Karrin Allyson, a jazz singer of some repute. She did a gig at Jimmy Mack’s here in Portland. It was around the Christmas holidays and she must have been in a crappy mood, as she started berating the audience for eating while she was singing (it was a dinner club, hello), then bitched at some people at a table who were chatting (it’s a DINNER CLUB), saying “What are you talking about? I’d really like to know!” Then she got huffy with a guy in a wheel chair because he kept pointing his camera at her (“There he goes again!”). Her singing was lackluster, and as a final act of stupidity, she introduces her sister and has her sit in on the drum kit for one of her numbers (she sucked). We left after the first set.
I did see Yes again a few years later (at the Palace of Auburn Hills), and they did put on a very good concert, and even played Owner of a Lonely Heart despite Steve Howe being the main guitarist - they played it during their acoustic subset, and Wakeman played the solo on piano. I knew the song list concert I was at was a very specific thing that they did for that tour and didn’t really hold it against them - I mean, as I said, it opened me up to even more of their music. It was just by far the most disappointing concert I’ve been to considering the expectations compared to what happened.
Well, if we’re counting shows where we didn’t see the performer, we had tickets to Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark at the Hot Klub in Dallas in 1982, only…this was not an all ages show, and my friend’s girlfriend was 17. So not only did we not get in, but our tickets were nonrefundable.
I mean, we could’ve stranded her outside, but it was a slightly dodgy neighborhood, and there was nowhere for her to go except to drive away in my friend’s car and come back later.
Actually, wait, I have another. We had tickets to see the Police and XTC at an auditorium on the campus of SMU, ~1980, and I got sick that night (but at least my friends got to go without me). So there’s that.
Around 1977, I and my new boyfriend (now husband) went to see the Beach Boys. It was a long time ago, so I remember little except that Brian Wilson acted bewildered and was wandering around the stage wearing something like a muu-muu. One of his band members would occasionally take him to one side and try to talk him into sobriety, but Brian never did pull it together. The concert was okay, I guess, but it was kind of spoiled for me.
Another one for me: Boston in 1995. Brad Delp had already lost the ability to hit those really high notes, so he had an understudy to do it. And I never thought “More Than A Feeling” could lack any, but it did.
The last half of the show was mostly songs the majority of the audience didn’t know, and the applause was polite and a lot of people were taking bathroom breaks. There was one song he did, called “Magdalena”, that really was good. I wrote up the show for a zine I wrote for at the time, and there was a footnote from the zine’s editor stating that it had been purchased from a regional band from her area called Hybrid Ice.
At least the monkey act was in tune.
If we are counting shows we had tickets for that we missed, mine would be Richard Thompson (with the full band) at Liberty Hall in Lawrence KS on the “Mock Tudor” tour. My youngest stepdaughter had a severe asthma attack that afternoon and my wife and I spent the evening at the emergency room instead of at the show. Reviews of the show said he pretty much tore the roof off the place. Many local music critics had it in their top five shows of the year. So yeah that was severely disappointing.
The whole video is 1 hour 48 minutes long, but you can skip around if you wish. Some of these are an absolute hoot.
I think I’ve told this story on the Dope before. In the mid ‘80s, I went to a show with co-headliners Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino.
Fats played first, and it was electrifying. He had a tight 10- or 12-piece orchestra, they were all full of energy and he belted out all of his hits and then some, culminating in Fats and the band members marching into the crowd while playing a rousing call-and-response audience-participation number. SO much better than I expected, especially since I’d really come to see Jerry Lee Lewis.
The crowd was abuzz during intermission, coming down from one incredible performance and anticipating another.
Then Jerry Lee came out, and… put the room to sleep. It was just him, a drummer, and one backup singer. He never spoke to the audience. The set list consisted almost entirely of slow, lesser-known country material and believe me, he didn’t sell it. He was bored and so were we. At one point he yelled at a stagehand for taking too long to bring him water.
Yeah, at the end of the set he did “Whole Lotta Shakin’” and “Great Balls Of Fire” and he kicked over the piano bench, but it was all rote; his heart clearly wasn’t in it. Such a huge disappointment, but tempered by Fats Domino’s unexpectedly amazing show.
Your post reminded me of my other disappointing concert, which I likely mentioned in one of the earlier threads: Boston, at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin, in 1987.
They were touring in support of their long-delayed third album, Third Stage, which had been released the previous fall, but which many of their fans had not liked as much as their previous two albums. Nonetheless, they started the concert by playing every track from Third Stage, in album order.
I cringed when I saw that ill-fated bridge in Chicago !
What was their driver thinking ? : ))
Not sure if this one counts, but I’m putting here anyway. Back when I was in college, I won a pair of tickets to five different concerts (I won a lot of tickets back in the day, I got really good at being caller number 10). When one of the concerts was coming up, a friend and I decided to go see them. Now, we both lived and breathed classic rock. We knew the genre very well and generally liked that type of music. However, for this upcoming show, we were aware of the band, but had no idea of anything they did (this was before you could hop on google and figure it out). Since we at least knew the name and we assumed we probably knew the music, we headed down there. Luckily, not too far of a drive. Kenosha to Milwaukee, concert at The Rave (for those around here, the actual rave, the downstairs part). They start their set, we’re clueless. We decided we’d stay until we heard a song we knew, and then figure out what to do.
Suddenly, like a skewer being stuck in our collective ears, we hear the lead singer belt out “I want you…to want me”. We looked at each other and headed for the door.
To this day, I still find it odd that between the two of us neither of us knew that that song was Cheap Trick AND we both disliked the song enough to leave without giving it a second thought.
What’s funny is that anytime someone hears me say that I saw Cheap Trick, their eyes light up, then I have to decide if I’m going to disappoint them by telling them the story.
“See those people on the tour boat? Fuck those guys! Watch this!”
And I got another one…Billy Joel. It’s certainly not the most disappointing concert I’ve ever been to and it wasn’t bad by any means, it was just, I don’t know, boring. Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled to have that ticket stub but I wouldn’t go pay a hundred some dollars to see him again. I think the big problem was that it was an enourmous venue (MLB stadium, with seating on the field so he was pretty far back from the stands to begin with). He’s wearing a black suit, playing a black piano, against a black stage and black backdrop. There wasn’t a whole lot to look at other than the projection screens. If his head wasn’t shaved, you wouldn’t even know where he was.
Looked just about like this.
Sounds about right.
If I remember correctly he denied the whole thing at first.
The Allman Brother Band. August 72. Duane was dead, and they were lackluster.
Reminded of a show I went to back in the day. The local rock station I listened to announced that because of one of their former jocks big time connections in L.A. they were able to book a performance by an Australian band called Baby Animals in a (then) super popular club in town on Thanksgiving weekend. The band was great, no problem there, but the crowd was 90% college kids back for the holidays and mostly interested in catching up with their friends and not so much paying attention to the band. The band, being from Australia, didn’t really get the whole Thanksgiving weekend “zeitgeist” and the lead singer expressed some disbelief that the packed room wasn’t paying much attention to them.
Again, the band was really good, it was just a bad mix of band vs. uninterested crowd.
Should have linked a vid in my earlier post so here’s one.
This is a song I remember liking at that show
I saw them on that tour. It was the only time I saw them. I thought they were excellent. If I remember correctly it was known ahead of time they were going to do the album in it’s entirety and then play their hits.
It’s entirely possible that they announced that, and that my friend and I (being daft college students) did not actually see that announcement.