Van Halen with Ratt opening up for them. Went with my brother. I was shocked, amazed, mortified, then instantly hooked on live shows. I was 12 or 13....I can't even remember. It was a GREAT time!
oh man, what a way to start out your live music journey. (i still like Ratt )
Van Halen with Ratt opening up for them. Went with my brother. I was shocked, amazed, mortified, then instantly hooked on live shows. I was 12 or 13....I can't even remember. It was a GREAT time!
Googling David Blue lead me to this Rolling Stone article. With videos. Amazing to learn that he was friends with Dylan and Joni, and many others, but what a sad end!
I went on a hunt today for NOT the first concert, but rather a Joni Mitchell concert that I ALMOST went to ... but that's another story, for another thread.
This is about the first concert I ever went to. Fleetwood Mac. For YEARS I've been trying to find out who opened for them. I described him as a "Dylan-wanna-be" and had almost convinced myself it was Bruce Springsteen. No one at the university could help me, but today with the help of the FM website I found a date, and that lead me to this in the local newspaper.
Googling David Blue lead me to this Rolling Stone article. With videos. Amazing to learn that he was friends with Dylan and Joni, and many others, but what a sad end!
The Beatles in 1964 in Cincinnati, Ohio. I could hardly hear them because of all the dumbass screaming girls. I understand that's the biggest reason they stopped touring.
My ticket cost $2.75 and I still have the ticket stub.
The Grass Roots at the Lake Charles Civic Center 1975 or so. Opening act: a Black Oak wannabe band called Howdy Doody Rock Ensemble. IIRC, the lead singer of that band squatted down at some point and his pants split/opened and the girls near me gasped. It was high school, and David Manuel made fun of me for âwearing tennis shoes.,â¦to a concert!â Hey, f you, buddy.
We all went because Jeanne Dixon supposedly had predicted that rock music was too loud for the venue and so it would collapse on us.
So I HAD to be there.
Doobie Brothers in 1976 in Myrtle Beach. Takin' It To The Streets tour. Michael McDonald had just joined the band and hadn't ruined it yet. Blew my mind!
The first concert I was "supposed" to attend was Boston, in Boston Garden. But my cousin managed to botch the ticket acquisition and I didn't go. So my very first concert was a week later at the Orpheum Theater with Sad Cafe opening for Toto. Kind of an embarrassing first show. But I caught Jethro Tull a few weeks later and that made it all better.
The worst concert I attended was put on by Sly and the Family Stone. Demon alcohol.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse was mixed. People in Ottawa could not stop talking and making noise during Young's acoustical part at the beginning. Young threatened to bring out the band, the fans ignored him and then he cut short the acoustical part and went electric.
Jethro Tull and King Crimson put on some of the very best concerts. Would take me many decades to revisit some King Crimson's music from that period and fully 'get it'. (Red, Lark's Tongue in Aspic).
Overall, I was not that fond of big venue rock concerts. Too much noise, too much tobacco smoke in the air, too many unruly fans, too many inebriated performers. I always knew the concert kinda sucked when I found myself wishing I had more hashish.
Folk, country and blues concerts in small venues never suffered these problems.
Can't say definitively, but it might have been Jefferson Airplane with Iron Butterfly the opening act. This would have been April 19, 1968 at Franklin & Marshall College. My Dad was an electrician at the college and he was working at the concert that night so my brother & I tagged along. I had never before heard anything so loud. I subsequently got to see many other top notch bands (Loving Spoonful, Santana, Grateful Dead to name a few) and I even hung out back stage with some of them. Unfortunately I was a dorky high school student who was undoubtedly totally annoying to the likes of Jerry Garcia, et al. But fun for me.
Other than seeing Pete Seeger and Burl Ives, and friends along the Hudson in the early '70s, probably Blondie with Suicide opening at CBGB - in 1977 - maybe The Ramones a week earlier or later. It was a while ago...
Seeing this pop up in the forum (which I responded nearly 2 decades ago) reminded me of the second concert I saw.
In the 6th grade, my friend Tommyâs birthday present from his parents was to take him, me and another friend to see Cheap Trick on the Dream Police tour.
Now, I was/am(!) fairly naïve, so as we approached the Mid-South Coliseum, I assumed his dad would be ushering us in and chaperoning for the night.
Nope.
This guy dropped off three 12 year-olds in downtown Memphis (several blocks away to avoid the traffic I might add), turned his head and said, âIâll pick you up right here laterâ, then motored off like he had just dropped us at school. It took a minute or 10, but I shook off the flabbergastedness and the sheer delight of that freedom carried me the whole night.
Not fer nuthinâ, the sight of a Kiss record sailing into the crowd was indelibly imprinted on my young psyche.
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