This week I ordered my ticket for the Over the Rhine concert in Philly on November 1st. I first saw OTR last December at the Theater of the Living Arts and was very impressed. The show in November is at World Cafe Live. I can’t wait. Their new album comes out next week.
Ordering my ticket made me wonder about the best concert I’ve ever been to. I would have to say it was the Sufjans Stevens show last September at the Tower Theater. After the concert my wife put her finger on what made this show so good. She said, “Sufjan’s music reflects that there is both beauty and brokenness in the world.” I agree (always a wise decision). His music and the whole experience of the concert had a way of bringing me on this tension of beauty and brokenness, a tension I know from the world around me and also within myself. They are also realities I’m being confronted with this week as I prepare to preach on the Fall from Genesis 3.
What is the best concert you’ve ever been to and why?
The conversation continues…
provocations 
5 comments
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August 17, 2007 at 7:07 pm
BOB
I would say the best concert I have ever been to was U2 at the Mellon Arena a few years back during their vertigo tour (or whatever they called it). The part I like best was during ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ (one of my fav songs btw) and Bono comes out with this bandana with 3 religious symbols on it. At this point all you could here was guitars and fighter planes. So then Bono gets on his knees, places the bandana over his eyes and acts like he was begging for something. Not sure exactly what Bono was driving at (if he even knew himself?) some point about co-existing religions…
All in all it was a great concert with the sounds, lights, and of course Bono’s lecturing.
August 20, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Brad
thats such a hard question. Aesthetically, i would agree that the Sufjan Stevens show where he was the Phoenix and the orchestra members were butterflies was a beautiful experience both visually and musically. But some of my other favorites tend to me the more intimate shows where you feel a connection with the performer. Possibly the first time i ever saw Over the Rhine play, at Taylor University. We were in the front row, and i think i decided then that i wanted to be Linford Detweiller when i grew up.
August 21, 2007 at 3:56 am
Jeff Robinson
This is a really hard question. I think it’s a tie between the frist time I saw Sufjan in Cleveland and the first time I saw Over the Rhine in Old Main Auditorium at Geneva. Both were intimate events, I was close to the stage and I was watching wonderfully creative people do what they love. While I’ve heard the songs played those nights a million times since, they’ve never carried me away in the same was as they did those nights.
September 1, 2007 at 6:29 pm
cornelius alexander
OK, nerdy response here but Jason promised that nobody would be checking this anymore so I should be safe…
The best concert I went to was a double pipe organ concert in a cathedral somewhere in Holland when I was about 14 or 15. I’ve always loved organ music, and to hear two organs playing in a great stone cathedral with awesome acoustics is hard to beat.
September 4, 2007 at 7:41 pm
eurorebs
Oh my! I should’ve introduced you and Katie to OtR back in college! They played quite a few times at Geneva and/or BCCS. I think I first heard them in ’99. Aren’t they amazing?? Sad to say, but I still haven’t picked up their latest release.
Best concert?? Not sure, but seeing U2 in Dublin was amazing. 80,000 people, some with giant Ireland flags waving, Ballymun off in the distance (that’s what the song Running to Stand Still is about)…it was so cool. 🙂