Top Concerts From 2020
Annual Countdown
By: Joseph Suto
The year 2020 started off very good with a slew of great concert announcements. Fans looked forward to spending their summer at their usual hot spots of amphitheaters, arenas and for many great festivals and outdoor events. But once March hit things took a turn for the worse when the pandemic roared in full force, putting an immediate end to many planned summer tours. Every few hours it seemed Live Nation was sending out press releases announcing postponed or cancelled tours.
Luckily, we did have two plus months of shows to take in before all this would go down. Generally, we do a top 10 ranking of all the shows we see each calendar year. The only problem is we only had taken in seven shows before then shutdown. So out of those seven I managed to narrow it down to two shows I felt that would have been considered based upon how they stood out. Without further ado here are the two shows.
First up was the lone arena show we were fortunate to take in at KeyBank Center, Kiss with special guest David Lee Roth. This show was exactly what the doctor ordered for a cold night in the dead of winter in Buffalo, NY. The show was a surprise add on to their End of the Road Farewell Tour. The band had just played Darien Lake Amphitheater during the summer and everyone had thought it would be the final area Kiss show. Kiss once again pulled out all the stops and delivered their quality show as only they know how to put on.
As far as playing as a solo act in recent years David Lee Roth has been relegated to being an opener or support act. A far cry from his initial solo days in 1986 for which he headlined and brought home then bass player hometown hero Billy Sheehan to a hero’s welcome. Sheehan was given the key to the city and enjoyed a successful homecoming. Roth in 2020 managed to entertain the crowd with some of his solo tunes as well as a mix of Van Halen songs and did exactly what an opener should do warm up the crowd.
The other show that stood out was the Geoff Tate show at the Town Ballroom. Tate’s show consisted of two sets featuring playing two Queensryche albums in their entirety. For the first set he dug out the 1986 gem Rage For Order and proceeded to do an excellent job delivering the songs played in the manner which made diehard Queensryche fans ecstatic. The second set featured Queensryche’s best-selling album Empire, which reached triple platinum status in 1991, from beginning to end leaving the crowd extremely satisfied.
While many shows and tours were pushed back to 2021 or outright cancelled, at least there will be something to look forward to once the insanity of the pandemic ends.
