Have you been to any live concerts that were as much about the overall experience, if not more, than they were about the music?

Not sure if it's what you mean, but i've been to some ethnic
culture fairs where the music may be the main attraction but
it's also just part of the lure to learn & expierence more about a certain people or group.

The Bill Monroe Bluegrass Festival used to be held around here. While many people attended for the music, a lot of people went also to meet with friends they'd met at previous Monroe Festivals. The festival grounds had arts & crafts shows as well as music "seminars". Never attended the festival only saw & heard it from afar.

I used to go and see this little known band called Marvelous 3. They had a radio hit called "Freak of the Week." They played small clubs with about 300 there and they put on the best shows I've ever seen. Their live performance was all about the experience. Also, Alice Cooper's shows are definately an experience. There's so many visual things at an Alice Cooper.

Of all the concerts I've been to, the only two stand out in my mind as an experience. One was Limp Bizkit - mainly because the audience was so crazy for them and they had some interesting visual aspects of their stage act. The other was O.A.R. because the energy of the crowd was so contageous and the music sounded SO good. I was relieved when I got O.A.R.'s new CD - it's their first major label recording and I wasn't sure if it was going to do their live sound justice, but they did a good job of capturing the energy of their live show. Have you ever been to an O.A.R. concert? If not, you should try to catch one if you ever get the chance. You can always listen to the CD too - http://www.ofarevolution.com/ . Anyways, I always wished I could've been to Woodstock, but I wasn't born yet and even if I was alive at the time, I probably would have had a final exam that week!

Hi Toad, Not recently! but way back - the light show and background projections were more often thjn not better than the band's live performance!

From my distant past I remember going to see ELO's Out of the Blue and Pink Floyd's The Wall concerts which were definitely more than just the music. Nowadays my dodgy eardrums prevent me from being anywhere near a live concert unless that is, if I have got half a ton of AFT's rayon balls wedged in my lug holes.

ELO and Pink Floyd... now THOSE must have been some mighty memorable concerts!

Probably the most spectacular concerts I've seen, and by 'spectacular' I mean the effort that went into the stage effects to create an experience that went well beyond the music were these six:

Pink Floyd in 93? with their intense laser show
Bowies 84 Serious Moonlight and the 87 Glass Spider Tour
Michael Jackson's Aussie Tour in 87
ACDC - BallBreaker Tour in 96
KISS - 1980

There's been plenty of 'big' concerts here, particularly in the 80's, but I wasn't much into Bon Jovi, Duran Duran and friends.

Sadly I think the days of these solo gala concerts were numbered a while ago as tour costs can often outweigh profits and the big bands have toned down their stage expenses some what. I remember reading that Bowie made nothing from 'Serious Moonlight' and has kept it a lot simpler since to at least take some profits from touring.

It was bloody exciting to see a band roll into town with 30 semi trailers or Michael Jackson flying into town with cargo planes so big that they blocked out the sun for 5 minutes!

These days I'm just as happy to sit in a 20 seat room and listen to someone play a guitar well