Rock in Rio Lisboa - Rolling Stones with Bruce Springsteen

Fishbone with The English Beat. I've seen better bands but it was the most fun that I ever had at a concert (been going for 40 years)

Springsteen in 1976 was a jaw-dropper. Tom Petty in 1980 was phenomenal. J. Geils Band, on New Years Eve in 1981 made me think I'll never see anything this good ever again. (I was wrong). Linda Ronstadt, in 1983, Get Closer Tour made me realize that there was a difference between "singing" and "vocals". The chills I got hearing that voice soar across the arena, the power of her delivery, the softness of her plaintive emotion on the slow ones was just stunning.
Thinking of those 4 shows, the common threads are that there was no nonsense- no dancers, no costume changes, no smoke, no laser lights, just a band on a stage, with talent honed by years of playing in front of an audience. With skills in capturing an audience, they grabbed us by the throat and never let us go under we were spent, hours later...

Saw Rush in 1977 in a small theater in Fitchburg, MA on their Farewell to Kings tour. This was back when they had just a single keyboard on stage.

Spent the entire show with my elbows on the stage right in front of Alex.

HA! Just looked it up: 12/2/1977

http://www.rush.com/tour/a-farewell-to-kings/

http://progulator.com/TK421/wp-conte...Group_1978.jpg

Nice! I imagine that they were still fairly unknown to the masses, having little radio airplay or "hit" songs, so those dates must have been "real" fan gigs...

For sure. They only started getting really popular after Permanent Waves and Spirit of Radio took off. And then Moving Pictures and Tom Sawyer made them mega-huge.

Did ya know that only The Beatles and The Stones have more consecutive gold and platinum studio albums than Rush?

I believe it! Very, very loyal fans who have stuck with them a long time..