Kevin Howdeshell / kevincredible.com
It’s about to be full-on festival season, with more backyard boogies, three-day band jams and outdoor headliner concerts than you can ever hope to attend. Which also means it’s time to dust off your personal top-five hand of concerts you’ve ever seen.
Everyone has them, his or her “full house” of best shows ever, with marathon guitar solos, surprise guests or famous bands that will never be seen live again. It includes ace of hearts shows like Woodstock or Monterrey, or the king of spades to say you saw Nirvana or Led Zeppelin. It’s the queen of diamonds to have seen Alabama Shakes just before they began to break, or the jack of clubs to have been in a small café, listening to Ryan Adams when he was in Whiskeytown.
With all the fun yet to come, here’s my personal full house of greatest shows I have ever seen. I would love to hear about the top five shows you have seen; leave them in the comments section below.
Neil Young Garage Band Tour, Ottawa
Neil Young is one of the greatest live performers in rock and roll history. Whether it’s solo or with whatever iteration of backing band he’s chosen to tour with, every time I’ve seen him, he’s brought the house down. Back in the late ’80s my friend Karl and I drove up to see him in Ottawa with his “garage band.” It was the first time I saw him, and remembered when the Ogden Theatre on Colfax was showing his movie, Live Rust, and the reviewer noted that, “Young plays licks hot enough to peel the paint off a barn.” In the parking lot we got drunk with a couple Canucks on sweet apple wine. Inside we smoked cheap grass while guitars wailed like sirens as Young and crew drowned us in a constant wave of sound. When he played “Powderfinger,” I could feel every note like shimmering stars in my mind. And the whole drive home Karl kept saying, “Fuckin’ Neil came to play tonight, man.”
Grateful Dead, Red Rocks, 1987
I suppose my entire “full house” could easily be composed of Red Rocks shows, from the all-American sound of Tom Petty to the electric virtuosity of the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughn. But two shows in particular continue to get the mental rewind. Number one is the first night of the final three night stand the Grateful Dead ever played on the Rocks, when, as a full fledged young hippie more than likely in need of a proper ass-kicking, I went in with some friends to make tie-dye t-shirts with the genius idea we would sell them to the band’s other broke hippie fans. On the front was a cartoon Jerry Garcia holding hands with Mickey Mouse from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and on the back it said, “Going where those chilly winds don’t blow,” from “Cold, Rain and Snow,” one of my favorite Dead cover songs. When the August day turned chilly and ominous with mountain weather, the Dead opened with that song. I could feel the heavy bass line reverberating in my bones and the trip, as they say, was on.
The Clash, Red Rocks
Number two was the original Clash show at Red Rocks. There was a second show, after Combat Rock came out, and Joe Strummer had kicked Mick Jones out of the band, but that show didn’t have the same intensity as the first one. Of course, from hippie to punk can sometimes be just the difference between a jagged power chord and a mind warping solo, or even just a little bit more volume. And even when I was listening to the Dead or reggae or Uncle Tupelo, I still thought (think) of The Clash as one of rock’s all-time best bands. I’ve never seen an audience as jacked up as that one, pogo-ing in place and screaming at the singer, all pumped up to tear the city down. I knew two of the kids who got thrown off the stage and was amazed how the roadies had to keep wiping Strummer’s microphone down. It was probably the safest punk venue in the world out there underneath the stars, but that didn’t stop The Clash from bringing their A-game, or us from thinking we were hearing our personal playlist to life in that sound.
Peace Corps, Cherry Creek, My Brother’s Girlfriend’s Backyard
The second safest punk venue in the world would have to be the expansive backyard of my brother’s high school girlfriend, in Cherry Hills Village, where his band, Peace Corps, and Child Abuse and Bum Kon played one of high school’s greatest one-night stands. Her older brothers—and there were several—ran a kind of laid back security, buying all the kegs, taking a few bucks at the gate to keep it respectable, and getting a $500 cash security deposit from some giant dude who drove his Eldorado all the way from Nebraska because he didn’t have his own punk scene. He got his money back at the end of night, even after clearing the mosh pit of all the jocks who thought dancing to punk was just an excuse to administer a friendly beat down. All the bands killed it, playing to more than a thousand gyrating teenagers. And the next day we ran neighborhood cleanup, finding empty beer cans, lighters and other party accessories for nearly a mile around.
Lucky Dube, Fox Theater
I can’t believe it’s been more than five years since South African reggae star Lucky Dube was killed in a carjacking. I still listen to his song “Remember Me” at full blast when I’m driving alone. I love it because of the lilting guitar, the amazing backup vocals and for Dube’s soaring falsetto at the end. It reminds me of when I saw him in a packed house in Boulder, where I first saw the Dave Matthews Band, and thought Lucky’s crew were the tightest, most well-rehearsed band I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe that music could sound so loose and free, and yet still so tight and driven. And also because I spent the whole night dancing with the red-haired girl who stole my heart at that show, warm with summer sweat, and happy together with all the other happy people all around.
Which is really what makes every great concert that much better—the people you get to share it with at the time. So be good to each other this summer, and have fun. Here’s to having a new ‘card’ in your full house by the time the summer’s done.
Peter Kray is Elevation Outdoors’ editor-at-large and co-founder of The Gear Institute.
