Greatest Live Musical Moment Ever Experienced

spiritualized - november of last year. at the beginning, someone yelled 'bring it on, spaceman!' i can only remember small fragments of the night after that, there were so many memory-wiping drones. so loud it was weakening; a physical endurance test.

Runner up would be Straitjacket Fits live at Auckland's Big Day Out about 7 or 8 years ago, one of the Fits' final gigs. Tripping at the time, and the stage, music, and crowd noise took on an extraordinary silver shimmering aspect.

Also:
Superchunk, every time I've seen them.
A Jeff Mangum acoustic set with backing from his wife (of Elf Power I think). His music meant the world to me then, and sounded even better live.

The feelies '87 - they ended up playing 6 3-song encores, basically another concert because everyone was having such a blast

mushrooms and Queen Ida led to me dancing around for hours with a huge grin on my face

many more that would take forever to list

Birthday Party, Brighton, everytime I saw them really, but especially circa Junkyard. The stage was only about 2" high and by the end of the gig the band and the audience were completely mixed up - people on the stage bashing things, band members on audience members shoulders but still playing, nick cave laying on the ground where he'd been pulled off the stage, his head cracked on concrete, still singing. that weird kind ofinspired mosh violence everywhere: mysteriopusly, no one is hurt, like some pagan rite.

Massiveattach. Glasto 1997, astonishing, pristine, archecitectonic beauty.

Alabama 3, Moles, Bath c 1998, th real thing: dangerous, witty, danceable, great.

God Speed! in a disused Church in Bristol, 2001, an experience of geological beauty.

Well, that's just what comes to mind right now.

Other good moments:

- Trail of the dead smashing everything up (old, but still cool!) and someone managing to steal the bass drum

- Underworld at the Brighton Essential festival a few years ago...playing born slippy and the crowd going krazy

- Kenickie doing stand up and occasional songs at the MM birthday party at the Astoria

Jon - Moles in Bath is the best venue ever!

Derrick May at The DEMF 2000

Godzuki/Asha Vida Split 7" release at the Record Collector June 95

Laddio Boloko at the Magic Stick, no idea when ;)

Brandon Giles at some bar in Nashville, July 2002

The Album Leaf, Summer 2001 at Stormy Records, Dearborn.

Leather Nun and Echo & the Bunnymen circa 1988

Chavez and GBV circa 1992

Mo Tucker w/ guest Stearling Morrison in podunk dive somewhere around '95

surely that doesn't count as live music moment. if mt is allowed this then i'd have countless club moments more epiphanical than listening to richard ashcroft and his ex-mates in a field.

Sonny "Sun Ra" Blount and the Arkestra in Birmingham, Alabama (the Magic City) in 1990.

Charles Gayle trio, 1994.

R.E.M. opening the Green tour in Louisville, 1989 (yeah, it was good, unbelievably).

Shellac playing a show I booked on my 20th birthday (esp. Steve's anti-college kid diatribe to open the set).

Any time I've seen Tony Conrad (but esp. summer '97 at Anthology).

Maryanne Amacher at 6Odum, Chicago.

No Neck at an unannounced show at the Velvet Lounge, Chicago '98 (after the Sunday night jam session).

Kraftwerk at the Riviera, Chicago '98.

Lungfish, Crownhate Ruin, Regulator Watts in college, '96.

Seeing a Gastr/Loren Connors show I booked written about by Bill Meyer in Magnet (tangent).

uh, there's probably loads more...

swans on thee last tour thing: ears rang for days etc. etc.

Yes, my friend.

Yes, it was ten years ago now. Yes, I've seen so much since then (and the concluding five bands at Terrastock this past Sunday alone made for sheerly monumental memories). But the two times I saw MBV -- especially the first, where everything was queasy and packed and hot and obsession and sheer release was in the air, and the whole pit was just a miasma of bodies in very slow motion while songs like "Honey Power" and "Slow" and the extended "You Made Me Realize" were being ripped out while projections of multicolored collages verged on rave chaos -- made for a grasping at the godhead as close as could be imagined. As simple and devestating as that.

Then there was Marc Almond in 1999 and the Cure in 1992 and Mogwai and Bardo Pond in 2001 and Depeche Mode pretty much every time since 1990 and...

* Devo in 1981, my first concert ever
* REM in 1985 - free outdoor show at my college with the Neats opening
* The Raincoats at Maxwell's, 1994
* Sonic Youth's FIRST Central Park show, 1993
* The Go Team opening for Yo La Tengo, 1989
* several NMH shows when the band lived in NYC - I particularly remember a poignant Jeff solo show at Other Music
* Fugazi at the IPU fest, Olympia, 1991
* Stuart Moxham/David Kilgour/Versus/Magnetic Fields at CBGB, 1992 - the best multi-band bill ever
* World of Pooh's final show, Maxwell's, 1990
* the first time I saw the Mountain Goats, 1994

etc., etc., etc.
mike

- outhud, deerhoof, sean na na, and witchy poo at the 40th street warehouse in oakland, ca.

- animal collective + black dice at springwater in nashville, tn

- don martin 3, palatka, and end of the century party in st. augustine, fl

- jenny toomey and geoff farina at UF in gainesville, fl

- lightning bolt, arab on radar, the locust, quest for quintana roo in 2000... san fran, ca.

- stereolab and dymaxion, athens, ga

- sebadoh, smog, and harry pussy, atlanta, ga

- make up, the warmers, some form of lambchop, and dave cloud in nashville, tn

- nuzzle, fisticuffs bluff, patterns make sunrise, and moonraker gainesville, fl

this is one of those things that goes on and on.
m.

Maybe i should get out more?

Mission of Burma in Boston, sometime in Februrary of this year. Out come the roadies / stage crew to set up the gear - put the plexiglass shield in front of the drum kit, bring out the guitars and amps, adjust the mics, etc. Roger Miller's set-up had his wee li'l amp sitting on a chair (if I remember correctly), with a few pedals & boxes connected (maybe only one). The guitar tech strums the guitar a few times (as guitar techs are wont to do), and then he tests out the tremelo - you know, that effect where the guitar sounds fade in and out, as if some snot-nosed brat is fucking with the volume knob. It sounded just like the beginning of "Trem Two", a song from their first (& only) LP. At that moment, it dawned on me that I was actually gonna see Mission of Burma (dood!!!!), and from that moment until about halfway through their first set, I smiled and cavorted just like that silly teenager Mel derides way back @ the beginning of the thread. Eventually, I settled into a more contemplative state of euphoria, but, wow.

Shouting along to "Academy Fight Song" that night ranks as a close 2nd.

Spiritualized on the US "Rollercoaster" tour playing "Shine A Light/Electric Mainline". The recording on "Fucked Up Inside" (recorded at the same show) just doesn't quite capture it.

The Replacements at the infamous "stink bomb" show at the Roxy. "Tim" had just been released, and the 'Mats were hell-bent on sabotaging everything in sight until they broke into the most desperate, heart-wrenching version of "Nowhere Man" I'd ever heard.

Link Wray sometime in the late-90s. For Link, the guitar is the One Ring - 70 years old and decrepit without one, but the second he put on the guitar and exploded into a version of "Rumble" that would shame Black Flag, he visably transformed into that teenaged hood who wrote instrumentals (INSTRUMENTALS!) that were "too suggestive".

Blue Oyster Cult. Late 80s show in an abandoned movie theater in Riverside with Firehose opening up. Problematic show... the sound was bad, the band was off, no new album in years, small crowd, etc. etc., until Eric Bloom went off on an insane gibbering rant about conspiracies, flying saucers, sex/drugs/rock-n-roll, being "BOC On Tour Forever!", leading up to a monster stadium-sized version of "Take Me Away" that blew away everyone. Show kinda fell apart after that, but it was amazing to at least catch a glipse of what it must have been like back in the day.

The Pogues / Los Lobos at the Palladium. Think this was '87 or '88 (the show was on the week that the Lobos' version of "La Bamba" went to #1). _If I Should Fall From Grace..._ had just come out and Joe Strummer was on guitar. Quite possibly the best show I've ever seen. Period. Both bands were just stunning.

Stan Ridgway. 1992 show with Concrete Blonde, Wire Train, and No Doubt (who were still ska then). Stan had a dozen people on stage - I can't even begin to describe what transpired.

Pretenders. 1981 at the Santa Monica Civic. This was when James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon were still alive. Totally mindblowing show.

LoSoul with Malte in Tresor, Berlin - click-dub haze you could dive into

Sonic Youth, Columbia Halle, Berlin -"Shadow Of A Doubt" and "Karen Revisited" this year - I didn't expected anything, and got everything.

living in remote western canada and just turning 19 means not so many Greatest Live Musical Moments Ever Experienced.

So, with the help of the crowd, they/we moved the drums, a huge stack of amps and cords out into the alley. Then came the extension cords. And the water guns. Joyous dancing in muddy puddles in an alley in downtown Providence at 2 a.m. for a good fortyfive minutes until the cops showed up because of noise complains. Falling down, water gun fights, dancing on top of cars and some of the happiest people I've /ever/ seen at a gig.

Also amusing were the people exitting the other bars looking down the alley only to hear hellacious noise and see a crowd of dancing hipsters/art fags.

On a completely different note, though, it reminds me of two other wonderful shows, both by Windy and Carl, at an OC art gallery. The combination of setting, atmosphere and meditation was lovely.

With love from J zeros poor lass

1) Cornelius, at the Masquerade in Atlanta, in mid-August of 1999. I had never heard of him before and from the very start of the show was falling in love. It came to a climax during his "Love Me Tender" theremin solo and something in my mind just *snapped* at that instant. I was never the same again.

2) Xiu Xiu, at our friend Kristen's house in Atlanta, Oct 18, 2002. I have a band that somehow opened for this band (who i had also never heard of) and we were pretty happy with our set, so I was in a good mood (amplified by some ...emm...additional substances) and then I ended up sitting in a chair in the hallway, completely entranced by this band. Everything they played was utterly perfect and original, and it seemed like a summation of everything truly great, but forgotten (just cos it's too weird), about pop music and I loved it. Unfortunately, I got their record the next day and was immensley let down...

3) Quasi, The Echo Lounge, early spring 2002. They went through a very good show and then at the end of it performed "War Pigs" and it was totally electrifying. For those few minutes rock 'n' roll truly still ment something, as absurd at that now sounds to me. Of course, it was partially compounded by the absurdity of a black metal classic being performed by a grown man humping a piano and an indie queen drummer, placed upon the stage in an insanely asymmetrical fashion. But during that performance, everything, all rules, gleefully leaped out the window.

Booking/Attending Barbara Manning and The Go-Luckys, The Wayne and Kate Experience and Tizzy at (my second home) Flywheel in Easthampton,MA. Like having the show in your living room. Where else are you gonna see 3/4 of The Crystalized Movements live even if they are in 2 different bands now and Barbara is an amazingly talented musician/performer/all around sweetheart.

High Rise/Major Stars/Frost Giant=Maximum Heavy Rock Action in a packed house full of lots of screaming people rocking out with High Rise in head to toe leather.

Borbetomagus at Club Metro Northampton- This place is known for its dance nights. I got the upmost satisfaction walking out of the small back room where they were playing and having everybody in the place look at me like I was the span of Satan. I took out my ear plugs for just a second when they locked the bells together. It was so loud that my ears rang for 2 days.

Ghost/Six Organs Of Admittence/Joshua at Hampshire College Red Barn last Thursday- Last stop before Terrastock and everyone in the barn, yes an acousticly perfect barn,was blown away. Ghost/ Six Organs/Josh all played amazing sets and the vibe was perfect. It was like being present at the Birth Of Jesus...

Favourite single incident: when the Ramones' sound went on their first UK tour, and they stood there dumbly for a few moments, then reacted to some sound offstage, and trooped off. Roadies work frantically for several minutes, then the band troop back on, take up the poses, and all stare to their right until they get the signal, then they all start playing again. They didn't say a word.

Plus, Win were the support act. Davey Henderson knowing that they were on a hiding to nothing were fantastic and fantastically pissed off. Angry angular punk funk, more bristly than their sugar coated records had ever hinted at.

gybe! at the aladdin theater in portland in 2000
belle & sebastian on 9/11/2001 at the roseland in portland
sigur ros at the fillmore in san fran, 2001

i'm sure i'm leaving some out... i hope no one misinterprets the pleasure i took from the 9/11/2001 show, but they were incredible and atmosphere was intense, etc....

John Cale in a very small local bar. it was packed with maybe only 100 people. I was right up front by his piano.
Trans Am at a dance club, everyone in the place was dancing along, and they played for a while, and seemed so excited by how much the audience was dancing.

marco zaffarano. yes, saw him there a few times, he was very good

* on his first tour with the Bad Seeds when for like the second or third song he gave this scream and we're all like "O Jesus he's gonna do 'Mutiny in Heaven'" -- and he did (Perkins Palace, Pasadena 1985)
* on the Kicking Against the Pricks tour, before "Your Funeral My Trial" had come out, when during "Long Time Man" my friend Allyson and I had this moment of feeling certain that there couldn't possibly be a better music anywhere on the planet
---
After that there's a long dry spell and then Cakekitchen played Fast Forward II in Nijmegen and I, drugless, was certain I'd seen GOD

And watching the first few notes of Babies turn 1000 tired but happy people in maniacs.

That said, Sonic Youth and Dismemberment Plan had great shows just for the pure chaos of it all. Anything can, and did happen.

Ween. Notorious for playing VERY long concerts without a set-list (they just get up on stage and drink and the audience yells songs at 'em and they do it like that for damn-near 4 hours!), they pulled out one of the best third encores I've ever witnessed with a rip-roarin' "Dr. Rock"->"Blarney Stone"->"Hot For Teacher" trifecta, thus finishing off our concert evening on a very rowdy note at damn-near 2 am (after taking the stage at about 9:30).

-Dick Dale at the Magic Stick detroit in 1999. Made me realize that I wanted to devote the rest of my life to live music.

-Gasoline at the Gold Dollar in Detroit, 2001 -- japanese garage rock freakery. The guitar player ripped out all the strings of his guitar, and then played the encore song with a ray gun held up to a pick-up(and solo'd!)

-Cherry Valence/Federation X/Bible of the Devil -- Elbow Room, Ypsilanti, MI -- August 2002 -- great build-up, perfect execution by the Cherry Valence, better than monday night's show at the same place.

-Patti Smith w/ Lenny Kaye & Allen Ginsburg, Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, 1996. Hearing them do "Ghost Dance" freaked the shit out of me and I went & bought _Easter_ the next day. They were at the local indie bookstore doing a signing, so I got Patti & Lenny to sign it, and lenny ever drew a picture of his guitar pedal on it for me.

-16 Horsepower/Slim Cessna's Auto Club -- Magic Stick, Detroit, sept 2000. 16HP encored with "Twenty Four Hours", nailed it PERFECT, and FREAKED out the crowd.

-Dead Moon/Easy Action/Bible of the Devil -- 14 Sept 2001, Empty Bottle, Chicago -- a PERFECT show, and a great realize for an audience freaked out & burned out by recent events. Each band was better than the last, each built to a pinnacle, and Dead Moon climaxed with a full-on garage-punk version of "Communication Breakdown".

-Sunny Day Real Estate - July 2000, Clutch Cargo's, Pontiac, MI -- on a sweaty july day, seeing the room packed with kids with sweatervests. The show was really good, but what make it Great was my brother. My stoic, 6'5", 250 lbs, defensive tackle for a Div II school, business major, brother absolutely broke down and starting screaming along to the climax of "In Circles" at the end of the set.

-Mission of Burma, Nov 2002, St. Andrews, Detroit. Jesus Fucking Christ. 2 full sets, 3-4 encores, they played every single song that you wanted to hear, even "Fame & Fortune" immediately after I yelled at them to play it. Seeing 3 guys in their early 50's have about 20-30 years melt from them right in front of you. Drained me(w/ stoic brother in tow) phsyically, mentally, & emotionally.

Best Play Ever, Man.

i don't think this moment will ever be topped for me: december 18th, 1996. the make-up at zoot's, which was a house in detroit. i was right up front, but all 200 or so people in the place were dancing, screaming "yeah" at ian's prompts, falling over, and in general having religious experiences. to start the encore, ian spiv ran from the back of the place through the crowd to reach the stage, and when he did, nothing in my rational mind could have stopped me from grabbing the sleeve of his nehru jacket and screaming my guts out like some crazed groupie. we were all chanting and screaming and clapping and stomping our feet, it was amazing. a religious experience, totally. can i hear you say "yeah?"

Seeing Springsteen in Memphis on the BITUSA tour with a late buddy, and welling up as Miami Steve strode onstage to do a duet of 'Slip Away' with Bruce.

Borbetomagus at Tonic with Merzbow (no, they didn't collaborate). Third time I'd seen them, and they were so on, so alive, so totally collaborative...one of the other times I saw them they seemed like three guys soloing at once; this time, they were three guys creating a solid mass of congealed sound. Beautiful.

Fushitsusha at Tonic. The real Fushitsusha, not Haino with a pickup rhythm section. Transcendent. They were supposed to play two sets, but it became one three-hour monster. The show was in 1999, but last year somebody sent me a 2CD bootleg of it which is now one of my most treasured possessions.

Slayer at Roseland, on the most recent tour, with Dave Lombardo back behind the drum kit. The breakdown on "Angel Of Death" is so monstrous and overpowering on record that you can't believe it's even happening to you when they kick into it live. Every other metal band on the planet (except Motörhead) exists to be compared unfavorably to Slayer.

John Zorn/Fred Frith/Bill Laswell/Dave Lombardo, with vocals by Eye Yamatsuka, at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival in 2000(?). Frith seemed kinda lost at sea, but Lombardo, Zorn and Laswell were the best Pain Killer ever, and I've seen Pain Killer, too.

Fred Anderson, Kidd Jordan, William Parker and Hamid Drake at the 2002 Vision Festival. Totally ass-ripping, totally soulful out-jazz with more swing than fifty big-band albums.

Junior Kimbrough, opening for Iggy Pop at Roseland. He didn't get out of his chair for the whole set; it sounded like one long song, John Lee Hooker jamming with the Band of Gypsys. And then, Iggy, to follow it up.

All of these were "I could die right now" kinda evenings. Wish there were more like them, but nothing's impressed me this year except for a few metal acts: Strapping Young Lad, Napalm Death, Immortal and Amon Amarth.

Hard to believe he's become that roly-poly Soundtrack of Our Lives guy...

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-- Also, I will never forget the Lifter Puller reunion show at Brownies, the day before I moved away from NYC.

the mind staggers.