Performers you wish you had seen in concert

[Connemara]

Plenty of the great ones have passed, and I'm sure a lot of us missed out on seeing them live. If you could resurrect a few musicians and hear them play, who would they be?

Three come to mind almost instantly:

Muddy Waters--listen to his live albums. You can feel the electricity through the speakers.

Frank Sinatra--Well, it's Frank. What more to say.

Ella Fitzgerald--

 

[SGladwell]

Stevie Ray Vaughan
Jeff Buckley
Joy Division
Jimi Hendrix
The Brecker Brothers
The Who (post-Moon incarnations don't count)
Led Zeppelin (post-Bonzo incarnations don't count, though I did see Page/Plant on both of their tours)
Gustav Mahler (I'd love to hear the difference between his interpretations of the classics and those of modern conductors such as Tilson-Thomas or Kent Nagano.)
Bruno Walter

 

[DocHolliday]

Janis Joplin
Lester Flatt
Edith Piaf
Freddie Mercury
Joey Ramone
Johnny Cash
Joe Strummer

 

[aportnoy]

Bob Marley and the Wailers
Graham Parsons
Patsy Cline
Sex Pistols

 

[seanchai]

Uh, The Jam would be nice.
The Who with Keith Moon
The last living castrato

 

[Joel_Cairo]

Joe Strummer (preferably in the Clash days)

 

[matadorpoeta]

Originally Posted by seanchai

The last living castrato

 

[LabelKing]

I've read that the last living castrato wasn't a very good castrato in terms of voice. The best ones had, even at that time, already passed on.

I would have liked to seen Oscar Wilde's American lectures.

 

[Thracozaag]

Liszt performing his 1st piano concert in Weimar with Berlioz conducting
Rachmaninoff performing his 3rd piano concerto with Mahler conducting
Busoni performing the complete works of Liszt in Berlin
Beethoven improvising
Heifetz
Horowitz
Kapell
Art Tatum

koji

PS: Would of loved to have been at the premiere of the Rite of Spring.

 

[GQgeek]

Horowitz. Pavarotti in his youth (had tickets for his last performance before they were cancelled). Jussi Bjorling. Domingo. Heifetz.

EDIT: Koji, you have good taste, sir!

 

[aportnoy]

I'll also add this one...

Miles Davis quartet with Coltrane on sax.

 

[Stax]

Otis Redding

 

[gamelan]

this is a great thread:

dead:
Jimi Hendrix
The Doors
John Coltrane (and a whole bunch of old school jazz greats for that matter...)
The Beatles (simply because The Beatles are just The Beatles)
Nina Simone
Ella Fitzgerald
Louis Armstrong
Count Basie
Duke Ellington
The Stooges
Velvet Underground
Charles Mingus
Bob Marley and the original Wailers
Mozart

broken up/not talking to each other/want to kill each other:
Galaxie 500
The Smiths
The Stone Roses (right after they had released their first album)
My Bloody Valentine (oh wait...i have seen them but i'd really like to see them again)

i'm sure i'm missing a whole bunch of other artists.

-Jeff

 

[Huntsman]

I am sad that I never saw Perlman and Ma together.

 

[Bona Drag]

Originally Posted by gamelan

The Stooges
I shelled out for a ticket to their reunion tour, but I'm debating selling it - not because I need the cash, but because I think it may be depressing. What does the committee think? Bear in mind that Iggy is pushing 60 (!).