Your Most Disappointing Concerts..

[pb2015]

In the late 80s I saw Tony Williams with his straight-ahead quintet. He overplayed so much and was so hot in the mix that he just obliterated everyone else on the bandstand. It was so bad that a guy in the balcony started yelling "Brushes! Play with brushes!" between songs.

I heard stories about when Tony brought this band to the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. The owner (who passed away recently) refused to put a mic on the piano forcing the drummers to play at a restrained volume. Tony was not happy and told the audience so. When I started seeing shows there later in the 90's I chatted once with another drummer playing there who I knew a bit (who didn't play with the overpowering style Tony had) and he also griped about the piano situation.

[pb2015]

And then there's the Montreal Stadium show, from Pink Floyd, last night of the 1977 tour, where Roger Waters pitches a fit when someone lefts off a really huge firecracker (M-80?) during Pigs On The Wing Part Two. That's one of those things I've never understood about 70's era shows: all the assholes who thought it'd be fun to set off firecrackers. I remember on the Forgotten Yesterdays page, there was someone talking about how he went to one of the shows on the Relayer tour, but before the concert, he got in the face by a bottle rocket, and had to be taken to the ER, so he missed the entire concert!

There are some tapes around of shows where musicians get injured by firecrackers from the audience (a Double Vision era Foreigner show, and Bruce Springsteen's New Years 1978 show). In the How The West Was Won version of "What Is And What Should Never Be" from 1972 Plant says "no more firecrackers" in the middle of the song in the original show, but they edited it out of the CD.

[Frumious B]

I saw Jimmy Page on the Outrider tour and it seemed like he was pretty inebriated. Then the Gibson double neck kept cutting out during the “Stairway To Heaven” solo.

[Sputnik]

I saw Jimmy Page on the Outrider tour and it seemed like he was pretty inebriated. Then the Gibson double neck kept cutting out during the “Stairway To Heaven” solo.

That's a bummer. My wife and I saw that tour and loved it. Page played great. I think you caught an off night.

In contrast, the first time I saw him with The Firm, he looked pretty bad, he was very pale and very thin, and his playing was quite sloppy, even by Jimmy Page standards. I attributed it to his well-know substance issues, but I heard later that he was actually sick at the show I saw (Hartford, CT, I believe). I've seen other videos from that first Firm tour, and he looks and plays far better, so maybe this was true. I saw him on the second Firm tour, and he looked and played fantastic.

Bill

[spellbound]

I can recall a couple of instances of getting lost outside concert venues. One was a show at the L.A. Forum, forgot which one, where we exited the building at a different gate than we entered, and couldn't find the car, because the Forum is a round building and the huge parking lot is identical all the way around it. That taught me a lesson in paying attention to where you park anywhere you go, that has stayed with me. The other time was at the Long Beach Arena for a Grateful Dead show. We decided to partake of a substance occasionally used by Deadheads. None of us were willing to drive there under the influence, so we took it when we got there. When we left, we spent seemingly hours driving around unfamiliar Long Beach, trying to find a way to get on the freeway. At first, we wanted the freeway home. Later, we would settle for a way onto any freeway. We didn't do that again. Gd concert, though.

[simon moon]

Frank Zappa at the LA Sports Arena.

We had pretty good seats on the floor, not too close. But the venue had so much uncontrolled reverb that everything was unintelligible. Big wall of mush. We walked to other places in the venue, and no place was better.

Adrian Belew, Stickmen, Tony Levin, etc at BajaPrig in 2013. The sound at the Teatro in Mexicali for every other band ever to play at BajaProg has always been quite good. But for these guys, who I really wanted to see, it was so unbelievably loud, it was unlistenable. It was even too loud to be in the loby.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Zeppelin at the Capital Center in Largo MD, 1977. They were loud, sloppy and incredibly wasted. I left after a few songs. Horrible.

[spellbound]

Frank Zappa at the LA Sports Arena.
We had pretty good seats on the floor, not too close. But the venue had so much uncontrolled reverb that everything was unintelligible. Big wall of mush. We walked to other places in the venue, and no place was better.

That almost surprises me. Pink Floyd at the L.A. Sports Arena in 1975 had excellent sound, advertised as quadrophonic. I saw Frank Zappa at Pauley Pavilion (UCLA) in 1977 and the sound was just fine.

[per anporth]

I went to see The Smiths at Coasters, in Edinburgh, in early 1984 - just when they were on the cusp of going huge. The venue was rammed, & everyone was piled up the front in a seething crush.

I went with two girls - I thought I'd lucked out totally, haha.

Well, on came the band, & really, it was such a crush (in both senses). One of "my" girls fainted. So, I had to take her outside, & look after her until she recovered. By the time we'd got back in, I guess we'd missed three or four songs. Anyway, we found my other girl friend. And, not a word of a lie, two songs later, she fainted! So, once again, I was outside, looking after her...

We got back inside. I guess, in the end, I missed half the gig, at least.

"What could go wrong?!"

(Needless to say, I've never experienced anything quite like that crush, the sheer intensity of it, at any gig since.)

[clivey]

I went to see The Smiths at Coasters, in Edinburgh, in early 1984 - just when they were on the cusp of going huge. The venue was rammed, & everyone was piled up the front in a seething crush.

I went with two girls - I thought I'd lucked out totally, haha.

Well, on came the band, & really, it was such a crush (in both senses). One of "my" girls fainted. So, I had to take her outside, & look after her until she recovered. By the time we'd got back in, I guess we'd missed three or four songs. Anyway, we found my other girl friend. And, not a word of a lie, two songs later, she fainted! So, once again, I was outside, looking after her...

We got back inside. I guess, in the end, I missed half the gig, at least.

"What could go wrong?!"

(Needless to say, I've never experienced anything quite like that crush, the sheer intensity of it, at any gig since.)

Bummmmner. I had one of my best ever gigs in the same place. The Stranglers secret gig.78
My experience of Queen at the Ingliston Highland hall was however shocking. The game I think, about 91. They were using lots of tape and the place is never going to be a great venue. The next time I attended that particular cattle market was to see Madness circa naughties. football casuals started a riot and I was injured in a bottle throwing outburst. Never saw the gig.

[proggy_jazzer]

Zeppelin at the Capital Center in Largo MD, 1977. They were loud, sloppy and incredibly wasted. I left after a few songs. Horrible.

I don't know how this didn't come to my mind straight away, but I was at the April 9, 1977 LZ concert at Chicago Stadium where Page came down with "food poisoning" and the concert was stopped after an hour. They rescheduled for August (tix for the 9 April concert being honored IIRC), but cancelled that after the death of Plant's son. The next time they even tried to schedule in the States was 1980, and we all know what happened before that could come to pass.

[Fracktured]

I really thought about whether I had seen a show a terrible as some of these experiences but I guess I’ve been really lucky. I know some shows haven’t been the greatest but for the most part I don’t recall a really horrible show by a band. Now the one thing I will say is I’ve had some bad experiences with people at concerts. I remember going to see the Allman brothers back around 94 I think it was when a girl right in front of me must have been either drunk or high or maybe both. She wouldn’t sit down at all and kept dancing in front of us. She was good looking and wearing short shorts but that didn’t help much I really didn’t want to be looking at her butt for the whole show and several people around her kept telling her to sit down to no avail. Just annoying as all hell. I’ve felt with arrogant drunk or high people at several shows which really ruins the experience.

[Ten Thumbs]

Nils Lofgren 1976 - I just never found the spark at that concert
Jethro Tull 1977 - only one song off the current Minstrel In The Gallery album and the rest were repeats from other Tull shows I'd seen
Flamin' Groovies 2017 - the reformed band didn't meet my expectations

[mozo-pg]

I really thought about whether I had seen a show a terrible as some of these experiences but I guess I’ve been really lucky. I know some shows haven’t been the greatest but for the most part I don’t recall a really horrible show by a band. Now the one thing I will say is I’ve had some bad experiences with people at concerts. I remember going to see the Allman brothers back around 94 I think it was when a girl right in front of me must have been either drunk or high or maybe both. She wouldn’t sit down at all and kept dancing in front of us. She was good looking and wearing short shorts but that didn’t help much I really didn’t want to be looking at her butt for the whole show and several people around her kept telling her to sit down to no avail. Just annoying as all hell. I’ve felt with arrogant drunk or high people at several shows which really ruins the experience.

I can see that for someone who is drunk, but high people are typically very mellow.

[Joe F.]

The Wonder Stuff opening for The Mission UK around '90 or '91. The show was in a 3000 seat venue and was very empty. The Wonder Stuff singer thought it was a good idea to tell us that we were all a bunch of fuckers and hurled insults at the folks who were there and paid money of how shitty we were. He did this through their whole set. Biggest asshole I'd ever seen on stage.

[Digital_Man]

The one that sticks out the most to me was Yes and Styx. Styx were great but Yes were not that good. Styx definitely blew them off the stage. Jethro Tull and Peter Frampton was another one for reasons I won't go into here(I'm counting the overall experience and not just the concert). I don't know if I have seen that many truly bad concerts though.

[Steve F.]

Kevin Ayers in the mid / late 90s.

Not rehearsed, didn’t care, was obviously inebriated, didn’t care, delivered a desultory, shambling 33’ set. Sad.

[Mascodagama]

I went to see the great South African sax player Dudu Pukwana with his band when I was a student. The band was okay, but Dudu basically didn’t play. He was clearly out of sorts, and the few times he started a solo it just fizzled after a few bars and he gave up. The crowd, who’d mainly had a couple of beers and had come to hear and see Dudu’s famously high-energy playing, was not happy.

A few months later I read his obituary in the paper. He’d done that last tour whilst he was dying (of cancer). I’ve no idea what made him do that, perhaps when the dates were booked he didn’t realise how ill he’d be and then didn’t want to let people down, or perhaps it was just his last chance to earn some money for his family. Whatever the reason, desperately sad.

[Mascodagama]

Also, Megadeth at a similar period. Band was fine but I got kicked in the head by some stage-diving idiot and my glasses flew off into the mosh pit.

[Progbear]

The word “disappointing” immediately reminds me of Pure Reason Revolution at NEARFest...I forget what year. I was looking forward to seeing them but the show fell far short of my expectations. The main issue was it seems the show was more Memorex than live, exemplified by the bit where the bass player put her instrument down, and yet the bass kept playing. It soured me so much that it made me enjoy their album rather less.

[Halmyre]

Bummmmner. I had one of my best ever gigs in the same place. The Stranglers secret gig.78
My experience of Queen at the Ingliston Highland hall was however shocking. The game I think, about 91. They were using lots of tape and the place is never going to be a great venue. The next time I attended that particular cattle market was to see Madness circa naughties. football casuals started a riot and I was injured in a bottle throwing outburst. Never saw the gig.

Can't say it was the worst gig I was at but I saw Rainbow at Ingliston and the sound was terrible. Second night they'd tried to hang sheets of cloth from the roof to try to dampen the echoes. Never should have been used as a music venue.

[Trane]

Although somewhat indissociable, I'd like to rule out technical stage sonic & light problems.

Two "doubleheader shows" come to mind:

Stevie Winwood with Level 42 MLG in 86/7. It didn't help that a sizeable amount of the crowd came for L42 alone (most left after), so Winwood played to a half-empty arena. I was never a fan of L42 (no idea if Jakko was on stage with them for that tour), but Winwood was quite disappointing. He played mostly stuff from his 80's albums (hated Arc and Talking Back), but I liked the return of the Hammond in High Life's album and was quite enthralled by the Freedom Overspill hit at the time. Little did I know that the rest of the album stunk (discovered it once I already had my tickets) and that the following Roll With It album would be quite superior. But it's mostly that Winwood played nothing from Traffic and just the two ever-present SDG hits (Man & Gimme), which was way too little for us. As far as the band was doing on-stage, they didn't seem to believe in what they were doing either.

Scorpions (Blackout) opening for Rainbow (SBTE album): clearly a lot of the crowd was there for the Scorpions alone, and a fair mount left after their set, leaving Rainbow's much elaborate stage show rather bland to a half-empty house. Blackmood's guitar destruction didn't help, bacause most of us knew he was only doing it in order to save the performance, as the fireworks didn't excite many and the drummer's solo (Rondinelli?) was way too long and broke whatever mood was left.

2) Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive - I fully expect some push back here from those of you who enjoy Zoot Suit, 40's style Havana, dancing horn music, but (stupid us) were expecting the "Look Sharp" Joe Jackson guitar-based "Angry Three" (Elvis Costello & Graham Parker) rock. One of the few concerts I ever just flat out walked out of..

Next.......

JJ was always a difficult thing for me (not just me either). First time I saw him was in a small hall and his performance was stellar: his punkish/ska-esque ambiance was impossible to resist dancing and jumping about. But I've always disliked JJ's crooning over semi-smooth jazz moments

However, this isn't trasported well in arenas & stadiums as it was the case with the most awful pairing with The Who's farewell tour. At Toronto CNE staium (not bthe Grandstand setting, the full stadium), he was completely off, but it was the sonics that was the real problem, IMHO), not just The Who fans. JJ soundee so twee (compared to The Who), probably (I'm assuming here) because he wasn't allowed to use The Who's PA system. I mean JJ's band sounded so thin that iot was impossible not to boo the performance (of course the thrown bottles hitting the stage were not helping).
For years, I wished that it was The Clash that would've opened the show (as they'd done in Buffalo), as it seemed a much better pairing than JJ, but apparently, it wasn't going that much better in terms of stadium sonics and crowd appreciation.


Sooooo, was The Who's road manager or road crew making a mistake, or was it upon design?

Too many to list mainly due to bad sound or poorly positioned seats where the stage was barely visible. Rush spring to mind the most with multiple shows at Wembley Arena where the sound was so bad it was sometimes hard to tell what song they were playing.

Yeah, that happened a few times in the nosebleeds seating, but bad soincs throughiout a full arena was frequent during the 80's.

Lou Reed 79 Düsseldorf, from memory the first time for a long time he didn't played in Germany and the cultish expectations were quite high....and right from the start the twenty first rows got up on their seats and blocked the view of the stage for the next twenty or so rows. So people who couldn't see started to yell and eventually someone threw a beer can ...that went over the aim and hit Lou Reed.

Mmmhhh!!!... Reed was usually a bit of an arsehole with his audiences (sometimes turning his back on them for the whole show), but then again, Van Morrisson (snotty twitt) and Peter Tosh (showing up on stage for only the second half of his gig) were also right up there with Lou.

But yeah, I've had a couple of show where it was impossible to see the stage from the floor sears, because the people in the first rows stoff on their chairs... but that was due to the fact that there were people who ran to the front of the stage and stood there, which meant that first rows setats had only two choices: either stand in front of their seat or, for the shorter ones, climb on it, which lead the rest behnd only the latter choice.

Tull's Under Wrap concert (Coney Hatch opening?) was one of those and nothing could save that show (especially that the sonics stunk and the UW gig set list as well). It would be alost 20 years until my next Tull concert.

The Toxic Twins put on a series of atrocious shows in the 1970s.

Yeah, their World Music Festival (Mosport) was very soso (underwhelming). Thankfully the other bands erased their poor performance that day.

I can see that for someone who is drunk, but high people are typically very mellow.

Yup, but the mix toking/drinking is not always cool either.

Kevin Ayers in the mid / late 90s.

Not rehearsed, didn’t care, was obviously inebriated, didn’t care, delivered a desultory, shambling 33’ set. Sad.

Yup, Ayers lived in Flanders (his second or third wife) in the 90/00's, so I saw him a couple of times in local pubs and small venues. Didn't seem to care at all about the quality of his shows.

[clivey]

Can't say it was the worst gig I was at but I saw Rainbow at Ingliston and the sound was terrible. Second night they'd tried to hang sheets of cloth from the roof to try to dampen the echoes. Never should have been used as a music venue.

Yikes. I was there. trying to remember the support act .it will be somewhere online.
I saw a lot of "metal legends" back then in a very short space of time. I can't say many left that much of an impression though.

[per anporth]

Can't say it was the worst gig I was at but I saw Rainbow at Ingliston and the sound was terrible. Second night they'd tried to hang sheets of cloth from the roof to try to dampen the echoes. Never should have been used as a music venue.

Ingliston was/is a horrible place all round - but especially for music.

I was (still am!) a huge fan of Micodisney. I saw them play an incendiary set, again at Coasters, again in 1984. A year or so later, I got wind that they were supporting The Jesus & Mary Chain at the Barrowlands in Glasgow. My best mate & I managed to get tickets, & piled over to Glasgow on the train. Got settled in down front, close to the stage, in loads of time...then the support band walked on. They were Pink Industry, not Micodisney.

(then the Mary Chain played their half hour set, but they were greeted as homecoming heroes...)

[Lopez]

Just remembered one band that was disappointing not once but twice and that was close to about 45 years apart: Orpheus. I was a big fan of the Bosstown Sound. In 1970, Orpheus opened for Johnny Winter And at Providence College. It was clear early on that Bruce Arnold, who had that smooth baritone voice, was no longer with the band. The front man was then Steve Martin (no, not "that" Steve Martin). Clearly a rock-star wannabe poser. Very annoying, and without Arnold the songs just weren't right. Jump to around 2015 or so, the electric Strawbs were playing at an old movie theatre (their spelling, not mine) in Arlington, MA. The opener was a reconstituted Orpheus. Same thing, no Bruce Arnold with Steve Martin again as the front man. Still annoying and still posing and still decent songs but without the necessary Arnold baritone. Amazingly, quite a few folks left the theatre after their set. Guess Orpheus fans are not Strawbs fans.