What was your first concert?

squeedle53

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Hi, Foggy,

What a great performer to see for your first show! Glad you enjoyed it!
 

Lavender10

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Mine was in 2007 or 2008 in indianapolis, Alice in Chains - Saving Abel - Chevelle
 

Big Ears

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Sassafras and Be-Bop DeLuxe at Friars, Aylesbury in the mid-seventies. Beer was sold in plastic cups, so, if you ordered a pint, you had about three cups. Buying a round for four meant juggling loads of cups. We stood ours on the front of the stage while we waited for the band to appear. It was supposed to be a double-header but Sassafras came out first. Sassafras were great and it was the best show I ever saw from them. Bill Nelson wore smart casual clothes and had his initials embroidered on his shirt. At the end of the show, confetti rained down on everybody. Nelson's guitar playing sparkled as always, but I could never get into Be-Bop Deluxe. Journalist Charles Shaar-Murray of NME was in the audience, conspicuous by his Superman badge and Afro hairstyle. If my memory serves me correctly, he wrote a favourable review.
 

Big Ears

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I would like to have seen Scorpions at around that time. I don't know much about Blackfoot, other than Ken Hensley left Uriah Heep to join them - which seemed a bit odd.
 

Sox

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Slade when I was 15. It was December, the place was packed to the rafters and Noddy was dressed up as santa passing bottles of brown ale into the audience.
 

Big Ears

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I found this on the Friars site. Presumably Charles Shaar Murray was presumably not interested in Sassafras. His English teacher, or at least the NME editor, should be admonished for not teaching him the importance of using paragraphs.

bebop738_small.jpg

Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 9th August 1975

THE FIRST THING that hits you when you see Be-Bop Deluxe in their current incarnation (or, for that matter, listen to said incarnation's Futurama album on the highly deserving and impeccably integrity-loaded Harvest label) is that they're about 400% better than they used to be.

This is undoubtedly down to the fact that Bill Nelson (lead everything) is now working with musicians, who can keep up with him.

It was fairly apparent a year ago that, in the original Be-Bop line-up, Nelson was stuck in a classic syndrome – semi-pro band makes good on the strength of the talent of one of their members – but these days one-man bands don't make it.

Just how unequal to the task Nelson's former colleagues were only becomes fully dear when you see him working out with bassist Charlie Tumahai and drummer Simon Ffox (plus an excellent keyboard player called Andy Mumble).

I mean, they're good.

Hence, Nelson is now able to let fly infinitely more.

He provides by far the best guitar-show available in his present price-range, which is just as well since he writes songs of such an obstacle-course nature that they'd derail lesser mosicians in the first six bars.

The obstinately dejointed structure of Nelson's compositions, in fact, are liable to be the major (if the only) stumbling-block in the path of Be-Bop's upward course to fame, fortune, super-stardom and guitars which don't go out of tune whenever you bend a note, since he doesn't write anything even remotely catchy for the benefit of us poor bozos who're unable to retain any line longer than 16 bars.

The way round that little dilemma, however, is the frenetic energy with which Nelson et al approach the songs in performance, as per Aylesbury, one of the few remaining English rock halls where you can amble in and be confronted with a (glurrrrrrrp) light show and (choke) Country Joe and the Fish records over the P.A.

It's strange that a hall with such a totally ZigZag aura should've been the launching pad for such '70s-oriented acts as Mott, Bowie, C. Rebel and now Be-Bop Deluxe.

Instead of just standing there and letting Bill gangle his way through the show as the only remotely visual item, Tumahai vibes up the ensemble quite considerably with the intensity of his playing and back-up singing, and the awesome charisma and star quality emanating from his hat (don't ask silly questions. Go see and All Will Be Revealed).

Occasionally, Nelson seems a trifle out of his depth conceptually.

Dramatising a scene from Harlan Ellison's 'Repent, Harlequin!', Said The Tick-Tock Man on the back cover of Futurama was a nice idea (and proves Nelson to be the only rock star apart from David Bowie who's openly conversant with Mr. Ellison's work), but 'Swan Song', the album track which I am informed relates to the picture, doesn't seem to do anything of the sort. Plus his lyrics still come on like collegemag poetry of the more tangled variety.

Still and all, Be-Bop Deluxe are a good show (Good show, chaps). Nelson's fluid, deft, powerful and intelligent lead guitar (note to EMI: this phrase is eminently suited to quoting in advertisements) builds up a more than considerable head of steam on 'Maid In Heaven' and 'No Trains To Heaven', and he gets lyrical all over the place on 'Sister Seagull' and the afore mentioned 'Swan Song'. Very bird-oriented is our Bill.

Still think they're a little overheated in the singing and songwriting departments, but Be-Bop Deluxe are still of this season's most interesting and promising new groups.

Though they haven't yet developed the knack of transmitting the greater part of their energy and presence on record, they're hell on wheels in concert.

Two gold stars and a tick in the margin.

Charles Shaar Murray, 1975

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LG

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Slade when I was 15. It was December, the place was packed to the rafters and Noddy was dressed up as santa passing bottles of brown ale into the audience.

Did you manage to secure a bottle Old Ent...:hm:

:heheh:


Jethro Tull for me, living in small town most of my life it wasn't until I moved to a big city that my concert resume got started.

Oh and John Wetton's perennially underrated band UK opened for them, I will never forget that night.:bow:
 

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