Worst Concert You Ever Saw?

I feel like I am about to commit sacredge but quite a few years back I went to see Peter Green in a small, old fashioned theatre in Suffolk, UK. The great man was most definitely passed his sell-by date. It was a sad experience.
They say don't meet your heroes.

 

Kelly Jones (of the stereophonics), he was brilliant and engaging as always but I only know this as I bought the live album. The sound was so awful I could barely recognise a tune. This was usher hall in Edinburgh a beautiful classical music venue so no excuse on that front, it was as made worse by being an all seater venue with the bar open and people going back and forth all through the performance. Basically the venue ruined it with poor sound but the audience just getting pissed to stop you straining to hear anything topped it off.

 

The loudest band I ever heard where the music actually hurt was Ginger Baker's Airforce playing at a quite small club when they insisted at playing at full tilt and people had to go down stairs and out into the street to listen to them. They were the only people left in the whole of the club.

A local UK (slightly famous) band from Macclesfield, Cheshire, who were a sort of Punk/Rock band called "The Macc Lads" famous for their foul-mouthed and politically incorrect lyrics about Beer, Sex and Fighting were fairly well known in the UK.
My mate who knew the drummer, 'Stez Styx' (Steve Hatton) was invited to see them and he took me along.
The music was fine, well sort of, but the antics of their army of hardcore fans and what they threw at the band had to be seen to be believed. Lots of spitting, vomit in plastic bags along with other bodily excretions in bags chucked at the band.
We didn't stay long probably 1/2 way through the second number when we left.
Anyone who has ever seen The Macc Lads will know exactly what I'm talking about.
There wasn't one song from any of their 13 albums and compilations and 8 or 10 EP's that could ever be played on Radio.

A version of The Macc Lads is still around today but it was the 80's lot who were the real Macc Lads.
Also I wouldn't advise going to see them unless you are wearing clothes you are willing to burn.

 

I saw the Kinks, twice, years apart. A band I really like. The first time, the sound seemed messed up, I was hearing the high backing vocals more than the lead, and overall a mess. OK, it happens.
The second, I had good seats, pretty close to stage. The sound wasn't too bad but Ray's singing was atrocious. I thought to myself, hey its rock and roll, but it was like he wasn't trying to stay on key. I still like the recordings for sure.

 

Most of the concerts I've paid money to go see, never were bad. Sure there was the unpolished opening act that was trying... and not very good but at least they're trying.

However, I did work as a bouncer at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, Mi for a summer. I saw so many bands go thru there and I think only a few handful I actually enjoyed.

I did see a local band perform. The lead singer / guitarist was all about prog rock, thought they were the next Rush. He was a local guitar teacher. They were pretty bad.

Sigur Ros was boring. I fell asleep.
Feist writes wonderful music. Her show was terribly boring.

 

OK artists don't "need" to do anything and can present any way they want.

So let's exchange that word for should. Should is my opinion. You may feel differently and that is A-OK. I have been to many concerts where the musicianship was not up to the level on the LP/CD. Probably because they used studio musicians which we all know was pretty prevalent. Should the studio musician have been at the concert. I don't know but it would have made for a better concert.

 

The best show I have seen was Van and the worst show I have seen was Van.
He has a digital clock offstage that he can see and when 90 minutes is up, he is gone.
The great show was a long time ago at Rutgers. He was backing Wavelengths - so 1978 - me and a high school buddy went with his older brother.
It was like going to church.

 

Bowie and Nine Inch Nails, which on paper sounds like it should be amazing, but NIN played through a cloud of smoke machine fog, Trent Reznor may not have even been there. The sound of the Sky Dome in Toronto was notoriously terrible. Bowie was touring Outside and in an "I'm not playing the hits," phase. He did play Subterraneans, Scary Monsters, Andy Warhol, The Man Who Sold The World, and Joe the Lion, which I appreciated as a die-hard Bowie fan, my gf (and now wife) was bored.

 

Forgot one. I think it was in the Oakland Arena. Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan. My wife got me tickets as a surprise and I was pretty excited. Beck's set was pretty much ruined for me by Terry Bozzio's over-amplified drums, and the Stevie Ray set just had very muddy sound quality. It was sad, because I never got to see Stevie Ray Vaughan in a decent setting.

 

i think probably one of mine when i watched it back, no joke.

 

Ted Nugent ! Way too loud, he was screaming, not singing. Felt like I was under siege or something. Walked out after 2 songs.

 

Me too. Twice, early to mid-70’s. That second time, about 40 minutes into it, the show abruptly ground to a halt when Dave and Ray had one of their infamous flare-ups on stage. Dave slammed his guitar to the floor and stormed off stage. The rest of the band, not knowing what to do, followed him a few minutes later. Eventually, Ray came back out with an acoustic and did a couple numbers solo, apologized to the crowd, and that was it, end of show.

Now, normally you’d call that a bad concert, and if it had been my first and only time seeing them, I might have too. But it wasn’t, and I was so amazed to have actually been there for one of those crazy Davies brothers altercations the press always wrote about – I was oddly satisfied with the whole thing!

It might not have been the best night musically, but it sure was entertaining!

 

Overall my concert experiences were good ones, but...

At a Clapton show in the indoor Oakland Coliseum about 15 years ago (?), which was otherwise spot on, during one of the numbers the keyboard player seemed to be playing in a different key. People were looking at each other with a "what just happened" expression on their faces. By the next song things were back on track.

Then there was the infamous "music festival" in 1972 which was known as "Bull Island". I was in the front row and did see a few of the acts, but overall it was something of a disaster. They say there were between 200,000 and 300,000 people there. There was also plenty of rain, little to no food or water, and drugs aplenty. There was a makeshift street where cars were lined up door to door with big sacks of drugs (you name it they had it) for sale on the hoods. Pretty much everybody there was wasted. The acts that were performing seemed to be apprehensive, and with good reason as it was a pretty scary place. During one of the acts, Flash, the singer and guitar player started fighting on stage. That could have been part of the act for all I know, but more likely it was just one element of the overall chaos occurring around them. Many acts did not show and confusion reigned supreme. At one point there was an explosion in the rear as one of the RV was set ablaze. This was followed by a surge of people moving in the direction of the stage. I thought I would be pinned up against the fence and crushed. It would have been dangerous to have been asleep on the ground at that point. While I was there I heard about people dying and at least one baby being born. Like most experiences in life, I was glad for it, but also glad to have survived it.

 

I was a pro-sound engineer for 20 years. Where to begin.....???

 

That picture could have been me back in the mid 70s.
I had a set of those JBL L-100s and would sit in the living room and crank them up - those were the days.
100% concentration on the music, no cell phones, email, Facebook to distract from the experience....

 

Wow! A real ticket. Those would have been in short supply. I doubt that most attendees even knew they existed, let alone ever saw one.

The event itself was just part of the overall experience. To get there in the first place I hitchhiked with some friends. At one point we got a ride from a middle aged redneck in coveralls driving his RV who picked us up because he thought one of the guys with long hair was a girl. Being from the Midwest he was a nice enough guy, and after some discussion he agreed to drive us to the place. But after a while he thought the better of it, pulled over and got in the back with the rest of us. We tried to convince him, unsuccessfully, that if he went with us he would meet plenty of hippie chick girls, but he wouldn't have it. At that point he started drinking whiskey until he pretty much passed out on the bed. Then one of the guys took his keys and proceeded to drive us the rest of the way. When we got to a point where the traffic was completely jammed we stopped, went into the back, woke the fellow up to thank him and returned his keys to him. Needless to say he was a bit peeved, but we calmed him down, even gave him some gas money for his troubles, and parted friends. I think one of the guys (the one who hijacked the RV) even stayed in touch with him for a while afterward. He was a nice fellow after all, and had done us a big favor, even if it was inadvertently on his part.

We walked the final few miles to get there, and were at the venue for less than 24 hours before leaving. The haze of marijuana smoke was so thick in places at times you didn't need to smoke to get high, and there was a pall of smoke, literally a thin dark cloud, hanging above the crowd. Getting out of there was another experience, a more pleasant one, hitchhiking home on a beautiful crisp Indiana September morning, rolling down Hwy 41.

 

Was that concert at Phillys Spectrum per chance?

 

Marshall Crenshaw, sometime in the early 80's at Toads Place in New Haven
A group of us actually turned our attention to a fish tank they had at the time and took bets on when a very long "Poop String" would snap off one of the larger gold fish.
True story ...

 

Odd thing is, he is he same way when he's not playing guitar or singing.