The best live show you have ever seen, and what actually made it the best

[Coder65]

Enough about recordings, let us do the church of the live show. One question with a mandatory second part, the best gig or concert you have ever attended, and specifically WHAT made it the best, because the answers to part two are never really about the setlist

Reading these threads over the years, the magic ingredient is usually something else entirely, the room, the company, the timing in your life, the support act nobody came for, the sound engineer having a perfect night, the artist visibly having more fun than the crowd. The music is the occasion, rarely the whole reason

Small venue supremacists and stadium defenders are both welcome, as are the honest contrarians whose best show was somewhere deeply uncool. A wedding band that levitated a function room counts, a school concert that made someone's nan cry counts double

And the melancholy bonus round, the show you COULD have gone to and skipped, that you would now pay foolish money to time travel back for. Every music lover carries one, confess it here

[Neuer31]

Best was 200 capacity room, band on the way up, everyone in the crowd knew we were catching lightning early. Saw them in an arena three years later and it was fine, which is the cruellest word in live music

[Dom9]

Fine is the cruellest word, framed, agreed. Arenas trade intimacy for scale and only a handful of performers can fill the extra air

[Josh93]

Stadium defender reporting, 60,000 people singing one chorus is a physical force the small room supremacists have simply never been hit by. Both churches are real

[StuckOnDestiny]

Part two answer, my best show was my dad's first ever gig at age 61. Watching him discover it beat every performance I have seen with cooler company

[Arty Kayla]

The support act nobody came for was MY best show, twenty of us at the barrier watching a future headliner play like their lives depended on it. Always arrive for the support, this is the thread's one commandment

[HollowSentinel]

Melancholy round, skipped a legend on a random weeknight because of work in the morning, they retired the next year. The work meeting has been forgotten by everyone who attended including me

[WarningPoint49]

The skipped show confessions should be printed and handed out at every box office as a warning

[Undertaker_EU]

Uncool answer as invited, a covers band at a family wedding who read the room like scholars and resurrected a dancefloor of divorced uncles. Craft is craft wherever it happens

[TommyB_20]

What made mine the best was the sound engineer, genuinely. Same band, same tour, two nights, one muddy, one crystalline. The person at the desk is the invisible member

[Theo90]

Reading this whole thread and realising every answer is really about being fully present somewhere with other people. The tickets were never for the music, were they