Just did a little searching - your friend has produced and mixed a lot of great albums!
Performance-wise, it would probably be The Who at the Denver Pepsi Center about 7 years ago or so. They played very well, but Pete Townshend spent five minutes introducing every song, almost like it was an old episode of VH-1’s Storytellers or something, and so the show had no flow to it at all.
Around the same time I saw Built to Spill at a very small venue, and unfortunately they had FOUR terrible opening acts that broke the audience’s will to live. When Built to Spill came on 11:30, I don’t think many people cared. My party left a half hour later.
Worst overall experience was Neil Young at Red Rocks around 2000 or 2001. Red Rocks is a terrific open-air venue, but Young played a late Autumn show and the weather quickly turned into a prolonged thunder storm/blizzard about 20 minutes into the show. It was just unbearable. Young continued to play–Rolling Stone was streaming it, so I think he was contractually obligated to play–but the audience couldn’t have been more than a few hundred people by the end.
The last couple of Ralph Stanley shows I saw were painful. Most of the show was carried by his no-talent hack of a son, Ralph II, and most of the rest was Ralph doddering on about how great he is, or how great his son is, or doing interminable comedy bits with the band that were ultra-hacky when he started doing them in the 70s and are even worse now.
By the last time I saw him his arthritis was so bad he never even picked up a banjo. His voice was still awesome, but the little bit of it you got to hear wasn’t worth sitting through so much bullshit.
These shows were over ten years ago, and a look at his web site shows that he’s still doing a couple dozen dates a year (though they’re at increasingly less prestigious venues).
I’ve seen the Reverend Horton Heat over a dozen times and he could usually be counted on to have super-shitty opening bands. The very first time I saw him (at the aforementioned Bogart’s, which indeed has the acoustics of a high school gym) the Goo Goo Dolls opened, and sucked mightily. The worst was a band called the Cows, which just made noise until the singer pulled a trumpet out of his pants and made more noise on top of it.
I was also at Kanye West’s infamous Bonnaroo set in 2008. It was supposed to start at 2:30AM–they had moved him from a primetime slot on the second stage to the big stage to accommodate his ridiculous light show and had to give him the late-night set. Except that he didn’t start until 4:30AM. The show itself was pretty half-assed, with some silly conceit about a spaceship that was talking to him, but the effect of his awesome light show was mostly lost since the sun started coming up around 5:00 and it was broad daylight by the time he finished. I was one of the few who stuck it out to the end, mostly out of spite at that point.
Went to see Squeeze a few years ago - probably should have known better than to go see a band that was 20 years past their prime. They just sounded bored.
Seconded! I imagine Tricky could be a bit of a handful in the studio.
He told stories of spending hours and hours sitting next a totally-stoned Tricky obsessing over different drum sounds…
Could be worse. The late, great Roger Nichols wasted more than a year working with Donald Fagen on drum sounds for that soulless piece of shit Kamakiriad.
Judging from the live albums of theirs that I have, I’m pretty sure you’ve just described every Who concert ever. Pete taking forever to introduce the songs is a feature, not a bug.
My personal “bad concert experience” seeing the Who was at the Hollywood Bowl in 2002, at what turned out to be their very first show after John Entwistle died. It was obviously a very emotional occasion and they did well by going back on stage so soon afterward, but the bassist they’d recruited to fill in had only had three days to learn the songs and obviously was a little out of his depth. (He even had a music stand set up off to the side with sheet music that he kept glancing at.) He didn’t even attempt to play the bass solo in 5:15, which is probably for the best.
I saw them again in 2006 with the same bassist and he was obviously a lot more comfortable in the role then than he’d been in '02.
Go see Chemical Brothers. Or Daft Punk. Or Underworld.
A Who show wouldn’t be a Who show without Pete’s banter! While he does tend to go on and on, he can tell some really hilarious stories and his interaction with the usual suspects in the front rows is legendary. On this last tour I was sort of disappointed because they played Quadrophenia from beginning to end without any banter at all.
Tricky cancels more shows than anyone I’ve ever seen. Anytime he’s coming to Chicago now, it’s a joke w/ my wife and I on how soon before the show gets nixed.
Thank you WordMan,
I will concede that CL can sing but now when I hear it, well I cringe.
I did not mean to imply that it was any band from Boston or Boston the band. I was referring to the marathon bombers. They should not be famous and IMO neither should CL hence my refusal to speak/write their names.
I have worked with many “difficult” artists over the years, never a real problem. Demanding performers can be just that but most of the time it is so worth it. Anything worth doing will at times be hard but there is no need to make it difficult “just because” you are a special snowflake. Most artists get this some do not.
I would like to give a few quick examples of hard gigs that I have worked where the artist is pure gold
Springsteen “the Boss” super complicated setup, hard gig. The nicest and most professional crew you can meet. That only comes from the top. They were at the Moody last year for SXSW, I was TM for someone who sat in. The crew chief was waiting for me on the dock, got all of my people in including record label folks and made sure I got dinner because he thought I looked hungry. Great show, no that doesn’t do it justice, fantastic show.
Bon Jovi, same basic story plus the guys were a riot. They played the Houston Rodeo several years ago. The band and SO’s were sitting watching the goings on from the stage and kept asking me to explain what was happening, so nice. Awesome performers and who knew that they all could sing so well, amazing.
Queensryche, big set up, long and hard day. Very exacting crew and band. After the show spent a half hour or so with Stone, the newer guitar player, smoking cigs. Most humble, nicest cat I have met in a while.
I don’t like any of the aboves music but I would bend over backwards to work with any of them.
Sorry for the hijack
Capt
Or Leftfield. Or Orbital. To be honest, the one time I saw The Prodigy they were immense.
Did anyone here ever see Milli Vanilli, or is willing to admit it?
It took the city banning smoking at bars for me to realize that what I thought were inexplicable hangovers the following day from a relatively small amount of beer or liquor at certain bars or concerts were actually sinus headaches from all the smoke I’d breathed while out the night before.
That also reminded me of what has to be the worst concert(?) I’ve been witness to. There’s a bar near where I work that is one of those “75 beers on tap/200 in bottles” sorts of places, and the kind where the waitresses wear tight shirts and cheerleader-style skirts and knee-stockings.
On certain nights of the week they have live music, starting at about 6-ish and running to about 10-11.
This particular Friday afternoon in about 2004, my roommate and I were hanging out inside, drinking beer and generally just hanging out. These two guys come in and set up their gear, then proceed to start trying to hang up their band’s banner, which is, I shit you not, a white bedsheet, complete with decorative hem, spray-painted with their band’s name and logo in neon colors. We’re sitting near where they are, but not necessarily right next to the.
These two idiots spend the better part of an hour trying to hang this thing with an office stapler and masking tape, only to have one or the other corner fall off while they’re trying to do sound checks.
Eventually roommate and I got drunk enough to start doing golf-announcer style banter back and forth about whether or not they’d get the bedsheet hung up properly, complete with golf-claps when we thought they’d got it, or “Ooooh.. tough break. I thought he had it, but no.”
Two idiots eventually get torqued at this abuse, and ask the waitress to tell us to knock it off, which we didn’t, because we could tell that this spectacle with our commentary was clearly entertaining the rest of the bar.
Finally, the two idiots got their bedsheet hung up, and start playing. Wow… they were as bad as their banner; they were like a cross between reggae and grunge, except doing covers of stuff like Coldplay and Dave Matthews.
To this day, roommate and I still talk about the “2 Idiots and a Bedsheet Band” when displays of incompetence are mentioned.
Oh man, that is a whole huge area. I attend more concerts now that there is no smoking in bars in both Kansas City and Chicago. I did one shoot at Mike’s Tavern in KC, and I swear, everyone there seemed to be smoking. The smoke was so thick at times, I came very close to puking. My clothes stank of smoke, hell my cameras stank and they are metal and plastic!
I shoot at one venue that has a bar area that opens onto a patio. They have signs everywhere that says you cannot smoke 15 feet from the open garage doors, but there is always some asswipe smoking a big, stinky cigar right in front of my camera, which is inside the bar.
My wife did!
Not me, but I think they were the first concert my sister ever attended.
Having heard Mr. Loaf’s dulcet-toned rendition of “America the Beautiful,” I am reluctant to accept your claims.
Agreed! Their set list was about 8 songs and way too much noise making.
Sammy Hagar takes credit for changing this format as they were playing more materials with shorter solos.
Yep, I remember either not knowing what song they were playing or not knowing the songs at all.
[/quote]
I saw them a couple of times in the 80’s, (we usually went to see the opening bands)
The Lick it Up tour was probably the worst.
Worse ever? Can’t say but here are some bad ones.
GNR 1987, wasted, out of tune, and completely unprofessional. I’ve had garage practices that were better.
Doobie Brothers 1982. Completely dysfunctional
Motley Crue 1983, 1985, 1987 absolutely awful, they could barely play and were wasted.
David Lee Roth 1988 - It was so over the top it was ridiculous! Dave couldn’t sing and Steve Vai’s solo was drowned out in white noise.
Winger (opening for KISS) sound was awful, short setlist, Kip’s wireless mic cut out halfway through so he had to use Paul Taylor’s wired mic on a stand at the back of the stage while roadies scrambled to fix it. I don’t think they ever did.
I also worked alot of shows back in the 80s and 90s and had great experiences with most artists.
The negatives (oddly enough with similar band names) I remember were:
Johnette Napolitano from Concrete Blonde throwing a fit on her bus, kicking a security guard in the head, and repeatedly having to restart songs for various reasons.
Mark Holmes from Platinum Blonde was a bit of a baby when I set up a show for him a couple of years ago. He was honestly surprised that no one showed up to see them. He kept asking me “Where is everybody?” to which I replied “Who were you expecting?”
FTR, 4 Non Blondes, were great to work with.