Vic's Picks: Our Favorite Concerts

9 Min Read

Vic's Picks has the music-loving staff of Victrola sharing our bests, our favorites, our recent discoveries, and our musical memories.

With spring finally officially "here," and late summer festivals like Lollapalooza announcing their lineups, it has the Victrola staff ready for concert season. For those of us in our Denver home office, it means Red Rocks shows galore. It got us thinking: What is the best concert you've ever been to? Below, our staff shares theirs.

Amy, Marketing Director, Customer Experience

Coldplay in Nashville, July 2025

This was the last road trip and concert I shared with my son before he turned 21. We didn’t call it a milestone or talk about what it meant, but I felt the shift in our relationship more than anything else from that time. Bittersweet.

Andrew, Director of Music and Content

The Pharoah Sanders/Floating Points tribute show at the Hollywood Bowl in 2023.

This concert was booked to celebrate the incredible album Promises, but Pharoah Sanders died during rehearsals. The show went on anyway, with Shabaka Hutchings playing in front of an armada of electronic music greats--Four Tet! Caribou! Floating Points!--and the LA Symphony on a quiet night in Hollywood where you could hear crickets in between the spiritual jazz of the album. I saw the show with two people as obsessed with Pharoah as me, and it was a lifelong bonding moment. I wept during it.

Mark, General Manager

Zach Bryan at Red Rocks Amphitheater on the 2022 "All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster" tour.

Being chosen for tickets in the lottery, the concert almost being canceled the day of the show due to severe weather, getting to experience "Snow" in a snowstorm at Red Rocks. Not sure anything could be more epic!

Ed Post, Customer Success Manager

The Replacements 9/15/13

Even though it wasn't the original lineup, I got to see my favorite band play live.

Becca, Social Media Manager

Highly Suspect at Red Rocks on October 20th, 2022

Highly Suspect has been one of my favorite bands for over a decade now, and the first few times I saw them were at smaller venues (Think Gothic, Bluebird, Ogden), so to see them grow and be able to headline at Red Rocks and talk to people who travelled to the show was very special. I also got a super cool foil poster and have it up above my vinyl setup.

Lake, Supply Planning and Procurement Analyst

Pretty Lights at Red Rocks

It was my first time seeing them, and it was my brothers first Red Rocks show to see his favorite band.

Nick, Financial Analyst- Receivables

No Doubt at the Fillmore

They were so fun and energetic, and it was at the Fillmore, which is a very small venue for a band that big. I was 10 feet away from Gwen Stefani... Awesome!!!

Lydia, FP&A Analyst

Phish 7/27/2014

The whole night was electric! A lot of my favorite songs were played, and the level of improv throughout the night is exactly why I love seeing this band. I will never forget the energy of the night; the band was feeling it as much as the crowd.

Toni, Warehouse Supervisor

Dierks Bentley at Fiddler's Green 2017

He is such a great entertainer, the concert was so much fun! He even shared a beer with members of the crowd and ended the show with a giant plane cockpit prop for his song "Drunk on a Plane." It was AWESOME!

Ali, Jr. Graphic Designer

BOYGENIUS on August 5th, 2023 at Red Rocks

This concert stands out to me because I was able to see my favorite band at Red Rocks! It is one of the most unique and magical venues I've been to. The opener for the concert was Illuminati Hotties, who is another favorite of mine, so having them together was the perfect combination!

Josh, Director of Sales

Phish Festival 8, 2009

Phish threw a three day party in Indio, California, over Halloween weekend in 2009. This festival included camping, a farmer's market, and some fun activities for the fans. The band played eight sets over the three days, and included a daytime acoustic set where the fans were given free coffee and donuts. My friends and I had a nice RV setup and cooked some fun meals and enjoyed the shows. On Halloween itself, Phish covered the entire Exile on Main Street album by the Rolling Stones, and included a set of horn players that made it quite the memorable experience.

Stacy, AR/AP Analyst and Office Admin

Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival @ Fiddlers Green on July 18, 2010; featuring Rob Zombie, Korn, Slipknot, Lamb of God, Five Finger Death Punch and more...

It was my very first music festival. I was almost 20, maybe all of 95 pounds soaking wet at the time, but I had this unstoppable pull to be right in the middle of everything… especially the mosh pits (some things never change). With a lineup that hit hard and a crowd buzzing with Rockstar energy, I didn’t really know what to expect. But what I found was something bigger than the music itself... I found community.

For the first time, I truly felt what it meant to be part of something collective. We looked out for each other: lifting people back up in the middle of a mosh, stepping in when things got too intense, making sure no one overheated or went without water. Total strangers, united by sound, rhythm, and a shared respect for one another.

I was out on the lawn, and it rained that day. By the end of it, we were all soaked, covered in mud, completely unrecognizable...but smiling like we’d just lived something unforgettable. We laughed, we sang, we hugged strangers like old friends, and in those messy, rain-soaked moments, real connections were made.

That day taught me that music isn’t just something you hear...it’s something you belong to."

Lydia, SAP Support Manager

Phoebe Bridgers in 2022 at Red Rocks on the Punisher tour.

My husband and I had bonded over this album on our first date (shoutout Tinder!) and how it so vividly brought us back to COVID since that is when the album was released. COVID was obviously a very isolating and introspective time for lots of folks and this album just seemed to encapsulate all of those feelings. It’s totally an album you play over and over again in your bedroom after a breakup or fight with a friend or when the world seems to be falling apart. But then to see her play all of these songs live, at Red Rocks, post pandemic felt like a watershed moment - where everyone else at that concert had been waiting to scream every single lyric, together, in a place as magical as Red Rocks. The energy that night just felt so special and connected like no other show I’ve been to. Plus - Phoebe just straight up rocks.

Ethan, Warehouse Lead

Zach Bryan at Mile High Stadium, June 2024

It brought live music to a new high. The scenery at Mile High, the light cascading down from the rafters, and some of the best lyrics country music has heard. I will remember that show for the rest of my life.

Jamie, VP Marketing

Mark Knopfler, April 11, 2010, Eugene, Oregon, Silva Concert Hall

I was in the middle of a long Oregon road trip, and it ended up being the perfect reset after hundreds of miles. I knew he was one of the most iconic guitar players, but had never seen him live. He had 15 or more completely different guitars lined up off to the side, switching between them with zero fuss to get the right sound for the right song. The band switched between Dire Straits classics ("Sultans of Swing," "Brothers in Arms," "Romeo and Juliet") and his solo work ("What it Is," "Sailing to Philadelphia"), and he felt so relaxed and generous -- he was there to share and was so damn happy to. All of his band felt like that, really.

By that time, I had been going to shows for 25 years, but it was the first time I felt like I was hearing true acoustic clarity at a live show, and everyone there seemed just as dialed in as me. I. Was. Blissin'.

The Silva Center (the venue) just had this way of wrapping Knopfler's sound around me. I've since learned its iconic architecture basketweave interior is the source of that (and visually is incredibly memorable). It kind of scatters everything so it feels warm and clear at the same time, like the music isn’t coming from the stage so much as it’s just happening all around me. Even in a big room, I remember distinctly how it somehow felt so personal.

Santina, Product Content and Marketing Specialist

ILLENIUM at his first headlining Red Rocks show August 29th, 2018

It was my favorite concert because it was my first time ever at Red Rocks and that’s already monumental in memory all in itself, but it was also ILLENIUM’S first time headlining a show there. At that time, it became my ninth set of his; now I've seen 50. The most recent was ILLENIUM'S first time playing the Sphere in Las Vegas, and my first time attending.

There’s music magic in the air at Red Rocks (it’s what you get back after giving up your ability to easily breathe up there, I suppose!) that goes back with you, if you let it. I was living with my grandma in New York at the time, and she encouraged me to fly and have the experience at Red Rocks even though it was on her birthday. I wished for a life of magical moments connected to music just like that one. I like to think my grandma played a part in granting that in 2018 and still does, in a different sort of way, to this day.