Having a passing interest in the subject, I guess I'll surprise you and answer this one ...
As native NYers know, there is an outdoor skating rink in Central Park (The Wollman Skating Rink). From 1966 through 1976, they ran summer concerts there. some of you may have gone to some of these. It started as the Rheingold Central Park Music Festival but from '68 on it was the Schaefer Music Festival. It was a very small facility for the quality of shows there. It was rivaled only by My Father's Place on Roslyn for cheap shows by amazing acts you could sit right in front of. I remember it being only $2.50 for the floor and $1.50 for the rear stands, but you could sit on the rocks outside and hear the music for free. The rocks themselves created a nice bowl to reflect back the sound, the PA system was excellent and it was fairly close to heaven. If you got there early enough, you sat right in front of the band (as I'll demonstrate in a second). Of course, one arrives in a mood that was, shall we say (ahem) ... appropriate for music, which was further augmented in ones seats.
Check out some of these shows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaefer_Music_Festival#Festival_lineups
My very first concert was there, Richie Havens with Cashman, Pistilli and West opening. That's the Cashman of Willie, Mickey and the Duke fame, but years before.
By summer of '73, my biggest heroes and centers of influence were King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra. They were both there that summer and gave the two best shows I ever saw. Both were on spectacular NYC evenings, outdoors and historic and I got there early enough in the day to sit a few rows back from the stage. This was KC's Lark's Tongue's tour (Fripp-Wetton-Bruford and David Cross on violin), arguably the pinnacle of the entire King Crimson catalog. They didn't always hit stride with every show but they did that night, including improvs that worked (they were about 50-50 with those normally).
The Mahavishnu shows (over 2 nights) were recorded and became the Nothingness to Eternity live album. I was psyched. This was the Tom Seaver of bands as far as I was concerned. At the beginning of the album is a trilogy starting with Sunlit Path. Cobham hit the gong to start it, which was also how he started Birds of Fire, so I shouted out "Yeah!" quite loudly. You can hear it on the album. There are only three pieces on the album and they did this plus the very best parts of BOF and Inner Mounting Flame, plus a Laird piece that Goodman and Hammer covered on their post Mahavishnu collaboration.
As far as current shows go, Steve Hackett and Musical Box are both doing great shows with old (pre-commercial crap) Genesis and on 6/21, Al DiMeola is playing electric again at Ridgefield, another tiny venue. That should prove worthy of mention.
I know that this is a bit sacrilege, but I'd give up Jets playoffs for the rest of my lifetime for several more years of the level of musicality that used to exist.
