Wow, a few I had overlooked! The Fixx had a truly original guitar player, you can pick his sound out of the crowd. “Saved by Zero” and “One Thing Leads to Another” are great songs.
Saw Def Leppard for Pyromania tour. Great show, and I was with the most beautiful girl that I ever dated. And her crazy cool sister.
Scorpions are still amazing, and their live performance of Dynomite(sp?) is right up there with Priests Painkiller for getting my heart beating. But here’s some obscure stuff for ya...
In the late seventies and eighties Canada had a lot of bands that were huge in this country, but never really broke out internationally. Sure, BTO, Bryan Adams and a few others were known, but bands like Prism, Trooper, Streetheart, Toronto, Harlequin and The Spoons used to sell out arenas every night. Anyway...
Prism was headlining. I saw them probably five times, great live band. A British band called City Boy was warm up, and none of us had heard of them before. They were touring on The Day The Earth Caught Fire album. They came out and absolutely blew us away. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen around fifty big shows. When they were done literally everyone around me was saying that we may as well just go home, because there’s no way Prism can top that. Check them out, City Boy. The Day The Earth Caught Fire. On a great stereo with analog sound it’s brilliant.
Nearly the same thing happened when Living Colour opened for the ‘Stones. With Vernon Reid on guitar they absolutely killed. Not better then the Stones, but good. Very, very good. He was the equal of Hendrix or Stevie Ray on guitar. Made it look easy.