November Collaborative Blog: Sharing our Favorite Concerts We've Seen

Design by Andres Duarte

What’s your favorite concert you’ve ever been to? The most cathartic one? The most energetic one? For the November collaborative blog, members of the collective relay some of the best shows we've seen, from iconic reunion shows to the formative concerts of our formative teen years!

Alex's Picks

Suicide Silence
The Rock. Tucson, AZ. 2011

I’m at the age where I’m looking back at some of the metal and hardcore shows I went to when I was younger and thinking to myself, “Man, that almost feels like saying I saw Black Flag at some abandoned warehouse in 1984.” One show in particular immediately comes to mind when I think this, and that’s when I saw Suicide Silence with original vocalist Mitch Lucker at The Rock in Tucson. It was August in Arizona. It was hot. The place was packed. They were touring in support of what would be their final album with Mitch before his untimely death the following year, The Black Crown. If you were ever lucky enough to catch Suicide Silence while Mitch was alive, you knew he was a special frontman. He had plenty of charisma and a commanding, larger-than-life stage presence, and in a tiny venue like The Rock, it felt like he filled up half the room with his full-body headbanging and signature bounces and stage stomps. I remember at one point he got a bunch of us in the crowd to play a game of chicken in the pit, and a girl jumped on my shoulders to mosh for one song. I wasn’t able to find any videos from that particular show on YouTube, but this video taken just a few weeks later at their show in Brisbane, Australia captures the essence that I remember from the Tucson show. (Video Credit: Steven Hamilton, YouTube)

Code Orange
Thee Parkside. San Francisco, CA. 2014

Look at them! They’re babies! Babies that had just released one of the most terrifying and pants-shittingly heavy albums I’ve still ever heard! I had to dive DEEP into my Instagram to find this photo, and I’m glad I found it. This is Code Orange on the I Am King tour; they were opening for Twitching Tongues. Thee Parkside is one of the smallest venues I’ve ever been to - it has to be around 1000 square feet, tops. Maybe less. I’ve definitely been in individual moshpits at big arena shows/festivals that were larger than that. And the place was completely packed to the point where you could barely move. I am SO glad that I got to see Code Orange here before they blew up and signed to Roadrunner, before “Bleeding In The Blur,” before their deal with WWE, and before that new song of theirs that sounds like “When Worlds Collide” by Powerman 5000. At this point in their history, the band was still a four piece; Jami Morgan was still playing drums in addition to his shared lead vocal duties, Shade was still playing guitar, they had no live keyboards, and the band had freshly rechristened themselves after previously going by Code Orange Kids. Even this early in their career, you could tell this band was going to thrive off their constant reinvention and refusal to put themselves in a creative box. I can still remember hearing Jami yell out in the commanding voice of a frontman, “OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW” from behind his drum kit.

Wikipedia says their setlist only included one song off their previous album, Love is Love/Return to Dust, but at this point, you could tell me they only played songs off I Am King and I’d believe it. It was a knee-bucklingly intense show, and the band completely ripped. An especially memorable highlight was when Scott Vogel from Terror showed up from out of nowhere to sing his part on the breakdown for “Unclean Spirit.” Then a fight broke out in front of me after their set ended, and the bouncers threw me out because they thought I was in the fight. At least they let me go back in to buy a vinyl. I had the privilege of seeing Code Orange here again one more time on the Forever tour in 2017. Then later that summer, I saw them on the side stage at Aftershock in front of about 10 times as many people. I just saw them again a few months ago at a properly-sized theater in Sacramento - I’m happy for the band’s success and all, but… it wasn’t the same. Oh well. Out with the old, in with the new, I suppose.

The Dillinger Escape Plan
The Rock, Tucson AZ, 2011, and The UC Theater, Berkeley CA, 2016.

Throughout their career, The Dillinger Escape Plan earned a reputation as one of the wildest live bands to have ever hit the scene. I saw them live twice before they retired, and both times were equally memorable for different reasons.

The first time I saw them was at The Rock in Tucson back in 2011. The promoter for the show must have done a TERRIBLE job, because there couldn’t have been more than, like, 20 people in the crowd. And this was on the Option Paralysis tour - Dillinger was well into their career and had amassed enough of a following at this point to not be playing empty venues anymore. But did that matter? No. They did exactly what any band, at any stage in their career, should do when only 20 people show up to your show: put on the best show possible for those 20 people. It was extra intimate that night. The whole band got in everyone’s faces, and frontman Greg Puciato was climbing on everything he could climb on inside the venue. I think back to that night and it feels like a dream that only I (and once-in-a-Haley’s-Comet T&E collaborator Jonathan Cohen) got to see.

The second time was in Berkeley on their farewell tour in 2016. This time, they played at the UC Theater, which was much bigger than The Rock and appropriately filled with fans who came to see them in all their glory one last time. Of course I spent the whole night in the pit. Towards the end of the show, while the band was ripping through “Sunshine the Werewolf,” Greg Puciato managed to crowd surf his way to the middle level of the crowd and perched onto the ledge, then took a big bite out of an unsuspecting fan’s burger, all without skipping a single word. I pulled out my phone and started taking a video. Then, Greg dove off the ledge to crowd surf his way back. He went straight in my direction. He screamed directly into my camera lens. I caught the whole thing; naturally, I posted it on Instagram and tagged the band. The next day, I woke up and saw that they shared my video on their socials with the caption “SF was beautiful.” I was stunned, and honored that The Motherfucking DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN would choose MY video to share with their fans as an honest representation of the intensity of their final live shows ever. I had a big, stupid grin on my face for over a week after that. What an amazing night. What an amazing band. I miss them.

Kanye West
Oracle Arena, Oakland CA, 2016.

*Author’s note* - I have not considered myself a Kanye fan for several years now, and I wrote this entry before he made his recent antisemetic remarks. I thought about deleting it, but I decided against it. I have since edited this entry and removed passages that now feel inappropriate, and also removed the video footage that I took at this show. I wish for this to be an explanation of what he once meant to me, and a reflection of my own problematic idol worship from when I did consider myself a fan. 

It was October 2016. Like many others, I had no idea what was in store for the country in less than a month, and even less of an idea that I was going to lose one of my favorite rappers in the process. I used to be a MASSIVE Kanye fan. I was never much of a rap fan growing up, but Kanye kept pushing the boundaries of his music and taking the genre to new places in a way that earned my comparisons to David Bowie. He was the one that got me regularly listening to hip hop. Every one of his albums between Graduation and The Life of Pablo was innovative and exciting. Sure he made cringeworthy headlines every now and then, and I had to defend my fandom from a lot of people who called him crazy, but as a socially awkward young man with crippling self-esteem issues that lasted throughout my teens and early twenties, his raw bravado was something that I admired. In my mind, the positives outweighed any negative connotations that he had earned up to that point. Kanye was my superhero. He stayed that way for a long time. And after years of being a fan, I finally got my chance to see him live on the critically-acclaimed Saint Pablo Tour at Oracle Arena in Oakland.

In retrospect, I feel like I was able to end my idol worship of Kanye on a good note thanks to that show. The Saint Pablo Tour was every bit as amazing as the critics made it out to be. Kanye performed all of my favorite songs of his in a massive set that spanned his whole career up to that point, and watching him do so on top of his floating stage with the soft orange glow of the stage’s lights hovering over a sea of people on the arena floor was an impressive sight. I even got to witness two signature Kanye-being-Kanye moments: first, he stopped and restarted “Famous” way too many times until he felt the crowd was appropriately into the song, cutting it off every single time shortly after that infamous line about how he made Taylor Swift famous (I’m so, so sorry, Taylor). Then later, he made a very articulate, off-the-cuff 20-minute-long speech in the middle of “Runaway” about social justice issues facing African-Americans. It was hard to fathom that just one month later, he would return to the Bay Area and boast to a very shaken and scared San Jose crowd that he was a Trump supporter, then go to Sacramento and pull the plug on that show after just three songs before canceling the rest of the tour. And harder to fathom still that six years later, he’d be where he is now.

Anyways, I’m an even bigger fan of Taylor Swift’s music now.

Andres' Picks
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Sonic Youth
SWU Festival 2011 (Paulinia, Brazil).
​November 14, 2011

I was lucky enough to be living in Sao Paulo, Brazil during a time that felt like a golden era to me, especially after growing up in South America where having access to these type of shows and bands was something you could never take for granted.

There was a lot going on during those years. One day I would catch The Ex playing on a rooftop for 100 people, the next day it would be an almost intimate show with Glenn Branca or James Chance playing on the street for free.

But at the top will always be Sonic Youth's last show. The day SY played at the SWU Fest, the lineup was this unexpected window into the 90s, with bands like 311, Primus, Stone Temple Pilots, Faith No More and Alice in Chains, to name a few.

The place was packed as expected. Sao Paulo has one of the largest and most intense alternative rock scenes I have ever seen, and they love, if not worship, Sonic Youth. I got there just in time to see the show. We got as close as we possibly could to the front. The show started and so did the rain. There were guys everywhere with massive coolers on their shoulders selling beers and what not, blocking the view to the stage. But despite all the distractions, I remember being sucked in by the music right away.

It's hard to be objective, since this was one of the first times I had seen a band that iconic on such a grand stage, but this show felt important and historic, even though we didn't know this would be their last. The setlist was impeccable. They played with such intensity that it was hard not get emotional at some points, which caught me off guard since I wasn't even a hardcore fan, compared to my friends.

Their show was over but the night kept going, and we got to see other bands that I would never imagine I would get to catch live. The Primus and Faith No More shows were nothing to be laughed at. They were epic, and I don't use that word lightly. It's hard to believe that night even happened as I write about it. But for some reason SY's hit differently and I just kept ruminating on it for a while. Luckily the show is online, at least for now. 
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The user who uploaded the above video was kind enough to add the excerpt from Kim Gordon's memoirs on the description, which is just the best subtitle to translate the emotions that were up on the stage that night.
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Dianogah / Shannon Wright ++
Electrical Audio 20th Anniversary (Chicago)
September 24, 2017 
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Steve Albini and friends decided to join the annual block party at the Hideout in Chicago to celebrate their anniversary and it became the best birthday present I could ever ask for.
As if Steve Albini throwing a party didn't sound good enough, the lineup was pretty enticing from the beginning, with class acts like Man or Astro Man and FACS, not to mention the ever magnificent and always underrated Shannon Wright.

One of the bands in the original lineup couldn't make it and then a miracle happened.  Dianogah (hands down one of my favorite bands from Chicago) was added to the list.

As we got to the venue we were greeted by a toasty late summer sun, and even toastier hot dogs handed out by the man himself, Steve Albini, dressed in a butcher coat. Being used to seeing Albini bark behind the mic with Shellac,I was surprised to be welcomed by this totally different persona, a smiling friendly neighbor that was only concerned with you having your belly full enough before catching the next band.

As Shannon Wright was about to hit the stage, Fred Armisen sauntered through the crowd to catch Wright's performance from as close as he could. Another cool surprise. Later on I learned about how close he is with Albini, and his time living in Chicago. Seeing Shannon Wright perform in the US is so rare, that is just as lucky as catching some exotic animal coming out of the woods. Her delivery was brutal and graceful, or as someone mentioned in one of her videos, "a weird mix between rage and beauty". You could see the music brewing and erupting from her body as she waltzed almost drunkenly around the stage. Her setlist was suddenly over and it felt like a one hour encore was much needed.

Dianogah played next. The scorching sun threatened to melt their faces off, but they put on a killer set. One of the highlights was seeing Jay Ryan singing Stephanie Morris' parts. Knowing how much of a blow her passing was for them, it definitely struck a chord to be able to see them perform those songs. As far as I know this is one of the last times they played since then, so it was an honor to be there for such a unique show.

I had to leave right when Man or Astro started playing, but I remember I left that night thinking to myself how this felt like one of those fake shows people make flyers for, only this was as real as those hot dogs Albini covered in mustard for me that day.

Parisa's Picks

​I ask a lot of questions in my writeups, something I’ve been doing more lately to harken back to the old school blog days to keep it more personal and conversational. Consider the questions as rhetorical prompts to get you thinking about your own musical adventures, or please feel free to reply in the comment section below!

Death from Above 1979
FYF Fest, Los Angeles, 2011.

Death from Above 1979 live at FYF, 2011. Photo by Todd Seelie

This is the one. This show is my favorite show I’ve ever been to. Is Death from Above 1979 my favorite band of all time? Nope. Are festivals my preferred setting to see a band? Not at all. But what made this show so special is all the circumstances around it. I had started listening to DFA1979 since their first (and up until recently, their only) full length album came out when I was in 7th grade. You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine was one of the definitive albums of early 2000s indie music, specifically the explosive dance punk scene that emerged at the time. It’s remained one of my favorite albums, and one of the handful of records I consider to be a perfect 10/10. But just as quickly they came, they went. DFA1979 had only put out that one flawless record, plus a short 4-song EP two years prior, and disbanded. 

It wasn’t until 2011 that the Canadian duo decided to reunite - and for two shows only. One at FYF Fest in Los Angeles, and another show in New York. It was a reunion that I assumed would absolutely never happen. There was no word on reuniting, no interviews leading up to believing that they’d want to get together again, yet it happened. I’ve been to many reunion shows, but this one hit differently. They only had fifteen songs as a band, and you know that everyone in that massive crowd had been singing along to those fifteen songs religiously for the past seven years. No one thought that there’d be an opportunity for thousands of people to get together and celebrate the songs that made the 2000s what they were. 

Reunion shows usually go one of two ways: either the band sounds rusty after years of separation, or they bring all the energy and momentum that's been building for years waiting to be released.  This show absolutely fell in the latter. I had injured my knee earlier in the day and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to join the crowd (I literally started crying when “Dead Womb” opened the set because I was so bummed that I just had to stand on the side lines), but as soon as the riff for “Romantic Rights” started, it was a done deal. I lost my goddamn mind and let any bit of adrenaline override the pulsating pain in my leg. Since then, DFA1979 has fully reformed and made new music (just under the name Death from Above), but nothing will compare to seeing them at that reunion when it was the lifelong fans, the band, and those perfect fifteen songs.

System of a Down
America West Arena, Phoenix. 2005

Setlist from setlist.fm

What was one of the most influential shows of your childhood? Everyone has that show they saw as a kid that forever changed their life. For me, it was seeing my favorite band, System of a Down, when I was in seventh grade for their Mesmerize/Hypnotize tour.  It was my first big arena show, and I went with my dad and brother. My dad and I sat in the seats, but my older brother of course was too cool and got pit tickets for himself and his best friend. My brother had first introduced me to SOAD a few years earlier. It was like something out of a coming-of-age sitcom. He had sat me down and put on their newly released self-titled album and I had that “I’ve never heard anything like this before” epiphany. It was my first introduction to heavier music, unlike anything I had heard in the mainstream. Now here I was, two years later, an official tWEen that knew all the words to every song (in my proto-pretentious years where I was already claiming at school “I’ve been listening to them since the first album!!”  ….some things never change, hahaha.) I was there with the two people who had fully informed my musical taste growing up, but also making my first stride to creating my own real-life music experiences.

The Mars Volta opened on this tour, which is absolutely bonkers to think about. They had just released Frances, The Mute, which is a pretty mind blowing album for anyone, let alone a seventh grader. It was the first experimental album I’d ever heard. I remember I had asked for that album for Christmas after “The Widow” became somewhat of a radio rock hit, and then having my teeny little tween-sized brain freaking explode when I heard the rest of the progressive, psychedelic fusion insanity that is Frances, The Mute. I don’t even think seventh grade algebra was advanced enough for me to count the fractions that make up the time signatures. Much to the dismay of many other SOAD fans there that night (I distinctly remember the girl next to me somehow falling asleep during their set), I was so insanely stoked to see them.

I don’t even know how to articulate what this show meant to me. As I’m sitting here writing this, I’m looking at/listening to the setlist (setlist.fm is seriously such a gem?!!) and cheesin’ and smilin’ and shedding nostalgic tears of joy because I’m not sure if life gets any better than being a kid and seeing your favorite band in concert. I’ll just leave the setlist here, and would say that if you haven’t listened to your favorite formative bands lately, you really should:

Injury Reserve
Crescent Ballroom, Phoenix. 2017

Similar to what Alex was saying in his Suicide Silence blurb, do you ever think about what show you’ll look back on in thirty years and say, “Man, I was there.” Something to the equivalent of people now saying they got to see some now mega-famous or cult classic band back when they were just starting in some tiny venue. I think that show for me would be Injury Reserve’s sold-out album release show for Floss in their hometown (and my hometown) of Phoenix, Arizona. The group had just dropped the album a month ago and became an overnight sensation. “Oh Shit!!!!” was the #1 song on The Needle Drop’s Favorite Singles of 2016 list. All the major music blogs were listing Floss as a year end contender. In a city like Phoenix, where for some reason or another most bands don’t get much attention outside of their local scene, Injury Reserve became the new hometown heroes. 

For this album release show, Injury Reserve played Floss in its entirety, starting from beginning to end, with no opening act. I remember the packed crowd murmuring before the show all of their Injury Reserve stories. It felt less like a crowd of fans and more of a homecoming gathering - friends and family were swapping stories of Injury Reserve house shows, how they all knew each other, etc. etc. (I should also add that Phoenix is generally not a friendly or sociable city, so this is not something that’s common at shows here.) Then they cut the lights. All of the lights. The room was pitch black and the house speakers blared “Bad and Boujee” (this was during the peak of that single before it got super overdone), and the crowd got so hype you’d think we were at a Migos show. People moshing and throwing each other around in a pitch black room to literally just a recording on the speakers set the tone for what kind of energy I was in store for that night.

Then, dim, deep red lights backlight the band standing behind a set of curtains. The piano intro to the album opener played softly and everyone braced themselves as they knew what’s about to come next…

"OH SHIT!!!"
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This video above isn’t from the same show but is the closest to what the Phoenix show intro setup was like (they were behind the curtains instead of under them). It was, and will probably always be, the most hype experience of my entire goddamn life. I got to see the most hype song of all time performed for the first time, officially, in the group’s hometown show. Unreal.

There’s not a lot to be proud of being from Phoenix. It’s a massive, sprawled out city with sparse communities, rifled with some of the nastiest conservative political agendas, all wrapped up in the most extreme temperatures that make it borderline unlivable. But for that night, everyone was proud to be from Phoenix. Everyone was proud that one of our own had made it big, and we could all be there together in a smaller venue celebrating their music before they went on to do massive festival tours. This show feels especially bittersweet now that rapper Groggs has passed away, knowing what brilliance he was capable of and shared in his short life, but it’s a legacy that will live forever in the music, and of course, these memories.
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“Weird Al” Yankovic
Arizona State Fair (2007) and Fox Theater, Tucson (2022) 

I recently wrote extensively about these shows and all things “Weird Al” related in this very personal and special edition of Play It By Ear - which you can read right here! 
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Daniel Johnston
Hotel Congress, Tucson. 2014

A signed print I bought at this show

This show was a testament to the phrase “music heals”. Sometimes a concert can make you dance, party hard, etc. but a truly meaningful show can rewire you on a mental, physical and spiritual level. 2014 was a very difficult year for me, and just a few weeks prior to this show I had gone through a very traumatic experience that I was sure I would never heal from. All I can say is, seeing Daniel Johnston, my favorite artist that’s ever lived, perform “True Love Will Find You In the End”, changed the course of my entire life. There’s obviously a lot more to be said about this show and Daniel Johnston in general, but I’m sure that if you know that song, you can only imagine how it would feel if Daniel Johnston sang it to you when you’re at your lowest. I am grateful for a lot of things in life, but this experience is one that I’ll always look back on with so much love.

Do you have a concert that changed your life? What’s been the most cathartic music experience you’ve ever had?

Honorable mentions:

• All the times I've seen Tool, 'cause they put on the most spectacular shows
• My early 2010 phase of traveling the country to see Thee Oh Sees with Ty Segall
• Devo at the Rialto Theater in Tucson, May 2013
• Massive Attack playing Mezzanine in its entirety. SDSU Open Air Theater, San Diego 2019
• GWAR, Napalm Death and Eyehategod in November 2019, the first big show I saw after the return of post-pandemic touring

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