I know it’s Tuesday, but Monkees Monday scans and sounds better, doesn’t it?
Dig Davy Jones’s multiple maraca action! I loved the Monkees–I was too young for the TV show’s first run, but caught the re-runs in the 1970s. Whenever I hear this song, it always reminds me of “Last Train to Clarksville,” both thematically and musically:
Can you believe that Michael Stipe ever had that much hair? That video must be at least 25 years old.
Historiann 
Stop, Historiann! You’re making me feel old! REM in ’86 was my first concert ever.
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I really, really loved Michael Stipe when he had long, flowing locks. Things really weren’t the same from Losing My Religion forward.
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Losing My Hair was more like it!
(But, hey–it happens to a lot of guys. No unseemly mockery intended.)
I think my first rock concert was The Romantics at the Toledo Masonic Hall in 1984, which is a little embarssing. I saw the Violent Femmes at the Fox Theater in Detroit in 1986, which I think makes me look a little cooler.
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Springsteen, Born in the USA tour, ca. 1984/1985. But selective chronology may mean that I’m revising history: my first concert may have been something like R. E. O. Speedwagon, or The Police, or Arlo Guthrie. I think I still have the Springsteen T-shirt (the one with the 3/4 sleeves!), believe it or not.
I was unable to get tickets to The Stones or The Who while I was in high school around 1981, when I foolishly thought “This may be the last time these guys tour; they’re getting too old for it!”
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My first concert was Sha Na Na. When I was 7. I’m not sure whether that makes me really cool or really a loser.
I think that my first concert in high school was Sting or something. I *could* have gone to see The Pixies on the Doolittle tour, but I was a freshman and a senior boy asked me and my mom just said no to that. Apparently “But it’s THE PIXIES!!!” was not very persuasive 🙂
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Simon and Garfunkel in a tent, in New Jersey, in the late ’60s. Wasn’t even driving, so mom had to do that–beYOND uncool. Jefferson Airplane in several venues in college. Stones tour in 1975 in Philly. After that… I forget…
Ever see the Pretenders in Ohio, Historiann?
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Tom–I remember having the same thoughts about my “last chance” to see the Who or the Stones back in 1982-83. I remember that Rolling Stone even did a cover story on the fact that Mick Jagger was turning 40 and what did this mean for the future of rock & roll, etc.
(This was years before old rock & rollers sold their songs to expensive car companies to use as soundtracks to their TV ads.)
Indyanna–I never saw the Pretenders, in Ohio or anywhere. I think they still tour occasionally, don’t they?
I tell you what makes me feel old: that Dr. Crazy could have seen the Pixies as a freshman in high school. (Sha na na, though: that’s pretty funny!)
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Hah! I saw that same Violent Femmes tour (’86, “Blind Leading the Naked”, right?) — and it actually was my first concert. I was a complete dork, desperate for the other kids to think I was cool. I also got kicked in the head by a stage diver.
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What a memory! My strongest memory of the show was Gordon Gano in a skirt, and the kamikazes we mixed up in the parking lot before the show. (I was still illegal then.)
Remember that scene from Annie Hall in which Woody Allen sneezes into a pile of blow? Well, I coughed/spit up into the pitcher of kamikazes. Humiliating! And too bad for my friends who really didn’t feel like drinking them afterwards. . .
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My first rock n’ roll song that I ever fell in love with was “Last Train to Clarkesville,” which I heard at a roller skating birthday party at a rink in King of Prussia PA.
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Supremes Steel pier Atlantic City, NJ first concert. Was lucky enough to have Saratoga Performing Arts Center close and saw so many artists there. The Monkees were one of my favorite shows.
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Mickey Dolenz was a pretty good songwriter, they learned to play serviceably, I guess you might say, and they admirably broke free from the gimmicky framework envisioned by their television producer “creators.”
Chrissie Hynde moved back to Akron to nurse a failing parent and opened a vegan restaurant there, but I guess she and some of her mates sometimes play a show or two. I never actually saw them, regrettably.
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First concert was John Sebastian opening for Robin Williams when I was 13 or so, visiting my brother when he was a summer tour guide at his college. The trip to Great Adventure that same weekend was cooler than John Sebastian but not as cool as coked out Robin Williams. The first concert I got my own tickets to was U2, Unforgettable Fire tour. Bono fake died on-stage to Bad and the Edge still sang back-up. And Lone Justice opened, which I didn’t even realize how cool that was because lots of people would go onto see U2 but Lone Justice broke up shortly after that tour.
Plus, loved the Monkees in reruns. And saw Davy Jones perform with the Real Live Brady Bunch in Ann Arbor.
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The first concert I remember going to, I may have been 11 or so, was Yehudi Menuhin playing violin. My mom took me. So, did I just broaden the bandwidth into UV dorkness, or what?
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The Carpenters, at a theater in the round thing, with a friend whose parents took us.
The first one I did on my own was Elton John, c. 1980 or so.
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It’s so interesting–there’s more variety in musical taste than in generational diversity in this thread. I’m guessing that most of you all are in your 40s and 50s. Perhaps the youngsters who have never seen the Monkees and/or Michael Stipe with hair aren’t yet moved by nostalgia for their youths?
Now that I think of it, my last memorable musical day/night out was the free show Green Day put on back in the summer of 1994 in Boston in the Hatch Shell, when they had to pull the plug because the local authorities were afraid it was going to be another Who in Cincinnati situation. (Plus it had been raining all day and was so muddy that they were afraid of electrocuting all of us.) I was with a bunch of other people in their mid- to late 20s and we all felt like the scene was already too young for us.
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Oh–forgot. Bob Mould at a free Earth Day show in Cincinnati in 2000, I think, and Lucinda Williams also in Cincinnati (not free, at a bar) around the same time.
(Since I’ve moved to Colorado–no live music for me!)
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The Who, fall 1968, somewhere in Westchester county. It was a present for my (older) sister’s 16th birthday, and my father took me as his guest. I think my sister was cross, because I got to go and it wasn’t my birthday (and it wasn’t particularly my scene). Bonnie Raitt in college, and Holly Near in grad school. Never much of a rock/pop concert person…
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Huh. I hear more and more diverse live music now than I did in my 20’s. Back then it was all opera and classical, except for one memorable road trip following the Dead Milkmen. Now I only attend the opera when I happen to be in a real opera city and locally we go to folk, bluegrass and so on (Punch Brothers coming up soon). The best non-operatic live show I’ve ever seen was Dolly Parton.
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Please take a moment to point and laugh when I tell you that the first concert I ever went to was Amy Grant. My relatives were fundies. One time one such relative bought me a shirt that said “Dare to be square” on it. Boy, did I live that concept in middle school & high school.
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I remember Michael Stipe with hair, and Monkeys reruns on MTV. Ah, high school.
I think my first “concert” was the coked up remains of the Beach Boys either at half time of or immediately following a Washington Diplomats game. Johan Cruyff! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN8zyz9FsdI)
My first show of my own volition was probably the Grateful Dead in 1984. Best shows recently… The presumably not coked-up remains of Ralph Stanley; possibly coked up remains of Graham Parker; and the pre-Zooey Deschanel M. Ward. Oh, and one of the most memorable I’ve been to was Blue Rodeo (Canadian supergroup but relatively unknown in the U.S.) at a really small place in Philly (the North Star Bar, maybe?)
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@Indyanna -Chrissie Hynde has a new project that’s actually pretty awesome: J.P, Chrissie, and the Fairground Boys. Their first alblum was released last summer/fall.
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I just saw part of a triple bill at the North Star last month! Before that, it was probably Cowboy Junkies at the Keswick about 9 years ago, unless I count Bubboon and Bubbles at the Philadelphia Zoo on WXPN days. Kids’ changed my music habits. Sigh.
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