Category: ConcertFlashback

December concert flashbacks

November concert flashbacks

October concert flashbacks

September concert flashbacks

August concert flashbacks

July concert flashbacks

June concert flashbacks

  • 6/01 #31: Fastball Live at the Herndon Festival in 2008. One of my favorite 90s bands so close to home.
  • 6/02 #32: Garbage at HFStival in 1996 plus Queens of the Stone Age at the 9:30 Club in 2002 with L’il Davie Grohl on drums.
  • 6/03 #33: Double shot of Herndon Festival – Brindley Brothers in 2005 and Girlyman in 2006.
  • 6/04 #34: Double shot of last time I saw artists: Lowen & Navarro at The Birchmere in 2009 and Mudcrutch (with Tom Petty) at the 9:30 Club in 2016.
  • 6/05 #35: The Excentrics at Friday Night Live. Remember when they didn’t just have cover bands?
  • 6/08 #36: Celebrate Fairfax doubleshot – Gin Blossoms and Sister Hazel, both from 2002.
  • 6/11 #37: Tom Petty with Trey Anastasio at Nissan Pavilion. All the hits, plus songs by Phish, Bo Diddley, Fleetwood Mac, Traveling Wilburys, Them [Van Morrison], and Stevie Nicks with a special appearance by Stevie Nicks? Just an amazing show.
  • 6/12 #38: One more trip to Celebrate Fairfax, this time for a double shot of Rick Springfield from 2005 and They Might Be Giants from 1999 (bonus points if you can spot me in the latter).
  • 6/13 #39: Da Vinci’s Notebook’s last show at Crystal City Street Fair in 2005. Still the most distractable band in the land.
  • 6/14 #40: The Pat McGee Band at the Alexandria Waterfront Festival in 1999. Notable for being the first time I saw them and Eddie From Ohio. Don’t have efo’s set, but Bob McNichols promises he’ll find it for me someday…
  • 6/15 #41: Robert Plant & Alison Krauss at Merriweather Post Pavilion in 2008. I really enjoyed them together.
  • 6/18 #42: A special number for a special show – the Tibetan Freedom Concert at RFK Stadium in 1998. Day 1 was cut short due to someone getting hit by lightning, but day 2 was super packed: Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Wyclef Jean, Blues Traveler, The Wallflowers, Luscious Jackson, Jungle Brothers, R.E.M., A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, and Pearl Jam (who snuck in Red Hot Chili Peppers to finish their set, but we left during Pearl Jam).
  • 6/19 #43: U2 at MCI Center in 2001. My first time seeing them and what a fantastic setlist.
  • 6/20 #44: Dave Matthews Band at Nissan Pavilion in 1997. Béla Fleck & The Flecktones opened and Béla Fleck sat in for quite a while. One of my favorite Dave shows.
  • 6/21 #45: The Beach Boys at Merriweather Post Pavilion with my dad in 2012.
  • 6/22 #46: The much missed 4 Way Street (Philly songwriters) at Jammin’ Java in 2004.
  • 6/23 #47: Guns N’ Roses at the Capital Centre in 1991. My first time seeing them, and as usual they started late.
  • 6/24 #48: Norah Jones at Wolf Trap in 2003. Good show, and she ended with an AC/DC cover. This one’s from a different show, but you get the idea.
  • 6/25 #49: Sting & Peter Gabriel at Verizon Center in 2016. Nice selection of hits, and I love it when the good double bills actually play together.
  • 6/27 #50: Counting Crows with The Wallflowers at Wolf Trap in 2013. Very nice career spanning sets from both bands – this is a good review.
  • 6/29 #51: Lindsey Buckingham & Christine McVie at Wolf Trap in 2017. A nice mix of their great album and Mac tunes.
  • 6/30 #52: Extreme at Bank Of America Pavilion in 2006. All the hits, all the members, plus half of Boston (the band).

May concert flashbacks

April concert flashbacks

After a month in quarantine I decided if I can’t go out to see live music, I’m going to start listening to my collection. A concert a day from this week in the past.

25 years since Woodstock ’94

In the summer of 1994 I had just left my first software developer job after two years as the company was sold. Burned out by 80 hour weeks of working on tax software and nursing a case of carpal tunnel, I took advantage of a deal to stay on and write a data exporter for the new company and walked away with some nice compensation, most of which I sunk into Digital Exchange, a used CD store in Springfield, VA. It had been started the previous year by three of my fraternity brothers from Sigma Phi Epsilon at Randolph Macon College. John (aka Rusty) wanted to get back to the corporate world full time, so I bought him out.

instructions

I was a long time fan of music, but I hadn’t gone to a lot of concerts yet. My first show was in 1984, but I’d only seen a couple of shows a year after that. I started getting more into it in 1993, but with my exit from the 9 to 5 world, came a new goal: I would see 100 bands in 1994. I was making good progress by summer, especially going to my first two festivals: HFStival and Lollapalooza. But the announcement of Woodstock ’94 had me salivating: amazing lineups and the connection with the legendary original. By that time I was at the store full time, and my buddy Eric was interested in going as well, so we bought tickets when they went on sale in June. We convinced John to come back that weekend in August and help out Steve, and got on the road Friday morning August the 12th (after seeing Nine Inch Nails at the Patriot Center the night before).

parking pass front parking pass back

With 250,000 people expected, the festival organizers had us drive to a parking lot to take a shuttle bus to the festival. While things had gone well for us, this is where the problems started as we had at least a four hour wait for an orange bus (and I had my one and only experience with Goldschlager). By the time we actually got to Woodstock ’94, it was dark and Sheryl Crow was playing. We caught some of her set, but it was late and we needed to set up camp. We could see tents all around, so we kept going past the North Stage where she was playing, then the South Stage, still not finding any empty space. We ended up setting up our tent on a hillside past there.

map

We were woken Saturday morning to light rain starting to fall, but our tent was partly shielded by the trees. We got food and walked over to the North Stage where Joe Cocker kicked things off. He was followed by Blind Melon, Cypress Hill and Rollins Band before we took a break (and missed Melissa Etheridge covering Janis Joplin as well as Crosby, Stills & Nash).

We were back at the South Stage in time to see The Band featuring Hot Tuna, Bruce Hornsby, Roger McGuinn, Rob Wasserman, and Bob Weir (and that turned out to be the one and only time I saw them) as well as Primus before the main event. Sure, we’d seen Nine Inch Nails two days earlier, but they embraced the mud to put on a legendary performance.

Metallica was up next and took on the challenge. As the only act there with pyrotechnics, they had an added fuel to their ferocious show.

Aerosmith was more than willing to top that at their show, which started after midnight. It was epic, and ended with a fireworks display at 3:30am (and one of our neighbors offering me a hit from a Coke Can bong was the perfect last time I had any).

Saturday was epic, but it was a festival that was later nicknamed Mudstock for a reason. It got harder and harder to walk around, the porta potties couldn’t get serviced, and they started to run out of food. Knowing that the later we waited the harder it would be to get back to the car, we only caught Traffic that day before heading for the buses and home (I loved the two bootleg t-shirts I got there to death). Oh, and I hit my goal: 127 bands just in 1994.

wristband

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