Thanos, thanks for the invite to the thread!
In no particular order here I go:
December 18, 1983: Blue Oyster Cult at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. The concert opened with Rainbow featuring Ronnie James Dio. Overall, Rainbow sucked out loud. Two shining moments for Rainbow...
1) During the sound check before Rainbow came on stage one of their roadies performed probably the single best twenty-minute drum solo I have ever heard in my life.
Bar none.
2) RJD led the band in a rock-version of the overture from Beethoven's 9th Symphony and, in doing so, they introduced me to a lifelong love of classical music.
BOC came on after about a 45-minute set change and they turned in the kind of concert you'd expect from a headlining band. Nothing terribly memorable though. This was the last concert I attended without ear protection. After this I always wore rifle plugs to a concert to protect my hearing.
Summer 1988: Pink Floyd at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento. Outstanding! Featuring the Flying Pig and sound turned up waaaay past 11! Windows were broken in the neighborhoods near the stadium. Selections from
The Wall were done along with very memorable selections from
A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The intro to "One Slip" was at least fifteen minutes long and came off like one of the better jam sessions I've ever witnessed.
March 2000 - The Chapel at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Lisa and I went to this concert to hear the daughter of a friend sing with a friend of hers from Napanee, Ontario. They had gone to school together when our friend, Jeff Simpson, was working in Napanee. Honestly, the concert was unremarkable except for the charming young lady who was singing with Rebecca:
Avril Lavigne. Yep, we had no idea who she was at the time.
October 2009: Blue Oyster Cult at The Boardwalk in Orangevale, California. In 1983 these guys filled an 18,000 seat auditorium to SRO. In 2009 they didn't even fill a 500 person bar in a Sacramento area backwater. It was a great concert for the fact that everyone was within 50 feet of the stage. It was sad, though, to see a once-great band reduced to playing a dive.
I've been to plenty other concerts and they were not remarkable, really. These were the remarkable experiences to me.