The Best Performance
 

What is the best performance you've ever witnessed? This could be in the arts, or sports, or anything. Have you witnessed someone or a group working at their peak? What, for you as the audience, made it so strong?

Nine Inch Nails, Merriweather Post Pavillion, 5/12/2000. I cried, I smiled, I was angry, I was happy. It was amazing.

tom petty, red rocks amphitheatre. the man is a god.

followed closely by fleetwood mac at uh... the old denver nuggets stadium. before they replaced it with the pepsi center. the venue sucked ass, but the band rocked the joint.

~james

Tom Petty, July 17, 2002, Nissan Pavillion. He *is* a god. It just wasn't quite as good as Nails. :) That was the second show of his I've been to, and it was better than the first. Man oh man. He is definitely timeless, as I've raved before. :)

Did he close with "Gloria"? :) I love that shit.

shit i cant remember what he closed with. he did 'dont come around here no more' with an extended intro during which the lights went down, tom comes on stage by himself, lit only by the moon and the glow of lighters from the audience. he creeps towards this chest center stage. he finally reaches it, opens it and light from within the chest spills out. he reaches in, and pulls out... a top hat...

completely bad-ass. if you ever have a chance to see a show at red rocks, do it. this is where u2 shot 'under a blood red sky', and i cant find a single decent picture of the place. i was about 10 rows up, just off-center to the left. its an open seating venue, so first-come-first-serve. we got there fairly early.

~james

excellent touch. The whole production of an arena scale show is pretty amazing. Its great when the big drama can be brought down to a simple, intimate gesture. That is bad ass.

I'd have to say one performance I saw that left me struck was an early show by kd lang. This was maybe 1985 or 86, she was full into the psycho cow punk thing- "Angel with a Lariat" and playing at First Avenue in Mpls, a mid to largish club. I really didnt know who she was, and then she started singing.She didnt need the mic. She just had some damn pipes. It was an amazing show and you just knew she was not coming back to this size venue. I remember she wore this country skirt with a plastic farm set sewn all over it- the animals, the fence sections, the silo. I thought that was a nice touch.

There is the strange vibe of the audience to add to the experience, too.

Chris Isaak. In a 300-person club, after his second album, before he got big at all. He's just a brilliant showman and funny as a stand-up comic.

EWF @ MLG

Sarah McLachlan and the Chieftains
Riverport Amphitheater, St. Louis
July 1995

At the time, I was a mild fan of both...two of my friends were going, the tix weren't too expensive, so I went as well. Fantastic show. Sarah would introduce her songs, many of them in the same way..."I wrote this about an ex-boyfriend of mine...man, he used to piss me off." It was just her and her piano, although the Chieftains would accompany her on some of her tunes. Beautiful.

The Chieftains came on and played most of the songs from The Long Black Veil, their release at the time. Although that album was made with a bunch of guest vocalists (Tom Jones, Sting, Van Morrison), the songs still sounded great. Sarah came on for a couple of the tunes, but the one I remember particularly was "The Foggy Dew" (which is performed on the album by Sinead O' Connor). A most excellent performance. At the end of the show, everyone was out of their seats, dancing like there was no tomorrow. I've seen a lot of great shows in my day, but this one was probably the best.

That sounds fantastic! I've never seen either live, but they both have blown me away via video. I remember watching (on TV) a hockey game where she sang "Oh Canada", brought my crusty old spouse to tears. No pyrotechniques and elaborate stylings, she just sang directly from the heart. Beautiful.

With hockey on my mind, I just thought of an amazing feat of performance, or performer. Sergei Fedorov. I have been hypnotized watching him skate when the Wings come to play the Wild. He is so strong and graceful, it looks so effortless. He takes offensive chances, get caught, and somehow manages to fly back to defend. He's got that low stance. (parden me while I get a cool drink!) Whew. yes I am a girl.

My first would be Counting Crows at the Greek Theater in Hollywood, followed closely by the little indie show I saw last weekend with Her Space Holiday and Azure Ray headlining.

Gonna have to go with Paul Simon and Ladysmith B M at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. He managed to keep three generations of fans happy, no small task. Rhythm of the Saints Tour.

I saw Cherish the Lady with Seamus Egan (of Solas) in Binghamton that guy wins in pure musicianship.

Just bought my tickets. Erwin Center, arena section 39, row 13. I'm not telling you what seat, just in case you go.
He'd better wear the damn hat!

Bright Eyes at the 9:30 Club

The entire night consisted of various portions of his band playing, though it was actually 3 bands total. It started with The Bruces, a nice little indy band with decent songs. Then moved on to a band who's name I can't recall and consisted of a guy with a guitar mostly. It was beautiful music. Then Bright Eyes came on, which actually consists of Conor Oberst, with whomever he gets to play with at the time. This time it was a 14 piece orchestra. The show was one of the most energetically charged shows I've seen in my entire life.

If you're into any kind of Indy music, I highly suggest getting some Bright Eyes stuff.

3 years ago, Dave Matthews Band at the Hersheypark Stadium. Particularly "Crush" as the best. Before all this new-dmb bullshit. :)

I forgot about Yes at the Hersheypark Stadium. The 90125 tour. Now that was a fine show.

ditto.

This is a hard one...
 

I've been to (roughly) 500 rock concerts, 250 theatrical performances and 100 Opera performances and have fond memories of many of those evenings. Nevertheless, I'll be as concise as possible.

Best Rock performances:

I saw my first rock concert on 6/13 (Friday the 13th) 1975. The Beach Boys and Chicago. The first tour for Brian Wilson in many years. This show is not really on the list, but as my first ever concert, it set the standard for all the shows to come...and it was a great show!

The first truly great show I saw was on 3/10/76 (two weeks short of my 17th birthday). The WHO at Madison Square Garden. It was only 1 hour and 45 minutes long (because Keith Moon's life was falling apart at the time), but he and his mates kept it together...and even came out for a (two song) encore, when almost no one had left a full half-hour after the lights had come on.

I had a third row ticket to see Bruce Springsteen at the NY Palladium (now an NYU dorm), a 2000 seat theatre on the "Born to Run" tour (10/30/76). It was an intimate glimpse into the life and troubled times of a man who would soon be his state's favorite son. He played a song you won't find on any of his albums..."It's My Life". Not a remake of the Eric Burden tune, more of a re-working of it. He told story after story about how his old man did everything in his power to try to convince Bruce he was wasting his time with that "God dammed guitar" finally building to the powerful refrain..."It's my life and I'll do what I want". The playing of that one song is a personal touchstone in my life.

But that show (one song aside) is not the best I saw Bruce. The Palladium show was only 2 1/2 hours long. The show I would see (one of three) on the River Tour on 12/19/80 would be the one I'll remember best. Over four hours long! We stumbled out well after 1 AM. Bruce was carried from the stage by two women dressed as nurses.

By this time I was going to see several show a week, sometimes two or more on the same night. The best night ever. Halloween 1981. I saw DEVO at Radio City, went to a party, then Zappa at the Palladium late show.

Since my "glory days"...the early eighties I've seen two shows worth mentioning.

A "Private" Michael Jackson concert (it was at the Garden but billed as a private show since it was a benefit for the United Negro College Fund...and all the other shows were at 50,000 + seat stadiums) on the "Bad" tour 3/3/1988. I don't care a damm about his personal life...the kid can sing and dance. And this was about ten times better than the "Victory" tour a few years earlier, where he toured with his brothers.

But my favorite band of all time is not one you'll find on the play list of a classic rock station. I think the best band of all time is PEARL JAM. I was at one of the shows at Randall's Island, but I knew very few songs at the time so I couldn't really appreciate it. The fifth time I saw them, 9/13/98 at the Meadows Music Theatre in Hartford. They played a great show, and then for the encore, they played a song they had only played once (the night before actually) since the night Kurt Cobain died, "Breath". After they played it, Eddie Vedder, pissed off by the lousy attitude of the security guards, incited us to rush the stage...which I found myself doing (as the band played "Alive"). I'll always remember how I left one guard sprawled out behind me with nothing more than a head fake. Then as the band played my favorite song, PORCH, I realized tears were streaming down my face. It was the most emotion I had displayed in public in a decade.

Like the man said..."This could be the day..."

Best Theatrical Performance Drama:

A revival of O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night". Jason Robards, Colleen Durhurst, and (her son with George C. Scott...playing her son), Cambell Scott. Directed by Jose' Quinton. I saw it like ten years ago, but it haunts me to this day.

Musical:

Mathew Broderick and Sara Jessica Parker in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". Three or four years ago. Much better than "The Producers".

Opera:

Joan Southerland and Alfrado Kraus in "Lucia di Lamamore" at the Met. The late eighties I think. The Opera Club were showering her with so many bouquets after her encore for "the mad scene", she literally reached out of the air and grabbed one and waved it at us. I had to stop telling people I saw this when I drove them to the Opera (I use to drive a taxi). They would get angry and not leave a tip. Some people can be so petty.


Sports:

Compared to other events, I've seen very few live sports events, but I did see one championship awarded...to Jimmy Connors, at the US Open, 1982 over the hated Ivan Lendel.

Lewis Black!- 11/22/02
 

Holy crap he was good. A couple thousand people and one guy with a mic and a bottle of water. He killed us. At the end of the set my stomach, face, and head all hurt from laughing so hard. Punch (line) drunk.