Best free concert you ever attended

Discussion regarding other bands, movies, etc.
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Pandemonium
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#21 Post by Pandemonium » Thu May 03, 2018 11:46 am

SR wrote:Nice rec's. As to the Pretenders, I heard the new music after JHS and PF passed with really sad and cynical ears. I was having none of it. I liked Middle of the Road, but really almost as a different band and certainly on a totally different level than the first two albums. Actually, the Pretenders was another "free" concert for me as my friend's sister picked up the tab for it.....Santa Monica Civic in September of 1981. I was 14 or 15. I can highly recommend this live album as well....this was the concert I was at by chance; their sound was really rich, rude, and snarling compared to the album versions. I spoke with Martin at length via Pledge Music on the sound; He attributed it to the sound guy almost exclusively.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/prete ... /197221524
Heh, I was at that Santa Monica show too, the only time I saw the original lineup. I will say, when the first MKII lineup single came out in early '83, I really liked Back On The Chain Gang/My City Was Gone. But when I saw them debut at the US Festival a few months later, yeah, it was a whole different band that completely lacked any of the punky fire and danger of the original lineup and the rather tame "Learning To Crawl" album kind of postmarked my interest in them. When I saw them open for U2 in late '87, they were utterly boring even though I think they had Johnny Marr on guitar at the time. It wasn't until the mid/late 90's when they released "Last Of The Independants" and "Viva El Amore" that I had any interest in them again.

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SR
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#22 Post by SR » Thu May 03, 2018 3:09 pm

Shit, I thought JM was still the guitarist. Apparently it's a five piece now and their last album, "Alone" released in '16 was CH alone with studio musicians. I read her boo, Reckless. It was a bit of a bore, but I still love her. Feminists (with the exception of Paglia) likely hate her fucking guts, but she's a true no nonsense person and as I've stated, her first two albums are masterpieces. Her rise through her happy accident as a journalist and bangin Sid Vicious to other exploits all while coming up in Ohio are just fantastical.

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Pandemonium
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#23 Post by Pandemonium » Thu May 03, 2018 3:27 pm

SR wrote:Shit, I thought JM was still the guitarist. Apparently it's a five piece now and their last album, "Alone" released in '16 was CH alone with studio musicians. I read her boo, Reckless. It was a bit of a bore, but I still love her. Feminists (with the exception of Paglia) likely hate her fucking guts, but she's a true no nonsense person and as I've stated, her first two albums are masterpieces. Her rise through her happy accident as a journalist and bangin Sid Vicious to other exploits all while coming up in Ohio are just fantastical.
One of the few times I got to talk to Damned/Lords guitarist Brian James back around '86, he mentioned he tried to teach Chrissy how to play guitar when they hung out together in the late 70's.

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SR
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#24 Post by SR » Thu May 03, 2018 4:23 pm

Interesting. She was never great, but very new to it while writing the first songs for the band. I’m not sure, but I’d like to believe that in the live version of The Wait I linked just before the solo she says “watch me!” and the subsequent solo is hers. :noclue:

phenobarb_bambalam
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#25 Post by phenobarb_bambalam » Thu May 03, 2018 9:27 pm

JA flash mob in London, 2003. Had hounded Perry several nights in a row for "My Time" and they played it as one of the five songs that night - it was a perfect moment.

Danny Boy :cheers:


clickie
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#26 Post by clickie » Mon May 07, 2018 2:59 am

Pandemonium wrote:The first "Free" concert I saw was some radio promotional thing for Nightranger, a pop hard rock band doing a free show at the Santa Monica Civic in early '84. The only reason I went was to the see the guitarist Brad Gillis who had replaced Randy Rhoads in Ozzy's band right after he was killed in '82. I'm glad it was free.

I forget if the Janes reunion show at the El Cid at the end of 2008 was free or not for everyone although I didn't have to pay as someone I used to know at Warner Bros publicity got me in. I do remember paying a $10 cover for the Echoplex show a month later in early 2009. The July 2nd, 2010 Roxy show which was Duff's last gig with the band was free.

I saw Social Distortion play a short set (as in about 3 songs) at someone's back yard keg party in the Summer of '83 before they recorded their first record. My buddy and I were more or less cruising around Huntington Beach off PCH looking for a parking spot a few blocks away to go bar hopping on Main Street and stumbled on this rowdy house party spilling onto the street. We found a spot to park, walked into this party in this tiny house crammed with probably over a hundred people like we belonged, squeezed out to the back yard where the band was already playing. We were there maybe 15 minutes and Huntington Beach PD came swarming like the riot goon squad breaking up the party. LOL, people were jumping over the rickety fence into the back alley and neighbors yards to get away. Game over, man. Game over.

I wouldn't call this a concert, but it was free. At the beginning of '83, my friend and I walked into a film shoot at the Troubadour club in West Hollywood for some cheesy sci-fi flick called (I think) Dungeonmaster. We were going clubbing later that night but we were driving around Sunset Blvd in the afternoon and saw some "event" going on at the Troubadour and decided to check it out. They were filming a segment that included metal band WASP doing their silly Alice Cooper style theatrical show and wanted people off the street to fill the club for the shoot. It was more or less WASP miming to pre-recorded music and long periods or waiting for the crew to set up the next shot. We stuck around for a couple hours, got bored and left.

Although not quite free, I paid $5 to see The Cult play a show at the seedy Olympic Auditorium about 3 weeks after 9/11. They were shooting a live concert video that was announced only a week before the date and understandably due to the circumstances of 9/11, no one was going to shows so soon after those events and they were desperate to fill the place. I think the auditorium only held about 4,000 people and they barely filled half of the venue. The atmosphere in the building was really weird and subdued. On the plus side, I show up a lot in crowd shots on the dvd....

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Thats how the guy from The Cult dresses? He looks like a gangbanger or something. Or like Mike Muir.

clickie
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#27 Post by clickie » Mon May 07, 2018 3:05 am

phenobarb_bambalam wrote:JA flash mob in London, 2003. Had hounded Perry several nights in a row for "My Time" and they played it as one of the five songs that night - it was a perfect moment.

Danny Boy :cheers:

You think they played My Time because of you?
:cheers:

phenobarb_bambalam
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#28 Post by phenobarb_bambalam » Fri May 11, 2018 7:12 pm

Pretty sure of it - Perry had said "maybe tomorrow" with a wink a couple of times in the days before. Given how rarely they've played it, it seems unlikely that it was random.

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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#29 Post by dannyboy » Sun May 13, 2018 12:29 pm

Hey!

Yeah, that was a great gig not least because we got My Time thanks to PB! I remember Perry asking the band what they wanted to play next and Stephen said "something new!" but Phenobarb Bambalam called for My Time and so we got it!

clickie
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#30 Post by clickie » Sun May 13, 2018 8:09 pm

Thats some cool Janes folklore right there. There used to be this one dude who posted on Janes forums a lot back in the day around 2001, can't remember his name. He was a big time old school Janes bootleg collector who amassed a huge collection of live Janes recordings the old fashioned way, through back pages of magazines and shit. I guess eventually he lost his entire collection because he had all the discs in the backseat of his car, and some thief grabbed everything not giving a fuck about sentimental value. He had pictures of himself hanging out with Perry that he would post.

clickie
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#31 Post by clickie » Sun May 13, 2018 8:26 pm

I said discs in my previous posts, but they were all on cassette tape at that time

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kv
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#32 Post by kv » Sun May 13, 2018 9:41 pm

I remember before tapes when we'd trade stone tablets of Perry's poems

phenobarb_bambalam
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Re: Best free concert you ever attended

#33 Post by phenobarb_bambalam » Wed May 16, 2018 9:16 pm

dannyboy wrote:Hey!

Yeah, that was a great gig not least because we got My Time thanks to PB! I remember Perry asking the band what they wanted to play next and Stephen said "something new!" but Phenobarb Bambalam called for My Time and so we got it!
Well remembered - I had long since forgotten that detail! :rockon:

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