Let me preface this by saying that I don’t like live concerts. They’re too loud, the crowd is too noisy and disruptive, and unless you pay top dollar, you’re not even going to see the band all that well. I don’t get the celebrity worship thing that most people have; celebrities are normal human beings just like the rest of us. The only difference is that a lot of people know who they are because of a thing they did/do.

So I don’t get excited over meeting celebrities in person. I’d much rather listen to their albums at home, where I can hear a high-quality studio recording and really enjoy every bit of sound, every instrument, every enunciation of lyrics. Plus, it’s way cheaper. I can’t believe people shell out hundreds of bucks for what I’d consider an inferior experience.

Regardless, my wife has dozens of bands on her “want to see live” list and she inevitably drags me along with her. And despite not having a good time for most of them, there are a few that stuck out to me as being pretty interesting.

I can’t remember the dates very well, but we saw Papa Roach as one of the openers for Shinedown (the other opener being Asking Alexandria). I think it was around 2016 or 2017 in Nebraska. The other two bands were meh. The music was fine, but they had no stage presence. They just stood there and performed their songs. I might as well have put in my headphones and listened to their albums on my phone.

But Papa Roach was spectacular! They had real stage presence, addressing the audience constantly, and dancing all over the place while jamming. Their visual performance was very entertaining to watch.

And then the lead singer just ran off into the crowd! In the middle of a song, while still singing, he just ran up and down the aisles, shaking hands and high-fiving people. He covered 90% of that stadium over the course of 2 or 3 songs, and it was a pretty big professional basketball court. Dude had some serious energy to burn.

At the end of the night, my wife, who went specifically to see Shinedown and Asking Alexandria, agreed that Papa Roach was the best band that night.

A close second would be The Hu. We saw them at a tiny venue in Maplewood, MN a few years ago (2023 I think?). My wife paid for VIP passes and we actually sat in a room with them for over an hour, listening to them talk about their history, music, and Mongolian culture. More specifically, listening to a translator talking, as they didn’t speak much English. We even got to ask a bunch of questions, which their translator relayed back and forth for us.

At the end of the VIP meet & greet, they did video recordings with everyone. It was a normal photo op, but instead of a photo, they did a quick video with your phone where they did a vocalized grunt along with you. It was pretty unique.

Their concert was fun. Being in a small venue, it was more like a dance club than a giant stadium performance, so it felt more personal. My wife and I claimed a couple seats on a couch and had a blast listening to Mongolian Folk Metal all night.

My wife likes to buy VIP tickets everywhere she can, and no other band has had such a personal meet & greet as The Hu. We’ve gone backstage before and done photo op’s with some bands. But almost none of them spent a whole hour just hanging out and chatting with us. Skillet did an hour-long pre-concert for VIP pass holders when my wife and I saw them around 2020 (right before COVID shut everything down), but it was mostly just them talking a bit on stage, then performing some new songs before doing a photo op.

Taking this in another direction, my wife and I enjoy the stand-up comedian Bert Kreischer. My wife, who escaped from a redneck family and white trailer trash upbringing, especially relates to his brand of comedy. So of course we needed to go to his live shows.

If you thought his Netflix comedy specials were raunchy, his live performances are extremely graphic. He doesn’t have Netflix breathing standards down his neck, so he can really let loose and tell some of the most unhinged and perverse stories to the crowd. And he’s drinking beers the whole time he’s doing his routine, so his stories get crazier the longer he stays up on stage. He even shared some very personal (and embarassing) stories about other celebrities he knows that I haven’t seen told anywhere else. It felt like bonus content that you can’t access unless you attend the live shows.

We’ve seen him live twice, and the second time, he dragged his wife out to the stage to help him re-tell a story because he couldn’t remember the details. Which you could tell was not planned because it took a couple minutes to track her down. He even called her on his phone when she wasn’t responding from backstage.

She was really awkward being on stage, too. She wasn’t used to being a part of his set. But once she got a little more comfortable, she practically took the mic from him because he was messing up all the details of the story. The crowd was rolling every time he started to tell the story and she’d be like, “That’s completely wrong, it went like this…” Then they would argue over telling the “funny story” versus the “real story.” Because his version of events was funnier, but the actual story was kind of boring. Married life, am I right?

He also asked the audience’s opinion on his set, because he prepared a bunch of new material for this tour, but people kept asking for some of his classic stories. He decided that after this event, he was going to try and mix old and new stories into the rest of his tour. So he’s not just working on a strict script; he’s pretty loose and willing to shake things up live.

He also didn’t seem to be tied to a strict timeline for his set. I think we saw him perform on stage for over 3 hours on that second show. He had kind of wrapped his planned material when he asked if we had any favorite stories we wanted to hear, then he went on for another hour or so, retelling classics.

Despite the lengthy show, the place stayed packed until the end. We were all having fun with him; it wasn’t just him talking to an audience, it felt like we were all just having a good time hanging out with a hilarious friend. And this was a massive stadium too, not a small venue! I’ll definitely buy tickets to any Bert Kreischer performances that pass through my area.

Mark Knopfler for the music. RAMMSTEIN because fire is cool.

Billy Talent, Sydney 2007

I don’t know man, was my first time going to an actual concert of a band I liked, and it was just something special

Daft punk

I haven’t seen him in almost 15 years, but Weird Al Yankovic puts on a hell of a good show. Always has the best backup musicians with him.

I think the best live show I ever saw was Good Kid. Their energy and jams couldn’t be matched.

Rammstein

Theatrics, setlist, audio quality, crowd… Just wow. Hope to see them one more time.

Die Antword at 2014 Bonaroo

They’d rotate out for costume changes, so one vocalist was constantly on stage and the music and energy never dipped the entire set.

Can’t remember if that was before/after they blew up, but for whatever reason I was able to get super close to the stage.

I was at the Foo Fighters gig where Dave Grohl fell off the stage and broke his leg, after which the rest of the band spent an hour playing various covers until Dave came back on stage high on pain meds mixed with alcohol and resumed the show. A doctor had to sit on stage and keep his leg fixed for the rest of the show until they could take him to the hospital to give him a cast, and the entire crowd dedicated “My hero” to the doctor. That show was fucking awesome.

Top two concerts of all time:

Daft Punk at Lollapalooza 2007

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard at Northerly Island, Chicago, 9/1/24

Slipknot puts on a crazy show. With so many people in the band, there was always somebody doing something worth watching. I’m not even a Slipknot fan, I was there to see System of a Down.

In random order: Rammstein in 2024, Iron Maiden in 2008, Gorilla Biscuits this summer, Metallica in 1991 and probably one or two I forgot.

Bush’s performance of Glycerine, on MTV Spring Break Rocks 1996. It was raining and they were warned against performing, but Gavin Rossdale insisted, and it was amazing.

EDIT: I haven’t had my coffee, and for some reason your question translated to “live TV performance” in my brain.

I saw The Chemical Brothers play back in the early 2000’s and they were set up with racks and racks of keyboards surrounding them. They played their electronic music live on the keyboards and watching them blew my mind. Up until this concert I never thought of electronic producers as musicians, this totally changed my perspective.

Stone Temple Pilots - MTV Unplugged ’93

Massive Attack- Roseland ‘96

Green Day - Barbarella ‘95

Modest Mouse - Sapphire Supper Club ‘04

Paul Oakenfold - The Tunnel ‘94

These are just a few. I’m sure there’s a bunch I’m forgetting. I doubt that I could single any one of them out.

Maybe STP or Massive Attack