In the early 1990s, Guns N’Roses would have an “equipment malfunction” halfway through the show, bring out a couch and some acoustic instruments, and play an acoustic set until the problem was “fixed.”
At every show.
David Lee Roth did something similar in the early days of Van Halen, although in this case, halfway through “Jamie’s Cryin’”, he would stop singing and say, “I forgot the $%^&ing words!”
No, it was actually two years prior. This was in Ohio (and on a Friday, now that I looked up the date), but thanks because it corroborates my story. She made it though the entire performance when I saw her. She was good, too. But it was kind of like when your mom’s making your birthday cake but fighting with your dad. I even accidentally drew her wrath (and deserved it, really). I had my phone in my pocket the entire show (I hate when people have their phones out at concerts), but I was at an angle I could see her play list. So, I took my phone and meant to zoom in on it to see what songs she was going to do. I had no idea my phone used the flash to figure out the distance, so it flashed a few quick times. Yikes! I put it away immediately but at the end of the song she swings over to my direction and flips me off, full on Johnny Cash style. I didn’t blame her for that, as I felt awful. Still, she came out already blazing and had a bottle of red wine to help out.
I read the same thing about Janet Jackson’s concerts some years ago. A journalist type went to two or more of her shows and reported she sang the same songs in the same order, put her hand to her forehead at the same moment every time, sang or spoke with a little quiver in her voice at the same moment every time…every movement, every look, every sigh, every sentence was the exact same in every show.
I’ve been lucky in that my most disappointing concerts have bad opening acts, and the headliners have all been really good.
I saw Flaming Lips when they opened for Candlebox, and I now despise them. The Lips played for about 45 minutes, and never stopped playing, even between songs, so it came across as one 45-minute song. Horrible.
Suicidal Tendencies when they toured with Queensryche. Bad mix, bad songs, and Mike Muir talking for 5-10 minutes between songs was really annoying.
Warrior Soul, also opening for Queensryche. I’d never heard of them before, I’ve never heard anything from them since, and society is better off because of it.
I saw the band Cry of Love open for Aerosmith in the early 90s. They had one song that was decent (“Peace Pipe,”) and they played it as their second song. Just a horrible band. It’s still a running joke between my friends and I. We use them to quantify how bad other things are.
The story’s a few years old and I didn’t follow it all that closely, but IIRC the four Zappa siblings have resolved their dispute, which seemed to me to have been instigated by their late mother Gail, pitting Dweezil and Moon against Ahmet and Diva.
The number of ex-Warrior Soul members says a lot. Can’t say I remember them either.
Yep, just checked. Hatchets were buried two years ago.
Yes I knew Gail was the reason. She was a horrible guardian of the legacy. She always seemed to be mare interested in keeping people from hearing the music than anything else.
I only saw them in their 2000s reunion – not the first one but the one where they played through the whole of Doolittle, and all I could say about the performance is that while it was musically solid and tight, it was very mechanical. It very much felt like a band playing their “greatest hits” for the umpteenth time. Still, I enjoyed it as I had never seen them live before, but it didn’t give me an experience much different than the record.
Worst performance I had ever seen was catching Oasis at an outdoor music festival in Budapest. I was there to photograph various shows for a photo agency, and that’s a band that just seemed fucking bored with the music they were playing. Liam stood there singing with his hands behind his back the whole time, as if he were just going through the motions to fulfill his end of the contract. I don’t know if they’re like that typically but it really felt like he wished he were anywhere but there at the time.
Not disappointing as much as uncomfortable.
The Who, Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium, October, 1982. We had general admission tickets (Holy Cincinnati, Batman!), and we got there early enough that we were only about fifty feet from the stage. Then we had to wait–plop down on the field for the next few hours. Okay fine, but security would let people walk back through the “aisles” they created, but would not allow people to walk forward in those aisles; you had to step your way through the crowd. Made going to the bathroom in the stadium grandstand rather difficult.
Of course, there’s a delay.
The opening act came on–it was Joe Jackson, who left early after one of his band members was hit in the head by an thrown (but empty) liquor bottle. More delay.
Then The Who hit the stage about two hours late. And the crowd surged. Oh, boy did it. I ended up about 25 feet from the stage, carried by the crowd. Great, but we were all packed in, and security was about to be overwhelmed. So they deployed the fire hoses. Yep, I got hit by a fire hose. Naturally, we all fell back.
I enjoyed the concert–at least the part that The Who played–but it was definitely uncomfortable.
Oh! I just thought of two other bands that I was unimpressed with live (well, not Live…they put on a pretty good show the one time I saw them, which was in 2000).
I was unimpressed with Bulletboys, who I only knew of shortly before the concert (early 90s).
And I saw Googoo Dolls when they co-headlined with Counting Crows. I’m not a huge Googoo Dolls fan, but they’re listenable enough when they come on the radio. But, oh, did they suck live. Low energy, bad mix, bad attempts at crowd interaction, and Johnny Rzeznik was just not showing that he wanted to be there. I’m willing to chalk it up to just a bad night, but it made me ambivalent about seeing them in concert ever again.
I too was disappointed by the Pixies, but only a few years ago when they were touring with Weezer. They just clearly did not give a shit. The only one with any energy at all was Paz Lenchantin, the most recent bass player. They played “Wave of Mutilation” twice, and I don’t think much of anybody noticed.
The weirdest one, by far, was a show a few years ago by Mystikal here in my tiny little town in eastern Kentucky. To say this was unexpected is an understatement, but it was put on by a local guy who had put a few smaller hip-hop shows before. Mystikal was not too long out of prison, but he did have a terrific track out there on Mark Ronson’s album, “Feel Right” (the same album with “Uptown Funk”.
Oh, the ways that it was terrible:
He did at least take pictures with everybody afterwards. Mine is pretty great.
I saw them on the early '00s reunion tour and they were just kinda okay. Didn’t play a lot of my favorite songs. I’m still bummed that when I had a ticket to see them on, I think it was the Doolittle tour, they cancelled the club gig in Ottawa to open for The Cure. I don’t blame them for jumping at the bigger crowd, but I never had a chance to see the Pixies in their prime. Ultimately saw Frank Black on his first solo tour, which was pretty good, and The Breeders at Lollapalooza, but oh to have caught them live back when they were really blowing up…
You know, I’m no holy roller, but if he cut out the swearing because he thought he was in church, I’m giving him a few points for that. That’s really funny.
This reminded me of something. Maybe forty years ago I saw one of the all time greats, Desmond Dekker, in my home town. It’s call out time: Workington, Cumbria, England. If I remember correctly they were playing the Thursday and Friday nights and we could only go on the Thursday. My brother and I were two of the total six people in the audience.
But, contrary to the thrust of this thread, they put on a show. Dekker was the consummate pro - working his balls off for an audience of six.
Best or worst? Whatever. A great pro.
j
My wife drug me to an Elton John concert. Never been a fan and never will. John on piano and the drummer could have done the whole show, I couldn’t detect anything from the guitarist, bass player or keyboard player. There was also a 20 minute intermission so some guy could sweep the stage. Also saw Queen + Adam Lambert. The 3 original members were great, Lambert was not Freddie Mercury. Not even close.
I hope they were good drugs.
Heh, so did you guys trash the place? (j/k)
Hopefully at least their bus! (probably outa dodge before anyone realised what was going on)
I hope you mean “performed” his songs. (Definitely couldn’t see Randy nor Tommy belting it out.)
Heh yeah I can imagine the “clap your hands” phoning-in, pretty sure he did that too when I saw him in ‘80. (And at that same gig, Lemme from supporting band Motorhead got so pissed of with the apparent staidness of us Victorians that he eventually went, "wot’s this? A fuckin’ tea party?")
(an example, I spose, of a most disappointing crowd Motorhead’s ever been to.)
All good - here’s a German-accented Elton, and friend.
One of my heroes, the grumpy Bill Bruford, mentioned at one of his clinics that the Union tour was the most embarrassing, regrettable thing he was ever involved in.
Ok what I’m hearing from you is denial…yyyyeah I think “you’re block-iiiing” . I sense some resistance, tempered, somewhat, by a hesitant, maybe ambivalent unsureness of how you really, actually feel about this most intriguing conundrum. Because everybody uncondtionally, empirically and objectively just luuuuuuuvs Niel, this presents a unique outlier window, here. 
Backing band was a set of singers as well as the guitarists/drummer, mostly female.
Nah.it wasn’t the venues fault. And the bus was already gone (and it was in Washington County, not Dodge County. Joke intended). Plus remember, I was a Deputy Sheriff. Can’t be doing stuff like that.
We left and went to the Attic West night club in northern Milwaukee.