First Show/ Worst Show: Andre Moshenberg

(Claire: It begins! Here’s our first First Show/Worst Show by Andre Moshenberg: Live music fanatic, maker of mixtapes, my dad. Interested in seeing your First Show/Worst Show on the Charm City Jukebox? Click here.)

First show: Keep in mind that I’m very old. My older brother took me to see The Band at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I’m guessing the summer of 1970 or 1971. So, I was 8 or 9 years old. I remember a bunch of hippies drinking and smoking on the lawn, I remember singing along to some of the songs but the most clear memory of the evening was some guy wearing a homemade Jethro Tull T-shirt. I’d never heard of them and I thought it was the coolest name.

Worst show: I was going to see Tom Morello, the Nightwatchman, at Sonar. I wasn’t sure what kind of crowd there would be but figured it would be pretty large due more to his time in Rage and Audioslave than his current material. So, my friend Glen and I walked into the big room at Sonar. I’d been there once before to see Gomez and didn’t think much of the room. The opening act came out to thunderous applause from the packed house. I thought it was weird that the crowd was so young but thought that was a good thing.

The band played forever. The crowd ate it up, screaming and jumping up and down like crazy. It was just odd that this terrible opening band was both playing so long and getting such a positive reaction from a crowd that was there for Morello. After what seemed like an eternity, they ended their set, the lights went up and the place emptied out. We discovered that night that there are two rooms at Sonar. Tom Morello was playing the smaller room. We had just stood through an entire Cobra Starship show. Worst show ever. Fortunately we did catch a bunch of the Nightwatchman show, which was great. But still…Cobra Starship…really?