I know none of you like AFI, but last night I saw them live for the first time, and it was simply amazing. The heat didn't matter (the building had no AC, so they were literally hosing us down to stay cool) the bad openers didn't matter, because when AFI took the stage, it was perfect. They didn't miss a note. Adam didn't miss a beat. Davey was so obviously happy about having a real crowd, not a warped crowd. The set was awesome. The encore was awesome. It was everything.

Just thought I'd share. Discuss great concert experiances, or something.

Where should I start here.....hmmmmm

How about the show that you remember as being the first one to really knock you off your feet?

Living Sacrifice.

It was basically a living room in a house that served as the youth center for a Vineyard. There were around 100 people, and they played like it was 100,000. Wildest show of my life

My favorite concert experience has got to be Ben Folds, but I also got a big kick out of the two times I saw Tool.

Musically, the first show that really knocked me off my feet was Bad Brains and Living Colour in May 1993. Small venue and both bands just tore it up.

Usually when I go to a concert, it's the "off-stage" stuff that sticks with me. Like running into my 250lbs Blonde Stalker Chic at a big-ass festival show (shortly after I had met that Tubby Dead Leadsinger Guy from Sublime).

Or the guy who said "wanna' packa' schmokes" at the first show I ever went to.

Or getting hammered by the rain at a ZZ Top concert that was eventually cancelled when the stage got flooded.

Or going to see Suicidal Tendencies play in a gymnasium during a blizzard, in the late 90's.

Or fighting for my life then doing keg stands, inside a small garage while a shitty band called "The Rocking Tacos" played.

Rage Against the Machine/Wu Tang

FUCKING INSANE.

Slayer - I told this story here....

Eminem - yeah, I saw him in a small club here in Pittsbugh before he ever had a video on MTV.

The Gap Band - Say something negative, I'll beat your ass.

Outkast - I caught them in concert a couple of years ago when Stankonia just dropped. EXCELLENT

KRS One - I've never seen a person in my life have that much energy. It was at a small club and he fucking tore it down. Best performance I've ever seen.

Pantera - Was bloody the first 15 mintues there. I punched at least 5 people in the face.

Up in Smoke - I got to see Dre/Snoop/Ice Cube/Eminem all in one night. And at the end they did a NWA reunion without Easy (obviously)

Beasties/Tribe Called Quest - UNREAL fucking show. Everyone busted ass.



.......just for now.

God Damn. Those all sound pretty insane. Rage/WuTang in particular.

Er, I saw Nine Inch Nails and Bauhaus?

I don't really do the concert thing. I have messed up hearing for the most part and concerts are a little too painful for me unless I go to outdoor shows or big arena shows where I can sit above the speakers and such. That doesn't really work as most of the groups I want to see like Iced Earth work the smaller venues I don't go to.

Plus the Columbus concert goers are a bunch of savages. I saw a fight spill out of the Newport Music Hall that ended with a guy being put in a body bag after being stabbed to death. This is also on top of 2-3 giant riots at Ozzfest and the whole Dimebag murder.

Duke Ellington Orchestra. Unbelievable.

The noise/sound level thing can be a problem. I used to go a concert and would have my ears ringing until the next morning. It was like a badge of honor, I thought.

But, I saw Motorhead on a Sunday last year and my ears rang until Friday. It was painful. I still think there's a slight buzzing in my ears ever since then. I wear earplugs whenever I go to an indoor show, now. When you wear em', you actually get a cleaner, more crisp sound. You can make out the lyrics, instead of a massive buzzing of distorted guitars. It's usually dark, so nobody will see 'em in your ear and think you're a wimp.

Fun Wacky Trivia Pop-up: I actually modelled earplugs for an OSHA sfaety course back in 2000! Yup, I'm an Earplug Model!!

Yeah, I've been doing the earplug thing for quite a while. It makes a ton of difference. Well, I didn't need them at the Duke Ellington show but...

U2, Living Colour, Everything, Chili Peppers, Fishbone, and Brian Setzer Orchestra are some of my favorite rock shows I've seen. I usually prefer the clubs to the arenas, but U2 always comes across fine in the bigger setting.

We live in the same city!?!?!?!

I agree that the crowds can be a problem. Especially if you're going to see an opener.

Surprisingly, some of the worst crowds I've ever seen happened at Dashboard Confessional shows.

Yeah.

I did not know that. How odd.

Worst crowd ever was at a Bad Brains show in Wilmington, NC. Riot squad had to come in. Scary night.

The one Ozzfest riot had the riot squad come in. And of course everyone whines about police brutality even though they were setting fire to shit and spilling out into the neighboring areas and tearing people's property up.

The college students always do that shit when they riot on campus too. "Waa some police officer clocked me because I was doing something violent."

I thought it was rediculous at a Shinedown concert when the crowd was acting like we were listening to some sort of hardcore metal band, not some hick nu metal act. It was outdoors on pavement, and I know someone who went to the hospital due to the moshing, and this other guy was having his friends launch him into the air, just hoping that there'd be people under him to catch him. Idiot.

I may have told the story here before, but it's a good one. Prong opened for the Bad Brains. Singer was leaning over the pit, doing the headbang thing. Somebody in the pit jumps up and cracks him in the head with a beer bottle. He goes down like melted cheese. Band keeps playing, some people run on stage to help him out. He starts getting up, bleeding like a stuck pig, dives into the crowd and starts swinging on everybody. Eventually he climbs back to the stage and starts screaming in the microphone about rednecks and stuff like that. Somebody jumps out of the balcony on to him, but doesn't do much damage before security gets him. The guy from Prong then apologizes and tries to cool everything down, and they play one last song. Now we're waiting on Bad Brains, and I see this Mexican gangsta making his way across the floor and punches this skinhead right in the face. Big fight breaks out, but it seems to cool off after a minute. finally the Brains get up, and they're playing reggae trying to keep everything settled. About midway through the first song the gangs start going at it again. This huge bouncer jumps into the crowd and punches a guy so hard in the head that you actually hear the crack above the music. Everything stops for about two seconds, nd then the whole crowd turns on this bouncer. It got real ugly. The Bad brains run off stage, I hide behind a bar, and a couple of minutes later, here comes the riot squad swinging clubs. Loads of fun.

Good God. That's scary. I now feel lucky that in my few shows I've been to nothing serious has happened. Turned out some kids passed out from the heat Monday Night, but by all accounts everyone is alright.

Other concerts I'm going to hit in the upcoming months are Tool and RHCP/Mars Volta. Excited.

You will greatly enjoy RHCP. They have a real cool vibe live. Frusciante is unreal.

Yeah. I'm going to check out some of his solo stuff before then. I've been told it's amazing.

NO!!! His solo stuff sucks hard. No joke. It was all done under the heavy influence of heroine, and is barely classifiable as music. Just listen to Blood Sugar Sex Magic over and over again.

Or that. I actually got a copy of that, and my brother broke it before I could get it on my iPod. You just reminded me of that. I meant to pick that up this weekend, too. Thanks.

No riots or anything..but the first concert I went to had people fucking. It was an Iron Maiden show in a basketball arena. About 1/3 of the seats behind the stage were closed off. It was during the lull between the opening act and the main act. On the upper level, one couple walks over, into the closed off area and starts fucking. People notice and start cheering. Eventually, one of the spotlight operators turns his light on them. People are going nuts now...but security walks over and pulls the couple back to their seats. BIG "booooo".

Closest thing I had to a riot was at a somewhat infamous Pearl Jam show in Boulder, November 1993 (yeah, yeah...this was in my total hippie/art student/grunge period). I was sitting upstairs in the loft, but I guess the "pit" got out of control. A secruity guard got shoved around and his headset wound up on stage. Eddie Vedder said something about secruity mistreating the fans. Then he picked up the headset and said "here's what we think about control" and smashed the thing. I read in the paper the next morning that this had caused a "riot". News to me.

Almost forgot, Mighty Mighty Bosstones used to put on a heck of a show too. That was my first "club" show, in '92. I was 17 and had to sneak into the old 1313 club in downtown Charlotte to see them. I saw them many times after that and they were always really good.

Oooh, ooh. I just remembered another great (terrible) show story. 1994 - I was a Freshman at UNCW and had come home for a few days. Hooked up with some of my boys to go see Follow for Now at the Pteradactyl in Charlotte. FfN was a black rock band in the vein of Living Colour, but a little funkier. i shaved my head for the first time a few days earlier, because I was 19 an getting thin on top. So anyhow, we're in the club grooving to the music, when the band stops and the keyboard player is like, "Wait. We don't need no skinhead pussies in here. Somebody get that mf'er outta here, or we ain't playing. Keep in mind, I don't even remember my head is shaved, and I've never been a skinhead so I'm looking around for some dudes wearing swastikas, or hailing Hitler in the middle of the pit. I start feeling the crowd bearing down on me, and suddenly I realize that he is talking about me. Before I could even think, some dude had clocked me, so I'm just fighting for my life. This HUGE Samoan bouncer comes and grabs me around the neck, and gets the other guy under his arm and carries us outside. So outside he throws the other guy down in the gravel parking lot and proceeds to choke me nearly to death. I seriously thought it was over. I started fading, and then he picks me up and throws me a good 10 feet into the side of the building and I just crumble to the ground. I'm happy to be alive, but then I'm thinking this other guy is still out here wanting to fight me, and I can't even move. Luckily, my friends had made it outside by this time, and by the time I had regained my senses, my friend Trent was feeding this guy knees like you have never seen. It was sickening to watch, really. I was just happy I had survived and could go home.

The end of another fun night for the WMD.

I may have told this here already, but I went to see Stavesacre, Living Sacrifice and Project 86 in Indy. This was a few years ago, right after Limp Bizkit made "nu-metal" really cool with 14 year olds. I watch Stavesacre, because it's the first time I saw them live. When Living Sacrifice comes on, I move to the front because I've been looking forward to blow off some steam. The set starts, and the crowd sucks in. Kind of like when you vacuum seal a bag. No kidding. I can't breathe, it's so tight. So I gather my senses, and realize the crowd is swaying. So I start to work with the sway, and push a really fat kid next to me. Half the crowd falls. No kidding. I work my way to the back and then realize most of the crowd is 14 year old kids with red hats and Dickies. I get pissed, and spend the rest of the show by myself off to the side in my own personal mosh pit

Stavesacre - ah yes, I've seen 'em a few times, and they are incredible.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot The Specials. That's right, I saw the frigging Specials at ZIggy's in Winston-Salem. If you don't know who The Specials are, go ahead and kick yourself in the nuts. They are legends, and definitely one of the best shows I've seen.

Okay, this is a story my mom told me recently, while I was listening to "The Idiot" by Iggy.

"Oh, I met him once. Didn't know who the hell he was."

"What!?"

"I was there to see Joan Jett. She was opening for him. Real skinny guy with stringy hair, right?"

::I Nod::

"Yeah. I ran into him at the bar right as I was asking "So who's this guy headlining?" He goes "That would be me.""

::I just shake my head::

Okay, tonight I was at a local show to see a band I know somebody from. One of the openers was a Boston band by the name of The Motion Sick. I was expecting pain because the singer walked out in pants tighter than mine and carrying an accoustic guitar. I was blown away. They were really really good. I started singing along after I picked up some of the words, which they appreciated, since I was the only kid on the floor who wasn't in a band. About halfway through the set the singer looks down at me and goes "This song is for this kid right here!"

Now, at this poitn I should point out that I'm wearing my black jeans and band t-shirt, which just so happens to be a Joy Division shirt with "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on it. What do they start playing.

Love Will Tear us Apart. It was unreal. Took me a few seconds to get it. I talked to them after the show, and the keyboardest (who was kind of hot) said that her faveourite part of the show was the moment of realization I had when I figured out what they were playing. (They played it a mite bit slower and in a different key, or I'd have gotten it right away.)

But yeah. Point of the story is never judge a book by it's cover. You might miss a hella good set and not meet some really cool people.

Actually, the point would be you not capatalizing on a hot chick in a band that maybe with a little luck you could have bagged. DUMBASS.

From what I could tell, her and the bassist were an item. They were certinly a bit more friendly than just bandmates...

And you run on the assumption that I have the "little luck" I'd need. (I don't.)

You should have just lied and said you bagged her. Otherwise though, cool story. I don't know how many life altering musical experiences I've had from just going to a show.

Well, it's like the lottery.

You can't win if you don't play.

Last time I lied about "bagging" a chick at a show (The NIN show) ya'll called me on it and ran me out of the thread.


And good point DK. I'll have to remember that.

You'll have to remember that? It's common sense, man. Just don't get herpes. I don't want to hear you bitch about never wanting to have sex again after contracting some disease the first time. It happens to the best of us.

I have a horrible lack of common sense. In all situations. I think I've proven that by now.

I saw Alice in Chains on Monday night. I really wasn't too excited about going. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it until about 3pm that day. But I got there and it was a truly nifty show. Much better than I had expected. Hadn't realized how much I dug their music.

Sure, it was sans Layne Staley, but Jerry Cantrell's pretty much the main cook of the group.