Concerts I can remember going to in near chronological order:
Indigo Girls; New Haven Green (summer '89)- It was free, what can I say. You gotta start somewhere. I saw more bald women holding up lighters at this show than I've seen during the rest of my life.
Beastie Boys- Rosemont Horizon/Chicago*- Some friends had an extra ticket. It was when that Sabotage song was their big single. I was bored.
Summer Fest something or other in Chicago (Q-101?)*: Stone Roses (First show in US), Sponge, Bush, Collective Soul, Sheryl Crowe (?!?!), "We Care a Lot" band (Faith No More), Duran Duran
- It was long, it rained, and Duran Duran had major equipment problems and had to stop for a while. It was funny watching the bass player throw a hissy fit and have to sit on the edge of the stage while the probs were fixed. Some dude in front of us kept yelling "Just play @$#@$ Rio!" They never did. Hilarious.
Joe Satriani/Riviera/Chicago*- It was pretty good. A local band called
Rollover opened. They were surprisingly good, too.
Joe Satriani/Eric Johnson/Steve Vai-G3 Tour/Aragon, Chicago*: Cured me of my love of guitar solos. In a big way. I stopped listening to Satriani after this show.
Lambchop/Lounge Axe/Chicago*- More like Lamb-suck. Walked out on those tool-bags half-way into the show. There's 8 bucks I'll never see again.
Suzanne Vega/Tower Records/Chicago- Not bad, for a free show. She played 8-10 songs. I'm not a fan or anything, but it was pretty cool.
The Minus Five/Tower Records/Chicago- Pretty cool band.
Sponge/Tower Records/Chicago*- Freeby, but I was ripped off. I'd like those 20 minutes back! Sponge sucks.
Smashing Pumpkins/Metro, Chicago*. A matinee show during the Melon-collie tour (first show after the hiatus when the drummer was kicked out for OD'ing with a roadie). Great locale, pretty good show. But I never really listened to the Pumpkins again after that. In fact, I may
never have listened to their CD's again after that.
Cheap Trick/Summer Fest/Grant Park/Downtown Chicago*- Good show, although it was insanely crowded and you could barely see the stage. It was free, too.
Pearl Jam/Soldier Field/Chicago*- Good show, they played for about 3 hours. Had a great time. Then I sold all my PJ albums and haven't listened to them since.
Rush/Chicago*- It was their
Test for Echo tour. I used to like Rush a lot, but mainly went because they were my bud's favorite band. Pretty good show, I had fun. They did the full version of 2120 (all 20 minutes or so -er, 2112). All the hardcore Rush-geeks needed diapers.
Paul K and the Weathermen/Lounge Axe, Chicago*- Maybe 12 people showed up to this show. It was one of the best I've ever been to.
Come/Lounge Axe/Chicago*- The critics raved. The band sucked. I was able to keep a straight face throughout the show, but my bud couldn't stop laughing at them (and we were like 5 feet away from the guitarist). I think I tried to keep a straight face, but it was not easy. They were absurd. The highlight was a cover of Big Star's
Holocaust. Even I had to laugh at that. They're one of these self-loathing junky bands. Oh, I hate myself, kill me, kill me, kill me! Hilarious.
Palace Bros/Music/etc/Lounge Axe/Chicago- Damn, I can't remember the dude's name in this gawdawful one-man act (ed-Will Oldham), but he's an actor and was in
Matewan. This show sucked, and I have no idea why he had such a big cult following. I was actually really lucky to get into that show. And I felt lucky running out only 45 minutes into the show.
The Waco Brothers/Lounge Axe/Chicago*- Fun, fun show!
Built to Spill/Lounge Axe/Chicago- I never got around to getting any of their albums, but this was a pretty cool show.
Run On/Lounge Axe/Chicago: Saw them 2X. The first time, I just went to the club for a night out. I was blown away. Blown away the second time, too. I'll never forget sitting at the bar before the second show, and chatting with a kind of, hmmm, rough woman during the opening act (think Susan Hawke from Survivor I). They were kind of a metal band. She was getting into it, and she turned and looked at me and said
"This is the kind of music I like to fuck to."
I nearly keeled over. Hilarious!
Sonic Youth/Riviera/Chicago- I love Sonic Youth. This was during the
Thousand Leaves tour. Unfortunately, I got to see them one album too late. The show sucked. I still listen to them, but haven't bought a new album of theirs since. The openers were a Dutch band called The Ex. A lot of people went to the show just to see them. They did something remarkable: they sucked worse than Sonic Youth. What a crappy night.
The Handsome Family/Border's/Chicago- Saw these guys at an instore in Chicago. They were pretty good, but the show was weird. They were kind of stuck in a corner near the entryway of the store and its coffee-shop. I think I was with friends, and we only had time to watch a few songs.
Cheap Trick/The Metro/Chicago*- They were doing 4 shows in 4 nights, playing one of their first 4 albums in its entirety each night. I went for the night when they played their debut album. Absolutely awesome show!
Wilco/Jayhawks/Golden Smog/Riviera/Chicago- I went to see Wilco. The Jayhawks were kind of boring. Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum was there, and Golden Smog did two short sets at the end of each show. I didn't really listen to them then, but I love them now. Wish I could've appreciated it more. Wilco was doing the final show of their
Being There tour. It was a great show. Much better than Sonic Youth.
Cheap Trick-bar in Salt Lake: Maybe the best show I've ever seen. I was right up against the stage. During the chorus of Surrender, Robin Zander held the mic right in front of me and I yelled "Surrender!" I get chills just thinking about it. I love that band. They are amazing live.
Rod Stewart/Salt Lake- Some friends got free tics, so we figured what the hell. Not bad, given the low expectations. I love real old Stewart and Faces, and he played a lot of the old songs, and kicked soccer balls around. Seriously, the concert did not suck. Much better than Sonic Youth.
Guided by Voices/Liquid Joe's/Salt Lake- Saw them 2X. Both shows were great. Really fun band. It's cool when the lead singer is trading smokes and beer and hi-fives with the fans up front throughout a show. Bob Pollard's the only rock-and-roller I've ever hi-fived during a show.
King Crimson/Denver- I tried to get into KC; I bought a couple of their albums (Red and Discipline), and went to the show with a bud who was a big fan. It was pretty boring. It was weird watching confused Dead-heads trying to do hippy-trippy dances to the songs. Robert Fripp was a huge nerd. Watching him doodle around with his guitar gadgets is like watching Isaac Asimov write haiku. Yippee!!! Haven't listened to KC since, and sold my albums not long after the show.
Ellis Paul/Lyons CO and Denver CO- My wife's a big fan. His shows are pretty entertaining, although I'm not really into folkie-type music. The first show was remarkable because it was in some dude's house. Maybe 40 people crowded into his living room and sat right in Ellis's mug as he tried to play and sing, with dogs barking in the neighbor's yard during the show. One fat dude sitting in the front row was sitting with his feet up right in front of Ellis and with his eyes closed the whole time. Really, really weird. The second show was at a regular club, and was pretty good.
Halden Wofford and the Hi Beams/coffee shop/Raton, NM. My wife and I were driving back to CO from Los Alamos just after halloween in '04. The weather was fine, until we got to Raton (on I-25), where it went from sunny to a white-out in the space of maybe a quarter mile. It was maybe 2 in the afternoon, and the pass was closed. We slowly worked our way into town, and found a coffee shop to stop off at for a break. The Hi-Beams had gotten stuck, too, on their way to a show in Denver. So they'd brought in their instruments, and played a little show for all the stuck travelers. We listened to them for maybe 30 minutes. It was extremely weird. This was not the kind of coffee shop where bands play. It was more of a '50s style coffee shop. The band was pretty good. The drummer was keeping time by tapping on a guitar case (a la the Elvis comeback show in 1968). They played a song called
Humdinger that was pretty funny. I-25 ended up being closed for the night, and all reasonable routes out of Raton towards CO were shut down (you couldn't even drive towards Amarillo, Texas because of an ice-storm on the roads to the east). As soon as it was announced that the interstate was going to be closed overnight, there was a mad rush for the local hotels. We got the last room at the Super 8 (in your face, dude standing behind us in line!). We saw the Hi-Beams eating at the restaurant where we had dinner. They didn't play a gig for us there, though. I would totally go see this band again, if it was free, and they were playing at a gas station or something and I needed a refill.
Paul Westerberg/Bluebird/Denver- One of my all-time favs. Took me a long time to finally see him. He didn't disappoint (unlike Sonic Youth, who sucked).
I'm gonna update this sucker as my memory comes back.
Biggest surprise: Run On. They only had a couple of albums, but they were awesome. They were the anti-Sonic Youth. Great live band, you could almost see the music coming out of the amps (I was not drunk, I swear!) In my experience, it's really rare to see a band live that you've never heard before, and to really enjoy it. That was what was so shocking to me about this band. And they second time I saw them, after listening to them a lot, they were just as good.
Biggest Letdown: Sonic Youth. How about playing some of your old songs, tool-bags? They did play Death Valley 69 (as their frickin' encore), but that was the
only song that didn't come from their two new experimental albums. Both of which blew.
Best in Show: Cheap Trick. Amazing live band. They've got 3 decades worth of great power-pop, and fortunately they're pretty aware of which of their songs suck, and they rarely play the sucky ones.
*These are concerts I went to with my bud, the ur-Chili Dawg
it does make me laugh seeing the 'kids' do a kindof shoulder lunge these days instead of headbanging!)
* 
