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Gigs You Regret Attending.

Taff63 said:
Me and my mate Ian were having a pee in Sheffield City Hall toilets at some gig a good few years ago when I asked him "Who were those useless twats who tried to sound like Rush last year?'
Click to expand...

I thought you were going to get the answer...
Rush.
 
great idea for a thread BTW!

First one, I can kill two birds with one stone here, I saw Sleaford Mods support The Pop Group at The Bodega Notts, both bands in my mind were awful, we walked out during The Pop Group's set

next up is The Stone Roses at Reading Festival 1996, I was never a Roses fan but one of the lads was and he persuaded me to watch them, this excerpt from Uncut sums it up for for me...

It started well enough, opening with “I Wanna Be Adored”, Ibrahim doing a fine impression of Squire’s swirling Celtic guitar motifs. Three minutes in, everyone’s smiling.

And then, Ian Brown began to sing.

His voice was flat, atonal, eye-poppingly dreadful. The crowd began to drift away, many shaking their heads in disbelief. People were actually crying at how bad it was. It felt like an entire generation had been let down.
And it doesn’t get much worse than that.
 
Snow Patrol 2009 (just a dead sound); heard them at previous gigs and thought they were decent.
Massive Attack at Kings Park Bowl 2009. Was not impressed with them at all. Again heard them before and thought they were great.
 
Marillion at The Hexagon in Reading a couple of years ago. Far too loud for the venue. I’d have walked out but my son bought the ticket For me as a birthday present and he was with me at the gig. I suspect the venue has an issue in that there are seats below an overhanging balcony and those seats just get a horrible reverberating sound.

Also, Jeff Lynne’s ELO at The O2 last year. Far too loud again. That arena has a really bad echo and I suspect the sound engineer was just trying to drown out the echo.
 
Santana - Empire Pool Wembley 1976.
Difficult to find anything positive to say about this one - awful venue with awful sound; Santana played for under an hour and looked like they were going through the motions - quite frankly they were boring.
Night and day experience when compared to a band like Genesis during the same period who would always play sets in excess of two hours and interact with the audience.
 
The Eagles: Hell freezes over Tour: Dublin 96. Played an absolutely perfect set the same as the LP but the most boring performance I've ever witnessed and it rained.

Roger Waters : The big Hyde park total rip off tour: the price was extorsionate and his new band was crap, I'll not start on the hypocritical political bullshit.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers: I think it was Knebworth, okay performance rather marred by the hours of crap I had to endure before and after the gig.

Funny enough, both Roger Waters and RHCP feature in my best ever gigs, both previous to these two, that's why I went again but perhaps when I see someone once and really enjoy the experience I should leave it at that.
 
There's only a few gigs I've walked out on:

John McCaughlin at The Rainbow 80/81. He brought on a chum, and they competed to see how many notes they could squeeze into a bar - muso **** of the worst kind. It was saved by having Steel Pulse as support; who weirdly (and this isn't a cheese dream, honest) brought on Steve Hillage for the encores.
AC/DC at the Victoria Apollo (I think that's what the place was called) on the Back In Black tour iirc. Now, I'm not their biggest fan; but I was expected a bit better than dunga dunga dunga drab riffing. It was DULL.
Simple Minds at Hammersmith on the Sparkle In The Rain tour. I was really looking forward to it, having seen them on the previous couple of tours. However it was just when they decided that endless, drawn out audience participation was a good idea - presumably in prepapration for their yearned for stadium gigs. I went to the bar in the tenth minute of The American. And stayed there.
Flying Lotus/Martyn at The Roundhouse. Martyn played a dreary, functional set of tech house; and the kindest thing I can say about Flying Lotus was that the projections were pretty good.

Oh, and the prize for the fastest sprint to the exit as the band starts the encore goes to Kruder & Dorfmeister. Pretty good set; and then the most cringy appalling cover of Let It Be. Still, we got out before the rush.
 
Peter Green, Cheltenham Town Hall, mid 90s. PG just stood there really, didn't seem to play the solos. I knew he wasn't the full shilling, but expected him to make at least an effort.

Foo Fighters, T In The Park, late 90s. Playing a big festival is a challenge, and the Food rose to the occasion by standing stock still throughout their set. That's showbiz. They were followed by Black Grape, who gave a great performance.

Jaco Pastorius, North Sea Jazz Festival, early 80s. Joined by Mike Stern on guitar, played the dreariest heavy metal.

An Opal Evening, Shaw Theatre, London, late 80s. Opal was Eno's label at the time, but Brian wasn't on the bill. However brother Roger was, as was Harold Budd. I wasn't expecting a hard-working evening, but they played the most insipid twaddle. It was the same night as the King's Cross fire, so when I left the venue Euston Road was a sea of people, putting my disgruntlement in perspective.
 
Fun thread

Phil Collins - Manchester - in the mid 80s (date and exact time erased from memory) - new girlfriend at the time was a massive Collins fan (she had other more attractive features that outweighed this obvious flaw) and bought us tickets. I kept quiet and hid my Peter Gabriel collection from her and the day dawned. I decided that despite the fact that I think just about every one of Collins' songs sucks like a Dyson vac on steroids it might be OK as it was live and the band could be good etc. so I approached it with the best frame of mind I could muster. What the gig made me realise was that if I thought his studio recordings were insipid and formulaic then his live rendition was doing the best to remove any remaining vestiges of interest from them and became the 'I love Phil Collins' show with mammoth amounts of self congratulatory waffle when he spoke between them (although even this was better than the songs themselves). Absolutely gut-wrenchingly awful and the day I realised that what most people want from their 'pop stars' is not what I am after. Btw the relationship did not last long.

REM - Huddersfield - mid 90s - Had seen REM a few times before they became massive and always liked their tight playing and Stipe's live vocal delivery which was more edgy than his recorded sound. Decided to go and see how they had moved to a stadium band on the back of Out of Time and Automatic for the People by attending the Huddersfield gig held at the then McAlpine stadium. The first problem was the support act... if there is a band I detest more than Phil Collins The Beautiful South are that band and their repertoire is not improved by them playing live. Their songs are the sort of rubbish that arty groups of pompous rich kids who formed a band briefly in sixth form might come up with and it was over an hour of pure torture, but it was bearable (just) as REM were coming next. Trouble is by the time they arrived Stipe was too far gone on whatever substance he was imbibing to care how it all sounded and compared to the energetic aggressive urgency of their previous performances I had witnessed this was a band going through the motions and cashing in. Coupled to this was the sound which was obviously mixed by a work placement student sourced from the local deaf school. Bass was non existent and the cymbals felt like razors being stuffed in your ears. I left before the encore sadly disappointed and was pleased to hear Stipe's subsequent revelations about how much of a state the band had got themselves into and how they sorted themselves out a few years later as at least it restored my faith in them to an extent.

U2 - O2 London - 2018 - now I know U2 are about as popular as the clap on here, but I don't give a ****, I love them and always will. I have seen them on every tour so was not going to miss this one, but this was a case of the venue letting the whole side down. I had long heard how bad the O2 was for sound and had avoided it, but as I was living in London at the time and didn't want to break my record I booked tickets. My reasoning was that U2 know how to do stadium gigs like no other band (Zoo TV remains the singularly best live stadium event I have ever witnessed) so if anyone could make it sound good they could... turns out they couldn't, the sound was quite honestly the worst thing I have ever heard in a stadium and that's quite an impressive feat seeing as I witnessed SImply Red at Old Trafford cricket ground many moons ago (another girlfriend related situation as I don't have much time for them either). I stayed until the end out of loyalty and to marvel at a sound system that can make U2 sound flat and lifeless which is a pretty incredible feat judging by the myriad of times I had seen them before. Will never ever go there again. The funniest is the rip off parking... they try and channel you into an 'event car park' - £30 or some such and a way away from the stadium... I just told them I was going to the cinema... paid £9 and right next to the venue. London is special where ripping people off is concerned in every single respect. Have now moved away thankfully.
 
"Roger Waters : The big Hyde park total rip off tour: the price was extorsionate and his new band was crap, I'll not start on the hypocritical political bullshit."

Yes i paid a lot of money sto see him at NEC , the seats were facing at an angle , the air was heavy with smoke [ remember those days !!] and he started on his rants ... i walked out at half time !!! dreadful
 
Clapton and friends at the Albert Hall, must have been 2011 I think. Winwood was ok but Clapton came across as so bored and mechanical it just was CRAP.

Then around the same time, went to the barbican to hear Madeleine Peyroux, being totally in love with her recordings of the era, and she was so far off key from note 1 that we (and a lot of others) drifted out half way through. Bloody awful.

Loudest was Hawkwind at Swansea, since I got jammed up against the r speaker stack early on whilst out of my head on various things. Couldn't hear a word for half a day after either. Interesting night that.
 
A really interesting thread and it pretty much outlines why live music doesn't often cut it for me. Don't get me wrong, I've been to loads of gigs over the years, but there's something about recorded music, that at it's best, played on a decent stereo, is difficult to beat. Imagine all that music we have from the likes of Hendrix, Beefheart, Coltrane, that we can call on to entertain us in our own living room! You can have the volume at any level you like, you won't have anyone talking all the way through the gig and you won't have people trampling on you or squeezing by you in a mad rush to get to the beer tent!
 
Red hot chilli peppers 90/91 in Liverpool. My brother and I were so looking forward to this gig we were 13/15 it was shite. They were off their faces and the place was full of assholes.
Scorpions 2008? Wolverhampton I thought that they would be funny and maybe half good but a complete waste of time.
 
Tangerine Dream at the Apollo, Manchester, late 80s. A big orange circle projected onto a white sheet, or so it appeared, unchanging throughout the gig, the "band" standing with their backs to the audience. Dull, dull, dull.
 
Oh, and a Bevis Frond gig in a club on Charing Cross Road, early '90s. We drove down from Manchester, hit fog at Stoke, and I spent the next 6 hours in total focus mode unable to see anything. I had to get out to read street names when we reached London! Got to the venue, a quick toke and one sip of Southern Comfort, and I spent the whole of the gig lying down trying not to be sick or pass out. Or both! Came round just as they walked off, and then drove home again. My wife enjoyed it though.
 
Motorhead at sheffield city hall early 80's - just a wall of extremely loud distortion,every song sounded the same as the previous one.Left after 30 mins and had ringing ears for 3 days. utter shite.
 
Another was Stereolab at the Southbank; one of my fave bands and really looking forward to this gig. The lads behind us had bought along their uninterested girlfriends, who spent the whole time yak-yak-yakking; do you ever stop for breathe? I enquired, much to their surprise. They stopped momentarily, but eventually, we had to move to a better seat.

Edit: I should add, that Stereolab were great, so not a regret really, but spoilt by the fact that I remember more about the girls chatting, than I do of the gig..
 
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Emerson Lake and Palmer, Empire Pool Wembley in the 70s.

The new fangled Quadrophonic sound made them almost unlistenable.

:(
 
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