5 Most Preferred Bands To See Live

 

The Beatles

The Rolling Stones

Hendrix

Santana

King Crimson

 

 

Ozric Tentacles

Klaus Schulze

Gong

Manuel Gottsching

Quantum Fantay

Jethro Tull

Yes

Peter Gabriel

Tool

Rush

Gong

Magazine

Hadouk Trio

oh and Kate Bush

Opeth (seen 4 times)

Roger Waters/David Gilmour/Pink floyd  (seeing Roger Waters possibly twice BACK TO BACK!)

Zappa plays zappa (missed out on them TWICE!) =(

Aghora (seen 3 times...AMAZING PERFORMANCE OF ENTIRE FORMLESS that was better than the studio version!)

 

This is not an easy question.

 

At least 3 of the top composers of our time, will probably NEVER play in America ... because the interest is only in top ten, and the audience is too damn fickle to appreciate it ... and sometimes this board angers me because of it.

 

Vangelis (with orchestra of course)

Mike Oldfield (with orchestra of course)

Klaus Schulze

Riuichi Sakamoto (with orchestra and rock band together)

 

Riuichi has done stuff here with Yellow Magic Orchestra, however we will never get to see some of his solo work that is way better ... if you have not sat through "Beauty" and said to yourself ... I wanna see that ... and then listen to portions of "The Last Buddha" soundtrack ... and then to ... so much other stuff ... you are missing some really far out stuff. Totally neat and excellent.

 

Vangelis is without saying and you and I would both want "Blade Runner" for the encore. And I would like him to be with some orchestra folks, which unffortunately makes it more work for him.

 

Mike Oldfield ... cold day in hell that some a$$hole in NY is going to bring him to America for a couple of shows ... even with a rock band, however I don't think that Mike is interested in rock shows any more since the quality in most of them is from bad to pathetic and Mike will not allow that to happen to his music ... and since America is the ultimate place for cheap crap and plastic hit music ... it means we will never see Mike.

 

Klaus Schulze ... I think that he has given up and decided that places like America are simply not worth it ... on top of it, the desire to rewire all of his stuff and make it work would be a massive nightmare ... and not worth the hassle. He is also his own mixing person, which is something that some folks don't like ... and somehow I don't see Klaus just using 4 synths and a Midi board and nothing else to do what he does ... it's all or nothing!

 

After that ... there are no rock bands that I wish to see or regret not seeing except maybe Led Zeppelin. The best bootleg I ever heard was "Live on Blueberry Hill" by Led Zeppelin and the energy and intensity of the whole thing can not be found in many places at all.

 

I am not sure that there is any band I would want to see ... that I have not seen or that I missed otherwise. For the most part I am totally down on rock music concerts ... since not enough bands take care to ensure that their music comes out correctly and is balanced properly. My example here was the last two times that Ozric Tentacles came through here the sound system and mixing jerks screwed it up so bad that all you had was some idiotic rock'n'roll band out there that had no keyboards ... and sounded so bad ... that on the 2nd show I left halfway through it. It was just the saddest realization of my life that ... what we're calling "prog" is just crap and there are not enough people making sure their music is important at all ... it might sound fine on the mixing board, but that is NOT what people are hearing at all!

 

What made "progressive" was that these people cared about the music ... what is killing it and making it "metal" and some other form of crap definition, is that fidelity is not important and only loudness is ... ie .. .Dream Theater on their last tour! No keyboards or bass to speak of ... or singing voice for that matter! And in the end, this will kill the music ... and all that is left is people here on this board being a fan of a guitarist or drummer ... how progressive of them! ... see the point? ... it will kill the music!

 

Other than that, for the sake of music history ... I would love to see the orchestral Frank Zappa material regardless, and also his 200 Motels and other video stuff that is hidden released so we can see a brilliant and quite experimental mind at work. 

 

Lastly ... I would like Congress to pass a law that any dispute between artist and record company is against the law and must be resolved within 30 days or the company will get punished for it, unless they can prove they are not the problem. This issue of movie companies and record companies holding artists for ransom has to stop and not be allowed. After all, we don't live in the age of slavery anymore ... or do we?