Three I Still Haven’t Seen Live

For quite sometime, I’ve kept a list of every concert I’ve attended. Detailing the kind of information that only obsessive music fans would care about: what the venue was, who was the opener, if there were special guests etc. Although its a somewhat unnecessary activity, it really doesn’t take too much time to write some basic info in a book and spreadsheet I put together.

Over the years, the list has accumulated into quite the database of information that can tell me that my first concert was Paul McCartney at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City in 1993 (though I clearly don’t need a computer to remind me of that), or that I’ve seen the jazz-funk trio Medeski Martin & Wood seven times, or that I saw the Ray Brown Trio literally 6 days before Ray Brown himself died.

One thing this list also tells me is who I still HAVE NOT seen in concert. Obviously that would and should be larger than the list of artists I have seen, but I try to narrow it down by those bands and artists who are still actively touring, still together (reunion concerts don’t typically get added to my list), and those still alive (no Beatles dream concert fantasies here).

Here are five artists or bands that I would try VERY hard to see in concert (within reason… I’m not at a position where I’d drop boatloads of cash to fly across the world to see some band).

1) Jon Brion — Known more for his stellar production with artists like Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann and recently even Kanye West, and for his eclectic film scores (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Punch Drunk Love, Magnolia etc), Jon Brion has become a cult figure in recent years for his weekly vaudevillian live performances at his club Largo in Los Angeles. Brion serves as a one-man band at these shows, playing all the instruments and constructing songs from the ground up with help of looping pedals.

What makes these performances so amazing according to what I’ve read and heard, is that he often takes requests from the audience who call out for cover songs both well-known and obscure. Along with the occasional surprise guest stopping by to play a song or two (Apple, Nickel Creek, Mann have all been known to show up), Brion creates a fantastic atmosphere where people can watch his amazing instrumental and arranging skills, while singing along to Beatles songs at the same time.

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2) Paul Simon — A few years back Paul Simon was touring in support of his great, yet underrated album You’re the One, and was stopping by Kansas City. I waffled on whether I should attempt to get tickets to see him (with my dad who is a huge fan of Simon), but ultimately waited too long and it sold out.

While I love the music of Simon and Garfunkel, I was never keen on forking over a crapload of money to see their recent reunion because ultimately that just seemed like the kind of nostalgia-filled singalong I wasn’t interested in witnessing.

His solo shows however, I would LOVE to see because of the depth of material from his early 70’s albums, not to mention Graceland, Rhythm of the Saints and all of that. Since parting ways with Art Garfunkel all those years ago, Simon has always surrounded himself with the industry’s best stage and studio musicians — tapping jazz greats like Michael Brecker, Cyro Baptista, Steve Gadd, among others.

Probably should’ve scalped tickets to that one.

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3) Sigur Ros — Of all the recent bands I’ve wanted to see the last few years, Icelandic rock band Sigur Ros always ends up being that intangible “one that got away.” Some of that can be attributed to the mystique of their beautiful, ethereal music, but it could also be because I keep bloody missing them. In 2002, there was a fantastic week where Lawrence Kansas had this perfect storm of bands worth seeing who all happened to be coming through.

If I remember correctly there was Jurassic 5, Charlie Hunter Duo, Bob Schneider, Aimee Mann, and The Flaming Lips opening and backing Beck. AND Sigur Ros, if I recall, the same night as Hunter and Schneider and sandwiched between Mann and the Lips\Beck shows I was already going to. Since I didn’t live in Lawrence at the time, making the trek during the college school week three days in a row was unfeasible sadly and I had to pick and choose…

I don’t regret choosing Mann and the AMAZING Lips\Beck show (which still stands in my top five shows ever list if I ever created one), but when I narrowly missed Sigur Ros again a few years later I was mildly more miffed. The band was playing in Bethesda Maryland, literally the day I moved to Washington DC and it was impossible to score a ticket, let alone find a way to get out there. (That show was webcast on All Songs Considered, which made it that much more painful to have missed it.) After seeing a video of their recent show at MoMA in New York, I was convinced to not to miss them again.

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There are countless other artists on my list as well, but surely those are stories for a different day. What are other musical artists or bands you still have not seen?