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The first concert I attended


Mats Nermark

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Hi,

 

I was almost 15 and had played the guitar for about year and a half, when the neighbor wife told my parents that I would probably enjoy going to a concert seeing how much I loved playing my guitar. The biggest city close by had just built a hockey arena that was also able to host musical concerts and this was the first concert ever held there.

 

My parents asked me if I wanted to go and I said yes. Not because I particularly wanted to go to the concert of an old dude I've never heard of, but because I had a serious crush on the neighbors' daughter.

 

So what happen? I never got together with the daughter, but the concert was a mind blowing experience. Opening act was Carl Perkins and main act was Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three with Luther Perkins on the guitar. To this day I can remember the almost physical charge I got when they started playing and Mr Perkins' playing still influences my playing to some degree.

 

I have seen many, many concerts since then but few of them has had that impact.

 

Do you have any cool stories to share?

 

Cheers,

 

Mats N

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I saw the "Young Rascals" for $1. The local top 40 radio station, WLOF Channel 95 promoted it as their birthday party. They played their brand new release "Groovin'". I was 13.

 

 

Regarding Carl Perkins, I never knew how good he was till I heard him played on Bob's Scratchy Records (radio show) in recent years. The song below is a tongue-in-cheek tune about a mass murderer called "Dixie Fried".

 

[video=youtube;XiZiYOKQLbI]

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My first was a blowout event for the time. July 9, 1977. Emerson, Lake & Palmer at Madison Square Garden, on the Works tour, complete with orchestra.

 

I can still remember a small detail that somehow stuck with me...the huge line arrays hanging from the ceiling of the Garden, complete with dozens of (Macintosh?) tube amplifiers behind the speakers, their lights flashing with peaks in the music.

 

We also were almost mugged on the escalator in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Some guys tried to stop people as they went up the elevator. One of my friends was a big kid and shoved them all down as we went up, and we took off.

 

Good times!!!!

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I was in 5th grade when my family went to see Porter Waggoner and Dolly Parton. What stood out to me was how good and active the fiddle player was during the show.

 

after the show, they were signing autographs of big pictures you could buy and my brother who was 4 or 5 at the time, proposed to Dolly Parton and she said yes. I doubt she remembers it today, my brother is 46 now.

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Mine was Pink Floyd at the Atlanta Stadium on June 7th 1975.

 

I was fifteen years old and went with a friend of mine from my boy scout troop. His father dropped us off and we had to go into the hotel across the street after it was over to use a phone to call call him to come pick us up.

 

They played mostly new songs we hadn't heard before including "Raving and Drooling" which later became known as "Sheep" and "You Got to be Crazy" which later became known as "Dogs". They played another new song called "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" that started out real slow and dreamy until all of a sudden a big Gm7(6)/b7 chord rang out blasting all around the stadium in full quadraphonic sound. It was absolutely spine tingling and to this day I don't think I've ever heard that moment from the "Wish you Were Here" album without thinking about that concert.

 

They played "Dark Side of the Moon" in it's entirety and at the end of "On the Run" a big airplane came flying down from the back of the stadium and crashed into the drum set. For the encore they played "Echoes" and while they played the big inflatable pyramid above the stage started floating up and out over the crowd.

 

I had a five dollars on me so I bought a T-shirt and a program. The T-shirt was four dollars and the program was 25 cents.

 

Two days before this concert on June 5th - Syd Barrett showed up unannounced in the studio while they were mixing "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" He was fat and bald with no eye brows and the band didn't recognize him. It was the last time any of them ever saw Syd.

 

Setlist:

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/pink-f...-53d703d1.html

 

 

161130867_pink-floyd-vintage-handbill-flyer-atlanta-concert-june-7_zpspbhdjq0m.jpg

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I saw that tour. I got in early with a press pass from my high school and got to watch them set up the stage.

I saw Keith Emerson walking around behind the stage and yelled "Hey Keith can I get your autograph?" and he came over and gave it to me. Unfortunately by the time they got to Atlanta they had to drop the orchestra. Traveling with an orchestra was way too expensive and I think they lost a lot of money on that one.

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I saw ELP when they first came around; '71? '72? Philly Spectrum opening for Procol Harum. I believe they opened with The Barbarian. When the song ended, the place erupted the biggest, longest lasting standing ovation I've ever experienced. They couldn't continue for about 5 minutes. Have never seen anything like it since.

 

My band actually played The Barbarian at that time. Went over big at the local high school dances; NOT..:-) But sure was a fun challenge.

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First concert was probably Iron Butterfy at the Philly Spectrum, with Savoy Brown opening along with a couple local Philly bands, Catfish and Elizabeth??? Rotating stage which was somewhat annoying since half the time you were looking at the back of the amps. I was (am) a big Savoy Brown fan, so really enjoyed them. Of course Iron Butterfly did Inagaddadivida which was pretty cool to see for a 15/16 year old, especially with the extended drum solo, something I'd never seen before.

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I've told my story of seeing Louis Armstrong when I was 14 maybe more than a few times.

 

I considered myself a nascent jazz fan. I'd always loved 'Satchmo' (I now know that only the rubes called him that but if I wasn't a rube, I don't know who was) but I was into 'modern' jazz, I thought. And, at the time (around 1964 or '65), Armstrong was still riding his global mega-hit version of the rather un-modern, not-so-jazzy, "Hello, Dolly." (Which he did perform, of course.)

 

Disneyland (the park, which I lived 7 or 8 miles from) in those days had a couple of 'jazz festivals' -- I was excited by a chance to see big names like Kenton, Ellington, Count Basie, Woody Herman. Armstrong was booked to be playing sets with a reconstructed Hot Five (+2 if I recall) on the main deck of the S.S. Mark Twain -- the 'paddle wheeler' riverboat that endlessly navigated a circular [underwater/hidden] track around Tom Sawyer's island.

 

(You have to consider: Disneyland was built smack in the middle of miles of flat orchard and farmland. They dug rivers, built 'mountains,' engineered waterfalls that a fleet of mid-sized submarines [also on tracks] navigated under.)

 

Anyhow, my boredom with "Hello, Dolly" in mind, I was in no rush to see Armstrong -- I almost blew it off to see a second set by Kenton or somebody, IIRC.

 

But I found myself down on the landing just as the Mark Twain was disgorging passengers and there was the band set up right there in front of me (the musicians were breaking) and I figured being up close I could check out the PA if nothing else.

 

After some minutes, the crowd filling in in back of me, Louis and the band came out. I was maybe 8 to 10 feet away from someone I would later realize was (deservedly) a giant of 20th century jazz. (To me, then, he was just a very familiar, beloved, friendly face with a raspy voice and an ever-present hankie in his hand with his cornet.)

 

When the band started in, I was delighted to find that, instead of "Hello, Dolly" era hits, "Pops" and the band were playing all hot jazz (or "Dixieland jazz" as we knew it in Orange County, CA). I'd been puzzling a bit over those Kenton and Ellington charts [i didn't play music growing up, but I had started listening to a fair bit of classical music by then] -- but the Hot Five's bawdy house jazz was something that needed no explanation to me -- I was almost instantly in the sway of some hot, hot playing.

 

(And I found out why he kept that hankie handy -- Pops really did sweat up a storm -- even from 8 or so feet away some of his sweat hit me... )

 

It didn't take long before I was absolutely in the thrall of the music -- I remember thinking, What an idiot I must be to have almost missed this because I thought I was 'too hip' for an old cat like 'Satchmo!'

 

An important lesson.

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The first concert I ever went to was Jimi Hendrix in Houston, Texas at the Music Hall. A archive I checked out said it was February of 1968 at the Sam Houston Coliseum and ZZ Top was the opener but that is incorrect. It was the Music Hall and The Moving Sidewalks, (Billy Gibbons Band before Top) opened up for Jimi. They were great but Jimi opened the show with "Sgt. Peppers'.

Blew me away. First concert I went to. Bent me forever.

 

 

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Hi,

 

I was almost 15 and had played the guitar for about year and a half, when the neighbor wife told my parents that I would probably enjoy going to a concert seeing how much I loved playing my guitar. The biggest city close by had just built a hockey arena that was also able to host musical concerts and this was the first concert ever held there.

 

My parents asked me if I wanted to go and I said yes. Not because I particularly wanted to go to the concert of an old dude I've never heard of, but because I had a serious crush on the neighbors' daughter.

 

So what happen? I never got together with the daughter, but the concert was a mind blowing experience. Opening act was Carl Perkins and main act was Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three with Luther Perkins on the guitar. To this day I can remember the almost physical charge I got when they started playing and Mr Perkins' playing still influences my playing to some degree.

 

I have seen many, many concerts since then but few of them has had that impact.

 

Do you have any cool stories to share?

 

Cheers,

 

Mats N

 

I don't have any stories to top that one. That's a hell of an experience.

 

 

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It didn't take long before I was absolutely in the thrall of the music -- I remember thinking, What an idiot I must be to have almost missed this because I thought I was 'too hip' for an old cat like 'Satchmo!'

 

An important lesson.

 

I was in high school (1976 or 77) and had a friend two years older than me who had a drivers license. We were downtown Atlanta for some reason. (I think we might have gone ice skating at the Omni hotel which was right next to the Omni arena.) Anyway there was a guy standing outside trying to sell two tickets to see Elvis Presley. He was asking sixty bucks a piece for the tickets. We were flabbergasted. Sixty bucks to see some old washed up rock and roller from the fifties. Heck sixty bucks to see anybody was insane.

 

We walked around for a little while and came back later and he was down to thirty five bucks or something. A while later we saw him again and I think he was down to twenty bucks a piece. About this time his girlfriend starts saying "Hey we have to go, the concert is about to start". Just for fun my friend says I'll give you five bucks a piece and he took it. I didn't have any money but I said I'd pay my friend back later.

 

The thing I remember most about that concert was that just as soon as the house lights went down the entire arena lit up. There must have been tens of thousands of flash bulbs going off simultaneously. For the first five minutes or so it was like being outside in broad daylight on a clear summer day. I'd never seen anything like it before and have never seen anything like it since.

 

A couple of years later I had the opportunity to see the American debut of the Sex Pistols at the "Great Southeast Music Hall" and I turned it down. I thought "Why would anybody want to see a bunch of no talent punks who can't even sing or play their instruments?" We thought they were a joke.

 

I'm still kicking myself over that one and if I could do it all over again I would have skipped the Elvis show and gone to see the Sex Pistols.

 

Looks like it was a lot more fun:

 

[video=youtube;mjcMfBTZ_gQ]

 

 

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I've told my story of seeing Louis Armstrong when I was 14 maybe more than a few times.

 

 

You think how he was about forty years or so into his career and he was playing on an amusement park ride. I remember seeing him as a kid on television singing "Hello Dolly" but had no idea of his influence or importance. The times were changing fast in the sixties and most of the young hipsters were probably just to cool to get it.

 

Now we have some forty and fifty year old acts that can still sell out arenas. I saw McCartney about a year ago and could not believe all the young people there. These were not kids being dragged by their parents to see an oldies act. These were college aged kids out with their friends and their dates. They were enthusiastic. I saw lots of them humming and singing the songs after it was over while walking back to their cars.

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