For many years, first at No Depression and now at Acoustic Live, my Best I’ve Ever Seen or Heard column has pinned down musicians, making them identify the best and most influential concerts they attended.
It’s finally time to turn the tables and make me come clean with the best concerts I was lucky enough to attend.
The No. 1 concert I ever witnessed was terribly uncomfortable — 6 ½ hours standing with my wife in a crowd packed together like sardines on a sticky, liquor-drenched floor. It was at Toad’s Place, a New Haven, Connecticut club, on January 12, 1990, and only one artist performed…and performed…and performed. The mystified crowd had no clue when the show would end.
The artist was Bob Dylan, and little did I know before the show started that he was about to provide the longest performance of his career — four sets totaling four hours and 50 songs!
And not just 50 songs but many that he had never played in public before and hasn’t played since.
Dressed casually in a white long-sleeve sweatshirt topped with a short-sleeve red sweatshirt and a leather vest, Dylan kicked off the night with his first public performance of Joe South’s “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” followed by “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)” from his 1975 album Desire.
The fourth through seventh songs that night also were played publicly for the first time: McKinley Morganfield’s “Trouble No More,” the traditional tune “I’ve Been All Around This World” and two new-at-that-time Dylan tunes, “Political World” and “Where Teardrops Fall.”
Before the night was over, Dylan played nine songs he hadn’t previously performed in public, including cover songs die-hard Dylan fans would never have expected. He performed Charles Segar’s and Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key to the Highway;” Elizabeth Cotten’s “Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie;” Glen Trout’s “Everybody’s Movin’”, and “Across the Borderline” by Ry Cooder, John Hiatt and Jim Dickinson.
Some of the other rare covers were Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” Lead Belly’s “In the Pines,” “Help Me Make It Through The Night” by Kris Kristofferson, “Lonesome Whistle Blues” by Hank Williams and Jimmy Davies and Dolinda Morgan’s “Confidential.”
Smiling, talking to the crowd between songs and asking for requests, Dylan was uncharacteristically loose and apparently having a great time. Repeated sips on a drink that looked like a screwdriver may have helped, too.
The show, which had been announced at the last minute, was a warmup for Dylan’s overseas tour. The venue was reportedly the idea of his lead guitarist G.E. Smith, who lived in New Haven and was also the band leader of Saturday Night Live.
Smith and Dylan traded electric licks all night, and I don’t recall any acoustic moments. Dylan also played a few of his own gems that he rarely performed live: “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “Lenny Bruce” and “Joey.” And his final set after midnight included his classic songs “Lay Lady Lay,” “Maggie’s Farm,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and the closer “Like A Rolling Stone.”
I’ve seen Dylan perform 55-75 shows since I first saw him in December 1975 at Madison Square Garden with the Rolling Thunder Revue, but no show has ever come close to what happened at Toad’s Place that night in 1990.
Of course, my Best I’ve Ever Seen list has plenty of runners-up. In chronological order, they include:
*Van Morrison at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall, New York, July 1973. The only thing I knew about Van’s music when I entered this show was a college-dormitory neighbor who repeatedly played Van’s incredible Tupelo Honey album. Well, I only got one song, “Wild Night,” from that album during the show, but, no matter, Van, his band and a small string section gave everyone a wildly rocking night to remember. After he performed “Gloria,” the house lights were turned on signaling the end of the concert. But the crowd was in a frenzy and refused to leave, even when the PA system started playing music. Stagehands began dismantling the mikes and the on-stage equipment, and the crowd wouldn’t budge. After 10-15 minutes with an audience refusing to leave and seemingly threatening to riot if no more music was played, Van had to come out to address the crowd. He explained that the string section’s mikes and equipment had been dismantled, so those players couldn’t return. Then he and the other band members started rockin’ again with whatever equipment remained. Never again would I see a concert at which an audience for such a long time refuses to obey the show-is-over prompts and forces a musician to keep performing.
*Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at Mile High Stadium, Denver, Colorado, July 1974. This was one of the first way-too-big stadium concerts, but the four forever-feuding lads delivered a blistering show. Watching them huddle up with four electric guitars wailing was a rock ‘n’ roll dream. Their social and political comments were golden, and, besides performing their sublime CSN and CSN&Y songs, they treated us to songs from Neil Young’s brilliant, just-released solo album On The Beach.
*Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado, June 1978. It was the Boss’s first concert in Colorado, and he later said it was the best concert of the entire tour. The fun began long before the show started. As we waited behind the huge rocks for the gates to open hours before the concert, Bruce did his soundcheck. Though we couldn’t see one another, we started cheering to the soundcheck songs, and Bruce called out: “This is for you behind the rocks,” and the E Street Band broke into a Beatles medley. Hours later, Bruce went wild on stage, running about with his electric guitar and then navigating riskily across the widely spaced metal partitions that separated the stage from the audience. He made it across to the crowd without falling through the spaces between the partitions. It was likely a first in the history of Red Rocks, my favorite and arguably America’s most beautiful concert venue. Bruce rocked for three hours, including three encores. Calling it “a legendary performance,” notable Colorado rock critic G. Brown wrote that “Springsteen had the charisma of a kid who had just hopped out of his folks’ station wagon and seen the mountains for the first time.”
*Pink Floyd at Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York, February 1980, and Pink Floyd at Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York, June 1994. Call this a Pink Floyd tossup, because nearly every live show of the British band was a memorable spectacle. Watching a high wall being built on stage in honor of the band’s double album, The Wall, was a gas at one of the few shows performed in North America in 1980, and the music and quad sound at Nassau Coliseum was incredible. But I couldn’t put that show above the David Gilmour-led show at Yankee Stadium, because my seat was on the field where Babe Ruth and Roger Maris once stood. And I finally realized how much a pedal steel guitar played into Pink Floyd’s music, how musically gifted Gilmour and the group are and how easy it is — even in the House That Ruth Built — to drift into the Dark Side of the Moon.
*Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band at the Beacon Theater, New York, November 1980. When I was introduced to the Captain on a Warner Brothers sampler album many moons ago, my best friend and I keeled over in laughter. How could anyone play so off key, sing so strangely and be so weird, we wondered. Then we learned that it wasn’t a joke. It was Don Van Vliet turning popular music upside down with his avant-garde madness and seemingly insane lyrics. This show was a Beefheart tour de force, a powerful rock and blues show with Don’s charisma and zaniness leading the way. Robert Palmer of the New York Times wrote that Beefheart’s Magic Band “gave a performance that was tight, committed and often devastating.” Palmer then tried to explain the art that Beefheart presented.
“The Captain’s sensibility — his personifications of inanimate objects, his genial misanthropy and rather disturbing tendency toward misogyny — will never be everyone’s cup of tea, but one doesn’t have to identify with the man to appreciate his genius,” Palmer wrote. “Through some remarkable personal alchemy, he has used elements from rock’s roots — blues riffs, various syncopations, slide-guitar licks, the eternal backbeat — to kick the music headlong into the future.”
*Brian Wilson at the Oakdale Theater, Wallingford, Connecticut, September 2000. How many times does one get to see a rock concert with 20 performers seemingly wielding every device and instrument imaginable? Brian’s band members pulled out a triangle, a French horn, a Theremin, a vibraphone, a clarinet and many other instruments to beautifully layer and add touches to Wilson’s masterpiece, Pet Sounds, being played in its entirety for the first time on tour. The voices and harmonies were angelic, and, during one song, I believe I counted 19 voices singing together in harmony.
*Blue Rodeo at the Mercury Lounge, New York, November 2000. Weeks before this Canadian band’s show, I was driving on Vancouver Island in a magical place named Tofino and had played out all the music I brought with me on the trip. I went into a record store and selected a new album, Just in Between, by Blue Rodeo, a band I barely knew, though two of their earlier records sat unplayed in my collection. I loved the album, gave it multiple listens and, when I flew back to New York, was thrilled to see a Blue Rodeo concert scheduled at the Mercury Lounge. Pressed against a side wall in the tiny chair-less club, I marveled at the musicianship of every member of the band. The songwriting, guitar work and the voices of band leaders and songwriters Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor was mesmerizing. It was great to see the versatility of the band members and their interplay on stage. Drummer Glenn Milchem strapped on a lead guitar for one song, and Cuddy and Keelor took a shot at the drums. Blue Rodeo rocked like a Canadian version of The Band with some Gram Parsons and Neil Young thrown in. And Cuddy’s smoothness, vocally and personally, intertwined with Keelor’s roughness and edginess exuded a McCartney-Lennon persona. As the crowd sang along to nearly every song and, between songs broke into the Canadian national anthem, I realized that I was one of the few Americans in the crowd. I quickly learned that Blue Rodeo is a national treasure in Canada, and they became, and to this day are, my favorite band.
*Damian Rice at the Beacon Theater, New York, December 2006. I knew next to nothing about Damian Rice when I bought tickets for this show except a one-song late-night TV show appearance that I enjoyed. The opening song was a lot of noisy percussion, and I and a friend wondered whether we had made a big mistake. But we were soon in synch with the adoring crowd when he launched into magnificent versions of “Volcano” and “Cannonball.” Rice sang and performed with passion, and we sensed we were attending a ground-breaking musical event. Lisa Hannigan almost upstaged him with her beautiful, but always laid back, supporting vocals, and cellist Vyvienne Long, drummer Tom Osander and bassist Shane Fitzsimons were fabulous accompanists. I left the show wondering whether I had just seen musical history, thinking it was a revolutionary landmark performance that may have been akin to Dylan going electric for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival in the 1960s.
*Paul Simon at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, Forest Hills, New York, July 2016. Paul returned to Forest Hills, where he and Art Garfunkel grew up, for the first performance in his hometown since the duo performed at the tennis stadium in 1970. A torrential rainstorm delayed the start of the concert for more than 90 minutes and flooded the stadium. The stadium has virtually no protection from the elements, so I and the entire crowd were soaked beyond belief. Paul took the stage about a half hour before the local community’s curfew time for ending concerts and played for more than two hours. I guess he wasn’t worried about getting in trouble for what was also billed as his hometown finale. What a finale it was Simon, as he played songs from many different albums throughout his illustrious career. His hot band added so much joyous flavor to “The Boy in the Bubble,” “Mother and Child Reunion,” “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” and other Simon-penned classics. Near the end of the night, he came back for a four-song encore, including “Wristband” off his new album, “Late in the Evening” and “Still Crazy After All These Years.” Many rain-drenched fans headed to the exits and out to the Queens streets. They missed an unexpected, but terrific, four-song second encore: a cover of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right,” followed by “The Boxer,” “The Sound of Silence” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Wow, now that’s a homecoming!
And now I realize how difficult it has been through the years when I have tried to pin down musicians to name the best concerts they have ever seen. Concerts by Lucinda Williams, Warren Zevon, Led Zeppelin, Savoy Brown, the Mark-Almond Band and so many others come to mind and should also be on my runners-up list.