greatest live band of all time?

For me it's U2 hands down. I saw them for the 4th time last night and they still give me goosebumps. I only wish I had been alive/not a baby in the early and mid 80s before they were huge.

Last night I went with 3 friends who had never seen U2 before. One was a HUUUUUUGE bruce springsteen fan. All the way to the show he kept saying that U2 could never beat the Boss's live show. But after it ended i asked him what he thought and he said it was the best show he's ever seen, and yes, it was better than Springsteen.

Part of what makes a U2 live show great is that every tour they march out the old favorites while still playing all their new songs, and the new songs are played just as intensely as the old ones.

In short, I love U2

I just got back from an Allman Brothers Band concert tonight. They took the stage at 7:30 and left at 11:00. It was an amazing show. They get my vote.

Of the shows I've actually seen I think I'll go with Alan and Queen. i saw them in a small theater in the early seventies and they were awesome.

The greatest concert I have ever seen(heard) was a Blues Traveller show in Atlanta and I'm not even a big Blues Traveller fan. Man can those guys play.

When talking about the best bands for live shows, I think it's really important to talk about type of venue.

There are a huge number of bands that put on great small venue shows that simply couldn't carry a large venue. And there are large venue bands that depend so much on the scale of the venue for their effects that they would lose a ton going to a smaller place.

There's great bar bands that couldn't handle a small theater, and small theater bands who couldn't handle a bar, and large venue bands that couldn't do either.

One of my favorite all-time bands to see in a 500 person bar is a group called Cowboy Mouth. They can work that setting better than anyone I've ever seen. But put them on a stage in front of 2,000 people at a small outdoor concert and they seem lost.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone better than Chet Atkins in the small-to-medium theater setting. But put him in a big auditorium and he dissappeared.

On the big stage Kiss was amazing, as was the Who, Eagles, and many others. At this level it's almost a genre centric thing. It's like comparing Broadway productions of Cats versus Phantom of the Opera . . . they're both so professionally produced and so well done that you can't say one is better than the other, it's just which show you happen to want to see that drives the answer.

Well, I have seen the Stones in every venue possible from a bar (the Red Lion in Denver) to Giants stadium and for me the only band better for live shows is The X-pensive wino's. Johnny Winter puts on a fantastic small venue show, Mott the Hoople with Queen as the opening act on Braodway was great.
The Stones are kind of a funny band to see live though, I would say if you can get tickets to a later show do that usually the first 10-15 dates are what gets them warmed up and show quality varies drastically from night to night, after that they really kick it into high gear.

My favorite show was seeing Stevie Ray Vaughn in a small auditorium in college back in 1985. I was in the first row balcony. Truly amazing.

Kiss puts on a great show. Very entertaining. Of course, there's nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.