Best live musical performance you have ever seen?

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**BaconUprising**

What is the best live musical performance you have ever seen?
Just gonna throw these out there:
Rage against the Machine ("Bulls on Parade"=crowd gone mental!!!)
Jack White

I've heard Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball tour is supposed to be pretty lively as well.
What's yours?

**Necroagogo**

Tori Amos at the Royal Albert Hall.
Catatonia at the Brixton Academy.
Queensryche at the Hammersmith Apollo (Operation Mindcrime).
Manowar at the same venue.
Cerys Mathews at the Hippodrome (front row, centre. Awesome).
Enuff Z'Nuff at the Marquee (first UK gig).

They're the first to spring to mind.

**chaos0xomega**

In person? I have a tie:
The Gaslight Anthem - My favorite band, period. They don't get fancy with pyrotechnics, lasers, etc. etc. They rock it old school, good music, a banner (typically reppin' New Jersey in all its glory), "red lights for fast songs, blue lights for slow ones", and some good banter. Brian Fallon is a great guy with some interesting things to say, and TGA fans pretty much hang on his every word, and you can tell he and the band have a lot of fun with it (how many other punk acts do you know that cover Lady Gaga??). I saw them live this past summer at Pier 26 in NYC in the middle of a thunderstorm, we were literally out on the water with thunder and lightning going and rain coming down while they played, best lightshow ever (all natural), and nobody gave a damn about the rain, we were all singing and dancing and soaking wet and drinking beer. Good times (plus I got the see The Hold Steady live, more importantly, I got to see Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles completely drunk off his ass doing an AMAZING cover of "Cattle and the Creeping Things" with The Hold Steady)

Janes Addiction - AMAZING. Saw them at WDHA Rock the Park/Rockstar Energy Festival at the PNC Bank Arts Center in NJ , technically the main act was Alice in Chains, but Janes Addiction was far and away better, they have AMAZING stage presence, completely stole the show.

Otherwise, I've seen video of Kaizers Orchestra live at various concerts... amazing band, amazing stage presence, amazing music, amazing shows, I'm sad that I'll never have an opportunity to see them live myself unless they come back out of retirement (in which case I'll book the first flight to Norway available and wait however long it takes and pay however much it takes to see it happen).

**whembly**

Godsmack (they do awesome covers and drum solos)
ZZ Top
Kid Rock
Metallica

Those just comes to me...

As an opposing view... I saw The Black Keys and the Beale Street Music Festival (Memphis, TN) last year and for that venue, they weren't as good. They need to play in a more intimate area.

**chaos0xomega**

I saw Coheed and Cambria (right before Janes Addiction) and they were terrible. No stage presence at all, just stood there and played, and the drummer had a laptop with all the sound effects for their songs cued up on it, it was kinda weird, sounded almost exactly like it would off an album. I've heard their much better in a smaller venue.

**Lint**

Nine Inch Nails, hands down. Trent might be a somber bastard most of the time but damn he puts on a show.

**RatBot**

Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Cradle of Filth all put on ridiculously good shows when I saw them.

Cannibal Corpse and Mushroomhead are also really friggin' good live, but the fact that they were at relatively small venues probably helped that quite a bit.

**whembly**

Lint wrote:
Nine Inch Nails, hands down. Trent might be a somber bastard most of the time but damn he puts on a show.

I'll second NIN... I just saw them last fall and had a blast at the their show. Their stage production (lights/lasors/spotlights) were wicked awesome.

**Palindrome**

Green Day at the Glasgow Barrowlands in about 2001 (when ever they were doing their Nimrod tour). A truely excellent atmosphere.

**Jimsolo**

Papa Roach. I moved to a hick town in the middle of nowhere last year, which was made tolerable by them playing a local event shortly thereafter. Great performance.

**Chancetragedy**

Modern life is war's last show. Was the most intense, heartfelt, and lasting memory I have of a concert. It also helps I travelled half way across the country to be there.

**Redbeard**

Necroagogo wrote:

Enuff Z'Nuff at the Marquee (first UK gig).

Wow, that's an old name. They were the first concert I ever went to. They're a band from down the street, and one of the members was a cousin of one of my high school friends, so we got into a "21" show while still teens.

I've been to so many shows, it's really hard to pick a best. I can name a few worsts (Nirvana, Black Crowes, Grateful Dead) but picking a best...

Maybe, Mark Knopfler's 2009 tour, where we had front row seats. Maybe Robert Plant in 2001, when he was just going out on the road again, doing songs he liked (and stuck around for three encores). Maybe... there have been an awful lot of really good shows.

**Oshunai**

Quite a few favourite/best performances of all time so I'll just do the very best recent ones.

Iron Maiden at Donnington, June this year. A Spitfire flyover followed by a perfect setlist featuring most of the material from Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was just incredible.

Bolt Thrower's 26th Anniversary show in April of 2012 at the London Forum was also unforgettable. A setlist featuring a song from every album and a few fan favourites.

Katatonia's Last Fair Deal Gone Night show on May 6th 2011 in London. First playing Last Fear Deal Gone Down in its' entirety and then a second set with songs from all the other albums and a decent amount of more recent material. Completelyt magical and eerie atmosphere.

Everytime I've seen Sabaton since 2007, but topped by their 2011 London headline show with a fan voted setlist.,

**Relapse**

Moody Blues at the Auduban Zoo in New Orleans back in '87.

**Tannhauser42**

Hard to say. I haven't seen that many, though.
A few that come to mind:
Weird Al Yankovic's Alpocalypse Tour
ZZ Top
Phantom of the Opera in Vegas (during my honeymoon,

)
Fort Worth Sympony's "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony" show (watch Bugs Bunny cartoons while the full orchestra plays all the music).

**d-usa**

P.O.D. at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa.

I've seen them playing an arena your the year prior and they were good there. But Cain's is a small venue, only about 1,000 people, and it was great seeing them play their hearts out for the small crowd. Managed to be front and center, held up Sonny a couple times to help him stand on the barriers while playing, got some drum sticks from Wuv, and just had a blast.

Giant arena tours with special effects are great, but that small intimate concert was the best experience I've had.

**Frazzled**

In this order:
U2
Bare Naked Ladies
Johnny Cash

**feeder**

Frazzled wrote:
In this order:
U2
Bare Naked Ladies
Johnny Cash

That's some seriously socialist listening there, comrade.

Personally, Judas Priest was fething amazing when I saw them five years or so back. Lifelong favorite band, though. Rob could have hummed three blind mice for an hour and a half and I would have been happy.

I've seen Down three times now, each time better than the last. These guys are total pros.

Heaven and Hell (Sabbath with Dio) was very impressive, despite the gak venue (BC Place), and completely changed my "Sabbath isn't Sabbath without Ozzy" opinion.

**ScootyPuffJunior**

My favorite band is Bad Religion, so every time I've seen them is equally awesome with maybe the first time seeing them being my slight favorite, especially since they played an extended rendition of my favorite song (Part III) which was pretty sweet.

I saw The Dillinger Escape Plan on their Calculating Infinity tour in tiny record store in Las Vegas (where I was living at the time) and on top of the craziness of seeing them in such a small venue they had a guy breathing fire.

**Chancetragedy**

Bahhhhhhh I miss DEP with dimitri singing. I got to see them twice on that tour, I also got to see them just after under the running board came out. '97 was when I got into metal/hardcore. They definately put on a great show.

**Ouze**

For me, it was Garbage on the 2.0 tour at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan, October 30th 1998. I still remember every moment of that show.

**chaos0xomega**

Oshunai wrote:
Quite a few favourite/best performances of all time so I'll just do the very best recent ones.

Iron Maiden at Donnington, June this year. A Spitfire flyover followed by a perfect setlist featuring most of the material from Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was just incredible.

Bolt Thrower's 26th Anniversary show in April of 2012 at the London Forum was also unforgettable. A setlist featuring a song from every album and a few fan favourites.

Katatonia's Last Fair Deal Gone Night show on May 6th 2011 in London. First playing Last Fear Deal Gone Down in its' entirety and then a second set with songs from all the other albums and a decent amount of more recent material. Completelyt magical and eerie atmosphere.

Everytime I've seen Sabaton since 2007, but topped by their 2011 London headline show with a fan voted setlist.,

Bolt Thrower's 26th Anniversary show in April of 2012 at the London Forum was also unforgettable. A setlist featuring a song from every album and a few fan favourites.

Bolt Thrower's 26th Anniversary show

Bolt Thrower

For real!???

**Seaward**

Jimmy Buffett at the Nissan Pavilion in Manassas, VA. Third row, dead center.

**MWHistorian**

Rob Zombie had the most insane theatrics of any show I've ever seen and the guitar solos were insane. Wow!

10 Years might win for pure talent. The performance is almost beautiful.

Birthday Massacre was perhaps the funnest show I went to because the lead singer's personality is so strong. Maybe because she's Canadian.

**dogma**

Rage Against the Machine, Lollapalooza, 2008.

**Maddermax**

The Living End are amazing showmen and musicians, seeing them in concert is one of my all time fondest memories.

Machine Gun Fellatio were a hell of a lot of fun to watch as well, if only to watch KK Juggy do a dozen naked cartwheels for the hell of it.

**IAmTheWalrus**

Hands down my best show was Kamelot in 2006 at the Chance Theater in Poughkeepsie NY. I was not 10 feet from Roy Khan, Epica opened for them so they did 'the Haunting' with Simone Simons and Casey Grillo gave me a broken drumstick after the show.

A close second would be Godsmack. I'm not a huge fan, but they put on an amazing show. There was one point where Sully and the drummer each had drum kits on different moving platforms and were playing covers of songs like Moby Dick and War Pigs.

Heaven and Hell was a little underwhelming for me. I saw them in 2006 or 2007 at Mohegan Sun. I love classic rock, but they didn't seem to have any energy and I was afraid Dio was going to break his hip jumping around like he was. That and it seemed like Tony Iommi forgot where he was during the middle of his very, very extended guitar solo and started over.

**marv335**

Iron Maiden for the Brave New World tour was good.
I saw The Donnas in Glasgow were good, I was the only bloke there...
Honourable mention has to go to Marlyn Manson, we had evangelicals trying to convert us away from satan in the queue with holy donuts.
(Seriously, they were made with holy water, and had been blessed)

**SilverMK2**

Cruxshadows were great - the first time I saw them was the best in a small venue in Leeds.

Alice Cooper was absolutely fantastic both times I saw him, especially the second time when I went with my wife.

**greenskin lynn**

haven't went to any shows in the past couple years, so i guess the winner for me would be seeing the misfits during the..hm..30th anniversery tour i think, in a smallish place in asheville