As we count down the greatest live performances in rock history -- only one to go! -- let's a take a moment, as they say in the new-age world, to reflect and review. Reflect on my own concert experiences over the last 28 years since the time, as a 15 year-old, that I walked into Nassau Coliseum for the first time to see the Police.
It may not sound remarkable to say that my first concert was the Police at Nassau Coliseum, but it was. Seeing a great band in its prime is a rarity. Nowadays, bands and performers play live until they drop. The economics of the industry demand it. Royalties from album sales are dropping like a rock now that music fans are stealing music right and left and sharing files and listening to free music in YouTube and Grooveshark. Playing live is the best way for these bands to make any money.
In 1982, there were fewer oldies acts. The Police had been making records for only 4 years, but their career was still on the upward trajectory. Their biggest album, Syncronicity, was still a year away, and during summer 1983 I saw the Police again at Shea Stadium. The Nassau show was better, more intimate. Shea is too large to see a concert. And the show was so big that two bands opened for them. The opening act for the opening act was an unknown band from Georgia that the rock critics loved and that I had barely heard of. I did not pay attention when they played a 20 minute set. I should have. R.E.M. was about to release one of the five best albums of the 1980's, Murmer.
The New York metropolitan area is the most prominent market for rock concerts. So large that when I was in high school in the early-to-mid 1980s you could not see the top-shelf acts without paying a scalper. Tickets were less expensive back then. Tickets for the Police show at Nassau cost only $12 (we sat in the upper deck, behind the stage), and I paid my buddy, a scalper, $20. That buddy was responsible for the memorable shows I saw in high school: David Bowie; Genesis; the charity benefit at Madison Square Garden with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page; The Who at Shea Stadium (the Clash opened the show).
Sometimes you went to concerts just to see certain legendary performers, even if they were past their prime, like the Beach Boys, Moody Blues and Yes, all playing in the mid-1980s. They seemed old, but they were not much older than I am today. Maybe the concert highlight of the time was U2 at Giants Stadium promoting the Joshua Tree album, in 1987. I drove down from college with a guy who lived in my dorm (we sat in different areas). Little Steven from Bruce Springsteen's band opened up and taunted the Reagan administration with a profane tirade against Oliver North.
Sometimes I got lucky. I saw the Grateful Dead in 1995 only a few weeks before Jerry Garcia died. We saw Jerry dying right there on stage, I guess. It was not a great show, and it was hotter than hell, I tell ya, but I always said I wanted to see the Dead at least once, and that's all I got. I also saw Stevie Ray Vaughn a few times in the mid-1980s. No one could know he'd die in a helicopter crash in 1990. Same goes for Frank Zappa, who left us in 1993.
The coolest and strangest concert experiences come to mind. Bruce Springsteen at Giants Stadium in September 2009 included the Born to Run album in its entirety. I see now that Springsteen is religion in New Jersey. His shows resemble some kind of revival. Todd Rundgren playing in a cape and bare feet in Poughkeepsie in 1995. Some lunatic throwing an explosive into the moat at Jones Beach Theater during an Eric Clapton show in 1983. Lucinda Williams in 2009 stopping her show in Peekskill, N.Y., because she did not like the acoustics and making the audience wait a few minutes while she coordinated the sound system anew. Taking my 80 year-old mother-in-law to see K.D. Lang in Kingston, N.Y., last year.
The best concert experience was seeing Yo La Tengo at Colony Cafe in Woodstock, N.Y., in 2007. Yo La Tengo is an alternative rock band that sometimes takes requests from the audience and tells stories between songs when it plays in small venues. I went because I was digging their new album at the time, which had a fantastic song, The Race is On Again, which blew my mind when I heard it for the first time one day on the road and I played it over and over like 20 times. I had to see Yo La Tengo at Woodstock!
There is nothing like Woodstock in the autumn chill. The good wife came along, and we got a table one level above the stage, no more than 15 feet from the band. I couldn't see the guitarist finger the chords, but I got a great view of the drummer's head. When I realized that the band was not going to play the new album in its entirety, I gathered the nerve to shout out, "I have a request." The singer/guitarist was sitting down so he didn't turn around. He just responded, "which is ...?" I shouted, "The Race is On Again." They played it, a mesmerising performance, as cool as the album version. I felt like a little kid who got an autograph at Yankee Stadium. Good timing for me. The band then played its encores, incluing an NRBQ song that I had never heard, a great version of this mysterious song.
The next day, I found the Yo La Tengo website and sent the band an email to request the name of that NRBQ song. I also told them I was the guy who made the request. The band responded right away! The NRBQ song was "Hit the Hay." And they thanked me for the request, said it was a good song to play live. Instant email communication from the band you saw the night before. The millionaire bands would never do this, and if they did it would be from a public relations intern. I'm pretty sure it was the band that responded to my question. How cool was this?
