In The Show I'll Never Forget , writer Sean Manning has gathered an amazing array of unforgettable concert memories from a veritable A-list of acclaimed novelists, poets, biographers, cultural critics, and songwriters. Their candid, first-person recollections reveal as much about the writers' lives at the time as they do about the venues where the shows occurred or the artists onstage. Ishmael Reed on Miles Davis Luc Sante on Public Image Ltd. Heidi Julavits on Rush Daniel Handler and Andrew Sean Greer on Metric Diana Ossana on Led Zeppelin Maggie Estep on Einsturzende Neubauten Dani Shapiro on Bruce Springsteen Gary Giddins on Titans of the Tenor! Nick Flynn on Mink DeVille Susan Straight on The Funk Festival Rick Moody on the The Lounge Lizards Jennifer Egan on Patti Smith Harvey Pekar on Joe Maneri Thurston Moore on Glen Branca, Rudolph Grey, and Wharton Tiers Chuck Klosterman on Prince Sigrid Nunez on Woodstock Jerry Stahl on David Bowie Charles R. Cross on Nirvana Marc Nesbitt on The Beastie Boys And many more . . . No matter where your musical taste falls, these often funny, occasionally sad, always thought-provoking essays-all written especially for The Show I'll Never Forget -are sure to connect with anyone who loves, or has ever loved, live music. The authors of these musings on favorite concerts include the well known (Ishmael Reed, Harvey Pekar, etc.) and the less known, all offering deepish thoughts about performers and performances. Chuck Klosterman remembers the night Prince played the Fargodome in North Dakota--surely a night when pop cultural worlds collided--while spouses Robert Burke Warren and Holly George-Warren compare notes in separate pieces about a 1989 Van Morrison show. Heidi Julavits lauds proto-headbangers Rush; novelist Reed, the discreeter charms of Miles Davis in 1955 in Buffalo, N.Y.--an event that, along with a trip to Paris, "would determine the course of [Reed's] life" (he eventually "dropped out of high school and went to work at a library"). For comparing and contrasting the perceived impacts of the Rolling Stones in 1965, Public Image Ltd. in 1981, and Nirvana in 1991, it would be hard to beat this book. And then there's Max Alan Collins on Kevin Spacey at the House of Blues in Chicago in 2004. Kevin Spacey? Collins is so mysterious. Mike Tribby Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Paste , 11/13/09 “A simple, genius idea: Get an army of extraordinary writers to dash off remembrances of extraordinary concerts.” Sean Manning is the author of The Things That Need Doing: A Memoir and editor of the nonfiction anthologies Top of the Order, The Show I'll Never Forget , and Rock and Roll Cage Match . He lives in New York.