Big Bad Concert Rankings: 140-131

You might be thinking, “Jon, you can’t possibly remember all of these details!” And you’d be mostly wrong. For one, and no offense to those of you that do partake in the collective, pseudo-mind meld of chemical accelerants and barbiturates, these are almost always sober shows. Even if I’m not working, I’m not a huge fan of doing anything that will reduce my memory of said show.

140 - Stardust Picnic [54-40, Blue Rodeo, Great Big Sea, Guster]

My first, and only, concert in a foreign country. Stardust Picnic was a Canadian musical collective (plus guests) that toured Ontario in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A personal favorite was 54-40 who made it quasi-big when Hootie and the Blowfish covered one of their songs.

139 - Daughtry

Summerfest Daughtry is my favorite Daughtry. Raw, but powerful performance, and did well with a short announcement window compared to other tours. This way maybe a year after American Idol and it was probably his biggest show.

138 - Prince Royce

Everyone who isn’t Hispanic or Latinx or South American or Spanish needs to see some form of Spanish-first pop show. It’s mental how much energy the crowd and performers feed off of each other. Hips are shaking, feet are moving, drinks are being thrown in good fun. You can lose 10 pounds in sweat and nobody wants to fight. Great times.

137 - Kurt Vile & The Violators

Kurt Vile is like if you could understand Bob Dylan and he was really good at guitar. But he’s clearly better at guitar than singing. Also, it was insanely hot during the outdoor concert set and the venue RAN OUT OF TACOS. Would more tacos have moved this show up? Probably.

136 - Young the Giant

Of the two YTG shows, this one had more material, but I was working and catching crowd surfers, which is fun, most of the time.

135 - Weird Al

Nobody really prepares you for a Weird Al show. I saw a clip today where he was singing the Jurassic Park song in Japanese. As good as he was, the downtime in between songs is difficult to adjust to. You’d be pumped up for one hit, then have to wait for three minutes to hear another live song.

134 - Damien Escobar

Escobar is an entry similar to Beach House (the one below) in that I never want to work another one of his shows. I would pay to go see his show again, however, because I had a very ‘carried away’ experience in the midst of the violinist’s showcase.

133 - Beach House

After my declaration of love for Chillwave, it’s no wonder I like Beach House. There’s one caveat — I would never, ever, ever, work another one of their shows. There’s a big difference between working a show you enjoy, enjoying work during a show you don’t know, and almost falling asleep on the job because the music you use to fall asleep is now 50-feet away from your face. Would see them again, no question, but it better be local.

132 - Josh Groban

Unexpectedly the best concert of 2019. Not the actual best concert of 2019, but the one with highest amount of delivery-to-low-expectation ratio. I have never been more out of place in a concert I’ve paid money to see, and yet more OK with it. I wasn’t expecting a full floor to ceiling LED screen or his voice to be that good live. Plus, the $20 ticket came with a CD. And I like CDs.

131 - Steve Miller Band [Joe Cocker]

People give EDMers crap for taking too much drugs at shows, but they still need to learn from the best of them. We were patrolling the lawn section of the Amp and this guy was hand rolling his own cigarettes. Perfectly legal. But in the act of doing this little interview we probably missed the other 12,000 people lighting up aged 65 and older. He was just a ruse. A red herring. Damn crafty Baby Boomers and their songs about getting high with a little help from their rock star friends.