Pink Floyd's The Wall was the very first album I ever really fell in love with, and I loved it hard. While I later turned punk and pretended I didn't know all the words for Nobody Home for a decade or so, my early teenage years were spent mired in Roger Water's lament for his dead dad, and his complaints about how hard it was to be a rock star.
Waters and the rest of the Floyd parted company a few years before that obsession really kicked in, so I obviously never got to see the legendary stage show they did for the album, but when Roger Waters came to do the show a few years ago, I was all in.
And when In The Flesh exploded on stage with all due pomp and circumstance, it was a proper overload, with lights and indoor fireworks and smoke and all sorts of things going on, and just when you think 'that's how you start a fucking show!', a goddam plane crashes into the side of the bloody stage.
It was a full-on sensory experience from there - as well as the practical effects of building the wall, the use of laser-sharp images on its blank face moved everything in whole new dimensions.
I've seen bigger shows with my own eyes - including a big Broadway hit from the front row, and the Beatles' Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas - and there was that one time I went to an AC/DC concert and could not even get my head around what I was seeing ('Oh, it's a giant inflatable sex worker on top of a full-sized replica train' I finally realized.)
But the most impressive thing I've seen in a concert was the first music I ever fell in love with, and first loves usually aren't that grandiose.
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