Worthy of mentioning bad concerts

[L-Jam3]

I can see that if the artist is just phoning it in, that to me would make a concert bad. I can’t recall off the top of my head if I had been into one where that’s the case, but if the artist is at least earnest in their performance, then I could at least appreciate the effort.

Although bad acoustics can ruin an experience, but that’s not really on the artist.

[Nonlinear FC]

I haven't been to nearly as many concerts as some of you guys, but it was definitely attended a bunch in my 20s. I don't remember ever seeing a bad concert, per se, but...

* - I was at concert (Joshua Tree??) when Bono fell off the stage at RFK about... Dislocated his shoulder (or something) and they had to cut it short. Still a good concert, but I also remember the sound mix being not so great and I think this might've been when they were moving from Arenas-->Stadiums and maybe just hadn't figure all that out so much. I think to rub salt in the wound, the next concert was up in Philly and I think they played an extra long set to make up for it. Didn't do any of us folks in DC any good.

* - The Black Crowes were killing it at Congressional Hall, but they way security was acting had Robinson all fired up and he kept stopping the music to yell at security to let ppl come up to the front. They definitely didn't play their full set that night and it was a weird vibe.

[GoodKarma]

I've seen Billy Joel 8-9 times...one of the shows was in Ohio State's new arena the year it opened...the sound was so bad I wasn't sure if it was him or the arena. I saw him again in Cleveland a couple days later and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized it was the arena that was the problem.

Funny story...my sister went to go see The Outfield at a show in Cleveland around 1988-89 or thereabouts. The lights went down and the band came on...lead singer started with the guitar/lyric "Josie's on a vacation far away..." then stopped, threw the guitar on the ground then walked off the stage. Show over.

[Giff]

Conor Oberst stumbling off the stage after Bright Eyes second song the night Phoebe Bridgers announced her engagement is probably my worst. REK was pretty awful one time, but he was also sick.

[brian]

Scott Hutchinson had a meltdown at a Frightened Rabbit show in Vegas because of bad sound and ended the show after like 4 or 5 songs. To his credit he apologized at a future show when they were opening for Death Cab and had negotiated an extra 10-15 minutes for their set that night to make up for it.

[mister d]

Wallflowers (as openers, not by intent) just fucking stood there. That one stands out.

[Giff]

Scott Hutchinson had a meltdown at a Frightened Rabbit show in Vegas because of bad sound and ended the show after like 4 or 5 songs. To his credit he apologized at a future show when they were opening for Death Cab and had negotiated an extra 10-15 minutes for their set that night to make up for it.

We got our money, but the band or Connor didn't apologize or even address it a single time.

[Johnnie]

For Veteran's Day several years back (shit, maybe over a decade back) I went to his I Love This Bar & Grill Restaurant and got free food because Murica. For free, it was delicious. That place closed down some time later.

[Ryan]

Funny story...my sister went to go see The Outfield at a show in Cleveland around 1988-89 or thereabouts. The lights went down and the band came on...lead singer started with the guitar/lyric "Josie's on a vacation far away..." then stopped, threw the guitar on the ground then walked off the stage. Show over.

So everyone got home 3 and a half minutes early.

[DaveInSeattle]

Easily one of the worst concerts I’ve ever seen.

I don’t thinking ever seen a bad concert. Why was it so bad? Were you taken there or did you buy tix and go voluntarily?

Worst one I've seen - Mazzy Star in 2013. They played most of the show with their backs to the audience. In between songs, they played like this taped "interlude" music for a few minutes...sounded like calliope circus music. And this was when they started touring again, after years of not going on the road, and it was obvious they hated each other.

Other contenders:

-MGMT: Deep discordant psychedelic stuff, with strange visuals projected behind them. It was at Bumbershoot, and we left after about 20 minutes to go get in line for a "Doug Loves Movies" podcast taping.

-Father John Misty: At a KEXP/Seattle Children's benefit concert, he was the headliner. Came out and played slow piano dirges, and at one point stopped playing and yelled at the audience for being too noisy. This was at about midnight, after a super fun night of music and raising money for a good cause.

[Giff]

Oh forgot worst concert ever (twice!) - Counting Crows.

[mister d]

Interesting. Because they slow a lot of songs down and sound nothing like the albums?



(Ironically, they were the band I had to sit through the Wallflowers to see.)

[Nonlinear FC]

Oh! Just remembered another one...

So, in the late 80s/early 90s my college crew had hopped on the Spin Doctors / Blues Traveler bandwagon pretty early. We'd see them as one offs, but they tended to tour together at least on the east coast. We got to see both of them multiple times at really tiny venues* until the got to the Hammerjacks level (think House of Blues but MUUUUUCH grimier... very Baltimore).

At one of those Hammerjack shows, and this is after Two Princes had gotten some run on MTV and Blues Travelers early successful album had been out... Let's just say sobriety was not really a priority, especially for the notoriously herion-addicted lead singer for the Doctors.

Dude was so faded he was barely mumbling the lyrics and was mostly just propped up on a stool. Easily the worst (and most depressing) shows I've been to.

* - At one of these bars (venue is a stretch), the bassist for BT was sitting next to us at the bar. The music kicks in with the rest of the band on stage... My buddy is all panicked: "Hey, dude!! You guys are on!" The bassist rolls his eyes as he starts to join in with the band while on some kind of remote connection to th amp. They were trying to be cool and my boy blew his "cover."

And you have to know this guy, who is nicknamed Rat which is partly due to his name and partly due to his voice. We can still get the group rolling in hysterics recounting that story. (A lot of it is due to this dude's voice, which is part raspy and part 2 octaves too high... It's a weird combo. But we love him!!)

[sancarlos]

Ive only ever walked out on one show. It was in the mid-90s at Red Rocks, with some old friends. We had just watched great opener sets from the Gin Blossoms and Cracker, so the vibe was good. But an interminable wait for the headliner, the Spin Doctors, was bad enough, but then their sound mix was bad, they sounded out of tune, and the singer was obnoxious. We decided to head back to Denver and hit a bar.

[A_B]

Ive only ever walked out on one show. It was in the mid-90s at Red Rocks, with some old friends. We had just watched great opener sets from the Gin Blossoms and Cracker, so the vibe was good. But an interminable wait for the headliner, the Spin Doctors, was bad enough, but then their sound mix was bad, they sounded out of tune, and the singer was obnoxious. We decided to head back to Denver and hit a bar.

Look at little Mr. Can't be wronged.

[Giff]

Interesting. Because they slow a lot of songs down and sound nothing like the albums?



(Ironically, they were the band I had to sit through the Wallflowers to see.)

Yup. I get doing that with some songs, but when it's nearly every song and people just want to singalong to "Mr. Jones" or "Round Here", it's really annoying.

When I think about hearing him sing the latter, I feel like it's someone doing a William Shatner impression of singing it.

[mister d]

Little Mister Can't Stay Long?

[The Sybian]

I'm sure there are worse, but the one that stands out was a Phish concert around 1995 or 1996. Went with some college friends, most weren't into Phish but came for the experience. Set 2 was essentially one jam. Started with a song that went into a Tweezer that WOULD.NOT.END. One friend just bitched the entire set, questioning how anyone could like the band. The energy just completely drained from the crowd. About halfway through, everyone was laying down on the grass. Every time they teased going into another song, the crowd would cheer, and the band misread this as people being into the jam. I loved Phish back in those days, but man, that set was torture. IIRC, it was really hot out and there was no shade in the lawn seats.

ETA: Love the internet... 6/22/95 at the Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center. Theme from the Bottom->Jam->Tweezer->Tweezer Reprise. Over an hour, essentially a one-song set. And according to whoever wrote the review on Phish.net, it was such an epic jam it became affectionately known as The Fleezer (Finger Lakes Tweezer), and they reenacted it a few years ago when they returned to FLPAC. Fucking hell.

Actually, worst concert experience was my final Phish show. Oswego 1999, a two-day festival at an abandoned airport. Temps were close to 100, humid as hell, no shade anywhere and standing on tarmac. Absolutely brutal. I remember the shows were great, but just unbearable. Walking out of one of the sets we walked past a circle of people watching their dog take it's last breath, dying from heat or dehydration. The owner was on acid/shrooms or something similar causing his eyes to look like a Homer Simpson in Japan, and he just kept screaming "oh, man! oh, man!" and I saw the dog stop breathing. At the height of the heat, I laid down under a food truck for a couple hours for the shade. I had a summer internship at the Mass Dept of Corrections, and we had a tour of a Super-Max prison the following day. My friends agreed to split the drive so I could sleep, as I'd have about an hour at home to get shower and get dressed before heading into the office. Both of those idiots decided to split a bag of shrooms as we were walking to the car, so I had to drive all night, and drive while listening to two idiots ramble on. One of them kept yelling at me to stop so he could take a shit. I kept saying no, we didn't have time. Then he kept laughing saying "the turtle head is poking out." Then the smell was unbearable. I yelled at him, he calmly said, "I told you the turtle was poking out his head." Had to stop at the next rest area. I was late to the office, but fortunately they waited, as that was an incredible field trip. And the attorney who took us let his irritation towards me drop when he saw the female undergrad intern decided to wear a miniskirt and lowcut shirt despite warnings not to show any skin.

[Pruitt IV]

I mentioned a brutal Jethro Tull show that I suffered through in Montreal, but when I was 19 or 20 I took too many shrooms on an empty-ish stomach before we went to see Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Don't judge - I liked a couple of their albums.

Two guys on stage with two reel-to-reel tape machines and the singer was pretty much howling through the dirge-like songs. I ended up laying on a speaker case beside the stage asking God to please put me into my bed at home before a roadie made me get off the case. The vibe in the concert hall was so morose that I staggered out of the show. Only time I ever left a show early.

My friends found me sitting in an alley next to the hall. God knows how I made it home.

[Nonlinear FC]

(I liked OEM's studio stuff just fine, fwiw.)

((Like... I actually like Phish's Billy Breathes album, but unless it's a short version of Prince Caspian I really can't stand their live stuff.))

[Steve of phpBB]

The only concert I really did not enjoy was B.B. King. It should have been fantastic, but he talked so damn much, and it wasn't particularly entertaining talk.

[DaveInSeattle]

I used to joke that some of the best shows I've seen were Grateful Dead shows...and some of the worst ones I've seen were Grateful Dead shows.

I had tickets to both nights at Deer Creek (outside of Indianapolis) one summer in the early 90's. The first night was AMAZING...and I sold my ticket to the next night in the parking lot afterwards because I knew they wouldn't be that good two nights in a row.

And Jerry's last show, at Soldier Field? Rough...

[duff]

I used to joke that some of the best shows I've seen were Grateful Dead shows...and some of the worst ones I've seen were Grateful Dead shows.

I had tickets to both nights at Deer Creek (outside of Indianapolis) one summer in the early 90's. The first night was AMAZING...and I sold my ticket to the next night in the parking lot afterwards because I knew they wouldn't be that good two nights in a row.

And Jerry's last show, at Soldier Field? Rough...

Dude! We may have met. Was that the summer the "fans" broke down the rear fence on the lawn? I went to the previous summer shows. Only parking lot the next summer, pretty sure that was the summer Jerry died.

[mister d]

You guys hear Toby Keith died?

[Rush2112]

.

ETA: Love the internet... 6/22/95 at the Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center. Theme from the Bottom->Jam->Tweezer->Tweezer Reprise. Over an

I love a lot of mid / late 90s Phish. I very much dislike Tweezer though, especially as it's bound to have the Reprise. I never "toured" but would hit shows intermittently on a tour. At one point I swear I heard Tweezer like 10 shows in a row. Ugh.

Also really don't like the Dead's Stella Blue. It's just a drag and seems like they wedge it in and it's like they hit the brakes on the bus. Folks seem to go ape shit when they played it but it was always straight bathroom/beer break for me.

In college, I went to see Modern English with this girl I'd been smitten with, they played Melt With You 3 times. I don't think anyone knew any other song.

Oh, and speaking of Red Rocks and Blues Traveler, went with the wife to their annual 4th of July show at RR, they played the entirety of their album Save His Soul, which is the album John Popper wrote while he was recovering from his motorcycle accident, and well pretty depressing. Then he talked about the 2nd amendment between songs. Man that was fun.

[rass]

You guys hear Toby Keith died?

I've decided I'm glad someone wrote

Red Solo cup
I fill you up
Let's have a party

and put it to a catchy little tune. And I guess it had to be a meathead, so why not TK.


Also, I think this is my actual entry for the thread even though the show itself wasn't bad. I've been bored at concerts before (Dylan) but I can't recall a complete disaster of a performance.

[tennbengal]

I'm sure there are worse, but the one that stands out was a Phish concert around 1995 or 1996. Went with some college friends, most weren't into Phish but came for the experience. Set 2 was essentially one jam. Started with a song that went into a Tweezer that WOULD.NOT.END. One friend just bitched the entire set, questioning how anyone could like the band. The energy just completely drained from the crowd. About halfway through, everyone was laying down on the grass. Every time they teased going into another song, the crowd would cheer, and the band misread this as people being into the jam. I loved Phish back in those days, but man, that set was torture. IIRC, it was really hot out and there was no shade in the lawn seats.

ETA: Love the internet... 6/22/95 at the Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center. Theme from the Bottom->Jam->Tweezer->Tweezer Reprise. Over an hour, essentially a one-song set. And according to whoever wrote the review on Phish.net, it was such an epic jam it became affectionately known as The Fleezer (Finger Lakes Tweezer), and they reenacted it a few years ago when they returned to FLPAC. Fucking hell.

Actually, worst concert experience was my final Phish show. Oswego 1999, a two-day festival at an abandoned airport. Temps were close to 100, humid as hell, no shade anywhere and standing on tarmac. Absolutely brutal. I remember the shows were great, but just unbearable. Walking out of one of the sets we walked past a circle of people watching their dog take it's last breath, dying from heat or dehydration. The owner was on acid/shrooms or something similar causing his eyes to look like a Homer Simpson in Japan, and he just kept screaming "oh, man! oh, man!" and I saw the dog stop breathing. At the height of the heat, I laid down under a food truck for a couple hours for the shade. I had a summer internship at the Mass Dept of Corrections, and we had a tour of a Super-Max prison the following day. My friends agreed to split the drive so I could sleep, as I'd have about an hour at home to get shower and get dressed before heading into the office. Both of those idiots decided to split a bag of shrooms as we were walking to the car, so I had to drive all night, and drive while listening to two idiots ramble on. One of them kept yelling at me to stop so he could take a shit. I kept saying no, we didn't have time. Then he kept laughing saying "the turtle head is poking out." Then the smell was unbearable. I yelled at him, he calmly said, "I told you the turtle was poking out his head." Had to stop at the next rest area. I was late to the office, but fortunately they waited, as that was an incredible field trip. And the attorney who took us let his irritation towards me drop when he saw the female undergrad intern decided to wear a miniskirt and lowcut shirt despite warnings not to show any skin.

Jesus Christ.

[Pruitt IV]

Epic tale!

[Steve of phpBB]

I used to joke that some of the best shows I've seen were Grateful Dead shows...and some of the worst ones I've seen were Grateful Dead shows.

I had tickets to both nights at Deer Creek (outside of Indianapolis) one summer in the early 90's. The first night was AMAZING...and I sold my ticket to the next night in the parking lot afterwards because I knew they wouldn't be that good two nights in a row.

And Jerry's last show, at Soldier Field? Rough...

Dude! We may have met. Was that the summer the "fans" broke down the rear fence on the lawn? I went to the previous summer shows. Only parking lot the next summer, pretty sure that was the summer Jerry died.

I saw them at Deer Creek in 1990. (Alpine Valley and Poplar Creek before that.)

[Pruitt IV]

The only Dead show I saw.

It was excellent (I think)!

[DaveInSeattle]

I used to joke that some of the best shows I've seen were Grateful Dead shows...and some of the worst ones I've seen were Grateful Dead shows.

I had tickets to both nights at Deer Creek (outside of Indianapolis) one summer in the early 90's. The first night was AMAZING...and I sold my ticket to the next night in the parking lot afterwards because I knew they wouldn't be that good two nights in a row.

And Jerry's last show, at Soldier Field? Rough...

Dude! We may have met. Was that the summer the "fans" broke down the rear fence on the lawn? I went to the previous summer shows. Only parking lot the next summer, pretty sure that was the summer Jerry died.

I saw them at Deer Creek in 1990. (Alpine Valley and Poplar Creek before that.)

I definitely saw them at Deer Creek in '90. Also saw them there in '92.

[TankFarm2023]

Wallflowers (as openers, not by intent) just fucking stood there. That one stands out.

My friends and I walked out on The Cars during their first tour for the very same reason. Years later, I read an interview where Ocasek said he'd been very influenced by Warhol in regard to band performances. My memory is suspect after all these years, but I swear the played all the songs in the exact same sequence as the record as well.


Weeks later we again walked-out on Yes. They were playing in-the-round, and seemed as bored as we were. In the midst of an endless Rick Wakeman synth solo, our entire row got up and left.

[Nonlinear FC]

(When I went to see The Breeders with my daughter recently, they played the Last Splash album in sequence, but that was the whole point of the tour... And it was fucking awesome.)