[MorbidToaster]

I've actually got a story that was both my best and my worst live show as well. About 10 years ago (when I was playing drums) I was in a cover band. We played pretty much anything we could all agree was awesome (so naturally...we only knew like...5 songs). 
 
Anyway...one day we were opening for a local band that was playing at Stubb's (a popular live music joint around here). We were excited as it was our first real 'gig'. We only had time for 2 songs...and we decided on Tom Petty's 'Runnin' Down a Dream',and Korn's cover of 'Word Up'. 2 songs of which are now worlds apart in my rankings of 'awesome songs'. 
 
The weak point of the band was our vocalist. He just didn't have the voice for either song. To make a long(er) story short...it was horrible. Crowd enjoyed it a little (I guess), but it didn't really get anybody going. So...worst gig ever, right? Nope...And here's why. 1: I had a lot of fun even though it was awful. Playing for any size crowd is an amazing feeling. 2: Our vocalist thought the crowd was hype enough at the end of our short set for a stage dive to work...he was wrong. He jumped from a stage about 7 feet up right onto the floor. Dropped from the band the next day with a busted face. 

  Normally I'd have felt bad, but he was a cocky jerk that just got put in his place.
 
I couldn't stop laughing. Best. Live. Show. Ever.

 

[galbenush]

Best concert I ever been to was in Bucharest. A gipsy band called Damian & Brothers played. I traveled 450 km to see them live, but it was all worth it. The atmosphere was electric and the energy coming from the band was amazing. They sounded great. No memorable thing happened, it was the best simply because of their live performance.

 

[HeroicPenguin]

Best concert has gotta be seeing The National in Radio City Music Hall two summers ago with one of my friends when they were touring for "High Violet". The opener was pretty great (The Antlers, promoting their album "Hospice", my favorite album of 2009), but The National here fantastic. Radio City was the perfect venue for it (elegant scene, medium sized place), but the place rocked when the lead singer Matt Berninger climbed the balcony. One of the most electric moments I can remember.

 

[sulkoudai]

Justin Bieber FTW

 

[olor1n]

Hard to narrow down to one live performance. Some of the more memorable include Queens of the Stone Age, The Strokes, Interpol, The White Stripes, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, Mercury Rev...
 
If I had to highlight one out of that, probably the QotSA gig just for the sheer physical assault of being front and centre, 3 rows back. Monstrous sound that molested the senses.
 

 

[SemperMalum]

 
The Pillows - Live from The Glass House in Pomona, CA.
 
The Pillows are a Japanese rock-band that have been together since 1989. That means, I was only a few years old when they started to make music. They have a pretty solid following, and they only just recently started touring over in the States a few years ago. Many people know them as the music from the anime FLCL.
 
These guys have released music every single year and only got better over time. I've already seen them live in SF in '08, and they skipped '09 as that was their 20th anniversary. So, last year when they announced they were coming back to the US, I bought tickets for the Pomona show to watch with my cousins. Line was huge and stretched across the entire block. The opening shows were great, but not as memorable as they were.
 
I'll leave it at that they sound just as good as they do live as compared to their CD. They get into their music and really seem to enjoy what they're doing. The best part of their set is always Hybrid Rainbow, though. And those moments always stand out because of the chorus. Imagine 95% of the people rocking out yelling, at the top of their lungs, "CAN YOU FEEL? CAN YOU FEEL THAT HYBRID RAINBOW?" This happened every time they did the chorus and was louder and louder each time.
 

 
That video says it all. Not me recording this, but I was in middle to the left, right underneath a speaker. Cut to around :50 seconds for the build up into the chorus. (Edit: I should mention that it was much louder than the video really shows.)
 
That was the best live show, ever. Did I mention that I stayed afterwards and got a picture with Sawao and Manabe? I should mention that. These guys came back out and greeted any of the fans that stuck around. Signed autographs and got into some personal pictures.

 

[DavidMahler]

Quote:

Great headphone, measures well, sounds good.
 
I'll probably get a second one. Highly recommended.
 
Unfortunately I missed the dead line

 
regards

Hey drummerman, you definitely didn't miss the deadline!  We will be choosing the winner on October 31!

 

[-y0-]

My first and best concert experience was Lollapalooza in 1997. I only went to see Snoop Dogg but it opened me up to new bands. Near the end I saw all the people get rowdy and stand, I was wondering who was up next. Then some guys show up riding in with pimped out bikes on stage, I was like who the ?!?! are they? The band turned out to be Korn. I became a fan afterwards and will never forget their intro in their pimp bikes and Adidas outfit.

 

[ostewart]

the best ever live performance i have seen was greenday about 2 years ago, the crowd interaction was brilliant, they palyed for a solid 2 hours set, and came out for an acoustic encore, they seemed really nice, invited people onstage to sing, and play guitar for a whole song, had a water pistol, toilet paper gun and a t-shirt canon, i loved it so much, and would go see them again if i could. Second best was underworld at a festival, they played really well and everyone was dancing, having a great time and the light show was amazing too. The only big headphones i have at the moment are the AKG K518DJ and would love to try some other cans, and have only heard good things about the creative aurvana live. Thanks
Regards

 

[Twanger49]

 
As an old geezer I have somewhat of a historical advantage, so ……from August 30 thru Sept. 1, 1969 Lewisville, Texas was the Texas International Pop Festival. I managed to finagle a job working back stage doing light security or whatever was required (picking up trash). I was 5’ 8” and maybe 125lbs. with thick wavy red hair going half way down my back and decked out in purple bell bottoms. Part of my job was to climb up and sit on the speaker scaffolding left of the main stage and keep the photographers from climbing up. I was parallel to the stage and watched a good portion of the festival from there. Quite probably the best seat in the house. The weather was hot but perfect. Do I need to list all the artists? Yeah….I say gloatingly….Led Zeppelin, B.B. King, Canned Heat, Chicago, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, Freddie King, Grand Funk Railroad, Herbie Mann, Incredible String Band, James Cotton, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, Nazz, Rotary Connection, Sam and Dave, Santana, Shiva's Headband, Sly and the Family Stone, Space Opera, Spirit, Sweetwater, Ten Years After and Tony Joe White.  All of the artists were in their prime and fully stoked.
One of my fondest memories was having Janis Joplin mistake me for someone else and running up to me and giving me a big hug. Kicking myself to this day, I was too zoned to come up with an intelligent response. I also stood next to B.B.King on stage right while we watched Johnny Winter whirling around on stage and firing off lightning fast riffs. I was amazed that he didn’t tie himself up with his long guitar cord. Late one night after the crowd had cleared out and the grounds were covered in steaming debris I remember sitting around a camp fire with Mark Farner of Grand Funk and Spencer Perskin of Shiva’s Headband. Mark was really pumped and could hardly sit still. Grand Funk had led off the main stage and went over really well. Unfortunately the ready availability of highly psychoactive combustibles somewhat clouds my memories but I swear I can remember those three days better than most of my college classes. The final kicker is that when I went to the promoter’s Dallas offices to pick up my paycheck I was drafted to help them move office furniture to their truck. I never did get paid……though I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

 

[LizardKing1]

My best live show was in a music festival. The day before I had met this girl on a speedating thing the show's production had arranged for fun, and a few friends had dragged me there. In the end me and her decided to go watch Beirut live the next day (it's a 4-day festival), which is still one of my favorite bands and one whose music I always use to evaluate a headphone's sound quality.
 
She never got there, so I watched the show alone. It was absolutely amazing. Zach Condon's face was angelical, gleaming with sweat. They had been shoved in a smaller tent than the other, so the other crappy artists could perform on huge stages, but it was ironic seeing how half the people in the festival went there to see them and the other jumbo tents had much less people. They played Postcards From Italy, Elephant Gun and an alternative slower version of The Gulag Orkestar (a funeral march). I was about 10 meters from the stage, so I could see them pretty well, and did not care the slightest how ridiculous I looked by waving my hands at the sound of the trumpet.
 
So they left, I never saw them live and that would be it. Oh yeah, the girl. Turns out she did go there, but she didn't see me and had no battery on her cellphone that day. So we kept talking afterwards, and it was funny how we were both describing the same concert and enjoyed the same aspects of it without even knowing the other was there. That girl and me just celebrated our 1st year of being boyfriend and girlfriend last weekend

 

[Angelopsaro]

I believe i nevert being to a live concert! i am going to the Red hot chilli peppers though in O2 arena in London next November! count me in please! i believe it will be the best i will go to! B)

 

[DayofCalm]

The best I've been to had to have been Tiesto live in Columbus, OH. I might have been the only raver there not on some kind of substance... but I had to be having some of the most fun too. From the first bass drop, to the shuffle circles, to the very last beat: definitely unforgettable.

The set was about four hours long, and the room was... well, it definitely wasn't big enough for the amount of people there. You could practically feel the sweat in the air... but you could also feel the bass in your bones, blinded by strobes.

I guess that's just the life of a basshead 

 
Thanks for doing this Creative!

 

[HeadphonesCom]

Quote:

Thanks for doing this Creative!

I changed the title so that there would be less confusion.  This very awesome Creaitve headphone is actually being given away by Headphones.com
 

 

[Lurkumaural]

I've been to a few concerts of varying flavors: Rock The Bells, Smokin Grooves, Broke Ass Summer Jam, Norah Jones (a few times), Garbage, No Doubt, Charlie Hunter, Dixie Dregs, very many others.  The best concert I attended was unlike any of these.  It was the Rock N Soul Revue, opened by Average White Band, then Michael McDonald, headed by Hall and Oates.
 
I am a fan of all three.  I enjoy Michael McDonald's work most out of all of them; I know I've read some unflattering opinions of his music here on Head-Fi and, well, what can I say other than opinions differ.  His live show, i.e. sitting a few rows in front of him, far exceeds anything I've heard him do in a studio or playback of a live show.  He's sitting planted on his butt behind his Motif, but the energy and excitement he had for his music was contagious.  He put a lot of soul in his vocals too, and by that I don't necessarily mean a bunch of ad lib runs.  It was, you know, soulful.
 
So when Hall and Oates got ready to perform "Kiss on My List" a second time during the encore numbers, and asked McDonald to come out and sing lead, my brother and I went nuts.  One of my favorite songs of the genre performed to great and enthusiastic interpretation by a man doing it justice.  I gotta tell you, that flipped my lid in a way that doesn't happen to me very much.
 
A close second was hearing Pep Love's "After Dark" live on stage for the very first time, before it was released.  Chills.
 
These are the moments that I have to keep sight of when I attempt something fantastic on stage.  I want to give these same moments to people, because hell, I definitely know how good it feels to be given such a gift.
 
 
Been wanting to get the CAL for a while.