Ask Lemmy

I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on the Skeleton Tree tour on the first night of tour. This was shortly after Nick's son had died in a tragic accident where he had fallen off a cliff. It was quite obvious he was deeply grieving but needed to be on stage to begin healing.

It felt like during the first song that the whole audience was keeping him alive and singing with our collective breathing, like the whole room was breathing as one person and holding him aloft with our breath? It's a bit hard to describe, but like we were holding his hand across a tightrope. Then after a song or two he found a groove and began being the Nick Cave we all know, and began moving like a jaguar across the stage the way he does and doing his Nick Cave things (if you know you know). He didn't talk much but it was pretty clear it was giving him some of his life back. I've seen him three times since, and he's back to his funny self despite the loss of another son in that time, but I've never lost the feeling when I see him that the audience keeps him afloat. It's pretty special. Also listening to and reading about him talk about grief has helped a lot of people.

Queen, news of the world tour, opening with "we will rock you". Second is ELO and Kansas with a deadly laser light show. Nothing else has come close. I am old.

I've really only been to a bare handfull of live performances, but the one that stands out was Blues Traveller. Their second album had just come out and one of the guitar players turned 21 at the show. Proceeded to play the fastest version of Johnny B. Goode I've ever heard in my life.

This was, Jesus, 30 years ago now? 1991... so shit... 33 years ago.

So hard to decide.

Most impactful was probably seeing Above and Beyond at one of the Wonderland festivals. They were the last band to play and did their group therapy stuff. And sure, part of it was probably the drugs, but On a Good Day really connected with me.

Most fun might be Bad Religion. The concert was great and all, but I was in California and my friend in Chicago told me they had an extra ticket so I flew out to go to the concert with him. Probably spent $350 on flights for a $35 concert ticket.

Then there was Panic at the Disco last year. It's my girlfriend's favorite band and I very much enjoy them. Now Im living in Chicago, so I flew out to California and drove with her to Las Vegas for the concert. It was one of our earlier dates once we decided to be more serious.

Best performance might have been the Adicts. It was a small venue, but gorram did they have such an incredible time.

Cage the Elephant honestly puts on an incredible show.

Beach House is transportative

But I think Sigur Rós is an altogether different experience. They are so so good live. I'll be seeing them later this year when they have their full orchestra and I'm so excited.

Finntroll live in a small venue in Belgium called Biebob. The hall is barely bigger than a decent café, so that means everyone is very close to the band. Once they started playing, the ENTIRE hall went absolutely berserk. Including the staff behind the tables and technical materials. Everyone was so completely enthralled that it was an almost religious experience. I've never before or after seen anything like it. Must've been over 15 years ago though.

I've gone to several Gogol Bordello concerts, they're always amazing. Most memorable one was when Eugene Hütz got their guitar strap stuck in their hair and kept rampaging around the stage with the guitar just hanging there, not holding it in their hands or anything. He kept making the stagehands go away instead of letting them help untangle the guitar. The mosh pits can be wild. Pre-covid he'd take swigs of wine and spit take it all over the pit, post covid they just splash wine everywhere instead which is still fun but not quite the same.

Another one that will stick with me is I got to go to a punk house and listen to local trans artists. I watched from the roof and spray painted a trans flag up there it was great

There have been quite a few good ones since, but the first concert that my parents let me go by myself to was a Primus NYE show in Oakland, some time around '94. I was, maybe 15? It was the coolest thing ever. Why was it so amazing? I mean, it was Primus, there was weed everywhere, and I was 15.

Recency bias: Tool - I hadn't been to a concert of that caliber in years, it was exactly what I was craving. Setlist was incredible and the band were on top of their game. 9.5/10 wish they''d played vicarious instead of the pot.

Favorite band: Rush - saw them back in 2012 on the Clockwork Angels tour. There's no way these guys tour if they can't play, show was great despite a lackluster setlist. I'm a 70s/early 80s rush fan and that era of their discography was largely unplayed.

Childhood: System of a Down - I was a massive fan of these guys and a young teenager and my old man took my brother and I to see them in '05

Honorable mentions: Black Sabbath, Slayer, Rob Zombie

I was at Warped Tour back in 2007, I think. It was in August in Texas, and was held in a parking lot. In other words, it was fucking hot! NOFX was the last band to play and as soon as they start their set clouds rolls in and a huge thunderstorm storm starts. Some guy runs on stage and tells everyone they need to evacuate to a nearby pavilion. Everyone refuses to move.

NOFX finally comes back out and says they were told they can only play 3 songs. So, they bust out their 18 minute long song, which up to that point they refused to ever play live.

As far as best performance, hands down Paul McCartney. He was in his 70s and played an amazing and high energy show for 3 hours straight.

I go to loads of concerts, but my favorite eas Lady Gaga's Chromatica Ball in Wrigley Field a couple years ago. A friend drove 3 hours to my place Sunday night, then we drove 5 hours to Chicago Monday morning for the show. 45,000 people crammed into that tiny jewl box baseball stadium was incredible. Looking out at the grand stand felt like a wave of people about to crash down on the field. Lady Gaga is an amazing artist and performer and knows how to rally a crowd. She played all her hits as well as most of the songs from Chromatica, which is a great EDM pop album. Lady Gaga always spends about 30 minutes if every concert at a piano and it feels so intimate, like she cares for you specifically.

Wolfmother is a band i really like as well. It's always a great when you go into a show with no expectations and get blown away.

For me it probably has to be Opeth at the Ancient Roman amphitheatre in Plovdiv, 2015. They were accompanied by a symphonic orchestra and the whole thing sounded unbelievable. Some of the songs were included as bonus tracks on "Sorceress" later on.

I'd also mention any of the TDK shows I've been to.

Fela Kuti, with a whole company of African dancers. Absolutely transcendent. His music was so good but the whole show somehow choreographed but still so immediate and alive, beautiful and raw and wonderful.

Also close second Henry Rollins at a little club in Daytona Beach. He was acting like an asshole rock star before the show (it was a long punk festival thing) and I almost left before his set. What a mistake that would have been. The stage had chain link between band and pit, he tore it down! He was amazing, band so tight so loud so good and he is such a showman, and it really was a tiny club so it was full of energy.

I have two concert that were amazing on the top of my mind. The first was the Taylor Swift Eras tour (which I know is a little lame and cliché but who cares) and the second was Cut Copy at First Avenue. Taylor Swift was just an amazing show with dancing, costume changes, fireworks and most importantly everyone there was so into it. The sounds of an entire stadium singing along to every song was amazing and with my earplugs the sound quality was still great. It was an EVENT with everyone there all the way in.

Cut Copy I went to in college with a bunch of buddies a little drunk and high. It was one of my first shows at First-Avenue which is amazing venue since every space has a great view with an intimate look at the stage. The crowd was all dancing their heart out the entire show and they had a awesome light show. My buddies and I all brought flasks and joints which we were passing around to strangers and friends alike in the crowd. It was just an amazing time all around and giving out free drugs and alcohol while in college felt like a baller move. Really all the shows at First-Avenue are amazing and haven't seen anything bad there

I saw Motion City Soundtrack when they were supporting the release of their first album. Their keyboardist spent more time in the air than on the ground. He was on another level. The show was killer. So much enthusiasm, so much passion, and when it was over they came into the audience and talked with us and hung out while Story of the Year did their set. It was one of the most "real" experiences I've had a show. Not some fever dream of energy and strobe lights. Just connecting with the artist afterwards and seeing that they are real people, too. I've never forgotten it.

I just looked at when that album released. 20 years ago. Goddamn.

La Pegatina. A catalan ska and reaggae band rocks up to a festival where no one knows any of their songs or even their name and proceeds to completely shred the stage for 2 hours. At some point they just threw a giant basketball in tp the crowd and while we tried to hit the giant basket they'd put, the band both improvised on one of their songs and cast this game as if it were the finals of some tournament. Every song was a banger. The best thing: The almost exclusively german audience had no chance of understanding their mostly catalan songs.

Delain, Sabaton, and Nightwish. Best concert I think I'll ever see. I hadn't even heard of Sabaton at the time and they quickly became one of my favorite bands.

I've seen lots of contemporary dance performances which have blown me away, one was called 'The Silk Road' and showed how dance, as well as material goods was passed on via the silk road.

It had traditional Indian dance and Spanish dance (the one where the men do the foot stomping, I've not been up for long and my brain is still in sleep mode). It was amazing. The dancing was beautiful and demonstrated how culture and ideas are transmitted, in this instance- the similarities of dance movements

Also saw a free performance of some students of Chethams School of Music (Manchester) perform the harp. I think there was 4, maybe 5 female students, and it was beautiful. I've never heard the harp performed just on its own and they used percussive rhythms made by drumming and tapping the instrument...

I have the flyers from both above performances, so I'll edit my comment later on after I've found them

Also adding Estas Tonne....my boyfriend is a big fan and we traveled down to London for a week which included one of his gigs....it was held in a church and was just him and his guitars (and 2 incense sticks)

Las Vegas, early June in the early 2000s they used to hold "JuneFest". $10 to get in for the day, all day outdoor event with everyone from REO Speedwagon, Joan Jett and Jethro Tull to Kansas, Jefferson Starship and Bad Company and more. It was a who's who and who's still alive of the classic rock genre in 2003. But it was one hell of an event. I think it got killed due to lax id checks at the vendors and some violence and heat related injuries.

Muse for the Simulation Theory tour. Marching bands, laser beams, a giant robot (Murph). It was an incredible show.

Sample: https://youtu.be/RX8WoVWAtdw?feature=shared

My first concert at IIT Delhi by KK. It was the best I've attended.

Sonu Nigam is my favorite but in his concert, I was like 3-400 m away and he was practically not even visible!

The band played 2 early albums + their latest one in sequence. Listening to whole albums in one go was great for many reasons.

The best concerts I've seen are Caravan Palace, Wax Tailor, Thievery Corporation, and Sylvan Esso. I love concerts where you can tell everyone on stage is having a lot of fun. I don't particularly care for arena shows or gimmicky effects.

Thievery Corporation is honestly one of the best groups I've seen live, if not the best. Their music is amazing, they cycle like 4-5 singers so you never know what you're going to get next, and I love that they have a big couch in the center of the stage. They will play a beautiful ballad in French and follow it up with a hip-hop duo about systematic racism, but their sound will remain cohesive.

Rammstein in Foxboro a year or so ago.

I was expecting a good show but holy shit. Just the atmosphere, effects, stage presence, and showmanship. Best show I’ve ever been to.

Close second is Trans-siberian Orchestra, for similar reasons.

I saw Swedish rapper Timbuktu at a local festival some 10 years ago, but he brought a full orchestra with him. It was an absolutely incredible mix that I’ll never forget

Recently, the best would be Underworld in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, which was absolutely phenomenal.

Best ever is hard to say - R.E.M. at Stirling Castle would take some beating though. Also, the Chemical Brothers at a festival in the mid-1990s and Pulp at that same festival. Oh, and the Beastie Boys in Glasgow in 1999, that was pretty special.

Saw Panic! At The Disco in 2012 after they released their third album. They're one of the few groups that borderline sound better live.

They also did a cover of I Believe In A Thing Called Love which I wish they'd release as an actual single. Kinda sucks that Bohemian Rhapsody got that treatment years later but this didn't.

Every Time I Die. It was a very small venue, the stage was like 2 feet off the ground and I was front row. No barriers or bodyguards, you could just reach out and touch them. The ceiling had pretty low beams and people were hanging from them at times.

They let people on the stage and if they lingered too long, theyd shove them off. They put on a wild show, interacting with everyone and just going crazy. That venue didn't last long, it was open for 2 years and shut down after a zoning violation and some other issues.

Honestly I've never had that much fun at another show. I've been blown away by several performances, but the energy has never topped that one.

One evening in 2002 I saw In Flames, Soilwork, and Pain on the same stage, one after the other. It was while In Flames were small enough to stick to the smaller and more intimate concert venues, so the crowd was small enough that you could greet anybody there if you wanted. Met a lot of cool people that night. And the night finished with the entire crowd jumping in unison to In Flames - Only For the Weak.

Crash Worship. They did sort of tribal industrial experimental music from the mid-80s through (I think) the mid-00s. I don't know if they came out of the OG Burning Man crowd, but they very much had the Burning Man vibe from back when the Burning Man experience still included shooting guns. I saw them play a NYE show at a 1920s-era movie house turned music venue called the Aztlan, and it was bonkers.

The show started with a massive floor-to-ceiling fireball, and kind of escalated from there. There were a lot of drummers and fire performers moving through the crowd flanked by a phalanx of nubile people in various states of undress carrying alcohol whose mission seemed to be to get as many people as possible as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. At one point I was so soaked with kerosene and alcohol that I was genuinely worried about lighting my own cigarette. Fortunately I was shortly put at ease about it when I got hit with a stray firework and didn't burst into flame.

It was a pretty intense experience. It's not surprising that Crash Worship has been banned from just about every venue they've ever played (and I think maybe some entire cities as well). There's no way the owners of the Aztlan knew what they were signing up for when they made this booking. I'm glad I got to be there to see it though.

Depeche Mode at the United Center in Chicago is definitely the one that blew me away the most. Their opening act hit the resonance point of the building and shook the whole thing, and Dave Gahan is such a showman. Everyone in the audience was reaching toward him and singing along with Personal Jesus.

Seeing the Red Elvises is always a treat too, but my partner and I caught them fresh off of touring with The Reverend Horton Heat and they played an incredible set that included a cover of Let Me Teach You How to Eat, and their songs from the movie Six String Samurai (Love Pipe and Boogie on the Beach). They even did a cover of Misirlou that night!

Hella Mega Tour: Weezer, Fall Out Boy, Green Day What made it the best: the music

I know it doesn't really count - but I saw The Lion King the last time they toured before sticking to Broadway and man. I get really emotional with live music and cried through the whole thing, damn frission lol. Still, an utterly incredible performance and one that I would happily see again even if it meant going to NYC.

For an actual concert, gosh there are so many to choose from. But I saw Shawn James in a tiny little venue in Seattle where I stood on a balcony and watched the show from on high. I've never been one for psychedelic music and his definitely isn't that, but there were a few times where the energy in the room and the music and the atmosphere was absolutely transcendent in a way I can only describe as psychedelic. Truly incredible.

I've seen Dave Matthews Band, Gin Blossoms, Daft Punk and gone to Pink Floyd laser shows (Pink Floyd wasn't there themselves tho) and more, but not one of the massive artists I've seen compared to the final show by a band some of my friends in high school had made (and I can't even remember the name they went by at the time; I only remember the original name of Kill the Messenger). They did it outside another friend's barn that had been converted into a skatepark and they wanted the crowd to just get all up in their shit as they played. Like, I was basically hugging the lead singer while they performed and they fucking ruled! They sounded like the Mars Volta which was still pretty new at the time and I really think that had they not all split up across the country to go to various colleges, they could have actually made something of a musical career.