The first, best, worst, etc.

I came across this exercise about live music in another blog, and realized I stumbled across an easy way to update my own blog without having to burn through too many brain cells.

First concert: After my mother won tickets in a WNEW drawing, we saw Tony Bennett perform at an outdoor bandstand at FreedomLand Amusement Park. My memory of this show is a little vague; I’d guess it was sometime in ’63 or ’64.

Last concert: Dwight Yoakam at the Morristown Center for Performing Arts in August 2019 – which means we’re coming up on two years without live music.

Best concert: It changes all the time, but today it’s the Talking Heads in 1980 at the skating rink in Central Park. Held during a memorable New York City heat wave – the temperature hit 97 degrees that afternoon and guys were selling “Welcome to The Baked Apple” t-shirts in the street – the weather perfectly suited the Heads’ new music, which was somewhere between urban funk and African pop. The band was expanded to include musicians from Funkadelic, plus avant-garde guitar virtuoso Adrian Belew of King Crimson. The entire show was cool enough that after a while you forgot how hot and heavy the air was.

I wish I'd picked up one of these

Worst concert: A tossup between Frank Zappa at the Palladium in the early 80s – a bore, plus one of the worst audiences ever and an overflowing toilet in the men’s room – and the Allman Brothers at Roosevelt Stadium in 1974, who couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge the audience. Even a “Hello, Jersey City” would have been nice.

Loudest concert: Not so much the concert as the opening act for Radiohead at the Prudential Center, a band called Caribou. The place was only about a quarter full when they came on and their music, loud to begin with, just reverberated off the mostly empty concrete stands.

Seen the most: Ten times for Neil Young. Once solo, with four different backing bands (including Crazy Horse twice), paired with Stephen Stills and three times with Stills, Crosby and Nash. We had tickets for an eleventh show at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY, before a band member mangled his hand (caught in a closing tour bus door was the story) and they had to cancel.

Most surprising: In the days before YouTube and setlists.com, you seldom knew just what to expect when you bought tickets for a show. I may have had some knowledge of the details around Neil Young’s 1978 Rust Never Sleeps show at the Garden, but the Alice in Wonderland meets Star Wars meets Woodstock theme that ran through the evening was at times spectacular, and strangely endearing.

Rust Never Sleeps: Neil Young surrounded by giant amps

Not a live show, but seeing a grouchy-looking Lou Reed in the audience at Carnegie Hall for a Brian Wilson concert was kind of surprising. 

Wish I’d seen: I had tickets for George Harrison at the Nassau Coliseum in 1974. I also had a mid-term exam the following day in a class that I guess I wasn’t feeling too confident about, so I sold the tickets to a friend and stayed home to study. I guess I had my priorities straight at the time, but in hindsight, yeeesh. Did I mention Ravi Shankar opened the show?

Unfulfilled bucket list: Bob Dylan, Otis Redding …

Next concert: Who knows?