If you could, what live performances would you enjoy re-living?


I have interest in hearing about yours.   I can think of some great concerts over the years in many great buildings, from Hancher in Iowa City, to Fisher Hall in New York, to some bars in Copenhagen. 

Something I have noticed....performers have times they are more "on" just like us, and it can make their concerts be perceived at different levels.   I know the three times I saw Jackson Browne, each was much different and most of that was his intent.  Having a good sized group with very talented back up singers to the time I saw him solo....all great, but very different.  He is a better guitar player than he may be given credit for. 

The live Jazz I have been to in NYC is near the top.  Sweet Basil and the Blue Note through the years have been very good to me, but in a much different vein, the lakefront festivals in Milwaukee are a somewhat unknown to most of America. 

I did see a few artists before their success and fame, saw a famous British singer at a bar in Rapid City many years ago..and he has done well since. 

Take care,

whatjd
Milles with Hank Mobley and Wynton Kelley and Jimmy Cobb
At the Blackhawk 4/22/61 on Saturday night.
Thanks to Bernie Fuller (RIP) for taking me there with his son, David. We drank Two Crappy Syrup cokes for each set! I didn't realize what history I was viewing. Okay I was 16.  Silly junior in high school. Became a full fledged jazz idiot from that moment on. NOBODY beats Hank Mobley on ts.  Fugettabout Coltrane, Dexter and the rest (except Harold Land a totally different species of tone for ts...saw HIM on Central Avenue in LA with Blue Mitchell. I'm old but Blessed.
I don't suppose anyone is interested in great performances in classical, opera, cantorial or traditional jazz that I want to hear/see again.
In 1966 a little girl named Joni Anderson Mithcell played a 'coffee house' in Saginaw, Michigan.  Joni had been in 'the states' only about 3 months and was living in Detroit off of Cass Ave.  (Every Detroiter will know!) I was a college sophmore and my girl friend and I went to the show with another graudate student who played an 'audition set' betweeen Joni's sets.  We all got to share a table for the 'artists' for the evening.  She played The Circle Game in the first set and played it 3 more times that night at my insistent requests.  Still may be my favorite out of her incredible  music.  
Several months later I moved to Detriot myself and lived in the Cass Corridor and found Joni lived up stairs.  She separated from Chuck Mithchell and headed out for Califorinia in the wake of divorcce and the heart ache of placing her baby for adoption.  We would sit at the Traffic Jam, a tiny neighborhood bar that is a upscale bar and restaurant today, and talk.  
I have not seen her since, except in concert (opened for Dylan in Minneapolis in the late 1990s).  I would love to be back in Saginaw at the  Ginger Blue and sipping muddy expresso and watching a left handed guitar player on an upside down guitar with the voice and the words of an angel.  I wonder if she remembers Detriot and Richard?  
Richard
fleschler,  

If I could, most of the top 10 live performances I would relive would be Jazz events/performances.....some of the  best were in the wee hours in Copenhagen. 

Bob Wilbur played in Copenhagen often.  I heard him at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City.  Too crowded but he was great!
My friend Frank (Oregonpapa) regularly went to the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, CA and heard all the great West Coast jazz musicians.  He said that those were sensational experiences   I bet they were!

fleschler
1,223 posts

When it comes to a Classical performance, I saw the Chicago Symphony with the Coral Singers...and the first chair Cello player and his girlfriend in with the singers stayed with my wife and I and we biked the Sugar River Trail in Wi. the next day...and I did a cookout in their honor....a wonderful weekend. 

And when it comes to June Christy, that Champagne would likely be a Brut...or at least an Extra Dry. 

at this point... any live performance by keith jarrett

ideally with jack and gary on stage

i guess brad mehldau will have to do from now on...  :(

I just flashed back on seeing Lucinda Williams at a pizza parlor somewhere in L.A. in the late-80's. Her s/t Rough Trade album had just been released, and I loved it. There were only a half-dozen people in the place.

The stage was tiny, her drummer David Lindley playing not a full set but a rub board. She had her original L.A. band, with Gurf Morlix on Telecaster and harmony vocals and Dr. John (not THE Dr. John, but an actual doctor) on standup bass.

Who woulda thought her Car Wheels On A Gravel Road album a decade later would elevate her into a major star? I had been introduced to her earlier in the 80's, at a Long Ryders show at Club Lingerie on Sunset Blvd. (her then-husband was their drummer). She was very shy.

I saw her a few more times before CWOAGR broke big, last at The Troubadour, quite a step up from the pizza parlor. After the CW album, it was into big theaters. Last time I saw her, she had Jim Lauderdale playing acoustic rhythm guitar and singing harmonies, and the great Jim Christie on drums, whom she had just stolen from Dwight Yoakam's band. Fantastic!