Concerts I Wish I Could Have Seen

I can't name any specific tours, but there are bands that I have never seen and wished I had the opportunity or made the additional effort to see. Off the top of my head:

- The Who - probably my all time favorite rock band. They just never came close enough for me to see easily. I sure wish I had made an effort when they were in their prime. 
- Led Zeppelin - I was only 16 when they ended, but I have friends who saw them and I wish I went.
- Pink Floyd w/ Roger Waters - I've seen the Gilmour led version several times, but always felt that I never saw the true Floyd. Roger is coming to Tampa in July - maybe I'll finally get to see him then (even if it is on a Tuesday night )
- Clapton - I'm a huge fan and he certainly used to tour enough, but for whatever reason I've never had or made the opportunity to see him.   

That's a pretty short list - I've probably been to 100's of concerts, I guess I should feel lucky that I've seen so many amazing shows.

Any Jimi
Any Grateful Dead
Any SRV
Any Jeff Healey
Any Miles Davis
Any Amy Winehouse. 
BB while in his prime.

In terms of still touring acts, I need to see
David Gilmour (again)
Frampton (again)
Phish / Trey Anastasio
James Taylor
Billy Joel

Shawn Lane "Paris" show.
1970 Atlanta Pop Festival - Jimi's last big show.
Late Zeppelin '75 tour (The Physical Graffiti tour)
The Dwarves, anywhere.
'91 Lollapalooza in Enumclaw, WA.  Notes on this beyond a whole lot of really good acts.

Enumclaw is my home town.  It is a tiny little redneck cow town southeast of Seattle.  It is also home to the King County fairgrounds.  Seattle is the King County seat.    So Lollapalooza brought in all these super alternative acts (Jane's Addiction, Butthole Surfers, Nine Inch Nails, Fishbone, Rollins Band) and their super alternative crowd into tiny little redneck square peg Enumclaw.   The town went nuts.  I was in the Navy at the time  getting ready to deploy to the Persian Gulf, so I couldn't attend.  My mom had been sending me copies of the local newspaper, the Courier-Herald.  After the show, the editorial page took up most of the issue with letters about all these purple haired weirdos invading the town.  I wish I was there not so much due to the concert, but because uptight civic hysterics always amuse me.

Shows I have seen that I'm glad I did see.

Primus at the Palladium in SFO.
Jane's Addiction at Iguanas in Tijuana
Social Distortion at Iguanas in Tijuana
Van Halen 1984 tour
Grateful Dead at Memorial Stadium in Seattle.  This more for the crowd than the show.  Entitled hippies everywhere!
GWAR at the Showbox in Seattle
Bill Frisell at Jazz Alley - I love Bill and have seen him multiple times, but his bass player (Tony Scherr) absolutely robbed this show.
Maynard Ferguson at Jazz Alley - This was actually a terrible show.  Maynard had kind of lost his chops at this point, but he died shortly afterwards so I'm glad I got to see it.
Robert Cray - Key Arena in Seattle - This was the last time I went to Bumbershoot, and that was maybe 1986?.  The city has fairly ruined that festival since.
All that early grunge in a whole lot of venues in Seattle - Those were good days, my friends...
Green River - This band in and of itself didn't amount to much.  Locally they got kind of popular, but former members went on to form bands like Perl Jam, Mudhoney, and Mother Love Bone.  Hugely influential in that regard.
Queensryche - Enumclaw High School.  This might have been 1983?  It was just before they blew up into what they are now.  Town did not freak out. 

I'm sure there's more.  I've seen a brazillion shows.

I've enjoyed just about every major venue concert I've been to, but to be honest I'm a whole lot happier hanging with the local music folks. Fortunately for me, the area I live in has a lot of live, local music.  There's a vibrant winery and micro-brewery scene in my area, and with all those venues, there's actually a bit of a shortage for good, acoustic live players.  Best scenario you could hope for. I enjoy myself in those situations far more than I do huge music venues.

Of all the concerts I have seen, I think CSNY was best. It wasn't just a CSNY concert.  It was a Buffalo Springfield, Byrds, CSN, CSNY, and Neil Young concert.  They took NO BREAKS. They had no warm up band.  They started playing at 7:00PM. I left at 11:30 because I had to catch a train before midnight and they were still playing. They started with CSN doing an acoustic set, then Stills and Young did a Buffalo Springfield set while Crosby and Nash took a break. Then Stills and Crosby did a Byrds set.  Then they did a full on CSNY set and hit all the big ones.  Then Neil Young did a set.  I left during an extensive rendition of Down By The River.  There were only two back-up players - a drummer and bassist.  I don't know who was on drums, but Duck Dunn was on bass.  He never left the stage in over four hours of playing. Not even during the CSN acoustic set. During the Buffalo Springfield set, Crosby grabbed a bar stool and sat down on it on stage to have the best seat in the house for some awesome music.

You know, I have to tell this story.  Back when OZZY first went solo and was on the Blizzard tour, he came to my town.  All I knew was Crazy Train and Iron man, but I wanted to go very bad.   I was 12.  My parents had bought into the whole Press  hoopla and were afraid for me to go,   However they did let me see KISS later that year (an many more that came to town).  So Scott then turns his allowance money from Kiss and THE WHO records to OZZY.  My first one was actually Diary of a Madman,   It was not until I was 16 that I was able to road trip to Charlotte NC (from Asheville NC) and see him in 85 on the Ultimate Sin tour.  Why do I miss that 1980 show so bad?  I would have gotten to see Randy  Rhodes in his prime and right before he died.  In a turn of events, When I did see Ozzy in 85, I got to see Cliff Burton (amazing bass player for Metallica).  He later died on the European leg of that tour.

Just wanted to share that story.

My early vote for March SOTM is that we nominate based upon our favorite shows we've seen live and in person.

Van Morrisonns,George Harrisons Eric Clapton THE BEATLES ROOF TOP!

I saw them in 1981 at the Johnstown War Memorial in Johnstown, Pa. I slowly inched my way towards the stage asking people if they would mind if I took a picture. I got to within 3-4 rows and someone finally said; "Yes, I do mind". So that's where I spent the rest of the night. My brother has the originals right now but here is one of the pics I took that night. He doctored it a bit and made a double image for use in his girlfriend's art gallery. The original is not like this. In the original you can see the "Ozzy" tattooed on his fingers.

ETA: I'll have him email me a few and share them later.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!  Thank you for reminding me!  Thread is up:  http://www.chordie.com/forum/viewtopic. … 84#p181584 

UJB - SIXTY EIGHT TIMES!  Um... uh... well... no comment.  LOL!

That's not counting the 4 shows I saw with the variations of the band after Jerry died; 1 in '08 and 3 in '16. Back in the day I knew people that had seen them hundreds of times. I was just a wanna-be compared to a lot of Heads.

I thought of a couple more.

In 1970 Three Dog Night came to my hometown. I didn't actually get into the venue to see them but being it was at a baseball field 2 short blocks from home, I was able to sit on the porch and listen. I also saw Brooks and Dunn.

There was a time in my life where I had a press pass.  A real honest-to-goodness press card.  I used it to get in to some concerts and access areas that aren't all that accessible to everyone. Sometimes I wouldn't even have film in my camera, but a press photographer has to have a camera with him doesn't he? 

I got in to see Molly Hatchet that way, and Yes (but I didn't know who they were or any of their songs), and .38 Special (who didn't excite me very much I'm sad to say).  Plus a whole lot of regional bands.