A Conversation with Claude About My Concert History
The following is an edited conversation about a lifetime of concertgoing, prompted by my setlist.fm profile and the stories behind the entries. It was partly inspired by this story I read today about another concert goer’s lifelong collection of surreptitious recordings. I myself never recorded any bootlegs, the songs I heard are saved only in my mind.
The Shape of a Concertgoing Life
Claude
Looking at your concert history, you’re a classic rock and new wave / post-punk lifer. Paul Weller leads the pack at 6 shows, and when you stack The Damned, The Beat, The Specials, Madness, The Bangles, The Go-Go’s, Blondie, DEVO, Oingo Boingo, The Police, The Dickies, the Ramones, and The Tubes together, there’s an unmistakable late-70s / early-80s British and American new wave spine running through your history. Paul Weller alone — between The Jam, The Style Council, and his solo work — tells me you’ve been following one artist’s whole arc for decades.
The single most striking number is seven shows at Anaheim Stadium. That’s not a normal touring venue count. Combined with the Hollywood Palladium, The Forum, Kia Forum, House of Blues Anaheim, Zebulon, Coach House San Juan Capistrano, and the LA Coliseum, there’s a real Southern California chapter in your concert life that contrasts with the DC-area cluster: 9:30 Club at 5, Wolf Trap at 3, The State Theatre, Black Cat, The Anthem, Birchmere, Hamilton, Bayou, Nissan Pavilion, Jiffy Lube, Patriot Center, Verizon Center.
And one festival entry stood out: “The Concert of the Century — Highlighting the Power of Music in Education.” That’s the 1999 White House event, isn’t it? If so, that’s a very Hill-on-the-Net-era artifact in your concert history.
The White House
Chris
Good questions. The White House event invitation came about because I was working on Hillary Clinton’s senate campaign at the time. Good eye catching that!
Claude
That’s a great piece of provenance for a setlist entry. The Concert of the Century was the VH1 Save the Music benefit — so you’d have been in the room for Clinton, ‘NSync, Gloria Estefan, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Lenny Kravitz, and the rest of that lineup. Which actually explains a few of the one-offs on your list. Gloria Estefan & NSYNC, Lenny Kravitz, and Eric Clapton all showing up as single entries makes a lot more sense if they’re all the same night at the White House rather than three separate shows.
The campaign connection is a nice throughline too — your Senate tech work in the 90s, the Hill on the Net era, then rolling into Hillary’s 2000 run. The concert is almost an artifact of that whole chapter.
Anaheim Stadium, Explained
Chris
Yes, I grew up in Southern California. From age 6 months to 22 right after graduating college. My very first concert was KISS at Anaheim Stadium, with Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, and Montrose as openers, so that explains that grouping. Later I saw Madness and the Go-Go’s open for David Bowie there. I think those two concerts may explain ALL of my Anaheim Stadium shows.
Claude
The math works perfectly. KISS + Bob Seger + Ted Nugent + Montrose = 4, and Bowie + Madness + Go-Go’s = 3. That’s exactly your 7 Anaheim Stadium entries. Mystery solved with two concerts.
And what a pair of shows to bookend it. The KISS / Seger / Nugent / Montrose bill would be August 1976 — peak Destroyer-era KISS, Seger right around Live Bullet and about to break huge with Night Moves, Nugent on the Free-for-All run, and Montrose still with Sammy Hagar. For a first concert, that’s an absolutely unhinged level of volume and pyro to start a concertgoing life with.
And then Bowie at Anaheim Stadium with Madness and the Go-Go’s opening — that has to be the Serious Moonlight tour, 1983. Bowie at the absolute commercial apex of Let’s Dance, with two of the most perfectly-of-their-moment opening acts you could ask for. If the KISS show was your initiation into arena rock spectacle, the Bowie show was basically a perfect snapshot of where pop music was in summer ’83.
It’s also kind of poetic that those two shows alone seeded so much of what came after on your list — the new wave / 2 Tone thread and the classic rock thread both trace back to those Anaheim nights.
Westward to Eastward
Chris
I graduated from UCSB with a bachelor’s in political science in 1987. That same month I got married and moved east to seek my career in DC. Where else is a newly minted political scientist supposed to be?
Claude
Exactly where you were supposed to be. Poli sci from UCSB in ’87, married, and pointed straight at DC — that’s a confident launch. The timing put you in Washington right as the Reagan era was winding down and the ground was shifting toward what would become the Gingrich Congress, the Clinton years, and eventually your own front-row seat to the internet arriving on Capitol Hill.
It also explains the clean break in your concert geography. The Anaheim Stadium / Hollywood Palladium / Forum / Coach House cluster is essentially your pre-1987 life, and then everything shifts to the 9:30 Club, Wolf Trap, The Bayou, Black Cat, Birchmere axis. Your concert history basically has a coastline.
One Night at The Bayou
Chris
I saw the Ramones at the Bayou. The only show I saw there as I recall. 8/15/88.
Claude
That’s a hell of a single-visit résumé for a venue. August 15, 1988 was the Ramones Mania tour, named after the compilation album that came out earlier that year and gave them their biggest sales bump in ages thanks to MTV finally putting “I Wanna Be Sedated” into rotation a decade after the song was written. So you caught them at a real inflection point: still the Joey / Johnny / Dee Dee / Marky lineup, Dee Dee about a year away from quitting, and the band suddenly playing to crowds that included a wave of younger fans who’d just discovered them via the compilation.
It’s also a perfect Bayou-sized show for them. They were touring constantly that summer — Hammerjacks in Baltimore the night before yours, Chestnut Cabaret in Philly two nights before that. Classic Ramones grind: small-to-mid clubs, four cities in five nights, 30 songs in under an hour every time, no breaks between songs, Dee Dee shouting “1-2-3-4!” and then they’re already three songs deep before you’ve finished your beer.
The All-Time Favorite
Chris
Taking all three of my adult children to see Ringo Starr at Wolf Trap was a big one. Seeing a Beatle at one of my favorite venues… priceless.
Claude
That’s the right answer. Not the rarest ticket or the loudest show — the one where the meaning came from who you were sitting with and what he represented. A Beatle is a Beatle. There are only two left, and the chance to share that with all three of your kids at once, at a venue you love, is the kind of thing you can’t engineer or repeat.
Wolf Trap is also exactly the right room for that show. The Filene Center under the open sides, lawn behind you, summer evening, an All-Starr Band lineup churning through “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Yellow Submarine” while Ringo grins his way through it — that’s a memory with a frame around it.
It’s a nice counterweight to the KISS-at-Anaheim-Stadium origin story too. Concertgoing life that opens with pyro and Gene Simmons spitting blood at age 11, and arrives decades later at a quiet, joyful evening with your grown children watching a 70-something Ringo wave peace signs from a Virginia stage. Same person, same love of live music, completely different chapter.
The Summer Ahead
Chris
We have a good lineup planned for this summer: Herb Alpert, Bruce Springsteen, Jack Johnson, then Adam Ant opening for Squeeze at Wolf Trap.
Claude
That’s a strong summer. Four shows, four completely different moods.
Herb Alpert finally gets crossed off. He’s 91 now and still touring with Lani Hall, which is its own small miracle. Springsteen will be your third Bruce show, which feels right for a DC-area lifer — not a completist, but you show up when he comes through. Jack Johnson is the outlier and it works: nothing else on the list really sounds like him, but he fits the other Chris — the sailing-and-ocean reader, the guy whose interests run to water as much as to amplifiers.
And Adam Ant opening for Squeeze — that’s the bill of the summer for someone with your listening history. Squeeze’s catalog (“Tempted,” “Pulling Mussels,” “Black Coffee in Bed,” “Up the Junction”) is wall-to-wall Difford and Tilbrook craftsmanship, and Adam Ant doing “Stand and Deliver” / “Goody Two Shoes” / “Kings of the Wild Frontier” is going to be pure 1981 MTV joy. Both acts are in the exact same new wave / post-punk neighborhood as your Paul Weller / Damned / Beat / Specials / Madness / Blondie cluster.
Wolf Trap is quietly becoming the spiritual center of your concertgoing — already tied for your third-most-visited venue, the site of the Ringo show with your kids, and now hosting what might be the most purely fun bill of your summer. There’s something fitting about a venue you’ve loved for decades being where the best nights keep happening.
You’ll get “Cool for Cats” drifting out over the trees while somebody a few blankets over pours wine into a plastic cup. That’s the platonic ideal of a summer Wolf Trap evening. Make sure somebody on your side of the blanket gets a photo when Adam Ant hits the first chord of “Stand and Deliver.” You’ll want it.