I’m roughly the same age, born in `62, and while I got to see a lot of really amazing concerts, there were so many more bands that I loved that I never got to see. The thing that I miss most of all was how affordable going to a concert was. When I was in high school, tickets were always less than $20, and a local radio station would often bring regional acts to town for “102 cent concerts.” While video are nowhere near as good as attending the live show, Rush DOES have a number of really great live concert videos on DVD and BluRay.
There’s an old saying about performers, and when a performer gives their all, that called “Leaving it all on the stage.” Rush gave their absolute all to every performance. They credit a part of that to their early touring days, opening for Kiss. Say what you will about Kiss, they wanted their audiences leaving the show feeling that they had more than gotten their money’s worth, and Rush was the same. Leaving a Rush show, I always felt both exhilarated and exhausted.
For sheer energy, don’t miss Rush, Live in Rio. It was around the 30th anniversary of Rush, and they visited Brazil for the first time, and they were really knocked out by the response. Search YouTube for YYZ and RIO, you won’t be dissapointed, but the entire concert was amazing.
Over the years I’ve seen Rush between 15 and 20 times (I lost count.) My very first rock concert was Rush’s “A Farewell to Kings” tour, and my last Rush concert was their R-40 performance in Kansas City. I had planned it to be my last concert, bookends to my “concert-going” career. But then I had another chance to see Yes on the 50th anniversary tour, as well as ARW, so I went to see both.
Again, there are plenty of live videos of Rush, and many other bands... I only saw Pink Floyd once (The Wall, in 1980) but never got to see Genesis. I went to a Queen concert, and it was incredible. What may be the best concert I ever attended was Paul Simom’s Graceland tour at Radio City Music call. I’ve seen Yes 5 times, but also had tickets for 3 other shows that were cancelled (including the show in KC where a week or two before the concert, the roof of the arena caved in.)
I hope to be able to see Steve Hackett’s Genesis Revisited next year, and hope I’ll someday get to see Jeff Back.
BTW, if you have Amazon Prime, be sure to check out the AMAZING live concert of “Jeff Beck, Playing This Week Live @ Ronnie Scott’s” as well as The Band’s “The Last Waltz” and Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense!” All 3 (and more) are available free right now on Prime.
Mark
70’s = GREAT concerts! Rainbow and Gamma in a small Syracuse theatre...second row seat..twenty feet from Ritchie Blackmore AND Ronnie Montrose on the same night!
I’ve gotten to appreciate Yes, Rush, King Crimson, and other prog bands more, now that I’m getting older. There’s a level of musicianship and virtuosity there that you don’t find in open chord, meat and potatoes rock bands. Being a headbanger/CanRocker/EuroRocker was fun in the day, but it stopped being fun and died off because it became a parody of itself. It didn’t help that grunge showed up; scruffy, morose, shoe-gazing, angst-driven, flannel-wearing Seattleites having existential crises put to music. And always in a minor key. Just kill yourself already, will ya? LOL Music got somewhat better after grunge finally died a merciful death, but by then I was expanding my musical horizons, other genres not even remotely related to rock. At one juncture in his youth, my late father was an tenor understudy at the New York Met in the 50’s, and was called up to the stage for several nights because the lead in that role was sick, so I was exposed to many different things growing up: opera, symphonic, chamber. He was a big Lanza and Pavoratti fan; I even attended a standing room only Pavoratti concert at the old arena in Landover, MD. I had a great time in spite of myself. He got me turned on to a lot of it; I, conversely, got him into certain things from Queen to Queensryche! LOL I really want to start catching the godfathers of rock before they call it a day and take their place on Mount Olympus: KISS, Deep Purple, ZZ Top, Styx........the silver lining with this whole coronavirus affair is that so many of these tours (farewell and otherwise) have been postponed, some until summer of next year. Gives me a little more time to plan things out.