At the Walnut, Peter Gabriel was wearing this neon double breasted zoot suit/cape thingy and sort of floated across the stage in 2 feet of fog under a blacklight spot. Or maybe it was the mushrooms. ;)

The Lamb was Gabriel's highest theatric achievement. Mostly in character as Rael in a black leather jacket (http://www.areacom.it/arte_cultura/f...750202GR/2.jpg), he also had a killer costume as the Slipperman (http://www.areacom.it/arte_cultura/f...TS/BIRTHSL.JPG ), and his consumption by the Lamia ( http://www.areacom.it/arte_cultura/fos/PICTS/Lamia.JPG ) .

In addition, the projection screen content was awesome...

Maybe with all the theatrics it would be more clear what the damn story is about.

Summary of The Lamb (as interpreted by my eroding mind over the years):

NYC street punk is mysteriously transported to an underground world and undergoes a transformation of mythological proportions resulting in his rebirth as...someone or something else.

OK, maybe with the mushrooms.

NYC street punk is mysteriously transported to an underground world and undergoes a transformation of mythological proportions resulting in his rebirth as...someone or something else.

An updated Horatio Alger!

It's like sex...don't analyze...just experience and enjoy.:D

At the Tower: Pink Floyd (Meddle tour), Frank Zappa (third row center....amazing) Todd Rundgren at the Tower and also with Utopia at TUMFI....and at Wisconsin Dells

Pink Floyd (Dark Side tour), at the Spectrum...

They don't make them like that anymore.

Technology has made live shows sound like the CD the artist is promoting. I like music to sound live, not like a rehash of the studio. Too much sampling, sequencing and (especially) digital correction kills the live buzz for me.

I tend to see acts in smaller venues (1500 people or less) or I go to "old favorites" when I can justify the cost. My favorite guy is probably Neil Finn, formerly of Split Enz and Crowded House. There's nothing sampled or sequenced about him; what yo hear is what is being played. I just a month or so ago saw Peter Gabriel for the first time in 20 years. His winter tour was too expensive for me to justify it ($130 a seat) but this stripped down summer tour is more up my alley musically and stage-presentation-wise and the $60 price tag was doable.

My big beef are live DVDs/CDs that aren't live at all. Pretty much any major music act re-records a "live" concert for release as a CD. McCartney's recent "Back in the US" DVD has at least a bass overdub on "Band on the Run" (a song Macca plays bass on, the bastard) and if they did THAT they probably did a bunch of other stuff, too.

U2 is one of the worst offenders in this regard. "Rattle and Hum" was completely re-recorded except for the drums apparently. Lord knows what they did for the "Boston Elevation Tour 2001" DVD.

My concert experiences have never been normal. There was NIN, NIN, and NIN.

The NIN/Bowie concert was great. Mosh til you drop, then Bowie and Trent traded a few songs as a segue. It was cool hearing Bowie sing Reptile, and Hurt. [aside:I like Johnny Cash's version of Hurt. Mr. Cash can make anything sound very, very cool.]

So at the end of Hurt, Trent is playing a bit of Saxaphone, and Bowie slowly walks toward him. It was relatively quiet, and my brother pipes up: "God, if they kiss, I'm gonna leave!" I stopped, dropped, and rolled away from him in the crowd. The Bowie show after that was great.

P.S. I saw Primus and U2 a few times. Reverend Horton Heat, James McMurty, and Tori Amos were in smaller venues.

I saw Tori a few years ago. She's amazing. I've never been to a concert where people were actually 'shushing' each other before.

In fact, it was a weird concert experience in a couple of different ways. First off, *no one* was smoking dope, and people were asking other people to put out cigarettes (this in a venue where smoking was not illegal). Also, my wife and I were among the six or seven oldest people in a crowd of about 1500. There was another couple across the way that appeared to be in their fifties (she was 36, I was 42 at the time), and one woman who may well have been 70.

It was actually a rather disorienting concert experience for me. More like a Philharmonic performance than a contemporary popular singer/songwriter show.

The Who Quadrophenia Tour

Re: Concerts of the past vs. concerts of the present.
 

Possibly the strangest venue where I ever attended a concert was Norristown State Hospital (no, this was not just a detailed audio-visual hallucination) ... every year they do a Noyes Foundation sponsored concert to raise money for schizophrenia research.

The first year they did this, the act was Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the acapella group. I've loved their music for many years, and it was very exciting to be able to get to see them.

I know the guy who runs the research unit who put together the concert. He made certain that I was able to get a chance to meet the fellows, who were quite gracious. Apparently they are very involved with a hospital in South Africa that provides psychiatric care, and they spent the day prior to their show at the state hospital visiting with the patients.

Classy.

Harv saw them all and look what happened to him.:p