What's the best song you've ever heard performed live?
 

For me, without question it's Evanescence's "My Immortal". Amy Lee sitting on the stage playing the piano and singing what was already a fantastic song just made my night. It was a surreal and powerful moment and I fell in love.

Second was during the encore at a Gin Blossoms concert where the lead singer sang this song about a dinosaur that was awesome to listen to, but sadly isn't on any albums and I can't find it on mp3 anywhere. Truly incredible.

U2- Sunday Bloody Sunday was great live

"Bulls On Parade" - Rage Against The Machine

U2, "Pride"

"Barroom Hero" by the Dropkick Murphys.

"Hey Dude" - Kula Shaker and "The Only One I Know" - The Charlatans

It's a tie between:

Static - King's X (Tallahassee, 5/03)
Mini-Tobaggan - Last Crack (Ft. Lauderdale, 7/91)

"Born to be Wild," Steppenwolf, 1971, Monroe, LA. You have to understand there was a near riot going on, since the police had just escorted the band off the stage and shut the concert down due to a song involving profanity and discussing drug use, i.e., they had just played "The Pusher", i.e., "...goddamn the pusher man..." After a sustained protest and near riot on the part of the audience, the band was allowed back on stage to play their last song, the long version of "Born to be Wild." In those circumstances, best live song I have ever heard.

Best song performed during a riot:

Breadfan - Metallica (Orlando, '92ish) - they kept playing as the lights came up, and 75% of the crowd decided to jump onto the floor and reenact a massive WWF scene with the metal chairs on the O-rena floor. I think Metallica had to pay upwards of $30K in damages.

We've all seen the "Mama Said Knock You Out" unplugged video, but an even better performance by LL was "I Can't Live Without My Radio" at a show in Columbus, GA.

We have?

"We" haven't. The last time I think I saw LL Cool J on my TV, video or not, was the first 30 minutes of Toys.

Any Given Sunday

Tool - the entire concert

Nine Inch Nails, Hurt.

Pantara - Fucking Hostile.

I have never seen the referenced LL Cool J video.

Mama Said Knock You Out on unplugged was by far my favorite Unplugged moment, which is saying an awful lot, as I don't really like LL Cool J and a ton of my favorite artists all did Unplugged.

I was going to mention something from Pantera, but couldn't pinpoint a song. My actual favorite Pantera moment was when Skid Row opened for them and all the teenybopper chicks stayed up front for the beginning of Pantera's set. Thirty seconds into their set, there was a panicked exodus of hairspray, tears, and running mascara. It was fucking great!

Never saw it.

Interesting. You must be a very big fan of the band based on how you spelled their name.

R.E.M - Orange Crush, they used to do a yearly show at the Omni around Thanksgiving...this was the last concert before they tore the Omni down. Awesome show, incredible song, amazing band.

I haven't seen a ton of concerts, but I could probably name 10 songs by Barenaked Ladies that I loved live, they put on a great show if you like their music at all. But the best?

One - Metallica.

Pearl Jam - Oceans

I was really trying to pick out a song, from Tool or otherwise, but couldn't. Primus was pretty sweet to.

beastie boys - paul revere
tone loc - funky cold medina

That was on my short list, too. At least, the Justice tour version of it, or maybe even the Grammy performance. They've done it so many times since then, it's kinda lost its uniqueness. Except for the one where James got burned - I guess that would have been a memorable version.

Primus doing Master of Puppets, with Les playing the rhythm guitar part on bass, was mind-blowing.

I can't think of the best performance of a song I've ever seen live, but the worst one is a no-brainer. I attended RockFest at FW Motor Speedway in 1997, and the Wallflowers played their big hit One Headlight, and I'm using the term 'played' loosely. The band sounded awful, and Jakob Dylan was just terrible.

I'm trying to think of a band I liked where I thought they were bad, and I can't do it. Anyone who I thought sucked in concert I probably didn't want to see anyway (i.e., AC/DC when King's X opened for them).

Tangerine Dream, entire concert. They came out, played for 90 minutes straight with a BEAUTIFULLY orchestrated light show. Finished, left the stage, standing ovation from audience, they came back out, played for another FANTASTIC 20 minutes, and left. Never said a word, just played fantastic music with an awesome visual component. Best concert ever, hands down.

It would have to be a tragically hip song, but I can't think of a specific one that shone above the others live. They are pretty much awesome live the whole way through.

Didnt relize you had to be a huge fan to think a song was the best you have ever seen or heard at a concert? So I misspelled Pantera, big fucking deal.

Easy for me. Marilyn Manson. Playing at Ozzfest in alpine valley. They came on after Pantera. They were horrible. People were pulling chunks of grass up and throwing it at the band. Easily the worst show I have seen.

This is a tie, both from the Billy Joel concert (I'm a piano player so be gentle!):

Prelude/Angry Young Man
Piano Man

Paging QS!

"Baby's Coming Back" by Jellyfish in Dallas, Spring 1993 is right up there, but They Might Be Giants doing "She's an Angel" in 1991 was the best.

"Fields of Athenry" Dropkick Murphys

Screw you for having seen Jellyfish live! ;)

*glaring*

For me, now that I have composed myself a bit... it was "Here Comes the Flood" by Peter Gabriel. On the So tour, he did a piano-only version of this song, which (as is often the case with the least-accompanied number in the show) was unusually powerful. I saw it a few times, and they included a version similar to the live performance on the collection Shaking the Tree. Pretty good.

I'd have to go with a fairly recent memory: Lightning Crashes by Live at The Agora in Quebec City.

It's an outdoor setup in the Quebec City Old Port, not very big maybe 3000-4000, with the stage mostly covered by a roof except at the very front of it. It rained during most of that show with a good downpoor that started as the first notes of Lightning Crashes started. Ed Kowalczyk started singing coolly and came to the front of the stage, where rain was hitting him and in the middle of the song, when the song picks up in intensity, he was singing kind of bent backward like he often does, his left arm outstretched, kind of looking at the sky above. No there was no lightning in the sky, but the song felt kind of surreal...

Kinda sad they'll be tearing The Agora down next year :(

FM

Hmmm... you guys are going to laugh, but:

"How do you know when it's love" - Van Hagar at the height of their popolarity (90, 91?)
"Country Boy can Survive" - Hank Jr with only a 10-string guitar and bottle of Jack

Sigh...I'd give my left testicle to have seen them live in the 90's.

For me, seeing Sting sing 'A Day in the Life' in '93 was awesome because I'm such a huge Beatles fan, but the #1 on the list is the 12 minute version of 'Round Here' at the Halloween '02 Counting Crows concert.

u2- "Where the Streets have no name"

The Who "Wont Get Fooled Again".

Entwistles base pounding in your chest.

Daltrey's Scream making your hair stand up on your arms.

Townshends guitar riffs making your ears bleed.

For me, the best songs performed were cases where they were just so different than I expected. One was "Cop-Killer" performed by Ministry (not Ice-T and Body Count). It is hard to imagine an angrier, more intense performance. I think a performance by Lords of Acid doing "I Sit on Acid" was truly amazing because it was very different than any of their other renditions of the song.

Generally, though, like Cam, I have enjoyed every TMBG performance I have seen.

Radiohead-Paranoid Android. Simply amazing sound live. I've seen them twice Chicago in 2001 and Cleveland in 2003 and the Chicago one was better. It was AWESOME!

I don't know if it was necessarily the best song I've seen performed live but the most memorable for me was Type O Negative's, Black No. 1 when they were opening for Pantera. Type O sang most of the song, then when it came to the 'loving you was like loving the dead' part, Anselmo came out to sing. There was at least a foot height difference between Type O's lead singer and Anselmo, so Phil was practically leaping to sing into the microphone, but he did one hell of a job with it.

hmm...perfect weather here for Type O....

Great song, been meaning to check them out live.