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What is the ABSOLUTE WORST Live Performance that You Have Ever Seen?


steve_man

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Love and Rockets, Philly, maybe '88? They vamped it up in the laziest, most annoying way possible, and got really pissed that the crowd didn't eat it up. I think they were used to unadulterated adolation in the UK. Didn't cut it in Philly, not by a long shot. Pixies opened for them, and totally slayed, so the contrast was brutal. If not for Pixies I'd have started a riot.

Junior Wells, Brooklynn Academy of Music, NYC, '93? He was ridiculously coked up, barely knew where he was, spent most of his time dramatically selecting a different harmonica for each song, from a set of ~30. A total waste of time. Very sad, still love his early work with Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, etc. As we tell our kids over and over again: Know when to stop.

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Oh, and Neil Young at Farm Aid in Columbia, SC. We spent the whole day rocking to some great bands, the last of which was John Mellencamp (the highlight of the evening). Neil Young was the headliner, and unfortunately this was in his “Godfather of Grunge” period. I’ve never seen a football stadium empty so fast. I got dizzy watching the stream of people pouring down the spiral exit ramps on each corner of the stadium.

 

 

 

I have a hard time believing that. This was maybe his most popular time.

 

 

Believe it or don't, but that's what happened.

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I have yet to see a sucky live performance. Though, I'd say the "worst" was the G3 tour with Malmsteen, in umm, 2003? Show was great and all three guys rocked it, but I kinda had crap tickets and had a pole blocking part of the stage. So, in part, it "sucked", but that had nothing to do with the guys and just with the somewhat shoddy seating arrangements in the venue.

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We saw Roy Clark at a concert late last year.....I'm really,
really
, sorry (seriously) to have to say...there's a time to just STOP, and it was probably at least ten years ago.


:cry:

 

I felt that way about Dick Dale last year. Had trouble remembering words and and embarrassed the Hell out of his pick-up Bass player, finishing one song three times so that they could finish together. Walked out about three songs in and only a Ministry show several years ago topped that, but on that occasion I was there to see L7.

 

PS I wouldn't shell out for Dylan again either after a mediocre show a few years ago.

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Don't think I've ever seen a truly horrible national act. Plenty of local bands, hell I was even in some of those nightmares. :D

Two that were very disappointing were
1) the last GnR tour. They bickered on stage and apparently had to discuss the songs at length before playing them. When they finally played a song they did well enough but it was a bad show since the pauses took all the energy out
2) Dizzy Gillespie the year before he died. He had a big band with him and they were very very good indeed. Dizzy otoh played all of three notes the entire concert. The rest of show he sat at the corner of the stage smoking cigars. Good show fot the music, bad show if you came to hear Dizzy

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This is a typical Bob Dylan show.
:lol:

 

I've seen Dylan three times. Twice, the concert sucked badly. But one of the concerts, sandwiched between the two horrible ones, was the tour he did with Paul Simon. He and his band were great. I think it was the competition that made Dylan up his game. He lost weight, actually looked like himself, sang as if he cared, put on an outstanding show. The next time I went to see him, I walked out before the concert ended.

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I've been lucky I suppose and haven't seen a bad live performance from a national act.

 

I will say that the worst sounding show I've attended was an Iron Maiden concert, just horrible. It was like the sound guy decided that since it was Maiden everything should just be cranked to the point you couldn't distinguish guitar from vocals from percussion. The band at least brought a ton of energy though, so it was still an entertaining show.

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I will say that the worst sounding show I've attended was an Iron Maiden concert, just horrible. It was like the sound guy decided that since it was Maiden everything should just be cranked to the point you couldn't distinguish guitar from vocals from percussion. The band at least brought a ton of energy though, so it was still an entertaining show.

 

 

I've seen Maiden a few times - Earls' Court in London was brilliant - they played through their new album and it rocked so hard it didn't matter that nobody knew the songs. Plus the PA caught fire and they had to stop the gig for nearly an hour - they kept us entertained by playing football (soccer) on stage and joking with us through a megaphone. The greatest hits-packed encore went on an hour longer to make up for lost time.

 

Then I saw them at a stadium gig a year or so later and the sound was pretty bad - noise/volume restraints put in place by the council I think. The show was still enjoyable though - top entertainment value!

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the Beach Boys a few years back- obnoxious and self important, sounded like crap- had much higher expectations

 

Chevelle- this summer, they were actually tedious to watch- no energy, kept saying {censored}ing this and {censored}ing that and variations on that theme for no apparent reason - made it through their songs but not by much- very disappointed

 

 

on a happier note, both the Twisted Sister and Alice Cooper shows I saw this summer completely rocked and it looked like everyone on stage was having a good time too-

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Bob Dylan in the early 90s. He just mumbled the whole night. Kept looking at the band constantly for changes & endings. Sloppy as hell. It took me till half way thru the songs to recognize them.

 

 

I saw him in the early 90's. I literally fell asleep at the show. I am serious. I fell asleep sitting in about the 6th row of a 25,000 seat venue. I must have blocked that from my memory for the past few years.

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I wonder if it was a situation where the one who actually owned the song was no longer in the band? I recall seeing Elvin Bishop back in the day and he wasn't able to do Fooled Around and Fell in Love.

 

 

Mighta been because Mickey Thomas sang that song on the record. Elvin can't sing like that.

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It's nice to see that this really isn't a flame thread. Anyway, on to my response...

 

My first concert was in 1999, and it was Third Eye Blind with the opening act Tonic. Tonic sounded pretty great, though I'm not a fan of the band. Third Eye Blind sucked - vocals were off, he was kind of douchey, and the band wasn't tight. I know that they had just replaced their guitarist right before the tour, but whatever.

 

When I was in college, I had a short stint on the school's newspaper, and I went to a Wyclef Jean show so I could write up the review. It was really bad in every way, but since I wasn't a fan of the guy to begin with, I may have been a little biased.

 

Within the last year, I saw some doom metal band open for Tool. I can't remember their name, but it was so bad, I thought it was a joke when they started playing.

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I'm going to have to echo other's opinions here and say Bob Dylan. I saw him when he and Willie Nelson did a tour together. I came to see Dylan and didn't really care about Nelson. Ended up being quite entertained by Nelson and almost walking out on Dylan since I couldn't recognize any of the songs or even what he was singing.

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Wow, this brings back some memories. I have seen a few that were mentioned here - Dylan, Zeppelin in '73 (I went twice convinced that the first one must have been an off night as I love them in the studio), Procol Harum not playing Whiter Shade of Pale.

 

I will add Traffic in the seventies. Chris Wood was so drunk that he collapsed and had to be helped offstage twice. I felt really sorry for the rest of the band.

 

Also, Eric Clapton on the 461 Ocean Boulevard tour. Headlining a stadium show, he played a short set and barely played lead guitar at all, leaving most of that to George Terry. Freddie King played with him on Have You Ever Loved A Woman and was by far the best thing that evening. By the tine they returned for an encore people were throwing things at the stage.

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We went to a Blondie concert last year, mainly because it was ten minutes from home and I had free tickets. To be fair, the problem wasn't with Blondie or the band themselves. The problem was who ever they had doing the sound. The bass and drums were so loud, you couldn't hear the singing or much of anything else. IMO the sound guys totally ruined the concert.

 

Or, maybe I'm just getting old and that is the way people like their concerts these days. I prefer to be able to hear the whole thing.

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Cant think of any headliners I saw that were bad. Rush in' 84 or so was a little boring. Clapton around the same time was also not a real high energy show.

Some opening acts I've seen have been horrible, but went on to be huge. The two that come to mind are Bon Jovi and Soundgarden. Bon Jovi opened for Scorpions in the 80s and I thought they were the worst band I ever saw. A year later they were the biggest band around. Same deal with Soundgarden. Opened for Neil Young in '91 or '92. I remember thinking that the singer was real good but the rest of the band sounded bad, couldnt play and the songs sucked. A few month slater it seemed like they were one of the biggest bands in the world.

I wouldnt have made it in the A&R business.

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Willie Nelson's a consummate showman, so I'm not surprised you enjoyed that.

 

 

The thing that I really didn't expect that night is how many 40+ year old women were on their husband's shoulders flashing Willie Nelson. I'll admit some were surprisingly nice, but many I could have done without, no offense to those women.

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The thing that I
really
didn't expect that night is how many 40+ year old women were on their husband's shoulders flashing Willie Nelson. I'll admit some were surprisingly nice, but many I could have done without, no offense to those women.

 

Given that I'm in my 50s, I would graciously appreciate any woman in her 40s who wanted to flash me! ;)

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I saw B.B. King around a year ago and was pretty disappointed, He played for just a little over an hour and it was mostly his backing band and second guitarist who played while he sang maybe half the songs and threw in his licks here and there. Since he's getting up there in years I wanted to catch him before it was too late.

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Dexy's Midnight Runners on Saturday Night Live. Can't find a Youtube clip, but I remember it being cringe worthy. Singer must have been sick. One song, pretty much ended their run in the US.

 

 

They were surprisingly great when I saw them live near the peak of their popularity.

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I once went to see Jackson Brown

 

I kept waiting for the rest of the band to join him on stage.

 

It never happened.

 

But I thought it would.

 

Turned out it was a solo acoustic show. :(

 

It was like what Bill Cosby described in his famous standup show about 30 years ago when he was talking about going to the dentist.

 

He said (paraphrasing) it convinced him that even if he had no legs, he'd still be able to walk because the dentist made his butt crawl so much that his ass alone was trying to walk himself out of the chair and out the dental office.

 

Well, that's how I felt with listening to a solo acoustic evening by Jackson Brown. My ass was twitching the entire time and the only thing holding me back from fleeing the theater was thinking the rest of the band would be coming out any minute and I'd be hearing Running On Empty, etc.

 

Kind of like what Senator Lloyd Bentsen said to said to Senator Dan Quayle -

 

I wanted to say, Jackson, you are no James Taylor.

 

 

Only the truly diehard JB fans with only half a pulse seemed to emerge from that one happy.

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