Fleetwood Mac at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium — May 19, 1980
Fleetwood Mac rolled into Buffalo Memorial Auditorium on the Tusk Tour — supporting the sprawling, experimental double album that represented Lindsey Buckingham’s deliberate attempt to escape the commercial perfection of Rumours. The band was the biggest act in the world at this point, and their live show was both a pop music spectacle and a […]
Johnny Winter at Broome County Arena — May 18, 1976
Fifty years ago, Johnny Winter brought his twin-neck Gibson and incendiary Texas blues-rock to the Broome County Arena in Binghamton. Winter had just released Captured Live!, documenting what audiences already knew: he was one of the most ferocious guitar players of his generation. In 1976 at the height of his CBS recording run, Winter was […]
Ray Charles at Clemens Center — May 17, 1985
Ray Charles brought his full orchestra and his singular genius for genre-crossing to the Clemens Center in Elmira. The man who had invented soul music by fusing gospel and R&B, who had conquered country music with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, was still a commanding stage presence in 1985. Southern Tier audiences at […]
Duke Ellington Orchestra at The Unicorn — May 16, 1975
The Duke Ellington Orchestra — led by Mercer Ellington after the maestro’s passing the previous year — brought the legacy of one of American music’s greatest composers to The Unicorn in Ithaca. The orchestra was determined to preserve Ellington’s music exactly as he’d arranged it, and a college-town crowd got an evening with one of […]
Cher at Niagara Falls Conv. Center — May 15, 1990
Cher played the Niagara Falls Convention Center on the Heart of Stone Tour, which had become one of the biggest-grossing concert tours of 1990. Fresh off her Oscar win for Moonstruck and the massive “If I Could Turn Back Time” video, Cher was at the height of a remarkable solo comeback. Western New York got […]
X Ambassadors at The State Theatre — May 14, 2016
X Ambassadors returned to Ithaca — where they first formed as students at Ithaca College — for a homecoming show at the State Theatre, ten years after they’d first started playing together. Their breakthrough single “Renegades” had made them a genuine mainstream presence, but the Ithaca crowd knew them from before the stadium anthems. The […]
Cage the Elephant at Palace Theatre — May 13, 2016
Cage the Elephant brought their kinetic live show to the Palace Theatre in Albany, a venue that perfectly matched the band’s scrappy, crowd-surfing energy. The Kentucky rockers had broken through nationally with “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” and were now alternating between anthemic rock and darker, more introspective material. Albany has always responded to […]
Four Tops & Temptations at Seneca Niagara Events Center — May 12, 2017
Two of Motown’s greatest groups shared the stage at the Seneca Niagara Events Center for a night of pure classic soul. The Four Tops and the Temptations together represented decades of ‘My Girl,’ ‘I Can’t Help Myself,’ ‘Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,’ and ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There’ — a catalog that defined a generation. […]
Phish at Pauly’s Hotel — May 11, 1989
Before they were selling out Madison Square Garden, Phish was playing Pauly’s Hotel in Albany — a legendary dive bar on Central Avenue that hosted some of the most important underground music in Capital Region history. In May 1989, Phish was still a Vermont-based cult band with a reputation built entirely on word of mouth […]
Ramones at SUNY Buffalo — May 10, 1985
The Ramones brought their 30-song, 75-minute blitzkrieg to SUNY Buffalo at a time when the punk veterans were searching for ways to stay relevant in the MTV era. Their debut album had launched the entire genre a decade earlier, and their live show — fast, loud, relentless, no breaks, no solos — remained the blueprint […]