Silly Live Music List
The "meme" of the moment in the parts of blogdom prone to such things is to list the bands you've seen live. There's a compare-and-contrast element, too, but I've seen it on so many LiveJournals that I'm not going to try to pick a list to compare to. And, contrary to what some people might think, I'm not really hipster enough to have seen a large number of bands live, so the overlap with other people's lists is really pretty low.
Instead, here's a rough chronological list of bands I've seen in concert, and when, plus whatever random comments I can recall.
- Van Halen, fall of 1988. This was in the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, when I was in high school. I came home reeking of marijuana, courtesy of some jackass three rows in front of us. Though it could've been worse-- one of the guys I was with got a beer dumped over his head as well.
- Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Sonic Youth, and Social Distortion. Winter 1991, at the RPI field house. A bunch of us made the trip over from Williamstown. Neil Young kicked ass, the other acts were not terribly impressive.
- Guns n' Roses and, umm... Skid Row? Some dire hair metal band opened for them. This was summer 1991, before the release of Use Your Illusion, at SPAC. We had lawn seats, and pushed our way to the very front, only to wind up directly beneath a speaker stack. My ears rang for days.
- Bob Dylan. 4th of July, 1991, at Tanglewood, in the Berkshires. It was actually a pretty bad show-- he was completely incomprehensible. It was a nice day, though, so we basically just treated it as a picnic.
- Acoustic Junction. I saw these guys (who nobody's ever heard of) twice between 1991 and 1993. They were from Berkshire County, and related to someone on the women's rugby team, if I recall correctly.
- Arlo Guthrie. 4th of July, 1992, again at Tanglewood. The highlight was really the between-song patter.
- Spinal Tap. In the summer of 1992, they all needed money, so they did a second "album," and a jokey tour. It was a way to get out of Williamstown for a weekend.
- Jimmy Buffet. Also summer 1992, also at Great Woods near Boston. It was a fun show-- very laid-back, and he seemed to be enjoying himself, unlike, say, Axl Rose.
- Blues Traveler. Winter of 1993, they played on campus. John Popper had been in a major car accident not long before, and was pretty immobile, but it was a reasonably good show.
- Pink Floyd. Sometime in 1993-4, though I no longer recall the date. A cousin of mine was a DJ in Binghamton, and got us free tickets on the floor of the Carrier Dome. They did insist on playing some new songs, but the second half was the "greatest hits" spectacle that everyone had come for.
- The Afghan Whigs. At the 9:30 Club, on the tour for Black Love, so probably 1997. Not much in the way of spectacle, but they were a fantastic band, and it was a really good show.
- The Pietasters. A DC-area ska band, that happened to be playing at Toad's Place in New Haven when I was up there looking for an apartment in the summer of 1999. I recognized the name, and it was only $10. The Pilfers were the recognizable opening act (and put on a pretty good show themselves), and there was some terrible local act that kicked things off.
- Counting Crows and Live. Jones Beach, summer of 2000. That was a fun trip-- we spent the afternoon at my favorite beach (the best thing Robert Moses ever did), then showered off, and went across the street to see the show.
- Bob Dylan. Fall of 2000, in New Haven. A much better show, that I have on tape somewhere (Kate got it for me for Christmas). A really good country-ish version of "It Ain't Me, Babe."
- Wilco. Sometime in early 2001, also at Toad's Place. We were maybe fifteen feet from the stage, off to one side, and Jeff Tweedy may have been the most stoned human being I've ever seen up close.
- Barenaked Ladies. Summer of 2001, again at Jones Beach. This one involved a lot more sitting in traffic than I would've liked, but it was a really good show. I can't remember who the opening act was.
- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, summer 2002 at SPAC.
- John Hiatt, summer 2003 at the Troy Music Hall.
- Richard Thompson, March 2004, at the Egg in Albany.
- Fountains of Wayne, summer 2004, Empire State Plaza. Kate had gotten me tickets to see them at the 9:30 Club back in DC, but I was away at a Gordon Conference that week, and couldn't make the show. It was good to get to see them.
- John Mayer, summer 2004, SPAC. The tickets were a gift, all right?
Why so few (barely over one a year since 1988), given how much time I obviously spend listening to and thinking about pop music? Well, I grew up and went to college out in the sticks, which didn't provide a lot of options. And then I spent six years in a city with a very good music scene, but living on a grad student stipend that didn't really allow for much in the way of concert-going. Since I've had actual paying jobs, I've been back in places where there weren't a lot of options-- the shows we saw in New Haven were about the only ones I was interested in while I was there. And the Albany area isn't exactly a musical hotbed, either (though part of the problem here is that I'm not very well informed about what's going on).
Anyway, that's the list, with the exception of a few free shows here and there featuring no-name bands. And believe me, if I'd seen enough shows to justify editing some of these out, I would've...
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