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How about disappointing concerts? Yer experience?


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43 minutes ago, singlehum said:

Nightshift...on Rubber Avenue.  I seem to recall that club  booking a lot of blues acts.  

Yes, but lots of underground bands too

Was a fun place, lotsa kookie characters, good music. My wife went their once, before we met, part of Legs McNeil wedding party. Lol, the Neighborhoods played that night.

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Clapton, SECC Hydro, Glasgow 2014. There were sound problems all night, and the man from the very start obviously didn't want to be there and just went through the motions. He walked off after an hour without a word, came back on for 1 song which Paul Carrack sang and walked off again to the sound of 13000 people booing.

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5 minutes ago, Midnight Moses said:

Clapton, SECC Hydro, Glasgow 2014. There were sound problems all night, and the man from the very start obviously didn't want to be there and just went through the motions. He walked off after an hour without a word, came back on for 1 song which Paul Carrack sang and walked off again to the sound of 13000 people booing.

I think I found some backstage photos from that concert:

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I'll pile on to the list of witnesses to c.1978 Aerosmith shit performances. Not that I was "disappointed," since I was never really a fan, but I did walk out on them after watching them fumble around the stage at Giants Stadium in August of '78.
It didn't help their cause that besides being shit-faced on stage in front of about 90,000 people, they had to follow Ted Nugent, who tended to take such situations a bit more seriously. 
Nuge had to follow Journey with Neal Schon, who was melting faces. To say he was motivated is an understatement.
Aerosmith after that wasn't even fair.
 

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3 hours ago, Steve Haynie said:

Churches have had this weird pattern of having the PA mixer in a separate room.  Sometimes there is a booth or a room with a glass for someone to see through, but some churches have had the mixer in a separate room with no connection to the main sanctuary or performance area at all.  If some of these church leaders think that God does not like the sight of a mixer in the same room where someone holds a microphone while preaching and praying then they need to show where that is commanded in the Bible.  Installers from the store where I worked would tell the church people that the mixer needs to be in the same room as the PA speakers, but some of them would not let that happen. 

Had that happen too.

 

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13 minutes ago, Ed Rechts said:

Guns n' Roses has sucked every time I ever saw them, mostly in LA clubs back in the 80s. Still kind of puzzled about their "legendary" live band status, as their setlist really is just the first album and like, 3 other songs and now a ton of covers for 2 additional hours. But the menacing vibe of the early shows was fun.

 

Skid Row with Sollinger, both in a club and opening for KISS on one of their frequent "last tours" was pretty lame. There were guys in the bathroom that could sing better than him. That band was killer at the forum opening for Bon Jovi when Baz Back was fronting.

It is interesting to me how seeing a good or bad concert is luck of the draw.  I saw Skid Row open up for Guns 'N Roses in Toronto on the Use Your Illusion Tour in June of 1991, and of the 100+ big concerts I have seen, it was one of the best.

On the other hand, I saw Pink Floyd in Toronto in the late 1980s (I think it was the first concert tour they had done since The Wall)  and it was so bad, I can't remember a single thing about it!  (I have a selective memory in that my memory for positive things is great, but my memory of negative experiences is bad).  I remember the build up as it was billed as the concert of the century, and I remember showing up at Exhibition Stadium... and then nothing.  Maybe some fireworks?

 

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I saw Waylon with Asleep at the Wheel many years ago. Waylon was so drunk he couldn't stand up. He passed out in a chair while others sang his songs. Sometimes he'd swing his arms like he was conducting! Before cell phones, or that would of been a youtube moment! I never bought another album of his after that!! Was not impressed!!

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Thanks for all the responses, folks.  I'll add another....

 

Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps tour.  He started like an hour late and when he finally came out he was in a bad mood. He messes around on the stage by himself, ignoring the cheering crowd. Crowd quiets down and he's still fucking around looking at his gear. I'm pretty close, like 25th row, and I can see he's not touching anything, he's just bent over and looking, then he walks over and checks something else out. Like 10 minutes of this shit, crowd becomes silent. He finally grabs a mike and walks to the front of the stage, crowd starts cheering again.

Neil: "I understand a lot of you waited in line for a long time to get in here for the show."

Crowd: Huge applause, cheers and whistles.

Neil: "Yea, well, there's a long line of people waiting to get on this stage."

Crowd: Cheers at first then, "Wait, what the fuck did he just say?"

No encore that night.

 

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Seen Van Halen 5 times -- 1984 to F.U.C.K. ----- Ed was drunk to the point that it impaired his playing 3/5 shows... and two of the 5 (the last two, Monster of Rock & FUCK he was not only drunk, but he was also angry and disinterested and put on a bad show. Sammy tried both times to raise it up but it was clear there was a problem and that the problem was Ed. Broke my Heart to see/hear.... 4 of 5 shows I was glued to the barricade right in from of Ed for the whole show... so my vantage point was as good as it gets to see the wheel coming off.

It's the reason I never went to see VH on the reunion... I was still holding onto my memories from 1984 and 5150... I did not want to see Ed falling apart again. Early feedback from the first reunion showed Ed was still not sober.... so I just couldn't do it.

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9 hours ago, Steve Haynie said:

Alex Chilton did a solo show at the Cotton Club in Atlanta.  If you did not know he had been successful before you would have never guessed it.  He was bumming cigarettes from the stage.  He was just going through the songs.  Nothing really stood out.  Maybe I just saw him on a bad night. 

Lol, he was a peculiar person. I saw one set in Hoboken, exactly as you say, the next set, totally on game. Sad because first set songs were better. He battled his fanbase on catalog, he lijed later material much more.

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6 hours ago, Ed Rechts said:

This fiasco was caught on camera and went viral. Ed explained later that he grabbed the wrong guitar for that particular song.

That was Ed's story.  His guitar tech came out this year and told the full story on Mitch Lafon and Jeremy White's podcast.  Summarized by ultimateclassicrock.com.

Quote

The 2007 incident when Eddie Van Halen performed the classic Van Halen song “Jump” entirely out of tune has become a celebrated story among fans.

The moment in Greensboro, N.C., is one of the few occasions when the legendary guitarist was seen to truly mess up onstage, and speculation has circulated for years that it was actually a problem with the keyboard backing track being played at the wrong pitch.

One person who always knew the true story – Van Halen’s guitar tech, Tom Weber – said he’s kept quiet about it because it was a “sore point” with his late boss. But in a recent podcast co-interview with Jeremy White and Mitch Lafon, Weber finally recounted his memory of the moment.

“It had nothing to do with the keyboards,” he said. “Ed loves to make noises with the guitar; we all know that … you’re liable to hear any unearthly sound that Ed can make with a guitar. ... So, at one point, he took the guitar and literally jammed the headstock of the neck into the stage several times. … My job is to be ready for him with another guitar, which I was.”

Despite lifting the spare instrument over his head to indicate it was available, Van Halen waved Weber away and appeared satisfied with adjusting the tuning of the one he had. The tech said it was “passable” but not perfectly tuned, so bassist Wolfgang Van Halen adjusted his own instrument to match. “So they’re in tune – you have guitar and bass in tune,” the roadie noted.

That worked fine for the closing songs of the main set. Usually the band came offstage before returning for the encore of “Jump,” but that night in Greensboro, the members remained on the platform, so Weber wasn’t able to swap Van Halen’s guitar as usual.

“So now you have Wolfgang on his bass and Ed with his out-of-tune guitar on a keyboard song that is in tune,” he said. “Ed didn’t have keyboards in his monitor mix, so he didn’t hear that he was out of tune. So that’s where all that went.”

He went on to say that the guitarist was oblivious to what had happened until several weeks later, when he was shown a video of the performance before another show.

“So I got called to the dressing room full of people, and he said, ‘You handed me an out-of-tune guitar.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ I said, ‘If you’ll recall, you banged the headstock of the guitar into the stage that night several times and then you didn’t come off the stage to get the guitar at the end of the show for the encore.”

You can watch the incident below.

Van Halen claimed the headstock trick “wouldn’t make any difference” to the tuning and “proceeded to jam it into the dressing room floor,” Weber explained. “And in front of a room full of people it comes back up – and it’s way out of tune. I said, ‘Just sayin’ … .’ And that’s the last I ever heard about it.”

As well as losing out on a fee from the Van Halen “kitchen sink” tour that was abandoned because of the guitarist’s ailing health, Weber noted he's also lost out on a “banner year” of income when the live-music industry shut down over the coronavirus. He’s now fighting to keep his home. You can help by making a donation of any size at GoFundMe.

Here's the podcast - not sure when this comes up. 

 

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9 hours ago, Biz Prof said:

No contest for me, really:  Van Halen in Greensboro in 2007...basically the return of the original VH, minus Mike Anthony.  I was stoked, as I never really liked the Van Hagar era.  They'd opened the tour the night before (or two nights before) in Charlotte IIRC.  While I realize the first couple of shows of a tour tend to have some techincal bugs and issues, the sound mix in Greensboro was just pure shit.  Alex's bass drums came through the FOH as a distorted mess virtually overpowering the rest of the mix. The band actually played well from what little I could discern (even Wolf) and Dave was a tad more restrained in his vaudeville schtick than I'd anticipated, but having those guys right in front me playing the best of their first six albums--but not really being able to hear it or enjoy it--was a cruel trick.  The coup de grace came during the encore.  The band's back-to-basics approach had Ed playing guitar and no keys.  So, when they attempted to play "Jump", the pre-recorded synth track was at least a full step off-key from where the band was actually tuned on stage.  And they never adjusted it throughout the whole damn song.  You can imagine how that sounded.

What a fucking mess.  What a wasted opportunity.

I saw the Raleigh stop later on that tour. It wasn't bad but it just wasn't doing anything for me. Add to that two guys I went to high school with almost 20 years earlier just happened to be in the seats in front of me and they were having a total "WOOOOOO!!!!!" fest. I also saw VH in Raleigh on the FUCK tour. That one was Sammy's birthday and they were all pretty hammered, set was short too.

Another bad one was ZZ Top in the early 00s, the tempo was noticably slow and everything was just dragging.

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Kiss in 2000, on accounta Gene Simmons had me thrown out. One of the fraudulent Farewell Tours.

Any concert that's cancelled without your knowledge until you get to the venue oughta be part of this list even though there was no show. For me, it was Spirit in early 1970 at Atlanta's old Sports Arena. Drove 150 miles to get there, and got a speeding ticket on the way back.

Dean Daughtry of the Atlanta Rhythm Section on Aerosmith in 1979:  "Those guys were so pale they looked like ghosts. Like walking death. It wasn't until later that they 'swore off' of everything."

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14 hours ago, Dasein said:

Seen Van Halen 5 times -- 1984 to F.U.C.K. ----- Ed was drunk to the point that it impaired his playing 3/5 shows... and two of the 5 (the last two, Monster of Rock & FUCK he was not only drunk, but he was also angry and disinterested and put on a bad show. Sammy tried both times to raise it up but it was clear there was a problem and that the problem was Ed. Broke my Heart to see/hear.... 4 of 5 shows I was glued to the barricade right in from of Ed for the whole show... so my vantage point was as good as it gets to see the wheel coming off.

It's the reason I never went to see VH on the reunion... I was still holding onto my memories from 1984 and 5150... I did not want to see Ed falling apart again. Early feedback from the first reunion showed Ed was still not sober.... so I just couldn't do it.

I saw the FUCK stop in Chicago.  I thought the same.   Sammy trying hard to make a go of it.  E mostly disinterested and sloppy.  Got a nice write up in the press, IIRC.  Go figure.

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I have seen Van Halen more times than I remember starting with their first show in 78 opening for Black Sabbath. Mostly in the early years before Hagar but I saw Van Hagar a few times.   Saw many great shows  and a few of the completely wasted versions.  Seems like 80 or 81, they got completely wasted on stage but at that point they were still young enough to mostly pull it off.  Dave lost the lyrics and Eddie just played what seemed an extra long solo.  We were in a party hard stage also, so, we didn't mind.

 

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19 hours ago, Dutchman said:

I saw Waylon with Asleep at the Wheel many years ago. Waylon was so drunk he couldn't stand up. He passed out in a chair while others sang his songs. Sometimes he'd swing his arms like he was conducting! Before cell phones, or that would of been a youtube moment! I never bought another album of his after that!! Was not impressed!!

Wish I'd been there to see it. Sounds legendary! 

I saw one of The Jesus & Mary Chains last shows before they called it day (they have later reformed). The Reid brothers were drunk. At least one of them was. And they started to fight on stage, throwing fists. It was awesome. Bad gig perhaps, but so legendary. Would now have missed it for the world.

Worst gig I have ever seen: HOLE in 1999 at a Swedish festival.  Courtney was high or drunk or just out of it on her own love for herself. She kept spitting at the security and calling them names Then she urged the crowd to come up on stage. It quickly became a big mess. I was watching from a high point perhaps 150 meter from the stage. Kids just fell to the ground and got stepped upon. One 19 year old girl died, trampled to death. I blame Courtney for that. She killed that girl.  

 

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There was a band that used to play in the FLA keys, called Big Dick and The Extenders. They were playing a joint in Islamorada, I didn't want to go because I thought it would suck, and said so, repeatedly. They were freaking great. Very disappointed in all of the crow I had to eat.

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49 minutes ago, Disturber said:

She killed that girl.  

 

Well, that's fucking terrible.

What goes through their heads, inciting the crowd to do such a thing?

Back in '83, my then girlfriend and I went to see Culture Club.  Gimme a break, she wanted to see them.  Okay... I wanted to see them too, so shoot me.
Anyway, we got floor seats, fairly close, and even before the band took the stage, there was some definite push for the area right in front. Luckily we were far enough back so that I didn't see any immediate cause for concern for our safety, but I I did keep my antenna up just in case.
You see, I'm no tough guy and I'm not an experienced brawler, but I was confident that if I needed to I could at least kick some Culture Club Fan ass. 

The band takes the stage, and the push for the front intensifies and Security is having an increasingly difficult time countering their momentum.
As they were about to start their first song, Boy George addresses the crowd push (I'm thinking he's going to tell everyone to CTFO) and says, "I know the Security staff wants you to stay back by your seats and not rush the stage..." (It helps if you read this with an overly-British and effeminate vocal affect) "... BUT BOY GEORGE SAYS 'ANYTHING GOES'!" And Security was trampled.

Even as a 17 year old, I was thinking, "Well, that was really irresponsible of him..."

I don't know if anyone got hurt, but I can't imagine everyone involved walking away unscathed.
Boy George just started the show, nonplussed by the hysteria he caused.

 

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38 minutes ago, kizanski said:

Well, that's fucking terrible.

What goes through their heads, inciting the crowd to do such a thing?

Back in '83, my then girlfriend and I went to see Culture Club.  Gimme a break, she wanted to see them.  Okay... I wanted to see them too, so shoot me.
Anyway, we got floor seats, fairly close, and even before the band took the stage, there was some definite push for the area right in front. Luckily we were far enough back so that I didn't see any immediate cause for concern for our safety, but I I did keep my antenna up just in case.
You see, I'm no tough guy and I'm not an experienced brawler, but I was confident that if I needed to I could at least kick some Culture Club Fan ass. 

The band takes the stage, and the push for the front intensifies and Security is having an increasingly difficult time countering their momentum.
As they were about to start their first song, Boy George addresses the crowd push (I'm thinking he's going to tell everyone to CTFO) and says, "I know the Security staff wants you to stay back by your seats and not rush the stage..." (It helps if you read this with an overly-British and effeminate vocal affect) "... BUT BOY GEORGE SAYS 'ANYTHING GOES'!" And Security was trampled.

Even as a 17 year old, I was thinking, "Well, that was really irresponsible of him..."

I don't know if anyone got hurt, but I can't imagine everyone involved walking away unscathed.
Boy George just started the show, nonplussed by the hysteria he caused.

 

That's a terrible thing to do!

I've been at concerts where the crowd was getting a little too crazy and the band either ignored it or didn't notice.  But not encouraged it. 

Memory is foggy on which band it was (maybe Pearl Jam) where things were going too nuts, and the singer had aook of panic on his face trying to calm down the crowd. 

I got knocked down on the ground and trampled on at a show.

 It was only a minute or so, but it was fucking terrifying!

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12 minutes ago, Ed Rechts said:

 

Imagine some of the last words you ever hear are "... BUT BOY GEORGE SAYS 'ANYTHING GOES'!"

KIZ-STONE2.png.37d5f8fcd00dc01746af923ce11b34c9.png

Saving this!

 

 

asshole - lol

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1 hour ago, kizanski said:

Well, that's fucking terrible.

What goes through their heads, inciting the crowd to do such a thing?

Back in '83, my then girlfriend and I went to see Culture Club.  Gimme a break, she wanted to see them.  Okay... I wanted to see them too, so shoot me.
Anyway, we got floor seats, fairly close, and even before the band took the stage, there was some definite push for the area right in front. Luckily we were far enough back so that I didn't see any immediate cause for concern for our safety, but I I did keep my antenna up just in case.
You see, I'm no tough guy and I'm not an experienced brawler, but I was confident that if I needed to I could at least kick some Culture Club Fan ass. 

The band takes the stage, and the push for the front intensifies and Security is having an increasingly difficult time countering their momentum.
As they were about to start their first song, Boy George addresses the crowd push (I'm thinking he's going to tell everyone to CTFO) and says, "I know the Security staff wants you to stay back by your seats and not rush the stage..." (It helps if you read this with an overly-British and effeminate vocal affect) "... BUT BOY GEORGE SAYS 'ANYTHING GOES'!" And Security was trampled.

Even as a 17 year old, I was thinking, "Well, that was really irresponsible of him..."

I don't know if anyone got hurt, but I can't imagine everyone involved walking away unscathed.
Boy George just started the show, nonplussed by the hysteria he caused.

 

I willingly took my Grandmother to a Fifth Dimension concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, NY.....and enjoyed it!

"Now is the dawning of the age of awuariums, age of aquarium,,,,....aquariums. AQUARIUMS." 

I had fish tanks as a kid.

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Aerosmith started off nice and tight and at a reasonable volume and halfway through the show it was a wash of blaring indistinguishable white noise. '79/'80-ish? I blame them for my tinnitus.

Frampton, the second time through and on the 'I'm in You' tour - screaming 12-year-old girls and forgetting the words to 'I'm in You'. Really? Really bad. On the plus side, J Geils opened and absolutely blew him off the stage. Made me a fan that night (until the 'Centerfold'/'Love Stinks' years).

I saw Van Halen three times during the DLR years and it always sucked. Between the shitty sound and Roth's constant non-singing/screaming it was difficult to even know what song they were playing, especially on ones you weren't familiar with. They looked like it was a good show, but it sounded like ass.

 

 

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Smashing Pumpkins - crazy loud wash of shit sound and at one point they did a sort of breakdown in a song where Billy Corgan just repeated the line "the eyes of the jackal are upon you!" about 100 times screaming it, whispering it, emphasizing different words or syllables.  It was the dumbest damn thing I've ever seen and a huge waste of time.

Deftones - could not distinguish a single sound.  It was just a horrible roar for the entire duration.

Van Halen - someone mentioned the first reunion shows with Wolf having terrible sound and that was my experience too.  At times Ed, Al, and Wolf seemed to be in three different sections of the song and not one of them even noticed.

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