Worst Concert Experience?

[Halmyre]

I've have been to a Nico concert in the beginning of the 80'ties, where the audience wouldnt shut up & listen while she was performing her song/harmonium set. Pretty embarrasing and it ruined the experience.
Second set was backed up by two iranian guys, and worked better because it was loud enough.
Most of the audience probably didn't know her music, they were the-new-wave/punk generation who wanted to see a celebrity.

Didn't she also get pelters while supporting Siouxsie and The Banshees? I think a lot of their fans at that point had climbed aboard when 'Hong Kong Garden' came out.

[Gravedigger]

Kansas with Atlanta Rhythm Section opening at the old Hollywood Sportatorium (in like 1980 I think) - that place had perhaps the worst sound ever. Just a huge metal barn.

Dave Hope was sick so ARS's bass player, Paul Goddard, actually sat in and kicked ass. Too bad the sound was so miserable. Awful.

That was one large man! But hot damn could he play!!! Anyone know what happened to him?

I was at that show, but I only remember Goddard sitting in on "Mask Of The Great Deceiver".
Yeah, the acoustics at the Sportatorium were pretty atrocious, but the concert-going experience
was still so new to me that I have only fond memories (aside from getting tear-gassed at Rush).

[Vic2012]

Is that the concert where a rip roaring drunk Grace insulted the German crowd and called them nazis or something?

[SteveSly]

Another one, even so it’s actually a fascinating memory now. Summer of 1978 Open air festival at the Lorelei /Germany The headliner should have been Jefferson Wheelchair. It’s actually one of the nicest locations I know. It’s high up on a cliff on top of the Rhine valley with a beautiful view. It’s build like an antique Greek amphitheater with the stage on the bottom and steep stone rows. When we arrived in the beginning of the afternoon it was raining and there were a lot of GI’s in the audience and the general atmosphere was good.
The first acts were Brand-X and Leo Kottke who got both only mild attentions. The Atlanta Rhythm section was on the bill too but didn't play. While the stage was changed for the headliners some discussion was going on on stage. After some time the promoter came on stage and said that Grace Slick was ill and that the band couldn’t play without her. (Afterwards I learned that it was actually only Paul Kantner who refused to go on stage without Grace the others were well aware that it would be a mess to cancel the show, and they actually did the Knebworth show a week later without Grace)
So, the promoter left the stage, some music played on the sound system and then after a couple of minutes everybody realized that the concert was over. So most people started yelling and whistling, but shortly after there was a rain of beer cans, wine bottles coming down on the poor roadies trying to get the equipment off the stage. Seen that the theatre is quite steep you could easily throw from the last row something on stage. Next thing some people climb the stage and start throwing amps and assorted material down the pit and then somebody lit fire and parts of the stage started to burn. A couple of minutes later the fire brigade arrived and again a rain of beer cans went down on the poor fireman who retreated rapidly. It was really a strange beautiful atmosphere like a Wagner opera setting. We camped on site and the next morning the stage and the surroundings looked like a battle field with some parts still smoldering. Dawn of the gods.

.

I may be getting my stories mixed up by I believe Grace talks about that incident in her autobiography if I remember correctly (it has been a while since I read it). The band had a big argument over cancelling the gig, and then when it was cancelled the riot broke out.

[SteveSly]

Is that the concert where a rip roaring drunk Grace insulted the German crowd and called them nazis or something?

I think that was a separate incident.

[alucard]

I think that was a separate incident.

It was a couple of days after The Lorelei show in Hamburg. Grace was still ill, but there was no way they wouldn't play the show. From what I read she was high on medication ( and other stuff) and was sitting most of the show, insulted the audience and at one point went into the audience and put two fingers in the nose of a teenage girls un the front row. Speaking about audience participation. After this show the band decided to play on the Knebworth festival without Grace. I think David Freiberg shared the vocals with Paul Kanther and the reviews were quite good.

[yodathedog]

Paul passed away recently. I went to the estate sale at his house recently. It was sad to see how he lived out the last years of his life in a wheelchair.

[Booba Kastorsky]

Devin Townsend and Animals As Leaders in Palladium, Worcester in November 2014.
After watching Devin's London gig's DVD I expected something similar. Alas...
Palladium is such a shithole, and on top of it this time the sound was absolutely horrible: noise, noise, and nothing but noise. And so loud that I had to leave early: my were ears physically suffering.

[jaysenese]

This post has nothing to do with "worst concert experience", but I just realized that all 3 groups I saw at my first concert ever, 40 years ago this year, are still touring and making new music today.

Wishbone Ash, KISS and Camel at the Long Beach Arena in 1975. Great time! NOT a worst experience. I just saw Wishbone Ash perform last night in Arcadia, California at a small blues club. 1.jpg

[GuitarGeek]

Lou Reed, beginning of the 80's in Düsseldorf/ Germany. The place was crammed and the moment the concert started the first ten rows stood up on their chairs and you couldn't see anymore behind these ten rows. The people started yelling at the people to sit down, while the band was coming on stage and Lou was a bit disconcerted by the yelling, not knowing exactly what was going on. So the band started to play and the first ten rows kept standing up ignoring the yelling. So some people started throwing beercans at the first ten rowers (yes those were the glorious days where you could smoke inside the concert halls and take assorted forms of beverage with you and use them to express your miscontent) So one of the beercans went way over the first ten rows and hit Lou Reed. He stopped singing, insulted the audience and left the stage with the band after three songs. This must have led to a near heart attack of the promoter while the audience started to yell even louder now. After ten minutes Lou came back and did about 40 minutes more while staring in an highly unfriendly manner towards the audience.

Another one, even so it’s actually a fascinating memory now. Summer of 1978 Open air festival at the Lorelei /Germany The headliner should have been Jefferson Wheelchair. It’s actually one of the nicest locations I know. It’s high up on a cliff on top of the Rhine valley with a beautiful view. It’s build like an antique Greek amphitheater with the stage on the bottom and steep stone rows. When we arrived in the beginning of the afternoon it was raining and there were a lot of GI’s in the audience and the general atmosphere was good.
The first acts were Brand-X and Leo Kottke who got both only mild attentions. The Atlanta Rhythm section was on the bill too but didn't play. While the stage was changed for the headliners some discussion was going on on stage. After some time the promoter came on stage and said that Grace Slick was ill and that the band couldn’t play without her. (Afterwards I learned that it was actually only Paul Kantner who refused to go on stage without Grace the others were well aware that it would be a mess to cancel the show, and they actually did the Knebworth show a week later without Grace)
So, the promoter left the stage, some music played on the sound system and then after a couple of minutes everybody realized that the concert was over. So most people started yelling and whistling, but shortly after there was a rain of beer cans, wine bottles coming down on the poor roadies trying to get the equipment off the stage. Seen that the theatre is quite steep you could easily throw from the last row something on stage. Next thing some people climb the stage and start throwing amps and assorted material down the pit and then somebody lit fire and parts of the stage started to burn. A couple of minutes later the fire brigade arrived and again a rain of beer cans went down on the poor fireman who retreated rapidly. It was really a strange beautiful atmosphere like a Wagner opera setting. We camped on site and the next morning the stage and the surroundings looked like a battle field with some parts still smoldering. Dawn of the gods.

I've heard several accounts of that show. The first I remember reading of it was back in the early 90's, when Guitar Player magazine ran an article on "the greatest guitar amps of all time", which turned out mostly to be vintage Fender, Marshalls, Voxes, etc from the 60's and early 70's. I forget which model amp it was, it was one of the pre-CBS tweed Fender models, but at one time, Craig Chaquico had a whole wall of them that he took on the road with Jefferson Starship. The photo caption noted that the amps were destroyed during the Loreley riot. I read another article where Craig said he stopped touring with vintage gear after that. I think that's when he switched over to using Carvin amps and started playing BC Rich and Carvin guitars.

As for them doing Knebworth a week later without Grace, might have had something to do with the next show that occurred the night after the Loreley debacle. I forget where they were playing, but it was still in Germany someplace. Apparently, Grace had too much to drink, and as she put it, she "Decided I was going to tell the Germans I was still unhappy about W". The concert was being filmed for German TV, but the band suppressed the footage, for obvious reasons. I've seen very short and heavily censored clips on VH-1 a couple times, when they've done those tabloid shows of theirs, but I've also been curious to know exactly what Grace said to the audience. Anyway, Grace said she was so upset about the whole thing she fired herself from the band, and went into rehab.

[Bbernardini]

Never seen Tool, but this reminded me of the most depressing concert I've ever seen, though by no means the worst musically: I covered Rage Against the Machine at Lollapooza 7 or 8 years ago, and it was goddamn miserable to watch Zack de la Rocha having to spend the entire set begging self-righteous meatheads to stop crushing girls and kids against the front-of-stage barrier. It really made painfully clear that much of RATM's audience takes political anger as an excuse for moron violence, and to watch these molly-watered rich kids abusing the band for not playing "Killing in the Name" while beating the hell out of anybody smaller than themselves, well ...

Funny you should mention this. I saw RATM when they were the opening band on the Philadelphia stop of Lollapalooza back in the 90s. They came out on stage naked, with tape over their mouths, and the letters PMRC written on their chests. They proceeded to let their guitar/bass feed back at top volume for 15 minutes, then left the stage. I actually shared a recording of it on DIME a while back.

Tool followed them and made up for it, as did Fishbone.

[spellbound]

I was at one of these Pink Floyd concerts on 25 April:

40 Years Ago: More Than 500 Pink Floyd Fans Arrested at L.A. Concerts

This was both a best and worst concert experience. Best: It was Pink Floyd! I was finally going to see them perform live. In quadrophonic sound, with all the flying pig props and whatnot on cables flying over the audience. Worst: unbelievably heavy police presence, in a city that in previous years had been pretty lax about weed at concerts. The constant threat of arrest while doing nothing more evil than watching your favorite band on stage. The bastard LAPD frequently turned up the house lights while the band was playing, trying to catch anyone daring to light up. It did not seem at all like '70s America. We had been forewarned, so my friends and I partook of whatever refreshments we desired before we got to the concert, and carried nothing on our persons. Still, an uncomfortable and paranoid evening. Some friends of a friend were among those carted off.

"Reefer madness, has stolen all their souls
Reefer madness, is right out of control
Evil reefer madness is a mind eating troll" - Hawkwind

[mozo-pg]

I was at one of these Pink Floyd concerts on 25 April:

40 Years Ago: More Than 500 Pink Floyd Fans Arrested at L.A. Concerts

This was both a best and worst concert experience. Best: It was Pink Floyd! I was finally going to see them perform live. In quadrophonic sound, with all the flying pig props and whatnot on cables flying over the audience. Worst: unbelievably heavy police presence, in a city that in previous years had been pretty lax about weed at concerts. The constant threat of arrest while doing nothing more evil than watching your favorite band on stage. The bastard LAPD frequently turned up the house lights while the band was playing, trying to catch anyone daring to light up. It did not seem at all like '70s America. We had been forewarned, so my friends and I partook of whatever refreshments we desired before we got to the concert, and carried nothing on our persons. Still, an uncomfortable and paranoid evening. Some friends of a friend were among those carted off.

"Reefer madness, has stolen all their souls
Reefer madness, is right out of control
Evil reefer madness is a mind eating troll" - Hawkwind

What bullshit. Try arresting real criminals.

[Luckie]

A Bill Frisell show I attended at the Barns of Wolftrap had a similar attendee.
This was a special needs adult who insisted on banging on his thighs and grunting through most of the show.
It was really distracting, and the person who brought him just sort of stared straight ahead the whole time.
Any attempt to silence him was ignored.
I am glad I only had to be around him for an hour or so.

Is that some kind of satire you're doing?

[ronmac]

What bullshit. Try arresting real criminals.

Instead of electing them, that is.

[miamiscot]

Sadly, he died of cancer last year.

Bill

Sorry to hear that. He truly earned my respect with his inspired bass playing.

[miamiscot]

I was at that show, but I only remember Goddard sitting in on "Mask Of The Great Deceiver".
Yeah, the acoustics at the Sportatorium were pretty atrocious, but the concert-going experience
was still so new to me that I have only fond memories (aside from getting tear-gassed at Rush).

You could be right. I was pretty high!

[Camelogue]

That's metal.

That's the ears.