[BartSimpson]

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.

[DrCaleb]

I couldn't name them all.

Some of the best:

David Bowie on the 'Lets Dance' tour. With Peter Gabriel and The Tubes. I followed them across Canada for a bit - Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal.

Genesis. That was awesome.

Van Halen, Metallica several times. AC/DC a couple times. Slayer, with Megadeth a couple years ago, and again last week.

Gowan, with Styx and without. (Minus Dickhead DeYoung)

Garth Brooks.

The Headstones a couple times.

Great Big Sea more than once, but I only remember bits of two or three concerts, so it may be four total.

Fleetwood Mac.

Rush, a few times.

Queen.

Tyr.

[llama66]

October 1984- Michael Jackson - Victory Tour
I was 5... but I still remember parts of this concert.

July 1 2001- Edgefest- Tool
I was drunk but I remember how frigging cold it was.

July 1 2002- Edgefest- Nickelback
Again, I was drunk, but I remember chucking a water bottle at the band 'Cake' after they delivered an anti-Canadian comment.

July 6 2003- Summer Sanitarium- Metallica/Mudvyane/Linkin Park/Limp Bizkit/ Deftones
Great concert. I was actually sober for parts of it.

July 30 2003- Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto (SARSStock)- Rolling Stones/AC/DC
Awesome.

Sept 6 2003- Edgefest- The Tragically Hip
Really intoxicated, but The Tragically Hip rocked the house.

November 25 2013- NIN
Going to be freaking awesome.

[Thanos]

I'm still unclear if being inebriated at a concert makes it better or merely makes the horror of it all somewhat tolerable.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Thanos wrote:

I'm still unclear if being inebriated at a concert makes it better or merely makes the horror of it all somewhat tolerable.

A little from column A, and a little from column B

[xerxes]

PublicAnimalNo9 wrote:

Thanos wrote:

I'm still unclear if being inebriated at a concert makes it better or merely makes the horror of it all somewhat tolerable.

A little from column A, and a little from column B

I second that.

[smorgdonkey]

1982
Toronto
Streetheart
1983
Loverboy
Headpins
1984
Platinum Blonde
1986
Haywire
Kim Mitchell
1987
Guns N Roses
The Cult
Chalk Circle
Rush
1988
Tesla
Def Leppard
Nazareth
1989
Eddie Money
Cheap Trick
Bonham
The Cult
1991
Extreme
ZZ Top
Warrior Soul
Queensryche
1992
Sass Jordan
Extreme
Steve Miller Band
Bryan Adams
1993
Metallica
1994
Hemmingway Corner
Jann Arden
1995
Entombed
Wild Strawberries
Jann Arden
1997
Big Sugar
1998
Leahy
Shania Twain
1999
Lin Elder
Dave Mathews Band
1999
Amanda Marshall
Alanis Morissette
Tom Wilson (Junkhouse)
Chantal Kreviazuk
2000
Mary Jane Lamond
Lin Elder
Sarah Harmerx2
Pantera
2001
Sarah Harmer
Sass Jordan
John Mellencamp
The Wallflowers
Rod Stewart
2002
Amanda Marshall
The Eagles
Helix
2004
Annie Lennox
Sting
2005
David Lee Roth
Pearl Jam
2006
The Trews
Rocketface
2008
Feist
2009
Neil Young
KISS
Stone Temple Pilots
2010
Robert Cray
Jonny Lang
Helix
Trooper
Barney Bentall & The Legendary Hearts
U2
2011
Arcade Fire
Napalm Death
2012
Cheap Trick
John Mellencamp
2013
Rush
Gordie Johnson (Big Sugar)
Joe Satriani
2014
Tea Party

[BartSimpson]

Thanos wrote:

14) Queensryche, Empire tour, 1991
I'm not sure if metal had a momentary die-out in my town or if the radio station doing the promotion fucked up really badly but Queensryche only sold about 3000 tickets in a 20000 seat arena. Geoff Tate came out with this What. The. Fuck. look on his face when he saw that the place was almost 90% empty. Good show though. I thought that they were about the most technically competent band I'd ever seen, and Tate's up there with Halford in having one of the better voices that metal ever produced. The first half of the show was all new songs off of Empire and a handful of their older ones from the mid-80's. The second half was a beginning-to-end performance of Operation: Mindcrime that was accompanied by some very decent lighting and a strange big-screen animation show. Very good performance by the boys all around. I sure felt sorry for them for the nearly empty house though. Seeing that would have left a sucky feeling for any performer.

In rereading this topic I thought I'd respond to this. I'm thinking it was around the same time that I saw QueensFloyd (or is it Pink Ryche?) at Sacramento's Arco Arena. Much the same experience you had. Arco is a huge venue with a concert capacity of around 25,000 and there were maybe 5,000 people there. The concert was good and I ended up trading my floor ticket with that of some kid who had a decent seat but wanted to be on the floor.

I also saw Cheap Trick at the Old Sugar Mill in Clarksburg roughly two years ago. Thin crowd. I miss Bun E. Carlos.

[smorgdonkey]

BartSimpson wrote:

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.

For me, it was Marco Minnemann who was playing drums for Satriani in 2013. Absolutely amazing and loaded with technical ability while at the same time having structure and variety keeping everyone interested. Huge ovation when he was introduced at the end of the concert. I have also seen Scott Rockenfield and Peart twice.

BartSimpson wrote:

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.

...and now she's married to Chud.

[smorgdonkey]

Thanos wrote:

Anyone who says that Dave was better in VH than Sammy was never had the dubious honour of seeing him in concert. Whatever Dave did right on the album recordings completely disappeared when he was on stage. Sammy wasn't as dynamic as Dave but at least he was a professional. Dave always was just a cliche-spouting drunken slob.

I saw Dave in 2005 and he was pretty damn awesome during every tune.

Eddie and his massive ego f'd the pooch in 1996 when they could have reunited.

The new incarnation of the reformed band is a mere shadow as Dave's voice is pretty toasted.


Further to the point though is that the original 6 Van Halen albums are what made Van Halen fans. Hagar may have been much better at doing a better job of what he did in the studio than Dave did but I don't want to hear 'When It's Love' ever again, yet I could listen to 'Unchained' every day.

[Thanos]

The Dave of 2005 is vastly different from the Dave of 1984 and the latter one is what I saw, i.e. the Dave that played at the Saddledome was pretty much the same shitfaced guy clowning around in the video for "Panama". I love the guy too but the show he put on for the 1984 tour was a fairly sorry spectacle.

[smorgdonkey]

It might have to do with the booze in the bottle in '84 was real and the rumour that the 'booze' in the bottle now is just a prop.

[Thanos]

Definitely. If Dave still drank like that he wouldn't be alive today. Neither would at least one of the Van Halen brothers either.

[Lemmy]

I've seen DLR twice, both with Steve Vai on guitar and Billy Sheehan on bass. The first was Hallowe'en 1986 at Maple Leaf Gardens and he was awesome. So awesome that, even not being a big VH or DLR fan, I went and saw him a year or so later at Kingswood (Canada's Wonderland). He was so drunk that night that he forgot all the lyrics and stumbled around like street-bum. At one point he was being carried around on a surfboard and he fell right off.

[Thanos]

Dave had an interesting history afterwards. He blew through his VH money so fast that he had practically nothing to fall back on when his solo career turtled in the 1990's as grunge took over the rock scene. He had the endless legal battles for his share of the VH royalties that Eddie refused to budge an inch over. Then he took over for Howard Stern's old show on commercial radio when Stern went to satellite. Dave's show was so poorly received by the old Stern fans that it only lasted a few months. The Van Halen reunion tours were what saved him and gave him some financial stability.

The ironic thing about VH, and how much it got ruined by Eddie's megalomania and all the infighting, was when they got inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame. Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, who were both permanently done with the band and who were on Eddie's hate list for the rest of forever, were the only ones who actually showed up for the ceremony. Both Van Halen brothers and Dave couldn't be bothered to attend.