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Am I fed up with lackluster concerts? No I'm fed up with the lackluster music 'culture' we live in today. Let's face it kids...IT'S OVER. It really is. If you are, like me, 40 years of age or thereabouts you saw the last wave in pop/rock music/youth culture when things were really ours. That's right, we were part of a cycle that stretched about 30 years. Roughly from the time of The Beatles arrival to round about 1995-96. Yeah, I'm older now but I wouldn't trade anything with a kid who is in their 20s now. Those people are REALLY getting the short end of the stick. I don't feel sorry for them though, everything they do seems to be under some corporate logo and they seem to go along with it at every turn. Oh well, good luck robots!
Anyway back to the discussion at hand: concerts used to be the gateway to one's underworld of choice. Definitely a gathering of whatever tribe you subscribed to. Parents had only a vague idea of what they were letting you out of the house to do, IF they even knew. I remember many shows where the arena was literally filled with pot smoke. It was just a huge monsterous cloud hanging in the middle of the place and every kid looked like they were a junior version of the guys in Bad Company. Bling? Are you fucking kidding me? Not back then. So where can I begin...1981 and again in 1984 V-A-N H-A-L-E-N. I never saw Led Zeppelin, but seeing VH with Dave was abolutely amazing and loud az fuck and made up for missing the LZ boat. Cheap Trick 1980 Dream Police tour (have seen them 9 more times since then). U2 War tour and again on Unforgettable Fire...MESIANIC! The Tubes!! The Cars summer of '84. Alot of shows to list..but to fast forward Sonic Youth, many early 90s shows. Grateful Dead at Madison Square Garden right before Jerry died. The Who (never got the chance to see them until around 2000. Got free tickets from a friend and I went expecting nothing and got EVERYTHING. it doesn't matter how old Townshend is, he's cooler than all of us!) Also saw Townshend acoustic in the tiny Joe's Pub in NYC. Wait a minute...did I hear somebody say Tom Petty sucked in concert? What? He is amazing live. Maybe you were at the wrong show. Check your tickets, I think they said you supposed to be at the Justin Timberlake show.
More great shows of the last 5-10 years: Mooney Suzuki, Zen Guerilla, Nebula, Melvins, Fu Manchu, The Donnas, The Hives, White Stripes, The Datsuns, etc, etc.
Hopefully will be reunited with The Police this summer after our last meeting in October of 1983. The only difference between now and then? We're all older and the tickets prices are like 600% more!
