starts blastin’ and the other two keep up. First Russell and Judah come out and get crunk, then the Man leaps out and starts flailing around in front of the Theremin. He plugs in his guitars and hoots—BELLBOTTOMS!!! The crowd goes completely apes—t and I take the opportunity to brace my self on the stage and heave backwards as hard as I can, knocking the frathole spinning…the last I see of him he’s waving his full beer over the crowd spraying his load with glee and hopping on one foot. I thought that would give me some room, but immediately fourteen teenage punk girls and their fatass boyfriend slide into the space in front of me and I am born away into the surging flailing fighting mass. I forget most of what happened after that for a while, except that I keep flying all the way back to the first row and getting slammed in the knees. They play for hours, barely pausing between songs…they are perfectly together. They are barely off the stage for one minute before they come racing back on for the encore…

At some point late they start playing that slow simple song from Now I got Worry…just a single progression played string by string as Russell hunches over the drums playing a plodding 6/8 time thing on the ride and snare. The scrum slows as JS paces on the stage preaching. WTF is he talking about? He says something about rock as religion, about Jesus, about the Blues is #1 (obviously), about praying with your hands in the air…the song goes on and on, 5 minutes, six minutes, Judah looks asleep and John is climbing around on the amps and hooting and screeching like a monkey…he fires up the Theremin, HOLY CRAP IS THAT LOUD. Junx wails into space and then bottoms out into a quavering roar. He’s waving his arms and hugging himself and pointing his guitar at the thing, he falls down and rolls around it like a snakehandler before a crucifix…all this time Russell has been playing as his big curly mop of hair covers his face and his huge body is hunched over awkwardly, playing the same slow 50s love song beat, but louder and louder and now his arm is going higher and higher until he is reaching straight up way into the f**ckin SKY and bringing the hammer down on the snare drum as hard as he possibly can-- CCCCCRAAACKSSSHSSHSHS!!!!! The snare is so loud I’d believe that he blew the mic for it and is acoustically destroying an entire amphitheater except for the fact that the reverb on that joint is cranked so high that the echoes blast through your skull until the next giant explosion. The mob is swaying crushed together staring in disbelief or screaming blasphemy and utterly soaked in sweat and beer. It’s hypnotism. Finally John leans his feeding-back guitar on the thermin, resulting in a single high pitched shriek, and walks off…but the song keeps going. A minute passes, then another, somehow the whole thing gets louder and louder and louder. John comes running back onto the stage and kicks his guitar over and screams thanks and suddenly it’s over. Russell tosses his sticks at his drums in disgust and splits.

The lights come on. We untangle ourselves from each other start squelching out en masse in our soggy shoes. The place is trashed and so are we. They start playing MU330 or some crap on the PA. I’m about halfway up the aisle when I hear, over the canned music of the loudspeaker…BABY BABY YOU SURE LIKE TO F**K! We all turn as one, confused. The band has snuck back onto the stage and just starts blazing in front of the half-empty auditorium. FULL GRRRRROWWN WOMAN!—F**K!!!! I somehow do not die of trampling in the stampede back to the front of the place. They play for another twenty minutes after that and in the process take my soul and kick it in the nuts. We all die on the spot and are transported to heaven where we wait for our ignorant bodies to stop their twitchin’.

I’ve seen this band many times, from the first tour for Extra Width to the last for Plastic Fang and they’ve always been incredible…but at that show they whipped those people into frenzy like I’ve never seen, outside of police video of hockey riots…It was utter and glorious madness. Rock and roll.

--GA

[young Nut]

1. Coal Chamber, Machine Head, and Pantera 1997 at the Industrial warehouse in Atlanta. Crazy old logging warehouse turned concert hall, a bad ass place for this concert. Coal Chamber was brand new at the time and tore it up. Machine Head was also fairly new, had just released The More Things Change. And Pantera was fantastic. Rex even played with a 102 fever, for 2 hours!

2. Nothingface, Morbid Angel, Soulfly, and Pantera at the Tabernacle in Atlanta 2000 I believe. All around awesome show. The Tabernacle is an old renovated church so it is a small venue. So cool to see these bands in a small venue.

[Georgia Avenue]

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1 Nothingface,

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Awesome. I used to install stero equipment with the guitarist of these guys when I was 15. He tried to get me to smoke up with him on jobs but I was a wimpy straight-edge. He was very cool...kinda...[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

--GA

[Big Business]

1. Rage Against The Machine and Wu-Tang Clan
2. ICP (not a big fan, but hell of a concert)
3. Dave Matthews Band
4. Offspring
5. James Taylor

[Los Feliz Slim]

Phish

08/13/93 Murat Theater, Indianapolis, IN

Set I: Lengthwise, Llama, Makisupa Policeman> Foam, Stash1, Ginseng Sullivan, Fluffhead, My Mind's Got a Mind of its Own, Horn, David Bowie

Set II: Buried Alive, Rift, Bathtub Gin2> Ya Mar, Mike's Song3> Lifeboy, The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony> Suzy Greenberg, Amazing Grace

Encore: Highway to Hell

[Borodog]

Jimmy Buffett ties Billy Joel. Behind those two is probably Tesla, although I don't know what they're up to these days, if anything.

The first concert I ever saw was Buffett playing at Charlotte Memorial Stadium. There was about a thousand foot long conga line wrapping the field during "Volcano".

The second to last Billy Joel show I saw was in Lawrence Joel (no relation) Memorial Colliseum in Winston Salem. My brother and I got our tickets late, and our seats where *behind* the stage. They looked terrible on paper, but we were there for the music. The band lights up and Billy rises up out of the stage with his piano on an elevated (as in well above the stage) platform that is about 15 feet in front of us. Billy looks over to our section and tells the crowd, "Bet you thought those seats were going to suck, didn't you?" It's was pretty [censored] awesome.

[Needle77]

Tribute to Micheal Jackson, Sept 10th 2001 at the Garden. I'm not sure but I think it was the last concert he did, but what made it great was the Jackson Five sang and let me just say that they were awesome. Watching Missy Elliot try and sing Black and White was also good for some comedy in the middle of the show. Even if he deserves to be shot, the man can perform and is one hell of a dancer.

[Layzie]

Phish - 8/8/98 Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.

[Slow Play Ray]

[ QUOTE ]
Phish

08/13/93 Murat Theater, Indianapolis, IN

Set I: Lengthwise, Llama, Makisupa Policeman> Foam, Stash1, Ginseng Sullivan, Fluffhead, My Mind's Got a Mind of its Own, Horn, David Bowie

Set II: Buried Alive, Rift, Bathtub Gin2> Ya Mar, Mike's Song3> Lifeboy, The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony> Suzy Greenberg, Amazing Grace

Encore: Highway to Hell

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that's a nice setlist, do you have a copy?

also, i cannot possibly pick one concert for myself. i have had some amazing concert experiences.

[Georgia Avenue]

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2. ICP (not a big fan, but hell of a concert)


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What was so great about the ICP concert? GWAR-like tendencies?
--GA