The Phoenix's top 40 Boston concerts

Via a link about James Brown's 1968 concert in Boston, I checked out The 40 greatest concerts in Boston history, according to the Boston Phoenix.

Now, you may not know this about Borderline, but I was wickedly into the local underground music scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For a time, I attended a show every week or two at The Channel, TT The Bears, Bunratties, The Rat, Green Street, The Paradise, and other local dives in and around Boston and Cambridge. Sometimes I saw shows out in the burbs, like the WBRS live productions up at Brandeis. Almost all the bands were local, or "alternative" acts from elsewhere -- the kind of shows that one would see listed in the Phoenix's music pages. So this top 40 list interested me greatly. I knew every single act on the Phoenix top 40 list, but was disappointed to see none of Borderline's faves were included, such as Bad Brains' performances at the Channel, Bob Mould at Axis, Soundgarden at Axis, Slapshot at the Rat, the Lemonheads or Bullet LaVolta at TTs, Rollins Band at TTs, and a few others.

The Top 40 list is good (with the exception of a few shows that were seemingly added for name-dropping/I-saw-them-first-nyah-nyah-nyah rights, like PJ Harvey in 1992) but is really focussed on the national and international acts, rather than the solid local rock scene. It's worth checking out the list, and if you saw any of the shows that are included, you can add your own review, which is cool.