This week's question: What
is the best live music show you've ever been to?
JOSH MODELL
Do I have to say one? I can't
just say one. I can't even count the number of shows I've been to over the
years. I'm gonna narrow this down to two that stand out. I've probably seen Low 40 times, but I can't pick one out, so I'll skip
them. So I'll start with Archers Of Loaf at Chicago's Lounge Ax in February of 1995. I was two
months shy of turning 21, so I had to finagle my way in, which was exciting
enough. But more important than that—if memory serves, which it rarely
does—the band had just finished recording the Greatest Of All
Time EP with Bob Weston in
Chicago. (I think Weston even ran the sound that night.) In any case, it was a
ridiculously powerful band at the peak of its ridiculously powerful powers,
still insanely excited about playing the rockiest of rock musics. And they
played the entire EP, which most fans agree is their greatest recorded
accomplishment, that night—including the crazy guitar intro to
"Audiowhore," and what may be my favorite Archers song ever, "Lowest Part Is
Free!" But that was a band I already loved going in. The first time I went to
see Jonathan Fire*Eater, I was
only going at the behest of their publicist and because I wanted to see the
headlining band, Stiffs Inc. But holy crap, I had never seen anything louder
and more amazing than JF*E playing to about six people at the Unicorn in
Milwaukee in 1996. (Smashing Pumpkins used to play the tiny basement club all
the time.) Singer Stewart Lupton was absolutely insane, in the best
way—imitating a gorilla on "The Public Hanging Of A Movie Star" and
generally shooting for the rafters, even though there were no rafters. I caught
a couple more Midwest shows on that tour, as did A&R; people for DreamWorks,
which signed the band and released the floptastic (but still fantastic) Wolf
Songs For Lambs. The band broke up
not long after, but their live shows remain the stuff of legend. (Oh, and most
of them eventually became The Walkmen, a band that also kicked all manner of
ass live at a recent Metro show.)
NATHAN RABIN
I'm going to join my esteemed
colleague Josh Modell and wimp out/cheat by singling out a smattering of the
most awesome concert experiences I've ever had. At the risk of being
controversial, it's hard to top Bruce Springsteen on the live front. The first time I saw Springsteen
at the Bradley Center in, I dunno, the mid-'30s (my memory is a little fuzzy)
he played for something like three and a half fucking hours. And this was no
sitting-in-a-chair-gently-strumming-his-acoustic-guitar type gig. No, he was
running, jumping, pole-vaulting, and performing back flips the entire time. I
was getting exhausted just watching him. Bear in mind that Mr. Springsteen is over
100 years old and has been touring longer than much of his audience has been
alive yet he still performed with an infectious, almost evangelical zeal. That
was some transcendent shit.
Though he's not the world's
most riveting live performer—it's hard to convey emotion or excitement
when you're wearing a mask that covers your face—two MF Doom shows stand out. When he opened for Talib Kweli I was struck by the surreal incongruity of my
favorite songs being performed by a fat dude in a T-shirt and sweatpants
wearing a Gladiator-style mask.
Instead of a DJ, Doom basically just punched a button that cued up a CD backing
track for whatever song he wanted to perform. Kweli was amazing. He created an
inclusive house party mood within the dispiriting corporate confines of the
House Of Blues. On the train ride home I sat next to a bummy-looking fellow who
offered me a can of cheap beer and played rinky-dinky reggae on a boom box.
"It's my birthday! Who wants to party with me?" he enthused while everyone
looked away. Nobody wanted to party with him. Well, I kinda did. It was
definitely a night to remember. MF Doom later played the Abbey alongside Brother
Ali, who blew him off the stage. Ali
has a Springsteen kind of vibe about him, a gospel-inspired desire to not just
entertain but to uplift and inspire. Normally I hate that kind of shit but Ali
and Springsteen are charismatic and talented enough to pull it off.
SEAN O'NEAL
For me, shows only seem to
get better the further I get away from them, so while there have been a number
of all-time-favorites in the last few years—including The Swell Season's Austin City Limits taping that I recently wrote about, a particularly
revelatory Grizzly Bear gig way
out in the middle of the West Texas desert town of Marfa, and the Walkmen show where the girl who eventually became my wife and
I first realized we like liked
each other (even though we were both there with different people)—I have
to go with my first real rock show ever: Mudhoney, Trees, Dallas, summer of 1995. I'd just
graduated high school, but because I'd been moved up a grade in elementary
school, I was still only 16. Unfortunately, you had to be 17 to get into Trees,
so I needed to do some fast forgery: I pulled out my old learner's permit and
very carefully doctored my birthday using an X-acto knife and a ballpoint pen,
then concocted a ridiculously detailed story for the bouncers about how my
wallet was stolen, and how I only had this and my social security card for
identification, and I was going to get a new one next week, but he could please
let me slide this time, etc. etc. Fortunately it was so packed that the
guy—incidentally, it was that same brawny douche who pummels Kurt Cobain
in the infamous video from Live! Tonight! Sold Out!—waved me in without a second glance, and I instantly
disappeared deep into the balcony in case he changed his mind. I was on a
serious high already, but as soon as I got up there I really started freaking out: There were Mark Arm, Matt
Lukin, and Danny Peters, members of my favorite band in the whole wide world at
the time, playing pool just like regular people. I had my tiny tape recorder on me, and I immediately
approached Matt and Danny to engage them in what turned out to be my first-ever
"rock band" interview. (I still have the tape, by the way, and yes, it's sheer
torture to listen to. At one point I actually ask them if they "have a big
stash of drugs" backstage, and Matt Lukin very snidely says, "We've got some
hash. Why, you want some?" Totally humiliating.) The set itself was a snarling
blur of rip-roaring songs from Piece Of Cake and the just-released My Brother The Cow mostly, and while I definitely remember the amazing,
nine-minute version of "In 'N' Out Of Grace," I mostly just remember
getting bounced around in my inaugural mosh pit while grinning like a
moony-eyed idiot. In all honesty, I'm not sure I've ever thoroughly enjoyed a
show as much since. Although I have to say, every time I've seen Mudhoney in
the intervening years, I've been instantly transported back to an age when
watching music meant less critical wankery and more rocking the fuck out. It's
good for calibrating the system.
[pagebreak]
KEITH PHIPPS
The first show that
immediately comes to mind is Built To Spill at Metro in Chicago 2001. Specifically, the fall of
2001, a period where every headline read like a further descent into misery.
The show came not long after George Harrison's death and in the middle of an
already excellent late night set, the band launched into a cover of Harrison's
"What Is Life," turning it into a blistering affirmation that the world still
had the potential for good in it. "Tell me, what is my life without your love?"
goes one line. My soon-to-be wife was with me that night. So was some random
guy I went to high school with I bumped into after not seeing him in years. For
a few minutes there everything felt okay again. They played "Freebird" that
night too.
NOEL MURRAY
I saw so many great shows in
my 20s that it would be hard to pick just one, but in my 30s I haven't been as
active a concertgoer, so those gigs tend to stand out more. In particular: Sloan at The Exit/In in Nashville, circa 2000,
touring behind Between The Bridges.
Though they were playing a mid-sized club—to a crowd of about
80-100—Sloan put on their usual Big Rock Show, with instrument-switching,
organized chants, and a big lit-up "4" behind the drum kit. It was an
arena-rock set at bar-band prices, and an effective reminder of the foundations
of rock 'n' roll: a lively room, great songs, and four musicians who love to
play.
TASHA ROBINSON
Mine was Dead Can Dance when they came to Chicago in 2005. It was the final
stop on their tour. (That show was later released as a limited-edition,
now-sold-out vinyl package.) I'd been listening to their music since college,
but I was completely unprepared for what a dense, lush, overwhelming experience
it would be live. It was in the Auditorium Theater in downtown Chicago, a
pretty lush, rich venue itself, where everyone has a padded, comfortable seat
and getting up or moving around in the aisles is discouraged. So it wasn't a
get-up-and-dance, crowd-the-stage kind of show, it was all about politely
sitting still as if we were watching a play, and letting the music wash over us
in heavy waves. Which it did—music so intense and layered and full that
it seemed to fill up the entire theater like water. (I later saw Bjork in the
same space on her Volta tour, and
it was a similar experience, though more pounding and staccato than tidal.) I
was sorry not to get the communal, participatory dancing experience, but it was
worth the tradeoff to feel like the guy in that old Maxell ad, blown back in my
seat by the sheer complicated, beautiful power of the music. I, um, cried
during the opening number. I don't even remember what it was, just that it was
gorgeous.
ANDY BATTAGLIA
It owes as much to context as
to the show itself, but mine is seeing Sonic Youth the night before taking my SAT in high school. It was during the tour for Dirty, at a strange warehouse-like pavilion in Atlanta. I don't remember
too much beyond general swirls of noise, lots of strobing white light,
and the way the bass and drums locked in during that cool breakdown in
the middle of "100%." It was one of those formative shows where
you start to imagine a world beyond the one in which you live.
JASON HELLER
Stiff Little Fingers at the Bluebird Theater in Denver, 1997. Boston's
hardcore/hard-rock legend Gang Green opened. (Which was kind of hilarious, and
a weird match for SLF. Why couldn't Beantown have sent Stranglehold—an
'80s contemporary of Gang Green that was overwhelmingly inspired by
SLF—instead?) I've got a beef with most reunion tours, but the thing is,
SLF never really broke up, despite having taken a couple breaks here and there.
I went into the show a little apprehensive: SLF had been one of my favorite
punk bands since a buddy hooked me up with their first two albums—1979's Inflammable
Material and 1980's overlooked but
equally amazing Nobody's Heroes—when
I was 17. SLF had gotten hung with the tag "The Irish Clash" pretty early in
their existence, and leader Jake Burns didn't exactly downplay that comparison
by covering Bob Marley's "Johnny Was" on their first album—a move that
seemed to mimic The Clash's reggae covers. But SLF's later discs aren't
anything to write home about, and I was afraid the concert would be a typical
case of "too much new shit, not enough classics." Man, was I wrong. They opened
their set with a lesser-known album track, 1981's "Roots Radicals Rockers And
Reggae" (yes, Rancid jacked that). It also just so happened to be my favorite
SLF song, and one I doubted they'd play at all. From there on out, it was
fucking magic: They played all their anthems, from "Suspect Device" to "Barbed
Wire Love" to "Alternative Ulster" to "Nobody's Hero," with just enough of
their middling new material mixed in to enforce the idea that this was not
strictly a nostalgia show. And did I mention that The Jam's Bruce Foxton was
SLF's bassist at that point? Circa 1997 he still looked exactly the same as he
did in all the old Jam videos, new-wave mullet and all. I've suffered all kinds
of injuries at punk shows over the years, but few were as painful as the raw
throat I woke up with the following day, after having screamed along at the top
of my lungs in my lousiest, happiest simulation of Burns' hoarse, barking,
impassioned wail.
STEVEN HYDEN
I hate it when people use
words like "magical" or "transcendent" to describe a live music
experience, because it's almost always "You shoulda been there!" bullshit
designed to make latecomers feel like they missed out on something
that really wasn't that great to begin with. I've been to a lot of
shows in my day, and even the really good ones were at least 20 percent
annoying. Either there's some moron behind you who won't shut up,
or the sound sucks, or it's too smoky, or there's something else
rubbing up against my (admittedly) overly sensitive nature. But then
there's the Guided By Voices show
I saw in 2001 at Birdy's in
Indianapolis. I still remember the exact date (December 8) because it
was—I apologize in advance for this—the most magical and transcendent
night of my music-loving life. I remember driving nearly 10 hours to
the show with my drunken and stoned friends, and thinking that
Birdy's looked exactly like the kind of bar that should not host a GBV
show. (If you've been to one of the billion anonymous sports bars in your
town, you've been to Birdy's.) But Birdy's turned out to be the
absolute most perfect place to see my favorite band of all time.
The beer was cheap, the people were awesome—I've never
hugged so many short-term "show" friends since—and no matter how
many times I went to the bathroom I always found my way back to the spot
I staked out right next to the stage. As >for GBV, they sounded
magnificent. Let me put it this way: I'll never get to see The Who in a
small club, but I got to see GBV that night, and that's good
enough. I went to a lot of GBV shows afterward, and punished my liver with
too much beer and whiskey in a desperate attempt to re-create that one
perfect night. I never got there again, but thinking I could was just
greedy.
KYLE RYAN
My freshman year of college, I took a road trip from Columbia, Mo., to Austin (where a bunch of friends of mine went to school) with a friend and my soon-to-be girlfriend to see my favorite band in the world, Face To Face. I was a massive fan, though I'd never seen them. Even better, it was with NOFX, whose best album, Punk In Drublic, had come out that year. Better still: I was interviewing Face To Face for this zine called Thora-zine, so I would get to meet them. I was beside myself with excitement, and it lived up to it: We ate Nutter Butters with Face To Face on their tour bus, and they gave us copies of their EP, Over It, on 10-inch green vinyl (not available in stores!). When they opened with my favorite song ever, "AOK," an amazingly catchy kiss-off song that I still love, my head almost exploded. I sang along (probably obnoxiously loudly) with every song, and I'm sure some fist-pumping was involved. It was a perfect combination at an ideal time in life: my favorite band, a college road trip, my high-school friends whom I missed dearly at my out-of-state school, the excitement of a budding relationship, yada yada. All was right with the world.