My Favorite Concerts - Top 5

5. Guns n Roses / Aerosmith, Civic Center, Wheeling, 1988

I believe I was sixteen when we made this journey down to Wheeling. Greg drove the Fairlane down, and while there were a lot of people that went, I think only me, Tony, and Joe rode along with him. I think Sean drove separately. It was something of an Oak Glen High School reunion in the parking lot. I recall that we had a couple of beers, which got us into a rebel's state of mind. At the show, Greg and Joe, who was on crutches, went to the upper seats, but me and Tony went down to the floor and ran to the front. Mercifully, this happened back when GnR had to get on stage on time rather than make everybody wait for hours. I remember loving GnR, but Aerosmith impressed me as well, especially the ten minute all-over-the-stage drum solo. When a drunk, topless girl sitting on a guy's shoulders fell off, the gentleman Scott Mills helped her up and copped a feel. Tony and I staggered out of that show with shirts literally drenched in sweat feeling like we'd fought a war.


4. Bruce, Benedum, Pittsburgh, 1996

The "Ghost of Tom Joad" tour was the first time I saw Bruce solo, and it was everything I wanted. The album came out the previous November during deer season, so I drove halfway back from Wetzel County trying to find a place to buy it. It was more produced than I wanted it to be, but I was immediately obsessed with it. We all went to the nearby Seventh Street Grill before the show. I believe I sat next to Benji, and I don't think Brad was there. Mike and Aunt Liz sat up near the front. I remember "Reason to Believe" as did the "border suite" of "The Line," "Across the Border," and "Sinaloa Cowboys," I believe. But the real treat was the very special version of "Promised Land" with Bruce beating on the front of his accoustic and pounding on the strings rather than strumming them.


3. Willie Nelson, Salem, OH (Ponderosa), 1995?

It is appropriate that I don't remember the year of this show. David and I began drinking early and didn't let up all day. At about 11 a.m., we met Dave's biker friend and some of his compatriots at a place in Salem called either the Green Mill or the Gin Mill. After drinking thee for a while we headed over to Ponderosa Park where we bought some 1/2 twelve packs at the concession stand. They were selling twelve packs cut in half with a box cutter. We sat on the grass drinking beer and bullshitting for a long time. It was one of the rare times that when I got up to walk to the bathroom, I almost fell back down and felt like I was out at sea, weaving my way to the bathroom. The place filled up with people, and when the first chords of "Whiskey River" started and the flag of Texas unfurled it was glorious. But what it made it a show to remember was that Willie played encore after encore. Waylon had been scheduled to play with Willie (and God knows that would have been incredible, but Waylon was ill). So I think Willie tried to make up for Waylon's absence by playing an extra long set. Old people started filing out of the amphitheater after the second encore, and I made my way to about the tenth row. By that time, the crowd was very sparse and those who remained were just standing and watching in awe. The last song he did was "A Song For You." It started very quiet, and Willie, I felt, sang it for the diehards.


2. Violent Femmes, Blue Note, Jefferson, MO, 1994

In the Fall of 1994, I was getting ready to graduate college and felt very out of place. I was living in Summitt Hall -- a private dorm for losers, foreign students, and people who weren't going to be at school the whole year (like me). I had a Japanese roommate, a Japanese neighbor--who I befriended and later had an emotional shouting argument with in the cafeteria--and we spent a lot of time with some Colombian women that we didn't know. One day I thought, I've got to get out of hear and see the Violent Femmes. I found out that they had already played all the nearby venues and that my last chance was Missouri. So I called Brad, who's always game, and we left Dayton at noon or something the day of the show. We misjudged the time it would take us to get there, so sped at 90 mph the last hour or two through MO. We arrived at the Blue Note, a cool old theater, an hour late (10 pm) and the show hadn't started yet. We got a beer and found a good spot in the crowd. The Femmes marched in from behind us playing a trombone, trumpet, and snare drum. The showed kicked an incredible amount of ass. They played until 1 am. I remember when the moshing reached a fever pitch, Gordon said, "You kids play nice." This was the "Add It Up" tour, so they played all kinds of old stuff that was on the CD. Since I didn't have "Hallowed Ground," this concert was the first time I heard "Never Tell." The whole band was just in rare form, tearing it up, and leaving us spent. We then got right back in car and drove about ten hours back to Dayton, and I was hallucinating from sleep deprivation as the sun came up. I kept seeing a barn coming out of the fog in the middle of the highway and thought we were going to drive right through it. It usually turned out to be an overpass.

1. Bruce, Three Rivers Stadium, 1985

I didn't know shit about Bruce Springsteen. I remember seeing on a Sunday morning news show some clip from a recent concert and talk of him becoming a sensation. Then songs from Born in the USA started to get lots of airplay, but it was not until the show that it all hit me. Three Rivers Stadium was a horrible venue for concerts. Later I saw The Who and the Rolling Stones there, and it was underwhelming. But that cool evening in 1985, Bruce captivated everybody in the crowd. He had a way of including the audience, getting us to sing along, pump our fists, and stuff that may sound silly but was awesome. The highlights for me that night were "Trapped," "Cover Me," and "This Land Is Your Land." He was able to go from larger than life with the first two songs to very intimate and quiet with the Woody Guthrie song. That concert flipped a switch inside me at age 13 that changed the way I thought about music. My only complaint was that I ended up with a ridiculous looking white sweatshirt because everything else sold out. After the show, my dad got into a shouting match with some guy pushing his way through the crowd that ended with threats and the other guy saying, "I'll be waiting for you on the other side of the bridge!" But that's a blog for another time.