That would have been his Christian period.
Heh.
Thanks I saw they were going to be playing locally and I was wondering if I should go.
I saw them in the mid 80s too and they put on a big show. The drummer obviously could not play well and his parts were enhanced but other than that they played and sang well.
And I loved that show. I saw them in Frankfurt and was about 10 feet from the stage.
I guess I haven’t had too many bad experiences. I’ve went to a few just to say I went but with mostly good to great experiences.
The most uncomfortable performance I saw was Randy Newman opening for Steven Wright. It was a big venue and he just didn’t fit in. It was just him on a piano singing songs no one knew. Mostly slow quiet songs. It was a performance that would have worked in a club somewhere not in a 6,000 seat amphitheater. The crowd got very restless and talking was constant. He rescue it a little by playing I Love LA and Short People but it was too late.
And he covered “Take A Message To Mary”
Good one.
Probably John Martyn, back in the late 70’s. I had started listening to his music when he sang sweetly and clearly and I was a BIG FAN. By the time I saw him in concert he had entered his ‘slurring’ phase…and downing a beer every song didn’t help him at all.
But Bob Dylan comes a very close runner-up in the Bad Concert stakes.
Search YouTube on “culture club berkeley greek theater”. There are a number of clips posted from a 2015 show which was surprisingly solid. George’s voice is clearly lower than it was during their 80s heyday, but they’ve adjusted for that and it works. As a front man, George is charming, and seems quite spontaneous and engaged with the audience. I’m not even a Culture Club fan, but if they tour again locally, I’d be interested in seeing their show.
That was a surprisingly good show! Happy to see this, as I love CC and was so disappointed. I don’t think Boy was sober during the late '90 s, which could have contributed to the awful performance.
Puddle of Mudd - I was young and dumb and I don’t care what you think.
The only good thing to come out of that evening was seeing Saliva perform live - they’re amazing, probably a top five performer I’ve ever seen, especially on a smaller stage.
Ted Nugent. Not because it was a bad show. But it’s been retroactively ruined by what a giant douchenozzle he’s turned into.
I saw Gary Glitter. Ewwww.
Turned into? How about always was?
I generally like Neil Young but the “Shocking Pinks” tour for the “Everybody’s Rockin’” album in the mid 1980s was dreadful. I swear half the show was Young’s roadie Joel Bernstein talking about different guitars Young has and how he cares for them. Plus the parody just falls flat. A few months later HBO put on a “Neil Young in Berlin” concert which was 1,000 times better than what we saw.
Kinks in Roseland ballroom in NYC end of 1983 . A short uninspired set where because it’s a dance floor you couldn’t see them very well . Also an atrociously bad opening act: Cindy Lauper. Saying she is a dog is an insult to canines.
Southside Johnny and the Ashbury Jukes at Jones Beach theater wasn’t bad. But at that time the stage was separated from the seats by about 30 feet of water. Southside thought it was the height of entertainment to over the course of the evening throw 5 microphone stands into the water, making him look like the fool rock critics accused him of being. Not quite the same thing but a couple years later the Smithereens were an opening act for someone (UB40 the night they recorded the “I Got You Babe” video with Chrissie Hynde?). Pat DiNizio comes out and says “I understand Guy Lombardo had something to do with this theater”. When some people shouted yes (he often performed there) DiNizio says “Well, f*** him then”. Gee, Pat, what’s that about?
I didn’t care for Hall and Oates in the mid 80s when they were very popular and they didn’t disprove my opinion when I decided to see them just to see what they were like. Probably shouldn’t list them but what the hey.
Another vote for Motörhead.
Saw them at Bogart’s in Cincinnati in the late 1980s. It was so loud that you couldn’t hear the individual instruments… it was just a wall of noise. A very LOUD wall of noise. It literally sounded like 1000 psi of compressed air shooting from a nozzle. I left after 20 minutes; it was pointless.
My daughter and I saw The Who a couple years ago in Columbus, OH. Moon and Entwistle weren’t there, obviously. Daltrey could barely sing. (I felt embarrassed for him.) And there were at least a half dozen other musicians on stage playing guitar, keyboards, etc. I couldn’t wait until it was over - I only stayed because my daughter loves them.
I saw him at Jazz Fest in 200(2?), and this was exactly our experience. He seemed to resent being there, resent the audience, the venue, staff, band, and the material he was performing. His demeanor was, in a word, petulant.
Fortunately, his opening act was BB King, whose performance was everything I had hoped.
I had a similar experience when I saw the Scorpions in 1994. Actually, I wasn’t there to see the Scorpions; I was there to see their opening act, King’s X, who was OK. The Scorpions’ act was physically painful, and awfully heavy on the pyrotechnics, so I left before their set was over.
My brother had a comparable experience after seeing the Psychedelic Furs, of all bands, and that was in a theater that was supposed to be acoustically perfect.
A few years later, he saw Public Enemy. He and his friends were among the 20 or so white people in the audience (that probably wouldn’t be the case now) and he said the show would have been OK had it lasted more than 45 minutes and consisted of songs, and not just scantily clad girls gyrating on the edge of the stage. No, he didn’t mind the latter, but that wasn’t what he had paid to see.
Bummer. ‘State of Confusion’ is a solid album. Wikipedia has this to say about the state of the band around that time:
"… During the second half of 1983, Ray Davies started work on an ambitious solo film project, Return to Waterloo, about a London commuter who daydreams that he is a serial murderer. … Davies’ commitment to writing, directing and scoring the new work caused tension in his relationship with his brother. Another problem was the stormy end of the relationship between Ray Davies and Chrissie Hynde. The old feud between Dave Davies and drummer Mick Avory also re-ignited. Davies eventually refused to work with Avory, and called for him to be replaced by Bob Henrit, former drummer of Argent … Avory left the band, and Henrit was brought in to take his place. "
Seems like it would have been an optimal time to catch Cyndi Lauper, as she was just breaking through. “She’s So Unusual” was released in Oct 83, and that record has a number of her best songs. Perhaps she wasn’t road-tested at that point. Or maybe it’s just her squeaky, screechy voice is hard to bear without studio sweetening.
There was this one concert I went to that was outdoors and I absolutely could not make out any of the lyrics or most the words. Also, you had to bring your own seat, and I didn’t know that ahead of time.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember who they were. Skillet, maybe?
I love the Ramones. In the late 1980s (am thinking '88 or '89) I finally got to see them at a place called Hammerjacks in Baltimore. Wow, what a disappointment. Joey just stood there, looking comatose/not moving a muscle. And he wasn’t even singing - he was blurting out the words to the songs in a gravelly, monotone voice. Dee Dee seemed clueless. He kept looking over to Johnny to get visual clues on when to move his left hand. (At least that’s what I think he was doing.) All the songs were sped up, I am guessing to get the show over ASAP. Sound quality was horrible - a noisy, distorted mess.
I lost interest after about 30 minutes, and went home.