Good Times

So last night at the pub after band practice, I got talking to one fo the servers (we're friends with just about all the ones that typically work the days/nights we have practice) about the Tool concert she went to see a couple of weeks ago. Now, I tried to get to see Tool when they came through, but the fates conspired against me... and so I did not, but I was more than eager to confirm that they are, in fact as fabulous a live show as I have heard they are. Of course, the verdict came back "yes".

So, this got me thinking. They would almost certainly crack my Top Five for best concerts attended... and this got me thinking further, as to what the rest of this fictitious Top Five that I was arbitrarily thinking up would look like... I think it would go something like this:

1. U2. No discussion here. I could go to the trouble of ranking the four shows that I've seen, but that would basically make this a pretty redundant list. For the sake of argument, I can easily say that the last time I saw them (September 2005, Vertigo Tour) was the best of the four, with October 1997 (PopMart Tour, also my first time seeing them live), May 2001 (Elevation Tour), and October 2001 (also Elevation Tour) rounding out the list, in order. Why was the most recent time the best? I was on the damned floor, THREE FEET from the band. What more do you want? Oh, and they also played my all-time fave track, "Bad".
2. Limp Bizkit. This was actually part of the Summer Sanitarium Tour a couple of years back, technically headlined by Metallica, but Fred 'n the boys just blew them out of the water. Damned near blew the roof of the Skydome! Never been to something to energetic in my life. Just fucking nuts.
3. Pearl Jam. I understand that this was actually a marginal show, as it was the very first of their new tour, and so there were some mistakes, and just a general lack of polish... but if that was an average-to-bad show? Wow. Gotta see them when they're on their game! I thought it was incredible.
4. Dropkick Murphys. In Boston, in the shadow of Fenway Park, on St. Patrick's Day 2001. Fuckin' A! Just a zoo. About the only thing that can come close to the mosh pit for Limp Bizkit...
5. April Wine. Don't laugh! Okay, maybe I had been drinking all afternoon, and was convinced from "You're going to see who?" earlier in the day to buying a t-shirt after the show... but these old dudes can still rock. I don't care about the beer guts and that it was at the Cocamo, full of sketchy townies. The show was great!

Honourable Mentions from the Piping World:

Simon Fraser University Pipe Band. Saw them at Massey hall a couple of years back, when they were fresh off one of their recent World Championships. Wow. Just an incredible band sounding incredibly good. They can do things as a band that most pipers can't do on their own, in terms of finger technique.

Also, before I joined them, Peel Police used to have a guest piper come over from Scotland to perform as a featured player at a concert series they had going in the early-to-mid '90s. In 1994 they have Alasdair Gillies, who is one of the most dynamic pipers I have ever heard. Again, just wow. Normally you only get a chance to hear some of these "big guys" in contests, where they tend to have to button it down a bit, but he really let it all hang out, and it was fucking fabulous. Originally from Scotland, he now teaches at Carnegie-Mellon university in Pittsburgh.

A few years later, I heard arguably the best solo piping performance I have ever heard in a contest from Stuart Liddell of Inverarry, Scotland, and currently playing with SFU. I can hardly put the perfection he attained into words. His pipe was immaculate, blown perfectly, and the degree of subtlety and control in his fingering and phrasing is as close to ideal as I have ever heard in person, or anywhere for that matter. Just a masterful performance.

Now that I've prattled on about piping and bored you all to tears, I'm going to stop typing.

Word.