Pretty much mimics my experience at the Hollywood Bowl, last show of the tour. Although the sound was fine.Originally Posted by mozo-pg
Pretty much mimics my experience at the Hollywood Bowl, last show of the tour. Although the sound was fine.
Funny! Sounded like a great night
Wow. There are a few that come to mind. For me it's usually people talking that ruins or mars a concert experience for me. I've posted it here before but I had one particularly crazy experience at a Jethro Tull concert involving women sitting behind me who kept talking(actually during the opening act Peter Frampton's set). I might post about it later but right now I'd rather not rehash this crazy experience. The short version is I was bumped up from the balcony to the first level only to have some big boobed blonde standing several rows in front of me blocking my view of the rest of Peter Frampton. I've had a few other bad concert experiences but none as bad as that one. Fortunately, I did enjoy Jethro Tull's set to some degree although the bad taste in my mouth(so to speak)was still very palpable.
A couple of English guys were talking during Rosfest(the first one I attended in 07). I imagine they were just there for Pendragon but I don't really know for sure. I got so pissed off at them for what I thought was excessive talking that I virtually threatened them. One of them said something to me like "what, are you going to use your kung fu on us." I'm glad I wasn't drinking because I would done a spit take at them. I admit that was pretty funny. We did resolve things a bit later on. Still, I hate excessive talking at shows. In between sets or even songs is fine but other than that it's just very distracting.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
Pink Floyd, 1977, at the Miami baseball park. After being in Germany for three years, going early to get a front row seating at the Frankfurt Festhalle while taking great pictures of bands while everyone was seated on the floor around me, I thought I would do the same with Floyd. I was the first to get to the centerfield fence, but was pushed up against it so tightly that I couldn't get my camera in position to shoot any shots. the mad throng was miserable, and to top it off, it seemed like the Floyds were just cashing it in, playing by the numbers without a hint of enthusiasm or passion. After getting ground into dust against the fence, I asked a security guy if he could lift me over so I could get to the rear. He did so, and I listened to the rest of the show from the back. It was definitely not one of their better performances, to be sure, but at least I could breathe back there around home plate.
Bob
YES when they opened for STYX in NH. Benoit's voice was shot, Downes was under rehearsed, and Squire seemed a bit off. STYX hit the stage and completely blew them away.
The concert (all 3 days of it) was muddy but fine.
Walking between 8-9 miles in, and then out to the car (3 days later- that's as close as we could get) in rain & mud was my worst concert experience.
Bethel NY, August 1969
"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician, and to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference"
President Harry S. Truman
A bit of a toss up.
I figure I am screwed either way so I might as well just dump a can of gas over my head and hand out the matches.
Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew at 9:30 club in Washington sometime in the late 90's. A Projekt show. 75 minutes of pure wankery.
We just stood there waiting for something of merit to happen.
Improvised noise making is what happened, really loud.
There was total agreement among the 4-5 of us that we had been used.
Jon Anderson at the Barns of Wolftrap 1/13/2004. The sound man was complaining loudly that it was not his fault the sound was lousy. The artist wanted it that way.
Cringeworthy performance. A large portion of the audience appeared to eat it up. Once again we left feeling used.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle
Nostalgia, you know, ain't what it used to be. Furthermore, they tells me, it never was.
“A Man Who Does Not Read Has No Appreciable Advantage Over the Man Who Cannot Read” - Mark Twain
Exactly how I felt after seeing HoBoLeMa in San Diego.
Bob Dlyan the Saved tour (1982-3?). Just freeking terrible. I took a friend and he was mad at me when the show was over.
Steely Dan (mid 90's) was pretty lousy too. Left halfway through the show
Oh, and Morrisey's 45 minute set as a headliner (mid 90's) also blew.
Was that when Jordan Rudess and Jerry Goodman were with them? Ironically I may have seen them the night before (or after) at a bar here in Chattanooga that holds about 60 people and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. Come to think of it, that would have been '93 because the first GH album had just come out. Sound was great- the place was so tiny there essentially was no PA; just stage sound.
Worst show for me (that I ever intended to see in the first place) sound-wise was the KISS reunion in '95. So shrill bright and loud I thought I'd never have children. Worst performance by a major act was Van Halen in '85. Eddie was drunk and they train-wrecked Why CAn't This Be Love and had to stop. His solo was awful. As was Mike's. And Sammy was a colossal dick. I saw him solo in the late 70s and he was cool back then.
I don't think I've heard the Miami show, but I've heard several shows from that tour that were awesome. If I could see one Waters era Floyd tour, it would be 77.
Worst was Boston in 2004, I think. I believe it was the last tour they did before Brad Delp went home. Now, the rumor I've heard is that Tom Scholz is so much of a paranoid egomaniac, he actually does the mix from the stage. That's right, he won't even trust a sound man to mix the show. If that's true, it might explain why the mix on this show was so abysmal. The show started with the PA underpowered (or maybe not powered at all), the start of Rock And Roll Band sounded like it was coming out of a boombox, which the audience noticed and disapproved of. Eventually, it got a little better, but the mix was off all night.
You could barely hear Gary Pihl's solos (which included Don't Look Back and Hollyann, two of the best songs), the pipe organ section during The Launch was completely MIA (Scholz appeared to sit down at the organ, then get up when they went into the next section of the piece, seemingly without playing a note on the organ), and Scholz screwed up the More Than A Feeling arrangement by having the band stop dead so that he could play his tapping cadenza before they went into the long instrumental thing on every other tour segued directly out of MTAF.
Dammit, for a guy who's so obsessed with making his music "perfect" sounding that it almost stops being rock n roll (as Frank Marino once said, "Rock n roll is the art of imperfection"), you'd have hoped he'd be capable to delivering a live show with perfect sound. Certainly on this night, that wasn't the case.
Other than that, there was the last time I trusted Greyhound to deliver me to NEARfest, which finished up with me missing the first half of Larry Fast's set, whichever year it was he played the preshow (2007, maybe?). If things went the way they were supposed to, I would have gotten to Bethlehem in the early afternoon, but we got held over for more than an hour in Pittsburgh, because apparently one of the buses that had people getting on our bus got lost. Then we got to Philadephia (no that's not a typo, Greyhound routed my Cleveland to Bethlehem trip via Philly) about five minutes after the bus I was supposed to get on to get to Bethlehem, and had to wait several hours for the next one, which then stopped somewhere along the way because there was a broken down Greyhound (and apparently, company policy is if a bus breaks down, any other bus that comes along has to stop and offer rides to the people on the broken down bus). That was the last time I do any long distance trip on Greyhound. From now it, it's either flying or Amtrak for me. Or bumming rides with my friends.
Oh, and I guess one I thought wasn't very good was when I saw Richard Lloyd back around 2001 or 2002, just because you couldn't hear his guitar, because the idiot soundman apparently didn't have him turned up in the mix. You could see that Richard was playing these cool guitar solos, but you couldn't hear anything! What is it with these incompetent soundmen who can do their frelling jobs right? Are they like completely deaf to the point they can't hear a key element of the band's sound is missing from the house mix?! And no, it wasn't because Richard's amp was turned up too loud, because I stood directly in front of the stage for a couple songs, and even in front of his amp you could only barely hear it.
Last edited by GuitarGeek; 03-22-2015 at 02:37 AM.
Saw the same tour in Canandaigua NY with the same experience. Styx fine.....Yes, not so
A friend and I drove 3 hours to San Francisco to see XTC, only to find a 'Cancelled' sign on the door of the venue when we got there.
The most recent show I went to in Sacramento was so freaking loud it made me nauseous. And we all had earplugs in. Eff you, Boardwalk.
Speaking of too loud, Billy Sherwooods Circa at Rosfest. Horrendously loud.
The few I have walked out on, Rush in the 70's opening for Blue Oyster Cult. Holdsworth at IMAC , painful noodling. Genisis right after Gabriels departure in a Suffern NY college, more a crowd thing, there was a near riot before the show. Pearl Jam at Jones Beach, not my cup of tea. I hesitate to mention this one ,but King Crimson's last tour. Not hugely familiar with their material , but swayed by their positive reputation and attended. I was overtired and not up to the challenge. Left 4 songs in for a flaffel in the village, the wife totally supported the call.
Man I saw the Dregs twice during that time and they were near perfect both times. That's disappointing, because the Dregs are so awesome!
My worst is, without question, Dream Theater on the Six Degrees tour in Atlanta at the Tabernacle. It was a triple bill with Kings' X and Joe Satriani and I was so psyched to finally see DT. Kings X killed in their 45 minute set and sounded great, then Dream Theater came out and was just an impenetrable wall of noise. You couldn't make out individual instruments it was so loud. It literally hurt my ears and I had to bail a couple of times. The band kept pointing at the sound guy, who was behind the band, not in the seats to up their levels during the entire show and it kept getting worse. Then JS, who I thought would be a total bore, came out and was awesome, and sounded great. The big difference was KX and JS's sound guys were in the audience, DT not so much and I don't think he had a clue what it sounded like past his sound board.
Kind of a mix for me.. for the most part I've only had positive experiences with concerts.. But with that said.. seeing Gentle Giant on the tour supporting Missing Piece they had Dr. Feelgood opening for them.. Crowd booed right from the start and 3-4 songs into their set the lead singer finally threw in the towel and said "Alright you'll get your Gentle Giant".. as a result we got an extended set from them.. Again.. started off horrible but ended wonderfully..
1993 is probably right. I was done with school but still working in Nashville before I moved back to Massachusetts. This show was in a club just to the east of downtown, a few blocks off Broadway. I don't recall the name. They had a variety of shows, but this was the first and only time I'd been there. They definitely had a house PA. I'd guess the room where the band played seated ~150, and it was pretty full. I have a vague memory of a few others retreating with my wife and I into the hallway because of the sound.
Yeah, I was bummed, and very surprised. Part of the fun of the Dregs music is the interplay of the various instruments, and all that just got washed away.
Glad they were better in other venues, though it doesn't do me much good.
Bill
King Crimson the last time they played in London (Shepherds Bush), 2000?. Just a wall of noise, no identifiable songs.
David Bowie around 1995, only played songs from the current and previous album, and they weren't that good. Morrissey was the support and head and shoulders better.
That was a great, great show
I don't know that we witnessed a extended set from the GG, but do you recall Derek saying that, "In England, we open for THEM"?
BG
"When Yes appeared on stage, it was like, the gods appearing from the heavens, deigning to play in front of the people."
Growing up, I had a huge fascination for Woodstock. I was only 5 when it took place but at 15 I wished more than anything that I could have been there. When I was in my 20s, I met someone who had been there. His comment? "Rained all the time, mud everywhere, nothing to eat, it was not a good time". Whoa, ruined my idealized version of it.
Was that Louie’s Rock City, Baileys Crossroads, VA Nov 77?... I remember the exact same thing....it was ugly, but Giant was amazing! I had a T shirt from that show with the Missing Piece Giant face on the front, and it was green. Wore it out. Been looking for years for one on ebay!
Going to many, many concerts since the early 70's, this is a small fraction in the bigger picture. Highlights of worse...
Aug 13 1972 YES w/Eagles and Edgar Winter Band. First, each band's music was just too different to be booked together, but individually they all did adequate jobs. The disappointment came when I found out Bill Bruford had quit 2 weeks before and Alan White, who in his day was a fine drummer, just didn't know the material well enough.
Feb 19 1973 Neil Young with the Stray Gators- Baltimore Civic Center: Very rowdy crowd. Neil came out to do an acoustic set and the crowd just kept screaming at him. After 3-4 songs he got up in the middle of a song and walked off. The house lights came on after a few minutes....set was maybe 15-20 minutes. Then they acted like there was an intermission which lasted at least 45 minutes to an hour. He finally came back on with his band and started playing the electric set but the crowd was still relentless. (And Neil was probably pretty high at this point) After about another 20-30 minutes, in the middle of the song, it broke down, they stopped and once again he walked off. That was it...almost swore me off to ever going to another concert.
Oct 1, 1975 Jethro Tull/ Gentle Giant Capital Centre Largo MD. Giant played to some of the largest crowds on this tour than they had ever played at...and they tore it up. Though the sound in this "barn" of an 19,000 seat building, was horrible. I believe this was Tull's Minstrel tour, but they must have also been pushing Bungle in the Jungle toons. At one point they had few people in a Zebra costume shooting tennis balls out of his ass into the crowd. The show was full of gimmicks and nonsense, and after having seen them on earlier tours...that night Giant blew them away. I left early.
73 and 77 Grateful Dead - Baltimore CC, and LA Coliseum. Legendary band, great show...but even back then 5 hours of noodling gets a bit old for me. One show was enough, the 2nd was a free ticket while staying in LA.
July 8 1978 UK- Painters Mill Music Fair, Owings Mills MD- SOLD OUT- sat outside the stage door and listened (w/ Wetton, Bruford, Holdsworth, Jobson)
more modern...
August 14, 2007 Dream Theater -Pier Six Pavilion Baltimore MD- So loud I thought my ears would bleed with earplugs!.... and when you look around and literally everyone in the crowd has earplugs in, you know there is a problem. My buddy is a big fan and keeps trying to drag me to see them. I'd rather listen to the recording where I control the volume. I was thinking OSHA would have shut them down if they had been there.
Aug 1, 2009 Dream Theater, Zappa Plays Zappa, Queensryche- Merriweather Post Pavilion. Columbia, MD- After swearing off DT, I ended up gathering the earplugs up and going again, only because I really wanted to see ZPZ. Dweezil.s playing has improved 10X, and he does honor to his father's legacy.
Though through the years we have all had the talkers, the screamers, and drunks....this one took the cake. The guy next to me was shitfaced, spilling his beer, screaming, standing up, jumping around. I finally asked him if this was his first concert? The older I get, the less I can deal with this. You pay all this money for tickets and you pay to hear the show, not the audience, not to have people infringe on your view, and spill beer all over you. Then DT made my ears bleed again....never never again.
I'll skip shows where I didn't want to go in the first place, but did just for friends, gfs, wife, etc.
I've had many many great concert experiences and only some bad, but a few stand out as truly horrible.
Mars Volta Wiltern Theater in LA circa 2005. These guys just can't play their material live. It was like attending a first rehearsal. The drummer was usually a half beat or more in front of everyone else. The guitarist was in a different key than the other guys. It takes a really bad show to get me to leave in a half hour and that one did it. Of course the kids were eating it all up. Kind of funny to see college girls in the new millennium going nuts over such an incoherent racket.
Then there were the "he can't sing anymore" shows, like Jethro Tull 2010 and Gordon Lightfoot around the same time. Here too most of the audience loved the shows. God knows how, but whatever. I now check Youtube before any show by a 60+ veteran artist. Saved me the effort of going to see Bob Dylan 2-3 years ago... That would have likely appeared on this list too!
And finally the probably good performances but so loud I couldn't stand it: Kansas at Anaheim HOB 2002 and Annie Haslam at Bethlehem (PA) Musikfest circa 1990.
^True, but I watched the film again some weeks back and musically it's wonderful still. Then you have the films of Altamont and the 1970 Isle Of Wight festival which are very different experiences and harder to watch. Anybody here go to Altamont??
My one and only experience in a stadium to see Paul McCartney (who was marvellous) will be my last.
I've been amused to see the Bob Dylan mentions. Someone I used to know was very pleased at the prospect of seeing him at a festival- I had to reduce those expectations with the stuff I always hear about latter day Dylan concerts (voice shot, changes all the melodies etc.). After the concert this person thanked me for doing that!
Louies Rock City it was.. and maybe my memory is a bit sketchy.. but it did seem like a long show to me..
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks