1999-06-25 Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve

Tower Theater

I had moved to the Philadelphia area only a few weeks before this show and quickly discovered that Philadelphia is a great place for concerts, with venues like the Tower and Electric Factory already familiar to me. I remembered how the Dead played at the Tower right around the time I first saw them at the Beacon in 1976, and was really excited to see my first show there.

At this "Elvis sighting", for the final song of the night, Elvis asked that all of the stage lights and the sound system be turned OFF completely. The Tower is a pretty large theatre, and Elvis invited everyone to come up close to the stage. Steve played an unamplified acoustic piano and Elvis leaned over at the edge of the stage and sang a touching song directly to the audience gathered below him, without a microphone.

2000-04-14 Phil Lesh & Friends

Tower Theater

This show took place on a Friday night at the end of a week when the stock market plunge had really picked up steam in the wake of the "dot-com bust" that Spring. I remember thinking that Phil's selection of the Wheel in the setlist that night was a reference to that carnage ("if the thunder dont get you then the lightning will...."), but who knows, maybe it was just on my mind.

2001-03-13 Joe Jackson

Tower Theater

An eclectic and very fine performance by Joe Jackson and his band as configured at the time. I think the only other band that used a Cello in a rock concert I’ve seen was Psychedlic Furs. I had purchased the double CD compilation of his music and was digging deeper into some of the stuff I wasn't already familiar with. Many years later I found myself standing next to Joe while trying to order a drink at the bar of the Beacon Theatre during a Steely Dan show.

2001-04-26 Mark Knofler

Tower Theater

The year after I moved to the Philadelphia area, Mark Knoffler put out an album called "Sailing to Philadelphia," which seemed to be a huge coincidence. I mean, why would a British rock star be writing about Philadelphia, anyway? I learned only later that it was a reference to a novel about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the English surveyors who established the border that became known as the Mason-Dixon line, one separating the southern and northern portions of the United States.