Opinion
KISS, a-ha and Stevie Wonder: Why I made it a mission to see my music heroes live By
Marc A. ThiessenColumnist|Follow authorFollowMarch 25, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT (Video: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)Listen13 minShareComment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSaveHuman read|Listen13 min
When Frank Sinatra came to Washington in 1992, I almost went to see him. But then I thought: Tickets are expensive, and his voice isn’t what it once was. I skipped the show — and immediately regretted it. Next time, I told myself. But there was no next time. A few years later, he was gone. I had passed up the chance to see one of the greatest voices of the 20th century.
So, I made a decision: Every chance I had, I would see a performer whose music I love — regardless of age, infirmity or musical style. My mantra became: See them before they die. Over the past three decades, that quest has taken me to venues across the country to see every imaginable genre of live music.
That vow took me, in the years that followed, to RFK Stadium, where I saw Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. In November, it brought me to Huntington Beach, Calif., for the Darker Waves Festival, where I spent 12 hours in an ’80s music nirvana: the English Beat, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Violent Femmes, Devo, Soft Cell, the Psychedelic Furs, the Human League, the B-52s, New Order and Tears for Fears. And this summer, it will take me back to Los Angeles for the Fool in Love festival, where I’ll see Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Santana, Gladys Knight, Kool & the Gang, Chaka Khan, the Isley Brothers, Eric Burdon and the Animals, War, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Morris Day and the Time, Evelyn “Champagne” King and others.
Advertisement
During the actual ’80s, when I grew up, I didn’t see a lot of these performers live. As a teen, I hung out in New York clubs such as Danceteria, where Madonna got her start, and my first concert was her Virgin Tour at Madison Square Garden. I camped out with friends overnight outside Tower Records for tickets. Otis Day and the Knights, of “Animal House” fame, played my high school, and I was one of the official greeters (“You get Otis high, Otis will be your friend,” he told us as he got out of the car). I saw Van Halen in college (but missed the David Lee Roth era) and David Bowie on his Glass Spider Tour in Paris (with the Cult as his opening act). But that was pretty much it.
Follow this authorMarc A. Thiessen's opinionsFollow
It was not until the ’90s that I began concert-going in earnest. In those days, one of my best friends, Mark Franz, was dating his now-wife, Sara, who lived in New York, so we would drive up to the city pretty much every weekend, playing mixtapes on the car’s cassette deck. As soon as we arrived, we’d grab a copy of the Village Voice to see which bands were playing. One day, we saw a postage-stamp-size ad that read: “Donald Fagen and the New York Rock and Soul Revue at Lone Star Roadhouse.” Steely Dan had quit playing live back 1974. Could it really be that Donald Fagen? It was. We saw him play before a few hundred people — an unforgettable night.
Mark also turned me on to a group called Poi Dog Pondering he’d discovered as a student at the University of Texas in Austin. They never made the Billboard charts but are still my favorite band. We’d see them at the old 9:30 Club in D.C. and traveled up and down the East Coast for their shows. One of my as-yet-unfulfilled musical dreams: The lead singer, Frank Orrall, is an accomplished chef who will come to your house and cook dinner for you and play a set in your living room. Maybe to mark their 40th anniversary this year.
Advertisement
In 1996, I met my now-wife, Pam. I knew she was The One when she accepted my invitation to go on a first date to see … KISS. How could I not fall in love? She got me back years later when, for my 40th birthday, she took me to Las Vegas to see … Barry Manilow. (What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!)
We have four kids, and they have joined us on our eclectic musical journey. We wanted them to have a cool answer to the question “What was your first concert?” So, we took our oldest, Max, to see Van Halen with Roth back in the band in 2012. He got to hear “Eruption” — the greatest guitar solo of all time — live before Eddie Van Halen stopped performing a few years later (and died a few years after that). Max’s siblings, Jack, Eva and Lucy, saw Bon Jovi for their first show a few years later. (Truth be told, their first live show was the Wiggles — but that doesn’t really count.)
Almost a quarter-century after our first date, Pam and I took the whole family to see KISS on their End of the Road farewell tour. (My daughters and I wore full makeup.) Eva drove up to New York with me to see a-ha when they made a rare U.S. stop, and she joined me for the Sugarhill Gang (and even got a picture with Master Gee!). Lucy has gotten me into country and Christian music. She and I have gone to the Grand Ole Opry, where we saw Carrie Underwood, and we have seen Morgan Wallen, Rodney Atkins Zach Bryan and Lauren Daigle, as well as (at her insistence) Michael Bublé.
In turn, I have made it my mission to make sure they see music history live while they can. I would have given anything if my parents had taken me to see Sinatra at his height, or Elvis or Queen with Freddie Mercury before they died. So we’ve taken the kids to see many legendary acts: Diana Ross (age 79), the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards both 80), Paul McCartney (81), as well as U2. And this weekend, we went to see Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Valli is 89, and though he does not move much onstage anymore, his voice is still crisp and strong.
Advertisement
“Live music allows us a real, incarnational connection to the music we love,” Mark, my original partner in concert-going, told me. “Like time spent ‘in person’ with a friend versus a phone call. It’s spontaneous and a little unpredictable; something we all crave in our overscheduled, often virtual lives.”
And that brings me to one of the very best things about live music: sharing the experience with friends. Mark and Sara moved to Texas years ago, but we meet up for festivals and use those weekends to reconnect. And I have a core group of D.C. friends from my days on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff with whom I have seen every imaginable ’80s act: Erasure, Yaz, Alison Moyet, Depeche Mode, the Cure, the Pretenders, Duran Duran, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Simple Minds, Squeeze, the Fixx and Culture Club, to name only a few. Our friends Ziad Ojakli and Devon Spurgeon took us to the 2022 Mark Twain Prize ceremony at the Kennedy Center (where we saw Bruce Springsteen play an acoustic “Born to Run” and join Gary Clark Jr. for a rocking cover of the Beatles’ “Come Together”). And last week, they took us to see Elton John and Bernie Taupin receive the Library of Congress’s Gershwin Prize at DAR Constitution Hall (where we watched Annie Lennox do a stunning rendition of “Border Song,” Metallica perform “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” and John deliver incredible performances of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” and “Your Song”).
But the other great thing about live music is that you can always go by yourself. When Stevie Wonder came to town, no one could join me, so I went alone. In an age when many feel lonely and isolated, seeing a show is a great way to get out and connect with others who share your passion for music.
Advertisement
Another reason live music is magical is that you get to see not only the talent of the headliners but also just how accomplished all the band members are in their own right. My friend Matt Dyckman told me he had never really appreciated what an incredible guitarist Steve Stevens was until we saw him live with Billy Idol. And Billy Joel’s longtime sax player Mark Rivera brought down the house with his “New York State of Mind” solo at Nationals Park. Live shows also allow the artists to change up their classics with improvisations and orchestrations. I have seen Joe Jackson perform multiple unique arrangements of “Is She Really Going Out With Him?,” Paul Weller perform his Style Council classic “My Ever Changing Moods” with strings, and Idol and Stevens do an entire acoustic show.
One of my pet peeves is artists who don’t play their hits. Last year, I saw Peter Gabriel for the first time, and it took him over an hour to sing a single song anyone knew. (The crowd jumped to its feet when he finally got to “Sledgehammer.”) I often love new material, but we’re there for the songs we already love. I also saw Elvis Costello last year, and he played almost nothing from his classic songbook and often seemed as though he couldn’t carry a tune — the only concert I regret attending. His opening act, Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets, was spectacular, however.
I also hate it when politics gets in the way of music. Pat Benatar won’t play “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” live anymore to protest gun violence. (I’m pretty sure the song refers to sex, not firearms.) But I’m happy to see artists whose politics I disagree with — if I weren’t, I’d have a very narrow list to choose from. Last year, I saw John Mellencamp, an outspoken man of the left, for the first time. Hearing “Pink Houses” and “Small Town” live was well worth the political commentary. The only artist whose music I love but won’t see is Roger Waters. Antisemitism is a bridge too far for me.
The only time I wear my political allegiance openly is at ’80s festivals. Before the 2022 Cruel World festival in Pasadena, Calif., we toured the Reagan Ranch and the Reagan Presidential Library, where I bought a “Reagan-Bush ’84” baseball cap to wear to the show. To my surprise, I got compliments. “I would have hated that hat in the ’80s,” one person told me, “but now I kind of miss him.” And I have loved seeing my friend John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting perform “Superman” — which has become a 9/11 anthem and always brings me to tears as someone who was in the Pentagon that day — and can’t wait to see him play his incredible songs about Ukraine (“Can One Man Save the World?”) and the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel (“OK”) live.
My other frustration are bands who stubbornly refuse to reunite. I’ve seen Sting, but the Police have not played together since 2008. The Eurythmics played an incredible eight-minute set at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2022, and Annie Lennox’s voice is in peak form — but despite Dave Stewart’s pleading, she doesn’t tour. She reportedly hates travel. So do a residency somewhere, Annie — we’ll come to you! I saw David Byrne’s “American Utopia” on Broadway, where he played many of his Talking Heads hits, but he won’t tour with his former bandmates. I’m sure glad I got to see Hall & Oates live before they fell into a bitter legal dispute. And the Kinks keep teasing a reunion that never happens.
Advertisement
All of which makes me even more grateful for those artists who do tour despite physical infirmity. Phil Collins can no longer stand or play the drums because of a spinal injury, but he sang seated in a chair with Genesis recently for a final tour. Five years ago, Peter Frampton was diagnosed with degenerative inclusion body myositis, which causes muscle atrophy, so he launched a farewell tour. When it was over, he found that, though he could no longer stand through a show, his fingers still worked. So, he went on his Never Say Never Tour playing seated. He was incredible. (And he just launched his Never EVER Say Never Tour.)
The toughest “go or not go” calls are the one-hit wonders. You sometimes have to listen to an hour of songs that never made it (for a reason) just to hear the one great song you loved. Modern English were terrible except for “Melt With You.” Tommy Tutone had one big hit (“867-5309/Jenny”), and it was a great one. Fortunately, I saw him perform it on a triple bill with Men at Work and Rick Springfield (who played “Jessie’s Girl” shirtless at age 72 and pulled it off).
I’m still seeing artists for the first time. Over the past year or so, I’ve gone to my first Eagles and Elton John shows on their farewell tours, and seen the Doobie Brothers, reunited with Michael McDonald, on their 50th-anniversary tour (better late than never!), Bryan Adams, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, ABC, Kenny Loggins, Journey, Toto, Alabama, Boz Scaggs and jazz legend Herbie Hancock (still going strong at 83!), as well as Genesis, Mellencamp, Gabriel and Bublé. (I would also have seen my first Aerosmith show, but Steven Tyler suffered a vocal cord injury). This coming year, I’m seeing Foreigner, Styx, Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow, Thomas Dolby, Men Without Hats, Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey, The Romantics, Wang Chung, General Public, Heatwave, the S.O.S. Band, the Black Crowes and the Beach Boys. But I’ve still got a long list of acts I’m longing to see.
Advertisement
Sadly, I never saw Ric Ocasek of the Cars, Robert Palmer, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett, Meat Loaf, J. Geils or Prince before they died. I was in Toronto in 2017 and Tom Petty was in town, but I skipped it — and he died not even three months later.
And this exposes the one big flaw in my plan: Even if I do see them all, eventually all my favorite artists will, like Sinatra, leave us. What then? I’m seeing many of the musicians I love performing well into their 70s and beyond. But who will I see in when I’m in my 70s? So, I’m on the lookout for younger acts. I’ve become a big fan of Mayer Hawthorne, Twin Tribes, Young Gun Silver Fox, Blossoms, Lovelytheband, Izo FitzRoy and Smoove & Turrell, among others. Even in late middle age, I still find immeasurable joy in discovering a new song and playing it until I know the words by heart — just like I did as a kid on my record player.
But as great as records are, nothing compares to seeing the songs you love performed live. So, I plan to keep going to see my favorites until they die — or I do.
What moment from a live music performance will you remember for the rest of your life? Submit your response.
Share Comments
Popular opinions articles
HAND CURATED
- Opinion|New York judge’s ruling on evidence couldn’t have gone worse for TrumpMarch 21, 2024Opinion|New York judge’s ruling on evidence couldn’t have gone worse for TrumpMarch 21, 2024
- Opinion|We ignore Trump’s defects at our perilMarch 20, 2024Opinion|We ignore Trump’s defects at our perilMarch 20, 2024
- Opinion|Liz Cheney still plans to make a difference in the election March 19, 2024Opinion|Liz Cheney still plans to make a difference in the election March 19, 2024
View 3 more stories
When Frank Sinatra came to Washington in 1992, I almost went to see him. But then I thought: Tickets are expensive, and his voice isn’t what it once was. I skipped the show — and immediately regretted it. Next time, I told myself. But there was no next time. A few years later, he was gone. I had passed up the chance to see one of the greatest voices of the 20th century.
So, I made a decision: Every chance I had, I would see a performer whose music I love — regardless of age, infirmity or musical style. My mantra became: See them before they die. Over the past three decades, that quest has taken me to venues across the country to see every imaginable genre of live music.
That vow took me, in the years that followed, to RFK Stadium, where I saw Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. In November, it brought me to Huntington Beach, Calif., for the Darker Waves Festival, where I spent 12 hours in an ’80s music nirvana: the English Beat, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Violent Femmes, Devo, Soft Cell, the Psychedelic Furs, the Human League, the B-52s, New Order and Tears for Fears. And this summer, it will take me back to Los Angeles for the Fool in Love festival, where I’ll see Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Santana, Gladys Knight, Kool & the Gang, Chaka Khan, the Isley Brothers, Eric Burdon and the Animals, War, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Morris Day and the Time, Evelyn “Champagne” King and others.
During the actual ’80s, when I grew up, I didn’t see a lot of these performers live. As a teen, I hung out in New York clubs such as Danceteria, where Madonna got her start, and my first concert was her Virgin Tour at Madison Square Garden. I camped out with friends overnight outside Tower Records for tickets. Otis Day and the Knights, of “Animal House” fame, played my high school, and I was one of the official greeters (“You get Otis high, Otis will be your friend,” he told us as he got out of the car). I saw Van Halen in college (but missed the David Lee Roth era) and David Bowie on his Glass Spider Tour in Paris (with the Cult as his opening act). But that was pretty much it.
It was not until the ’90s that I began concert-going in earnest. In those days, one of my best friends, Mark Franz, was dating his now-wife, Sara, who lived in New York, so we would drive up to the city pretty much every weekend, playing mixtapes on the car’s cassette deck. As soon as we arrived, we’d grab a copy of the Village Voice to see which bands were playing. One day, we saw a postage-stamp-size ad that read: “Donald Fagen and the New York Rock and Soul Revue at Lone Star Roadhouse.” Steely Dan had quit playing live back 1974. Could it really be that Donald Fagen? It was. We saw him play before a few hundred people — an unforgettable night.
Mark also turned me on to a group called Poi Dog Pondering he’d discovered as a student at the University of Texas in Austin. They never made the Billboard charts but are still my favorite band. We’d see them at the old 9:30 Club in D.C. and traveled up and down the East Coast for their shows. One of my as-yet-unfulfilled musical dreams: The lead singer, Frank Orrall, is an accomplished chef who will come to your house and cook dinner for you and play a set in your living room. Maybe to mark their 40th anniversary this year.
In 1996, I met my now-wife, Pam. I knew she was The One when she accepted my invitation to go on a first date to see … KISS. How could I not fall in love? She got me back years later when, for my 40th birthday, she took me to Las Vegas to see … Barry Manilow. (What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!)
We have four kids, and they have joined us on our eclectic musical journey. We wanted them to have a cool answer to the question “What was your first concert?” So, we took our oldest, Max, to see Van Halen with Roth back in the band in 2012. He got to hear “Eruption” — the greatest guitar solo of all time — live before Eddie Van Halen stopped performing a few years later (and died a few years after that). Max’s siblings, Jack, Eva and Lucy, saw Bon Jovi for their first show a few years later. (Truth be told, their first live show was the Wiggles — but that doesn’t really count.)
Almost a quarter-century after our first date, Pam and I took the whole family to see KISS on their End of the Road farewell tour. (My daughters and I wore full makeup.) Eva drove up to New York with me to see a-ha when they made a rare U.S. stop, and she joined me for the Sugarhill Gang (and even got a picture with Master Gee!). Lucy has gotten me into country and Christian music. She and I have gone to the Grand Ole Opry, where we saw Carrie Underwood, and we have seen Morgan Wallen, Rodney Atkins Zach Bryan and Lauren Daigle, as well as (at her insistence) Michael Bublé.
In turn, I have made it my mission to make sure they see music history live while they can. I would have given anything if my parents had taken me to see Sinatra at his height, or Elvis or Queen with Freddie Mercury before they died. So we’ve taken the kids to see many legendary acts: Diana Ross (age 79), the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards both 80), Paul McCartney (81), as well as U2. And this weekend, we went to see Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Valli is 89, and though he does not move much onstage anymore, his voice is still crisp and strong.
“Live music allows us a real, incarnational connection to the music we love,” Mark, my original partner in concert-going, told me. “Like time spent ‘in person’ with a friend versus a phone call. It’s spontaneous and a little unpredictable; something we all crave in our overscheduled, often virtual lives.”
And that brings me to one of the very best things about live music: sharing the experience with friends. Mark and Sara moved to Texas years ago, but we meet up for festivals and use those weekends to reconnect. And I have a core group of D.C. friends from my days on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff with whom I have seen every imaginable ’80s act: Erasure, Yaz, Alison Moyet, Depeche Mode, the Cure, the Pretenders, Duran Duran, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Simple Minds, Squeeze, the Fixx and Culture Club, to name only a few. Our friends Ziad Ojakli and Devon Spurgeon took us to the 2022 Mark Twain Prize ceremony at the Kennedy Center (where we saw Bruce Springsteen play an acoustic “Born to Run” and join Gary Clark Jr. for a rocking cover of the Beatles’ “Come Together”). And last week, they took us to see Elton John and Bernie Taupin receive the Library of Congress’s Gershwin Prize at DAR Constitution Hall (where we watched Annie Lennox do a stunning rendition of “Border Song,” Metallica perform “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” and John deliver incredible performances of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” and “Your Song”).
But the other great thing about live music is that you can always go by yourself. When Stevie Wonder came to town, no one could join me, so I went alone. In an age when many feel lonely and isolated, seeing a show is a great way to get out and connect with others who share your passion for music.
Another reason live music is magical is that you get to see not only the talent of the headliners but also just how accomplished all the band members are in their own right. My friend Matt Dyckman told me he had never really appreciated what an incredible guitarist Steve Stevens was until we saw him live with Billy Idol. And Billy Joel’s longtime sax player Mark Rivera brought down the house with his “New York State of Mind” solo at Nationals Park. Live shows also allow the artists to change up their classics with improvisations and orchestrations. I have seen Joe Jackson perform multiple unique arrangements of “Is She Really Going Out With Him?,” Paul Weller perform his Style Council classic “My Ever Changing Moods” with strings, and Idol and Stevens do an entire acoustic show.
One of my pet peeves is artists who don’t play their hits. Last year, I saw Peter Gabriel for the first time, and it took him over an hour to sing a single song anyone knew. (The crowd jumped to its feet when he finally got to “Sledgehammer.”) I often love new material, but we’re there for the songs we already love. I also saw Elvis Costello last year, and he played almost nothing from his classic songbook and often seemed as though he couldn’t carry a tune — the only concert I regret attending. His opening act, Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets, was spectacular, however.
I also hate it when politics gets in the way of music. Pat Benatar won’t play “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” live anymore to protest gun violence. (I’m pretty sure the song refers to sex, not firearms.) But I’m happy to see artists whose politics I disagree with — if I weren’t, I’d have a very narrow list to choose from. Last year, I saw John Mellencamp, an outspoken man of the left, for the first time. Hearing “Pink Houses” and “Small Town” live was well worth the political commentary. The only artist whose music I love but won’t see is Roger Waters. Antisemitism is a bridge too far for me.
The only time I wear my political allegiance openly is at ’80s festivals. Before the 2022 Cruel World festival in Pasadena, Calif., we toured the Reagan Ranch and the Reagan Presidential Library, where I bought a “Reagan-Bush ’84” baseball cap to wear to the show. To my surprise, I got compliments. “I would have hated that hat in the ’80s,” one person told me, “but now I kind of miss him.” And I have loved seeing my friend John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting perform “Superman” — which has become a 9/11 anthem and always brings me to tears as someone who was in the Pentagon that day — and can’t wait to see him play his incredible songs about Ukraine (“Can One Man Save the World?”) and the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel (“OK”) live.
My other frustration are bands who stubbornly refuse to reunite. I’ve seen Sting, but the Police have not played together since 2008. The Eurythmics played an incredible eight-minute set at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2022, and Annie Lennox’s voice is in peak form — but despite Dave Stewart’s pleading, she doesn’t tour. She reportedly hates travel. So do a residency somewhere, Annie — we’ll come to you! I saw David Byrne’s “American Utopia” on Broadway, where he played many of his Talking Heads hits, but he won’t tour with his former bandmates. I’m sure glad I got to see Hall & Oates live before they fell into a bitter legal dispute. And the Kinks keep teasing a reunion that never happens.
All of which makes me even more grateful for those artists who do tour despite physical infirmity. Phil Collins can no longer stand or play the drums because of a spinal injury, but he sang seated in a chair with Genesis recently for a final tour. Five years ago, Peter Frampton was diagnosed with degenerative inclusion body myositis, which causes muscle atrophy, so he launched a farewell tour. When it was over, he found that, though he could no longer stand through a show, his fingers still worked. So, he went on his Never Say Never Tour playing seated. He was incredible. (And he just launched his Never EVER Say Never Tour.)
The toughest “go or not go” calls are the one-hit wonders. You sometimes have to listen to an hour of songs that never made it (for a reason) just to hear the one great song you loved. Modern English were terrible except for “Melt With You.” Tommy Tutone had one big hit (“867-5309/Jenny”), and it was a great one. Fortunately, I saw him perform it on a triple bill with Men at Work and Rick Springfield (who played “Jessie’s Girl” shirtless at age 72 and pulled it off).
I’m still seeing artists for the first time. Over the past year or so, I’ve gone to my first Eagles and Elton John shows on their farewell tours, and seen the Doobie Brothers, reunited with Michael McDonald, on their 50th-anniversary tour (better late than never!), Bryan Adams, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, ABC, Kenny Loggins, Journey, Toto, Alabama, Boz Scaggs and jazz legend Herbie Hancock (still going strong at 83!), as well as Genesis, Mellencamp, Gabriel and Bublé. (I would also have seen my first Aerosmith show, but Steven Tyler suffered a vocal cord injury). This coming year, I’m seeing Foreigner, Styx, Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow, Thomas Dolby, Men Without Hats, Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey, The Romantics, Wang Chung, General Public, Heatwave, the S.O.S. Band, the Black Crowes and the Beach Boys. But I’ve still got a long list of acts I’m longing to see.
Sadly, I never saw Ric Ocasek of the Cars, Robert Palmer, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett, Meat Loaf, J. Geils or Prince before they died. I was in Toronto in 2017 and Tom Petty was in town, but I skipped it — and he died not even three months later.
And this exposes the one big flaw in my plan: Even if I do see them all, eventually all my favorite artists will, like Sinatra, leave us. What then? I’m seeing many of the musicians I love performing well into their 70s and beyond. But who will I see in when I’m in my 70s? So, I’m on the lookout for younger acts. I’ve become a big fan of Mayer Hawthorne, Twin Tribes, Young Gun Silver Fox, Blossoms, Lovelytheband, Izo FitzRoy and Smoove & Turrell, among others. Even in late middle age, I still find immeasurable joy in discovering a new song and playing it until I know the words by heart — just like I did as a kid on my record player.
But as great as records are, nothing compares to seeing the songs you love performed live. So, I plan to keep going to see my favorites until they die — or I do.
What moment from a live music performance will you remember for the rest of your life? Submit your response.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
