San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
CONCERTS THAT ROCKED
Picking my favorite live performance of all time is quite a task, thanks to James brown, Miles Davis, Jill Scott, the Rolling Stones and more; here are the concert memories I cherish most amid this drought
Do music critics like to torture themselves? I can’t speak for my peers. But when it comes to making definitive lists of my all-time favorite musical experiences, the answer is an absolute yes. That was the case in May, when I wrote about the 10 albums that changed my life. It was a near-impossible task, even after I hedged my bets by adding five alternate selections for each of my 10 choices. A day later, I could have easily cited 60 other albums, all as memorable in different ways.
The abundance of choices, and the difficulty in narrowing them down, applies equally to today’s article about my all-time favorite concerts. Make that, today’s article about some of my many favorite concerts.
Even before I became the music critic for the Union-tribune 32 years ago, I was an avid concertgoer — as a regular freelance writer for the
U-T, a contributing writer to San Diego’s Kicks magazine, and the music critic for Overseas Life, a monthly magazine published in Germany.
I happily reviewed my first concert — an unlikely double-bill of Velvet Underground and Humble Pie in Frankfurt, Germany — when I was in 10th grade. Three years later, I reviewed my first festival, the 17-day-long, genre-leaping 1975 edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.
In 2019, between mid-july and mid-august, I attended 22 concerts, which is about average for me during most summer months. I attend about 150 concerts a year, for a total of more than 4,500 since 1988. Sometimes, I squeeze in two shows a night, even — and especially — when they seem to take place on different musical planets.
In 1998, I rushed from Diana Krall at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay to the Spice Girls at what was then Coors Amphitheatre. In 2016, I
dashed with my wife from the Carole King musical “Beautiful” at the San Diego Civic Theatre to catch Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals at House of Blues. In January, we scurried from the first set by drum marvel Brian Blade at the Athenaeum to catch the area debut of country-soul vocal powerhouse Yola at the Music Box.
For a lifelong music-lover, the stylistically varied riches I have experienced are priceless. Of course, the number of great concerts has been balanced by lesser performances, which have ranged from good to hum-drum and from mediocre to patently fraudulent. I can’t forget (much as I’d like to) that — years before Milli Vanilli’s 1990 San Diego Sports Arena “concert” — the Thompson Twins and Fine Young Cannibals also delivered almost entirely lip-synced performances here.
Then again, you can’t enjoy a breathtaking mountaintop vista nearly as much if you bypass the valleys and plateaus below, can you?
First impressions
The first two concerts I attended were by The Doors and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, both in Frankfurt. It was a heady, one-two introduction to live music for a wide-eyed 12-year-old.
Next, in fairly quick succession, were Frankfurt concerts by the Beach Boys, John Mayall, The Marvelettes, Jethro Tull, the Frank Zappa-led Mothers of Invention, Chicago Transit Authority, Spirit, The Afro Kings, Pink Floyd, Yes, Deep Purple, Delaney & Bonnie (with guest guitarist Eric Clapton), Colosseum, Taste and Leonard Cohen. Then came the Rolling Stones, Procol Harum, Led Zeppelin, Wishbone Ash, Free, Jeff Beck, the Maggie Bell-led Stone the Crows, Gentle Giant and a good number more, including such recent Woodstock veterans as Santana, The Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Country Joe Mcdonald, Ten Years After and the Keef Hartley Band.
James Brown and Muddy Waters
To varying degrees, each of the artists cited above opened brave new aural worlds for me, aesthetically and culturally — or counter-culturally. A majority of them drew heavily from blues and rhythm-andblues, the perpetually rich American music styles that laid the foundation for jazz, rock, soul and more. Accordingly, two of my enduring early epiphanies in Frankfurt were delivered by James Brown (1971) and Muddy Waters (1972).
Brown, whose red-hot band then included a very young Bootsy Collins on bass, was electrifying from start to finish. His raspy, soul-stirring vocals and dazzling showmanship took such classic songs as “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” “Super Bad” and “Please, Please, Please” even higher. Watching him exultantly sing “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” to a young, white, predominantly German audience — which shouted those words back to him in an increasingly galvanizing (and heavily accented) call-and-response — was an early example for me of music’s unique ability to unify and elevate.
Waters and his talent-packed band performed at a much lower volume than Brown and favored a more nuanced approach. Even though Waters sang and played guitar while seated, he was as electrifying as Brown, whether caressing the slow-burning “Honey Bee” or kicking into high gear on “All Night Long” and the triumphant “Got My Mojo Working.” His first slide guitar solo of the night earned a standing ovation. When he came back out to do an encore, a fan rushed onstage, dropped to his knees and bowed. Waters was delighted. So was I.
Jill Scott, Whitney Houston and Cassandra Wilson
While Norah Jones and Diana Krall have both delivered enchanting concerts in San Diego, their debuts here — Jones at ’Canes in 2002 and Krall at the Horton Grand in 1995 — were underwhelming. Not so, Cassandra Wilson’s mesmerizing 1994 debut at the Horton Grand and the then-22-year-old Whitney Houston’s aim-for-the-stars 1985 debut at Humphreys, which was the first date on the first tour of her career.
But Jill Scott’s wonderfully dynamic 2001 debut at the Belly Up may have been the best of all. Backed by her ace band, Fatback Taffy, the Philadelphia-bred vocal sensation sounded like the irresistibly vibrant missing link between Nina Simone, Etta James, Betty Carter and Aretha Franklin, with a dollop of Prince and Bob Marley for good measure. When Scott sang “Made me some breakfast: toast, two scrambled eggs, grits” during her slow-burning ballad “The Way,” she let the word “grits” slowly roll off her tongue, as if she — and we — were savoring its taste at that very moment.
Miles Davis and the Rolling Stones
Rain, rain, go away?
You can count the number of rainy open-air concerts that have taken place in San Diego with two hands and still have enough fingers left to twiddle your thumbs. The two most memorable for me were by Miles Davis in 1985 at Humphreys and the Rolling Stones in 1998 at Mission Valley’s Qualcomm Stadium, which had the added attraction of wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour. The headlines for my Union-tribune reviews of the two concerts read: “Davis’ horn reigns rain or no” and “Stones take Squall-comm by storm.”
Exactly why the Stones were performing their 1998 stadium concert here in February remains a mystery. But the Mick Jagger-led band didn’t punch the clock and run for cover, nor did the largely rain-poncho-clad audience of 56,477. To the contrary, the Stones became more vital and intense as the night grew wetter and colder. When the group ripped into its 1965 hit “The Last Time” — about midway through its 127-minute concert — it almost magically made it sound like the first time.
The rain fell even harder during parts of jazz icon Davis’ concert at Humphreys in 1985, when his band featured future Stones bassist Darryl Jones. The stage crew covered some of the amplifiers and keyboards with tarps as Davis and his band performed, then put tarps over some of the musicians — but not Davis, who refused. Attired in black leather pants, an ornately decorated black rain coat, a black Gaucho hat, fingerless black gloves and his trademark dark sunglasses, the fabled jazz icon periodically scowled up at the sky, as if daring it to rain more. It did, and his series of increasingly charged trumpet solos earned loud ovations from the soaked but appreciative audience. Of the six times I saw Davis in concert, he never played with more fire than on that very wet San Diego night.
Unwavering consistency
Some artists can deliver a truly stunning concert one night, then coast on automatic pilot the next. That is why I place a great premium on those artists who consistently soar, night after night, tour after tour, decade after decade. So take a bow, Paul Mccartney, Neil Young, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Patti Smith, Chick Corea, Richard Thompson, The Roots, Emmylou Harris, U2, John Mclaughlin, Brad Paisley, David Byrne, Mavis Staples, Dave Holland, and such current or former San Diego artists as Diamanda Galas, Charles Mcpherson, Mark Dresser, Holly Hofmann, Mike Wofford, Rocket From the Crypt, Gregory Page, Switchfoot and the now apparently retired Tom Waits.
Some of the most consistent performers I have seen are either deceased (Ella Fitzgerald, Tom Petty, Fats Domino) or sadly inactive (Sonny Rollins, Joni Mitchell, Talking Heads). Over the years, I was lucky enough to attend at least two dozen concerts apiece by the late Ray Charles and B.B. King. Charles’ consistency was astonishing, as was his ability to make the exact same songs sound different when performing two back-to-back shows in a single night. The same held true for King, at least until the tragically diminished final few years of his storied career.
Today, with concerts at a virtual standstill because of the coronavirus pandemic, I cherish all of these concerts more than ever. And I can’t wait for live music to resume and my list of favorite concerts to grow ever larger. It won’t be a moment too soon.