Concerts

Not this guys again. Still wearing his members only jacket.

There are no more bands. Just annointed pop stars and their minion support bands.

I wonder if op is still sporting his velour tracksuit.

In 1972 I saw Spirit at a small venue. I was in high school and it remains my favorite show. Warm up bands believe it or not, were Bob Seger and newly formed BTO. Admission was under $10. BB King, Jack Bruce, Weather Report Jeff Beck, and John McLaughlin would be in my top ten.

I’ve always enjoyed concerts with real musicians. Probably the best live performers out there right now (IMHO) is the Tedeschi-Trucks Band. I’m a blues fan, so I’ve enjoyed the KWS band, Buddy Guy, John Mayall, BB King, and others with blues roots like ZZ Top. As for stage spectacles, it’s hard to beat Alice Cooper - he invented the genre!

Beach Boys 1968 Ray Charles 1969 Blood, Sweat and Tears. 1976

I was lucky enough to live in an area where I could go to a school dance at the Wayland High School field House and be entertained by a local band, Aerosmith.

Musical acts can’t make money off record sales anymore so the only way they can get paid is to go out on tour. While this might be a good thing, it has shot the cost of concert tickets through the roof. I stopped going to concerts when I began paying more than $250 for nosebleed seats at a stadium show.

^ We had planned on a trip to Denver just to see a concert at Red Rocks before we die. The seats we wanted? 650 each, plus parking, etc. Decided to just stay home, golf, grille and swin in the pool, while pretending its a Holiday Inn.

^ funny you say that, in my area, we have some very large communities, and every summer we get a lot of the old time groups doing tours and playing the club auditoriums, most of these bands have a mix of original and fill in musicians, recently we had Frankie Valley, Dion Dimucci who lives nearby is a regular show, a year ago Sly Stone who recently passed away did a show, we see a lot of them, two years back The Boxtops did a show. I’ve been to many of these shows the energy is great, and they’re always great fun.

Agree about how now it is more about the production than the sound.

Also agree the best concerts to see now are more of the "outdated" type groups that play smaller venues.

I was lucky to see Motley Crue right before they did one of the reunion tours.... cant remember if it was the first or second one. But it was at the JOINT in Vegas. Only 1500 tickets sold. WAS FUCKING AWESOME.

^ The JOINT was the best venue ever. Saw the Scorpions there two nights in a row back in 2016. Once in the front row, and second night front row balcony. Best acoustics I ever experienced. After the Hard Rock was sold a few years ago, don't know if that was maintained or re-done. Haven't been to Vegas since pre-Covid.

Scorpions are my all time favorite live band. Seen them over a dozen times. Best show was at Rosemont Theater, Chicago, in 2010. For that one night of the tour, they totally changed the whole show. Michael Schenker Group (Rudolf's brother who was kicked out of the Scorpions back in the 70s) was the opening band. Then he joined the Scorps for a set of their old stuff which was a complete change to the playlist of that tour. Midway through, Schenker and Matthias Jabs (who had long ago replaced him in the band) teamed up to do a short medley of Led Zep songs.

After that, my two favorite live acts were Billy Joel and Meatloaf. Seen them both a bunch of times and can't really say which of the shows were my favorites. Meatloaf was great back in the 80s and 90s but not quite as good when he got older.

^^^We saw Tommy James in a bar in Woonsocket, R.I. two years ago. Actually, saw Bruce Springsteen in the Springfield civic center when he had a curtain drawn to cut the arena in two and played for 4800 fans. Saw the Little River Band for free at the campus center pond on a sunny summer day (200 yards from my frat) Zoo Mass., Amherst,

Last concert I went to was The Glenn Miller orchestra at the Pensacola Naval Air Museum about 10 years ago. They are still at it and will be back there on 2/05/26.

glennmillerorchestra.com

Speaking of incredible musicians, one of the best bands I’ve seen live several times was the Dixie Dregs, later changed to just the Dregs. Each member was a virtuoso musician, but guitarist Steve Morse is simply from another planet. He has played with some bigger groups like Deep Purple, but his stuff with the Dixie Dregs is legendary. Who wouldn’t like a band with the initials DD?