Concerts I would pay to attend (archived)
Submitted by Feif Umgotnn on Sat, 10/01/2011 - 18:58
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- The title may sound stupid, but I do not go to many concerts or even to hear live music. There may be some other bands that are still together that I would like to see, but I do not want to go to a huge venue and stand 1,000 feet back amid 10,000 other screaming fans; I have never wanted to do that.
- Are there any awesome experiences you had at a concert? not just because you liked the songs, but the event was awesome.
- Pink Floyd's epic theatrical presentation of The Wall Roger Waters has been performing the material for a couple years now all over the world and it is coming to the U.S. in 2012 from what he said on the Jimmy Fallon show Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. The Wall is a mediocre musical album and goes on a bit with some very boring sections that I listened to too many times and still love (nostalgia is the parasite of the prefrontal cortex), but thematically it is exquisite. It is overbearing with the themes of insanity and the development of the tortured artist--through my love I remember the album to be much shorter than it is, and every time I listen to it I wish that they would have just get to the point and skip all the rock band masturbation, or kept it to themselves. Needless to say, but I will, unless I have cancer, and even if I do, I will be attending at least one performance to hear one of my favorite bands (though the band is no more) put on a great show. I may be forgetting, or not know of, a great theater piece by a favorite band, but this is my pick of the greatest concert ever: some great songs, a great teenage anthem, and theatrics galore.
- Bob Dylan's 1966 international tour Any location would do. Being at the Manchester Free Trade Center was only a drop in the ocean of awkward hate hurled at Dylan and his band during '65 and '66. Actually, I would take any concert that he had with a full band in 1965 too, but '66 was special. All of the philosophical contemplation you hear grow from '62 through Bringing It All Back Home, and then amplified on Highway 61 Revisited, to only be expanded in so many dark, lovely, loving, awesome, depressing, and poetic annals of Blonde on Blonde are pouring out in every note of Dylan's (sorry for this asinine analogy) "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" performances. Based on the Bootleg Vol. 4 and some other concerts I have heard that all seem to be carbon copies of each other (the reason why I could take any date or location of the tour), the first half of the concert has some of his best songs, ever; the simple love songs "She belongs to me" and "4th time around" followed by the harrowing version of "Visions of Johanna" that makes the listener long for "her" as well. The pain is boiling out through his teeth as he whispers the "visions of Johanna" refrains. When things couldn't get any more intimate he barely plucks away at his guitar as he "sings" "Just like a woman". This half of any of the 1966 concerts and Blonde on Blonde, "Sad eyed lady of the lowlands" in particular, put Dylan in the class of great, yes GREAT, singer. He cannot do the crazy vibrato of so many opera singers; he does not have the ridiculous range of many "good" singers; he can take you places with his voice that those people cannot. Then the live half of the concert features fucking fantastic performances of his new electric songs, and even better covers of his "older" stuff like "One too many mornings", "Baby, let me follow you down", and the thunderous "I don't believe you" with a pretty good unreleased song, "Tell me momma". I wouldn't care if I heard "Judas" since a variation of that was probably at every concert; and I would not have been able to hear the "play fucking loud" remark, so any performance would have done.
- Robert Rich "Sleep Concert" These concerts can be expensive, and you can perform one for free at home with a mix of his albums or just one time through with Somnium, but I would like to go and experience what he could concoct live once. It probably won't happen since he does not do these 3-4 nights a week and I will probably forget about it just in time for him to actually perform near where I could get to. It is still one of the greatest ideas for a concert.
- Joanna Newsom The one I went to back in the spring of 2010 after Have one on me came out, and I just fell in love with her singing. It was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had listening to music, especially since I prefer louder, much more psychotic music than anything she has ever done. I have stopped checking Drag City's web site every day for an update on Newsom's tour dates. I assume she will be touring in the U.S. some time in 2012. If not, I will always have 2010: much more of a feeling than a sound.
- Butthole Surfers These guys still perform, but usually only in the major major cities and others close by: NY, LA, Austin. I will get to one of those cities in the next year since I have no idea when they will pack it up. I wouldn't care what songs they played from their career, as long as they played them like Butthole Surfers.
- Syd Barrett Pink Floyd Another impossible concert, but one I cannot avoid to think about. I would want to go to hear great psych music, Barrett play "Interstellar overdrive", and I would welcome any Barrett antics.
- Pere Ubu Like Butthole Surfers, these guys are not gone and still perform a little. They played The modern dance from start to finish a few years ago. I would be happy with anything from their first 5 albums and early singles.
- Some others quickly off the top of my head: Lisa Germano; Mark Kozelek, with or without a band; Shit & Shine, maybe for 20+ drummers; I did not forget Radiohead, Arcade Fire, etc. I really do not want to go to a 10,000 person concert; and lots of other artists that I like and are still alive and performing are not really dynamic live, like Lisa Germano and Mark Kozelek, and Dylan has been dead for a decade now, though I still like him a lot.
