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The Show I'll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concertgoing Experience (Paperback)

by Sean Manning (Author)
Key Phrases: old main drag, slam dancing, New York, Lounge Lizards, Bobby Darin (more...)

3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this uneven but engaging collection of essays, 50 writers recall their most memorable concert experience, spanning about 50 years of popular music history. Manning does a great job of collecting a diverse range of writers and musicians for this project, and his sequencing has the intuitive logic of a well considered set list. Though the book is chronological, the parallel movements of different musical eras are allowed to bump up against each other in fascinating ways, such as when the smooth showmanship of Billy Joel gives way to the raw violence of X in 1979. The pieces in this collection are most successful when they combine personal anecdotes with specific and original recollections of the band being profiled. Tracy Chevalier's essay about seeing Queen in 1977 is a perfect evocation of experiencing live music for the first time, as she describes "the familiarity and yet also the strange rawness of the songs." While the overall pace of the collection is slowed by "you had to be there" essays about a Bruce Springsteen show, Woodstock and other events, there are enough high points to satisfy a dedicated live music aficionado. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The authors of these musings on favorite concerts include the well known (Ishmael Reed, Harvey Pekar, etc.) and the less known, all offering deepish thoughts about performers and performances. Chuck Klosterman remembers the night Prince played the Fargodome in North Dakota--surely a night when pop cultural worlds collided--while spouses Robert Burke Warren and Holly George-Warren compare notes in separate pieces about a 1989 Van Morrison show. Heidi Julavits lauds proto-headbangers Rush; novelist Reed, the discreeter charms of Miles Davis in 1955 in Buffalo, N.Y.--an event that, along with a trip to Paris, "would determine the course of [Reed's] life" (he eventually "dropped out of high school and went to work at a library"). For comparing and contrasting the perceived impacts of the Rolling Stones in 1965, Public Image Ltd. in 1981, and Nirvana in 1991, it would be hard to beat this book. And then there's Max Alan Collins on Kevin Spacey at the House of Blues in Chicago in 2004. Kevin Spacey? Collins is so mysterious. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press (January 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0306815087
ISBN-13: 978-0306815089
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #303,951 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
old main drag, slam dancing

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Lounge Lizards, Bobby Darin, Van Morrison, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Jersey, Patti Smith, House of Blues, Bon Jovi, New Sounds, Redd Kross, Clarence Carter, Madison Square Garden, David Bowie, Jimmy Reed, The Show I'll Never Forget, Bill Evans, Billy Joel, Buddy Guy, Georgie Fame, Jimi Hendrix, John Schaefer, Steve Abbot, Titans of the Tenor

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The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll by Holly George-Warren

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews

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4 star:		(2)
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3.6 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not so much "remember when" as "remember us"..., March 22, 2007

By	Erica Bell (Washington State) - See all my reviews

Shows that stick in our minds, decades after the fact, are so interwoven with who and where we were at the time--and why we couldn't breathe-- that it's hard to tease apart each element. That's why words like these from John Albert, musing on his then-15 year old self (and Black Flag) in the late 70's ring so true: "I love punk rock but know it is a fantasy. We are not in England. I am not poor. It is not raining. I can relate to the rebellion and anger in the music, and sometimes try to imagine we are in London, but it's difficult. The sun is too bright and there is silence all around. Each night, I sit on the curb outside my parents' house and listen to the sound of cars passing in the distance. There is a growing panic inside me. I can't shake the thought that somewhere else there is something profound and exciting happening--and I'm missing it all."

Hoo boy.

A theatre kid who just made the varsity cut, shows up at a Kinks show in a tux for the last time. A closet Prince fan comes to worship blindly at the Elfin Temple in--of all places--Fargo. A college girl dodges bullets at a Funk show starring George Clinton, who, after James Brown (also profiled here), must have been "the hardest working man in show business". And Jerry Stahl, newly off junk and still jumpy, gets a congratulatory hug from David Bowie (I always knew he was cool). You'll find yourself there amongst the geeks and stoners, the disaffected and the conforming, the used-dental floss that's that wretched in-between time when being alive doesn't seem so fun anymore.

There aren't many shows later than Beck here, but that's because it takes a while for adulthood to process the neural storm that is the past. I found myself warmed all over by this book, and musical taste be damned. Listen to Robert Polito:

"Earlier that evening, in one of those flukes that promises more than the moment can deliver, we ran into The Pogues, at least some of them, across the street at Fenway Park. The Red Sox were playing the Toronto Bluejays..."

I can't think of a better definition of being young than "a fluke that promises more than it can deliver". The music itself isn't so much an afterthought as the aural soup through which we navigate those years. But if you're interested, there are reviews of shows by the Stones, the Beatles, Led Zep, Miles Davis, the very young Beasties, Metric, Public Image, Van Morrison, the Mekons, Lou Reed, White Stripes (okay, I was wrong about Beck), a wonderful Ishmael Reed review of a Miles Davis show from the 50's, and lots of others for people who still think music can set our experiences UNIQUELY apart from the drek that is "everybody else". For those who know it's all a part of being human, bring your lighter.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Show I'll Never Forget" Does Not Disappoint, May 25, 2007

By	Mark Bezerman - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book looking to hear about great concerts that happened before I was born ... the ones you always hear about in that Man-I-Wish-I-Was-There sort of way.
Out of the 50 concert-going experiences, there were probably only 5 that I did not enjoy reading. The rest was either good, really good or amazing re-readable material.
For the most part, it doesn't get into the concert itself, with the workings of the set lists or whatnot ... rather it gives the emotional and background aspects of the concert goer before during and after. There were quite a lot of ultimate nirvana moments -- that moment where nothing could feel better, and those feelings jump right off the page and hit you. You become absorbed into the writer's story, placing yourself with the other people places and emotions.
A great read. For anyone who knows about music, wants to know about music, enjoys collections of short writings from various authors ... this is a great book. That's another thing, you get so many different writing styles and voices, it's a great book.
anyone should buy it -- except for a couple of passages, nothing that should keep this away from young readers, either.

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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Personal Views on Fifty Concerts, February 17, 2007

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A very simple premise for a book. The author asked fifty writers: 'What was the best concert you ever saw?'

The results vary, as you would expect. The book grabbled me when flipping through I saw that one authors favorite show was one put on by Kevin Spacey. Kevin Spacey? A Concert? Yes. Keven Spacey's an actor, not even a first line actor -- until you see him in 'The Usual Suspects.' Turns out that he is also a singer, using his own voice in the Bobby Darin bio. Max Collins writes a great report of Kevin Spacey singing Bobby Darin.

The other fifty articles vary. Some are on artists I simply don't care about. Some are funny, some are very sad. They are all told in the first person -- 'This is a show I went to see, and it affected me.'

A very enjoyable read to anyone who follows the music scene.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy! Write it yourself!
I (thankfully) borrowed it from the library. If you need to read any of this book, do the same.
First, most of the memories are not about the specifics of the concerts... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Harrison Merims

4.0 out of 5 stars Encore Please!
A few years ago I had an idea for a project/blog/zine thing that would involve getting friends of mine to write about their most memorable live music experiences. Read more

Published 22 months ago by A. Ross

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, sometimes funny, thought-provoking essays
Unforgettable concert memories have been revealed in numerous sources, from magazine articles to biographies and the works of literary writers: here they're gathered under one... Read more

Published on March 6, 2007 by Midwest Book Review

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your time.
First story I read by Heidi Julavits on Rush was basically a hatchet job. Full of inaccuracies and falsehoods. Thankfully I didn't buy this (library book).

Published on February 8, 2007 by Geddy Peart

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