Same deal for us with Leon Redbone at Playhouse Square in Cleveland. We waited for him for two hours, and there was no opening act. They played a Muzak-type CD on the sound system – the same CD – over and over, and no announcement. No “Thank you for your patience.” No “There’s been a delay but he’ll be out in a while.” When he did finally come out, he didn’t say a word about it. He gave a great show, but we will never pay to see him again. We asked the announcer on the way out of the theatre, and he said, “We just couldn’t get him to come out.”
I saw a show once at Northern Illinois University by Acumen Nation / DJ Acucrack. Basically, the band with one of the guys from the band doing an opening DJ set. The problem was that the “show” was in one of those rooms in the student center that I wouldn’t really say is conducive to a live band. The DJ set went by without much fanfair - it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t much of anything.
Then the band “came out”. I say “came out”, but really they just got up and walked over there because there was no stage. The crowd of roughly 30 people stayed where they were - sitting around the perimeter of the room. The entire area in front of the band was completely empty and the vibe was NIL. They played a song or two and they were okay, but nothing special. They didn’t have a keyboardist, but had a DAT that played some minimal electronics on it.
About halfway through the set, they asked “Does anyone out there have any requests?” One guy said “Anything off the first album!” The lead singer sheepishly said “We don’t have any backing tapes for anything from the first album…” and then they played maybe five more songs that no one recognized.
It was one of those shows where you wanted to walk out but the crowd was so small that you felt bad doing so. Luckily it ended soon after and we got the hell out of there asap. I’m not sure if the show really WAS that bad or just felt terrible because the night before this my friends and I had watched the band Hate Dept. rock a nearly two hour long set for roughly 15 people at a bar in Chicago and they KILLED. The difference between the shows truly was night and day.
Rage Against the Machine and Wu-Tang Clan, August of 1997, Blockbuster Pavillion, Charlotte, NC.
Wu-Tang brought their kids on stage and jumped around and mumbled over each other into what must’ve been at least a dozen mics. They never did anything that sounded remotely melodious, much less did they perform a recognizable song.
Rage came on and they were turned up so loud we couldn’t distinguish a drumbeat from a guitar note. It was all just blare with the faint sound of Zach screaming behind it.
On the way home, my parents’ fairly new minivan that I had borrowed overheated and broke down and despite dumping thousands of dollars into it, it never worked right again. They still blame me for not watching the temperature gauge. I had only had my license a month.
I went to the Silverdome to see Billy Joel and Elton John. It had 80,000 people . We saw them on a huge screen and the acoustics sucked. Joel was horrible. he had just broken up with Brinkley and he seemed stoned. Elton took over and did most of the songs. I was a big Joel fan and left a bigger Elton fan. I hate performers who charge full price and deliver a half hearted try.
You know why they redid the Powerslave tour? Because on the Matter of Life & Death tour (which I saw in the Meadowlands and loved, which is why this otherwise wouldn’t get a post here) Iron Maiden decided to open the setlist of each show by performing the entire Life & Death album! Which was fine by me since I actually listened to it, but pissed off the majority of the audience (many of whom probably haven’t heard an Iron Maiden song recorded past the 80s) like crazy, to the point where when they came out to do a second set (consisting of classic songs) after a brief encore break, the place was half empty.
A similar experience happened when I saw Eric Clapton at MSG in NYC in 2001. He opened the show by doing 5 songs from his new album Reptile, and by the time he was at the last song, about half the place was booing him and screaming variations of “PLAY SOMETHING WE KNOW!” … I hadn’t heard his new album yet, but I was still enjoying the performance. I mean cmon, it’s Eric Clapton!
Broadway on Broadway is a huge free outdoor concert held every year in Times Square. I go every year and have lots of fun. One of the best was September 9, 2001.
The worst was September 15, 2002. I was stuck between a bunch of people who had come together and kept elbowing into my space, and a woman who screamed on her cell phone the whole event (GUESS WHERE I AM? CAN YOU HEAR THAT? YOU CAN’T? GUESS WHO THAT IS?). It also started raining.
In 2003 someone got on her cell phone during the warm ups and I said firmly “We are here to hear the concert. We are not here to hear you scream on your cell phone.” She said “My friend couldn’t be here.” I said “Don’t you scream on that cell phone the whole time. Use it quietly.” She did and I had a good time.
Yes. About 1990-1991 – that tour in which they had two of everything – guitarists, keyboardists, drummers – except there was still only one Jon Anderson.
It was in a multipurpose arena, primarily used for basketball games and graduation ceremonies. The building and the acoustics were designed for placing the stage at one end.
Except – Yes has that stupid revolving stage. So they had to put it in the middle of the arena.
This concert was literally physically painful. I had to retreat behind the heavy canvas curtains that separated the seating area from the concession areas. The padding made it at least somewhat possible to listen to the “music” (if that’s what you can call that aural masturbation that Yes does) without feeling as if I was being stabbed in the head.
Coldplay, Reebok Stadium in Bolton, UK.
First, it was tipping it down. Coldplay decided they were only going to come on stage four hours after doors opened, and two hours after the support act came on.
The crowd was dead. I mean, there were people drinking glasses of wine in the crowd—that’s how boring this shit was.
The music was crap. I wasn’t a fan of Coldplay to begin with, but I’ve been to gigs before where I’ve not been a fan but then the live performance has persuaded me to change my mind. But no, Coldplay’s music is as dull live as it is recorded. Music for bedwetters, indeed.
The final blow: my friend’s girlfriend was having some sort of mental breakdown or something, that night, and kept sniping at my friend. Finally, after waiting hours for them to come on stage, he decides after the third song that he’d had enough, and decided to walk home, leaving me with his girlfriend, who I hardly knew and didn’t really like. Eventually, she decides to follow him, leaving me on my own, watching a band I don’t like, in the rain. I left shortly after.
I’ve had a couple:
We bought tickets for a concert because Soul Coughing was the opening act. Dave Matthews Band was the headliner but we didn’t care about them. Well, they showed us when they cancelled the tour (bassist’s daughter died) and when they rescheduled, no Soul Coughing and we were stuck with tickets.
Gary Jules was opening for Todd Rundgren and I really liked him. He’s a folker and has some Cat Stevens vibe to him and I was a bit floored to find out that he’s quite wretched live. The rest of the concert I tried to figure out what Todd Rundgren’s appeal is and gave up and left early.
The worst was a concert with Eliza Gilkyson and Mary Gauthier. They are two great singer/songwriters and I was really looking forward to this concert. Well, I was chatting with some friends online prior to the concert and there was one guy that was interested in dating me and he said that he might just show up at the concert. Well, he showed up and since the venue didn’t have assigned seating, we got to sit next to each other and talk before it started. He mentioned that he hadn’t heard of either of the artists and I assured him that they were some of my favorites. Mary Gauthier went up on stage and started performing. At this point, he started to try and sing along with her. On every song. Out of tune and not knowing the words. There was an intermission before Eliza went on stage and I weighed the idea of just moving to a different seat and thought that might be rude, so I excused myself to the bathroom and left the building never seeing the rest of the concert.
As in all fields of endeavour, there will always be individuals that stand out from the pack, and DJ’ing is no different. Have you never been to an all-night rave, matey? 
Metallica/Godsmack in Columbus, OH, September of 2004. Listening to Sully Erna berate the unwashed, very drunk masses at the front for not getting up and being all metal for 45 minutes wore my ass out. Thankfully I missed almost all of their set or I’d have left and said “fuck it” to the rest of the night. Yeah, people are all but ignoring you, dude, get over it. You’re the opening act for Metallica.
'Tallica made up for it though.
My worst was Jane’s Addiction in Salem, OR around 1990 or so.
The venue was a big general admission auditorium with a rural crowd of dangerously inexperienced concert goers. You know how major city venues can be packed to the gills, and the crowd has developed that higher beehive consciousness that makes 50,000 people somehow function and behave with happy stage diving, crowd, surfing, pitting, and the like with no one getting hauled out on stretchers?
Not Salem. The crowd, probably less than 10,000 with plenty of room in the venue, bumrushed the stage and barriers throughout the entire show. Some idiot dove off a speaker stack onto the concrete floor to expected effect (splat). I had to personally drag 3 girls out of the crowd who had passed out on the floor and were getting crushed, nearly getting crushed into unconsciousness myself several times. There were dozens of people recovering on the sidelines of the crowd and needing staff or medical assistance.
Jane’s noticed it also, and stopped the show a couple of times to admonish the crowd. They did not like the scene that was happening.
As a final nail in the coffin…the show itself also sucked, the venue was a massive resonance cavity that caused the whole performance to degrade into an echoing “whoooooommp” with no intelligible vocals or guitar able to be heard.
Todd Rundgren is a studio musician - actually, a pioneer of electronic music. I can’t imagine he’d really be any good live, honestly. His whole thing is that he manipulates studio equipment to produce bizarre effects. Some of his stuff is more alchemy than music. A Wizard, A True Star is kind of like what would happen if David Lynch recorded an album. It’s an avant-garde masterpiece, but it is not the kind of thing that would translate to live performance.
Another one, more recent—Def Leppard, Sarnia Bayfest last year. The band was fucking ON that night, but the 5 zillion opening acts sucked in different degrees, the local security were a bunch of knuckle-dragging assholes who thought it was funny to see people all but pass out from heat exhaustion, and I had some skanky ho-bag trying to hump my arm part of the night. Luckily we’d bought tickets for the “non-drinkers” section as the horribleness that was the “drinking” section would have either set off my homicidal, raving maniac side or made me die laughing.
I’ll NEVER go back there. Never, ever.
Around 1993, went to see Brand New Heavies and The Pharcyde. Brand New Heavies didn’t show because they had visa issues, and we left before The Pharcyde appeared because we were waiting for hours for them to show up. In addition, my wife almost got into a fight with two women behind her, and there was an endless stream of uninspiring opening acts (including a performance by the then up-and-comer Notorious B.I.G. performing a song with Tupac).
A U2 show in Birmingham (AL), with Bono drunk off his ass and slurring his words badly.
My worst concert was also at Webster Hall! It was Reverend Horton Heat and I don’t exactly remember when, but it would have been in the late 90s. A lot of the things you mentioned about Webster Hall were the same for me – everything started much too late, and the lack of a strategic plan for moving the concert-goers into the concert space without tripping over the dance hall-goers using the same stairs, etc did not help my mood. It was nearly impossible to fight through the crowd to get to the bar to get beverages. I’m sure they were overpriced beverages, but I can’t really be annoyed about that because I couldn’t get to the bar to experience the overpricing. When the show finally started, there was some bad buzzing feedback issue that the tech folks would manage to fix for about 15 minutes, and then it would start back up again.
About halfway through the concert, I gave up on it. I was there with other people, so it would have been difficult to leave, so I found a non-crowded out of the way area and pulled out a book. I was there with some close friends of mine, and another couple that my friends knew, and to this day, I suspect the husband in that couple thinks I am the world’s most (1) boring (2) freak, because he can’t figure out why I would have a book with me at a Reverend Horton Heat in the first place.
But really, YOU NEVER KNOW.
Sha.
Na.
Na.
The Who. Exhibition Stadium, Toronto, circa 1987 perhaps?
The show was fantastic, but the venue sucked hugely. We had floor tickets, which meant, as it turned out, an assigned folding chair. All the folding chairs were cable tied together in rows and security wouldn’t allow you out of your row to move closer to the stage.
As soon as the show started people stood up. Then people decided to stand on their chairs. I watched The Who play the entire Tommy soundtrack plus a few encores while standing on my tip toes, precariously balanced on a folding chair. If everyone would have remained seated we all would have had the same view, and been comfortable to boot. Groups of people are idiots.
Blues Traveler. It’s where I learned to hate the haronica. I just wanted the whole thing to end, but he just wouldn’t stop. The Spin Doctors are a close second.