* Yaakov Levine was in his late teens in the early 1970s, and the first concert he attended was the Doobie Brothers at Gaelic Park at Manhattan College in the Bronx.
* Jordan Cora Lampe was 8 years old in 1998, and her first concert was Def Leppard at Oregon State Fair. “There was a noise ordinance that no one knew about so they were refunding tickets,” Lampe said. “My dad and I decided to go anyway and I was definitely the youngest person there. It was awesome.”
* Robert Baguio was 16 years old in 1979, the first concert he attended was Bad Company at Oakland Arena in California. “I went with my older brother,” Baguio said. “It was awesome; they had two drummers and had lasers shooting out of the drums.”
* Noel Nash was 18 and his first concert was a Bob Dylan show in 1981 at Sunset Musical Theater in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
* Ron Hartman was 15 years old in the early 1970s, the first concert he attended was Alice Cooper in Orlando, Fla. “We saw the ‘Dead Babies’ tour, so there were a bunch of baby doll props on stage,” Hartman said. “A girl in front of us became very distraught because they kept ‘killing’ the babies.”
* Erin Tierney was 15 years old in 2005, the first concert she attended was Taking Back Sunday at the Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
* Pat Edwards was 34 years old in 1976 when she saw Elvis Presley at MacArthur Court on the University of Oregon Campus. “I don’t know if it was my first one, but it was my most memorable one and I can’t think of one I went to earlier than that,” she said. “I did go to see Bobby Bare at the Cottonwoods, a small dance club between Albany and Lebanon in about 1960. He was just getting started and I had never heard of him at the time, but he is now in the Country Music Hall of Fame. That wasn’t a concert, however. He just played a gig for one night.”
At the Elvis concert, Pat and her husband, Jim, recall sitting on the second balcony to the side of the stage. “We had an excellent view of Elvis’ back much of the time, but because the audience was all around him, he was good about acknowledging those of us behind him quite often,” Pat said.
She also married an Elvis look-alike.
“Not only did Jim and I both love his music, there was a bit of a parallel between Elvis and Jim in about 1959,” Edwards said. “Both were in the U.S. Army at the same time; both were stationed in Germany during the building of the Berlin Wall. Their paths never crossed, but Jim was an ‘Elvis look-alike’ and had the attached picture taken while they were both in Germany. It’s become rather infamous in our family now.
* Joey Blum was 13 years old in 1968, the first concert he attended was the Woody Guthrie Memorial Concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
The lineup included Pete Seeger, Odetta, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan (in the first public appearance after his motorcycle accident in 1966 with members of The Band), Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens and Tom Paxton.
“The show was, at first, a bit of a dud despite the hype and the ‘purposeful’ quality of things,” Blum said. “I was there with a bunch of family friends, parents and kids. The group of us who thought of ourselves as ‘cool’ were acting dutifully worshipful, but in truth were kind of bored. Then, Dylan came out with The Band and blew the lid off the place with his electric sound, an unveiling of sort of what he became while healing from his motorcycle accident. That was a watershed moment in music history.”
* Chelsea Greenway was 17 when she saw Colbie Caillat at The House of Blues in California. “I don’t listen to her very often but I still like some of her older songs when I am looking for an easy listening type of playlist.”.
* Aliya Hall was 16 when she and her friends attended The Vagaband Opera and Abney Park concert at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland. “It was the perfect mix of steampunk, accordion, and folk with belly dancers.”