In order to gloom up your festive season and to please the whiney b*tches that populate these lands, I am starting this thread where we can discuss perticularly bad show we attended. I'll start with : Soundgarden at Verdun auditorium, August 4th, 1994. With Grunge dominating the rock world and at the apex of their commercial career with the chart-topping Superunknown (their artistic career occured with their previous album Badmotorfinger imho), Soundgarden started a tour of North American arenas. Man did they dissapoint. First of all, the venue was so hot, it was like a freaking sauna in the hot August sun. That prompted many smelly grunge hippies to remove their flannel shirts. On the plus side, many patchouli smelling hippie chicks decided to do the same. When the main act got on the stage, the sound was so aweful you could barely make out the songs. And the playing was so sloppy, especially from bassist Ben Sheppard who was visibly so smashed on drugs and/or alcohool that you wanted to hit him in the face with his instrument. Overall, a miserable experience that immediately made me turn in my fancard. It had the potential to be an epic show for the ages... too bad !
I can't say that I've ever been disappointed by a headliner I paid to see. The closest thing I can come up with would have been 2016, "Hall of Fame" Tour. Cheap Trick. Joan Jett. Heart. Cheap Trick lived up to their name. I didn't recognize half the songs. Which were mostly sung by the bassist. Robin was not in good voice when he did sing. And Rick was more interested in throwing picks into the audience than play most of their set. I'm not a hater, but I wasn't really much of a fan of Cheap Trick to begin with. This just cemented my 'meh' opinion of them. On the other hand Joan was perfect. The band, and her voice, were in good shape. Their set was perfectly mixed, and an adequate level you didn't loose the music to shear volume. Heart was great as well. I hadn't seen them live since 1989, and was not disappointed.
I've yet to be disappointed in any artist I've paid to see, however the sound has certainly let me down several times. That's always a bummer. Especially after you've experienced great venues and sound guys.
I've seen Rush 4 times and can't remember a bad show, even if Geddy's voice was degrading in the past decade and he couldn't hit those high notes anymore. Haters can suck it !
Meatloaf at Wolftrap Center for the Performing Arts. His singing was terrible. He was so drunk that he fell of the stage. We left early and glad we only paid for lawn seats for that mess. Runner up: Asia at the Waukesha County fair. They had a new singer that wasn't very good. It was his first show with them, so normally I would give him some slack. Unfortunately, he chose the path of berating the audience for not being more enthusiastic, which of course made things worse. Eddie Money was the headliner that came on after and saved the day with an amazing performance.
For me it's the venue, not the artist. The Palace in Louisville. It sucks for rock music. Saw STP there and the sound was pure mud. Then saw Incubus about a year later and same result. I learned my lesson after that.
AC/DC & Skid Row, March 2, 1991 in San Diego. Skid Row was awesome. They were cocaine fueled and all kinds of good stuff. AC/DC - phoned it in and 35 minutes of Angus' 5 chord guitars solos out of the set.
None of you will be able to relate but Belo Dugme which is like the Beatles of Yugoslavia in the 80s were coming to Toronto to do a concert. Half of them for some reason couldn’t get into Canada so they decided to do a mash up with Goran Bregovic. Another famous Yugoslavian artist but whose style is purely gipsy style music. Trumpets and drums. No one told us. And while I enjoyed the fact that I got to listen to both, listening to rock style music from the 80s played on gypsy instruments with Gypsy style flair to it was off putting and weird.
Redd Kross- around the time they released Phaseshifter. Only concert I paid full price for a ticket only to leave before the 5th song from the headliner and band I went to see. Replacements opening for someone but we’re so drunk that they couldn’t play. Hurts since I was a huge fan. Youth of Today - Ray wouldn’t shut up about whatever (yoga fuel, vegan airspace, arm the vegetables, who knows). Full up with vegan jocks throwing fists and picking up change. probably some additional but those stick out right now.
DRI, Twilight Room, Dallas, Tx, 1984. One song in and the drummer threw a can of beer across the room and it hit me in the head, knocking me out.
Had to really give it thought, because normally even a bad show can still have fun moments……..but I now remember one that was just bad. John Christ solo act circa ‘07?? He charged the stage guitar in hand wailing away. A second later you realized “where the f@$k is the rest of the band??” He had a drum and bass machine playing while he played an actual guitar . It immediately felt like I paid to watch him play guitar hero
I was never a tool fan UNTIL I saw them live. Fuck. Great show. That rock on the range put on in Columbus every year is bad ass. Maynard is a strange dude. Runs a vineyard. Trains jui jitsu. Runs a couple bands. Dresses in drag
Same here. I got lucky and got to see Tool one night, followed by Pusifer and A Perfect Circle the next. Being an aging dude, Invincible live almost brought tears to my eyes.
There is not enough time or space to list them all. I can say the worst one recently was Bob Dylan. I worked for him twenty years ago he was fine. This last time he was fkn terrible. Awful. Sat down at the piano and mumbled incoherently the whole time. I can't believe people paid for it.
