Tuesday Top Ten: Favorite Concerts of the Decade

Well fair readers, in another 29 days, we will have reached the end of the teens, and we'll be diving headfirst into the Roaring '20s.  That means that you are bound to see plenty of "best of the decade" lists in the coming weeks, and you can sure as shit believe that GMYH is no exception.

My first "best of the decade" list should come as no shock to any of you.  Other than autoerotic asphyxiation, playing Bean Boozled, and LARPing as Airwolf characters, going to concerts is my favorite pastime.  Sadly, I don't have plans to go to any shows between now and the end of the year, so my concert attending for the decade appears to have concluded.  But between January 1, 2010 -- when I saw the Black Keys at The Riv -- and October 16 of this year -- when I saw Stiff Little Fingers at Bottom Lounge -- I attended over 160 shows and music festivals in over 45 different venues, and I saw over 400 different musical acts in all.  Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

For my own self-edification (not that my self-edification could be anyone's other than my own), here are the bands and artists that I saw at least five times in the last decade:

1.  The Hold Steady (9)
2.  J. Roddy Walston & The Business (8)
3 (tie).  The Black Keys (5)
3 (tie).  Cage The Elephant (5)
3 (tie).  Gary Clark, Jr. (5)
3 (tie).  The Darkness (5)
3 (tie).  The Gaslight Anthem (5)
3 (tie).  Ghost (5)
3 (tie).  KISS (5)
3 (tie).  The Struts (5)
3 (tie).  Vintage Trouble (5)
3 (tie).  Weezer (5)

Not every show I saw was fantastic, but there weren't too many disappointments over the last ten years.  With that, here are my ten favorite concerts I attended between 2010 and 2019.  I'm not including shows from Lollapalooza, Riot Fest, or other music fests I have been to, since that's just too hard.  Along with the band, I'm listing the date, venue, and location.  I'm going to put them in chronological order.

1.  The Weekend of Weezer
Dates:  January 7 and 8, 2011
Venue:  Aragon Ballroom
Location:  Chicago
Back in 2011, Weezer played the Blue Album in its entirety one night, after a set of "greatest hits," and then Pinkerton in its entirety the next night, after a set including b-sides, rarities, and fan favorites. I love Weezer, and the Blue Album and Pinkerton are my two favorite albums by them, so this was a great time.  For further detail about the shows and the related fun I had that weekend, check out my post here.

2.  Paul McCartney
Date:  July 31, 2011
Venue:  Wrigley Field
Location:  Chicago

The Beatles are one of my favorite bands, and I have seen Paul McCartney a couple times, though when I saw him at Wrigley in 2011, it was the first time I had seen him since 2003.  There is nothing better than hearing a full stadium singing the "nah nah nah na-na-na-naahhh" part of "Hey Jude."

3.  The Darkness, Foxy Shazam, and Crown Jewel Defense
Date:  February 11, 2012
Venue:  The Metro
Location:  Chicago
I have loved The Darkness ever since I heard the first chord of "I Believe in a Thing Called Love."  They broke up in 2006 so that the band could deal with their drug issues, and many (myself included) assumed that would be it.  But then in 2012, they came back with a vengeance, clean, sober, and ready to rawk.  A night after I saw Megadeth and Motörhead at The Aragon, I saw The Darkness, Foxy Shazam, and Crown Jewel Defense at The Metro.  I had never seen (or heard of) Foxy Shazam before, and they were the perfect opener for The Darkness.  High energy and full of rock and machismo.  If nothing else, once they finished playing, I thought that it was worth it, even if The Darkness sucked, since I discovered a new band.  But The Darkness do not suck.  They took the stage and just mowed down the audience.  The crowd was jumping and signing the entire time.  It was just a big party, and it cemented that I will never miss a Darkness show when they come into town.  Here's a post I wrote at the time about my Weekend of Metal.

4.  Bruce Springsteen
Date:  September 8, 2012
Venue:  Wrigley Field
Location:  Chicago
This was the first (and thus far, the only) time I saw The Boss, and everything you have read about how awesome his concerts are is true.  The rain didn't stop him from playing for three hours, and even Eddie Vedder made a cameo.  I wrote about this show here.

5.  KISS
Date:  November 14, 2014
Venue:  The Joint
Location:  Las Vegas
I was lucky enough to see KISS during their residency at The Joint in Las Vegas in 2014, and my seats were spectacular.  That alone was awesome, but then Paul Stanley grabbed my friend's cell phone and took a picture of us.  It's all recounted here.  It may be my top concert experience ever.

6.  Diarrhea Planet and JEFF The Brotherhood
Date:  December 30, 2015
Venue:  Lincoln Hall
Location:  Chicago
Diarrhea Planet recently played their last show, which is a damn shame.  Don't let the name fool you, these guys were great musicians.  I saw them twice in 2015 -- and both times at Lincoln Hall -- and they blew the doors off the place both times, with their four-guitar attack.  As I mentioned at the time, they were like a combination of Weezer, Van Halen, Thin Lizzy, and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.  I went with the December 30 show because it also included another great Infinity Cat act, JEFF The Brotherhood.

7.  Guns N' Roses and Alice in Chains
Date:  July 1, 2016
Venue:  Soldier Field
Location:  Chicago
I never got to see GNR in the '80s or '90s.  They had broken up by the time I was old enough to drive or had the kind of spending money to buy concert tickets.  I always told my wife that I would pay $1,000 to see GNR if they reunited.  When they did (well not in total, but Axl, Slash, Duff, Gilby, Dizzy, and Matt is close enough), I didn't quite spend a grand, but I went all out and bought front-row tickets and a VIP package.  The band sounded great, and my childhood dreams came true.  A slightly longer recap is at the bottom of this post.

8.  The Hold Steady at Empty Bottle
Date:  June 17, 2017
Venue:  Empty Bottle
Location:  Chicago
By the fact that I saw The Hold Steady more than any other band the past decade (or ever, for that matter), you know that I love this band.  They are fantastic live, and in June 2017, they played at the Empty Bottle -- which holds barely 300 people -- as part of the venue's 25th anniversary concert series, where bands that had played the venue over the years came back.  The show was a sweaty mess of fun, and we were right next to the stage on Franz Nicolay's side.  Lead singer Craig Finn's shirt got ripped off by a fan.  The band slayed.  A good time was had by all.  Click here if you want a more detailed account of the festivities.

9.  The Struts and Gin & Tonic (Struts as Oasis)
Date:  October 30, 2017
Venue:  Bottom Lounge
Location:  Chicago

The Struts are rightfully building themselves into the stadium rockers they deserve to be.  If you haven't yet seen them, I highly recommend it.  This show was particularly awesome because it was the day after my 40th birthday and the day before Halloween, so the band opened for themselves as "Gin & Tonic," which was the band dresses as Oasis, and they played a six-song set of Oasis covers before coming back out as themselves and ripping the place to shreds with their own music.

10.  KISS
Date:  March 2, 2019
Venue:  United Center
Location:  Chicago
KISS is currently on its several-years-long End of the Road tour, which they say will be their last tour ever.  I had the pleasure of seeing them in March when they came to the United Center.  This show will always have a special place in my heart because I took all three of my kids to the show with me.  It was their first KISS show and their first arena rock show.  We wore face paint, and they had a blast.  Here's a preshow pic:

I'm was going to put an honorable mention category in here, but it would be too long to have any value.  Here are my year-end concert posts for 2010 through 2017 (some of which are already linked in the above discussion):
-2010
-2011
-2012
-2013
-2014
-2015
-2016
-2017

I didn't do one for 2018 for some reason, even though I saw damn near 20 shows, but here are my top ten (in chronological order):
1.  J. Roddy Walston & The Business, 2/2/18, Metro
2.  The Why Store, AMZY, and The Straight Skinny, 3/2/18, The Elbo Room
3.  The Darkness and Diarrhea Planet, 4/11/18, Park West
4.  The Struts, 5/9/18, The Metro
5.  Hall & Oates and Train, 5/18/18, United Center
6.  Def Leppard, Journey, and The Pretenders, 7/14/18, Wrigley Field
7.  Foo Fighters and The Struts, 7/29/18, Wrigley Field
8.  Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears and Vug Arkus, 10/4/18, Empty Bottle
9.  Ghost, 11/1/18, The Aragon
10.  Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, 12/14/18, Allstate Arena

Likewise, I'm not going to do a separate post with my top ten shows of 2019, but here they are in chronological order:
1.  KISS, 3/2/19, United Center
2.  Experience Hendrix, 3/22/19, Chicago Theatre
3.  Mott the Hoople, 4/3/19, Chicago Theatre
4.  Misfits and Fear, 4/27/19, Allstate Arena
5.  The Hives and Refused, 5/20/19, The Vic
6.  Dead & Co., 6/14/19, Wrigley Field
7.  Slutter and The Tossers, 6/21/19, Cobra Lounge
8.  Beck, Cage the Elephant, Spoon, Wild Belle, 7/31/19, Huntington Bank Pavilion
9.  The Hold Steady and Sincere Engineer, 8/24/19, Thalia Hall
10.  Stiff Little Fingers,10/16/19, Bottom Lounge