Your first "real concert"

Midnight Toker

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Unfortunately, I never saw The Yardbirds with Jeff Beck. I was too young at that point, and they didn't do too many gigs in the USA.. I saw them twice back then, with Jimmy Page on guitar. I was at the Anderson Theatre on the Lower East Side of NYC the night they recorded Live Yardbirds. I have seen The Yardbirds many times since they regrouped in 1997, and got to jam with them one night at a club in NYC, which was a total mindblower for me, being such a fan.
Double WOW!! If you don’t already have it, I highly recommend getting the semi-recent set Yardbirds 68 that Page put out. The original album Five Live Yardbirds featuring Jimmy Page was put out on Epic w/o their permission, and they even oddly added fake crowd noise. That record was quickly pulled after a lawsuit, but by then tons of copies were already out and countless bootlegs from it would follow. The new set is just sublime! Amazing sound, no fake crowd noise, and really makes you feel like you’re in the room! HIGHLY recommended!!

 

DrumBob

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Double WOW!! If you don’t already have it, I highly recommend getting the semi-recent set Yardbirds 68 that Page put out. The original album Five Live Yardbirds featuring Jimmy Page was put out on Epic w/o their permission, and they even oddly added fake crowd noise. That record was quickly pulled after a lawsuit, but by then tons of copies were already out and countless bootlegs from it would follow. The new set is just sublime! Amazing sound, no fake crowd noise, and really makes you feel like you’re in the room! HIGHLY recommended!!


I already have the revised edition of Live Yardbirds. It is much better than the original. I know the whole story about that record, and how it was released without Page's permission. I have multiple vinyl copies.

Five Live Yardbirds was their first British album with Clapton on guitar.
 

JohnW63

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The first concerts I saw where in small venues. A group called " The Marantha Singers " who were a religious songs group and then " The new Christy Minstrals " , which were known for plenty of funny songs and well as folk songs. But the first concert I saw on my onw whas John Denver at the Anaheim convention center. I think we were about 12 rows back. I was really into him by the time I could drive.
 

dwasifar

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Pink Floyd, 1977, Soldier Field, Chicago.

I was supposed to get a ride to the concert with some older guys who worked at the TV shop with me, but they decided at the last minute they didn't want a 15-year-old kid along and told me I couldn't come with them. So I bought a train ticket, walked from Northwestern Station to Soldier Field, and attended the concert by myself. The people sitting near me were appalled that my "friends" had stiffed me, and sort of took me under their wing. They were very generous; that's all I'll say.

As it turned out, the guys from work got a late start, and by the time they arrived, all the good seats were full. They had to sit behind a speaker and couldn't even see the band, whereas I had a great view of not only the band, but the giant projection screen above the stage, and the floating inflatable pigs and sheep.
 

LeFinPepere

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Probably a german group named Faust around 1975, and/or Agitation Free..I vaguely remember the organ player, plus an intense smell of vetiver....Lots of Krautrock bands around in those days, and Canterbury-school English bands, my, my, weren't we a bunch of long-haired freaks?
 

Charlie Bernstein

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Iron Butterfly, Savoy Brown, Catfish at the Spectrum in Philly, Valentine's Day, 1970.

School trip, complete with yellow school buses. How a bunch of student teachers convinced the middle school administration it was good idea, I'll never know.

"Gee, those cigarettes sure look and smell funny ..."
Cool! I saw all of them around then. Too much fun! Not on field trips, though!
 

Charlie Bernstein

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It was 1969. I was 12. My friend's mother took 3 of us boys to Shea stadium in Queens to see a weird concert that was some sort of benefit/protest thing having something to do with Vietnam war.

Tom Paxton, Staple Family Singers, James Gang, and others I don't remember. Not really sure why we went - none of those bands were anyone I'd ever heard of. Hardly anybody there. Stage was on the inner outfield just outside of 2nd base. No one was allowed on the field so closest seats were pretty far away. PA was not what PA's are today and every time a jet would land or takeoff at Laguardia the noise would completely drown out the music.

My second concert was way better - 1970, Capitol Theatre, Port Chester NY, Grateful Dead with NRPS opening.
Great story!

I've seen Paxton a few times. Love that guy! I ushered for James Gang, NRPS, and Dead shows at the Capitol. Love all those guys, too.

Big regret is that I never saw the Staples. I guess Mavis is still hard at it, but she never seems to make it to Maine.
 

Charlie Bernstein

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Pink Floyd, 1977, Soldier Field, Chicago.

I was supposed to get a ride to the concert with some older guys who worked at the TV shop with me, but they decided at the last minute they didn't want a 15-year-old kid along and told me I couldn't come with them. So I bought a train ticket, walked from Northwestern Station to Soldier Field, and attended the concert by myself. The people sitting near me were appalled that my "friends" had stiffed me, and sort of took me under their wing. They were very generous; that's all I'll say.

As it turned out, the guys from work got a late start, and by the time they arrived, all the good seats were full. They had to sit behind a speaker and couldn't even see the band, whereas I had a great view of not only the band, but the giant projection screen above the stage, and the floating inflatable pigs and sheep.
Good story!

I ushered for them in '69.* No projection screen, just speakers set up all around the theater for that fly-buzzing-around-inside-your-head effect.

And no one had trouble finding a good seat. It was their first or second visit to the US. There were only a few dozen people in the audience, mostly local LSD enthusiasts.

----------------------

* CORRECTION NOTE: I originally wrote '96. Numeric dyslexia strikes again!
 
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Rich Cohen

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Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner!
My friend and I got tickets through a mafia connection with the 21 Club in Atlantic City. The contact knew Frank Sinatra, who of course knew the 21 Club owners who were mafioso. The Conventional Hall had been set up for the Democratic convention. There were press seats (actually benches with desks) and we had those seats. Despite sitting within arms length from the stage we could barely hear the Beatles for all of the screaming going on. I saw a young girl who had fainted and was being carried out on a stretcher. Crazy!

I saw Dylan in Spring of 1963 at Rutgers University, and the Jefferson Airplane at Beloit College (Wisconsin) in 1967. I sat next to the huge speakers near the stage and attribute my tinnitus to that event
 

walrus

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My friend and I got tickets through a mafia connection with the 21 Club in Atlantic City. The contact knew Frank Sinatra, who of course knew the 21 Club owners who were mafioso. The Conventional Hall had been set up for the Democratic convention. There were press seats (actually benches with desks) and we had those seats. Despite sitting within arms length from the stage we could barely hear the Beatles for all of the screaming going on. I saw a young girl who had fainted and was being carried out on a stretcher. Crazy!

Great story! The good old days?!

walrus
 

dwasifar

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Pink Floyd, 1977, Soldier Field, Chicago.

I ushered for them in '96. No projection screen, just speakers set up all around the theater for that fly-buzzing-around-inside-your-head effect.

And no one had trouble finding a good seat. It was their first or visit to the US. There were only a few dozen people in the audience, mostly local LSD enthusiasts.

Are you sure? Pink Floyd was essentially disbanded in 1996. They weren't touring at that time. And a Floyd show would certainly have attracted more than a few dozen people. There were 95,000 people at the 1977 show I attended.
 

Charlie Bernstein

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Are you sure? Pink Floyd was essentially disbanded in 1996. They weren't touring at that time. And a Floyd show would certainly have attracted more than a few dozen people. There were 95,000 people at the 1977 show I attended.
No, I'm not! It was '69. See my correction and note on post 71.

I've been plagued by numeric dyslexia my entire life. Wrong dates, wrong times, wrong everything.

Thank God we don't always use the binary system.
 

Charlie Bernstein

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My parents took me to see Burl Ives but I didn't consider him "real" music. That would have been 1984 or so. A couple of years later Grandmother took me to see Doc Watson. Doc was an old classmate of a dear friend of my grandmothers and I got to meet him. By that time I was playing guitar and realized how lucky I was. That strikes me as the first "real" concert.
You're right. Ives doesn't count. He named names.
 

Charlie Bernstein

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Lovin' Spoonful, Central Park, NYC, summer 1966. My parents drove me in, and surprisingly, my father enjoyed the music. After that, I started going to concerts either alone, or with a friend: Lovin' Spoonful again, Yardbirds with The Youngbloods as an opener, The Who, with The Vagrants as an opener, etc. Then, the Fillmore East opened, and I was there regularly.
I loved those Central Park concerts. And Fillmore East. And West, for that matter.

Happy daze!
 
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