Concerts
February 15, 2023
My pal Linda K. posted this list on The Facebook, and I saw it, and I thought "Cool! I'm gonna make a blog post out of this!" Feel free to play along, on The Facebook, on a blog post, on a Twitter thread, or however you see fit.
Here we go!
1. First concert - Ravi Shankar. It was also my first date! I was 15. The next night the same boy took me to see The Righteous Brothers. That boy took me to a lot of concerts - The Who (Led Zepplin was the opening band, heh!), The Lovin' Spoonful, and others that I can't recall right now.
2. Last concert - Eddie Palmieri Latin Jazz Band, just last month!
3. Worst concert - Gato Barbieri. He only played for 45 minutes and was clearly pissed off about something.
4. Loudest concert - John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I was tripping at the time, so it was quite a religious experience.
5. Best concert - Little Feat, when they recorded their live album, Waiting for Columbus, at Lisner Auditorium in DC. Dynamite!
6. Saw the most - Little Feat, closely followed by Bonnie Raitt. Other contenders: Delbert McClinton, John Prine, The Neville Brothers, the Grateful Dead.
7. Most surprising - Aerosmith. I didn’t think I liked them all that much, but the tickets were free. They were great!
8. Happy I got to see - So many! John Prine, Chuck Berry, B.B. King, The Who, Frank Zappa, and The Chieftains, to name just a few. We saw the Chieftains the day before the world closed down. Paddy Maloney, their founder and leader, died in 2021. We had tickets to see John Prine in June of 2020, but he died of Covid in April. His death hit me hard.
9. Wish I could have seen - The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix. And the hell of it is that I could have seen Jimi! My little sister got tickets and asked if I wanted to go. I was in my folk period at the time, so I passed. Grrr.