I’ve seen New Order a fair few times. When they were on, they were amazingly powerful, but when not they were dismal. I treasure Your Silent Face flowing straight into Temptation at the Barrowlands in Glasgow.
I like a lot of Bob Dylan stuff. He played in Glasgow, and by all accounts was amazing, and on the strength of that got tickets a few months later for his gig at Stirling Castle. Aye, well. The only gig I’ve ever walked out off to go to the pub - a disgraceful, half-arsed, mumbling bag of shite.
Yeah, I love Dylan, so about ten years ago I got tickets and went. The man is just not a vibrant performer, and with a shitty arena sound system, it was a huge waste of money.
This was open air, on the Castle esplanade, which is a great venue - REM were excellent in that setting, but Dylan was utterly, utterly dismal. More fun would have been had making a small bonfire of the cash.
I couldn’t disagree more about Zeppelin. I can take or leave their recordings, but seeing them live was one my best concert experiences ever (better than seeing many artists whose records I much prefer).
Speaking of just the opposite, if you ever get a chance to see The Fixx, I say take it. We saw them in half-full, tiny little venue a couple of years ago, and they put on the full show regardless. I have to admire a band that is that professional (and they were quite good and entertaining, too).
I’ve liked all the songs from Jack’s Mannequin I’ve heard, but when they opened for Guster last summer, I nearly went back to my car to wait for the real reason I was at the concert. They were terrible and the lead singer didn’t seem to hide the fact that he was pissed off about something before they even took the stage.
The Replacements. I hesitate to say that I saw them “in concert” because it was more like 30 minutes of Paul Westerberg & band-mates stumbling around on stage drunk. Most of the songs they began to play they didn’t even finish, they just sort of fell apart since the band couldn’t play in time with each other and just petered out. At one point, Westerberg shouted incoherently something that sounded vaguely like “fuck the lot of you” at the audience. By the time they were helped off-stage by some roadies, most of the audience had gone from booing to yelling “you suck!” to just plain leaving the room. Those of left cheered as their set ended.
To be fair, it was apparently the most memorable event of the evening. I seem to remember they were supposed to be the opening act for somebody, but I can’t for the life of me remember who.
Bob Dylan with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers as his backing band. Dylan was likewise drunk & incoherent, and couldn’t finish his set. Petty had to take over for the last hour.
Also, I saw Sinead O’Connor in concert. She was Ok, actually a little better than Ok (not great, mind you, but enjoyable enough) until she stopped singing midway through a song to berate the audience. They had been cheering her, and she stopped the song to yell “I’m trying to sing a song here! SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Memo to Sinead: Don’t alienate the audience of 20,000 who each paid $30.00 apiece (considerable money for tickets in the early 90s) to see you.
Ha! This reminds me to add Cake. If the singer is drunk, which is most of the time, he goes on tangents about trees and giving money and I don’t even know what. Just play a song.
I saw Mazzy Star back in the mid 90s and it was pretty terrible. Not that I expected a giant stage show but Hope Sandoval was even less intelligible than on her albums just murmuring softly into the microphone, didn’t speak two words (aside from singing), moved less than a fencepost and was cast in shadow so you could barely even see her. At one point the strap on her dress broke (don’t ask me how) and she mumbled something and wandered off the stage for about ten minutes, presumably to find a safety pin. It was a very uninspiring show.
Sometime last year, my sister-in-law went to see Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions and I told my wife about the previous show. That night, my sister-in-law called to complain about what a terrible show it was with the same criticisms I had over ten years ago.
Oh yes! I saw the Floyd in '71 and there was no special light show, no props, just a bare stage.
It was a bit shambolic: I recall they wasted some time at the outset as Roger Waters had Rick Wright tune his bass for him against the organ (Waters was plucking the strings, but Wright was turning the keys to actually tune them). Later on, as they were getting ready to play A Saucer Full of Secrets, Waters tried to steal two cymbals of the drum kit, over Nick Mason’s protests. Eventually a roadie arrived with two other cymbals for Waters to use. (He knelt center stage at the start of the song, playing a slow crescendo on them. I am not sure why Mason couldn’t have handled that on his own from behind his kit.)
Despite all that it was a pretty enjoyable show. They were good enough that they didn’t need all the crap they acquired later.
Ahh. But in '71 they were still kind of a cult band. If someone says they saw them live I guess I assume they are referring to the post ‘Dark side of the Moon’ stadium filling act. I’m too young to have seen them in the early days, I saw them in '87 and '94 and it was smoke, lasers, and some sort of spaceship thing that rose from center field during the encore in '94. But the descriptions of their late 70’s shows sound pretty elaborate as well.
