Led Zepplin '73 (I think). Same impression here. Very sloppy, Plant was stumbling around and totally off on his whole act. I decided then that they are a studio band. Period.
And I don’t think they held up all that well over the years, either.
Hardly on par with the other experiences here but let me say that the sound system at the Riveria in Chicago sucks. It hardly matters who we saw (Rilo Kiley and we enjoyed ourselves despite the system) because it could have been a choir of seraphim sent by Jehovah himself and they still would have sounded shitty.
I suppose I shouldn’t have expected better, but I saw Sir-Mix-Alot in Portland, Oregon a couple of years ago. The venue ended up being only 1/2 full, I saw Mix and cronies getting into a limo and leaving right before the show was supposed to start, and when they finally came back and started about 2.5 hours late, they refused to play more than one song off of their first two albums. They only played new stuff that the crowd obviously hadn’t heard. At least the whole set was only about 45 minutes long…
As an aside, I’ve noticed that most bands/acts have been starting their shows very, very late for the last couple of years. Nothing I like better than standing around in a sweaty venue listening to a CD over the speakers. Especially on a weeknight.
Just out of curiosity, I’ve noticed that several posts have noted that a contributing factor to suckiness was that the performers played only “new songs” or “songs the audience didn’t know” or somesuch.
Isn’t part of the value of a live performance the possibility of hearing something new? Isn’t that what makes it different from staying home and putting on the record?
A musical performance is a live, unique, never-to-happen again event. I’d be perfectly happy never recognizing a single note so long as the performance was good.
Of course, I’m also the type who likes to just sit still and take in the performance quietly. I’m really annoyed by people who stand up in front of me for no reason (and to me, that pointless wiggling and arm-waving that people call “dancing” is basically “no reason” – if you want to dance, go to a place with a dance floor!). I save my applause and cheers for the very end, and only if I’m so moved.
I went to a John Mayer concert a few years back- it was the hottest day of the summer and i had worked out in the afternoon. I ended up getting heat exhaustion and passed out and woke up in some random hospital. this was before i carried a cell phone so everyone i was with had no idea where i was.
1976 - Darryl Hall and John Oates at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion.
While Pauley is a great basketball venue, it absolutely sucks as a concert venue. Acoustics were terrible.
To top it off, they had a student running the sound board. John Oates actually apologized from stage for the crappy mix.
I saw him give a similar performance at Jazzfest in 2001. Evening show in the auditorium in Armstrong Park. With B. B. King for an opening act, my hopes were high. Except Van Morrison, in addition to being off key, unenergetic, and uptight, added a nice dose of open hostility to the mix. His studio work has never sounded quite the same to me since.
Isn’t it well known that Morrison is uncomfortable among people? I would expect that to affect his public performances. Why should that affect perceptions of his recorded work?
I seem to remember hearing that, too. It might have even been right here on the SDMB in a similar thread from about five years ago (I can’t find it, so it’s possible that it’s one of the those threads that have been archived and are curently inaccessible).
In any case, if it’s true that Morrision is “uncomfortable among people”, I’ll ask, “Why, then, does he continue performing live?” He doesn’t need the money (I would think) and all he does by continuing is give off bad vibes and, possibly, turn people off his music thereby cutting into his sales.
A co-worker of mine saw the same show at Jazzfest in 2001 and made the same comments about him (Morrison) being uncomfortable, off key, etc. On the other hand, my brother and sister-in-law saw him within the past two years at George Mason University in Fairfax and said that he gave a great show. He didn’t pay any attention to the audience - none at all, not even a quick “Thank you” after a hearty round of applause - but his singing, emotion, and song choice were right on target. I guess he’s just a very hit or miss proposition.
I think that it is very artist dependent. For Sir-Mix-Alot, I was going for the cheese factor, and he hadn’t been popular for over 10 years. Why not play the songs that people will know and appreciate, in that case. Play for audience, if you will.
For good bands, I love to hear new stuff, mixed with recognizable hits.
Because he conducted himself like an ass. And performed like it was open mike night at the roller rink. And every once in a while, those memories jar with the warm introspective tones I associate with “Moondance” and “Astral Weeks.”
And Plnnr, I’ve since heard the same thing about his shows. That sometimes, he pulls it all together live. I’ve heard the same thing about Dylan.
I don’t believe the Riveria has a house sound system, but uses a rented one or the act brings in their own. That means the sound engineer has only a few hours to try to accomplish system tuning that would normally be done over a period of days if the system were to be installed in the venue permanently. If a brilliant engineer with a great system is in that horrible, toilet bowl of a room, it can sound decent (Todd Rundgren - “Second Wind In The Second City” show). But the odds are against it.
Park West and Schubas have excellent installed systems. The Vic has a house system that sometimes gets taken down and replaced by the bands own system.
Personally, I refuse to see any more shows in that armpit because there are only two exits. I refer to it as “The Future Home of the Riveria Tragedy”. I have no desire to be there when a large number of people are either trampled or burn to death.
I went to see Yo La Tengo play at the Avalon in Boston a couple of years ago. The band was fine, the venue was more or less fine, but there was very little to be had in the way of seating. Which sucked, because I was recovering from a badly broken ankle and walking with a cane. My husband was getting a combination of anxious and pissy about the fact that I couldn’t seem to let the pain go and get into the music. They’re not my favourite band, and the musically adept but not exactly catchy noodling they were doing wasn’t enough to override the discomfort of trying to stay standing throughout it. So I went to the women’s bathroom, which had a beautiful velvet couch, and listened to the rest of the concert from there.
Bad circumstances, fine concert. I guess.
The only other bad concert experience was hearing Sigur Ros play at the pavilion down on the Boston waterfront, on a cold spring night when it was absolutely pouring with rain. The atmosphere was very suitable for their musical style, but we’d got soaked on the way over, and the incipient hypothermia meant we really had to cut out early. You really can’t get warmed up by rocking out to Sigur Ros. It was totally worth it, though.
I’ve been very lucky not to see any bad performances, but I had an isolated upbringing (nobody ever toured where I lived) so I have a relatively small sample size to draw from!
Just to add a bit more to this line of discussion, the rather detailed Wiki article on Morrision states:
The reference for this statement is an article/interview in Rolling Stone from 1972. The article goes on to say:
In the interview, there’s mention of him not looking at the audience and not talking to it either. Looks like an interesting read.
Saw Billy Bragg at the Filmore in SF recently. His support act was C.R.Avery, who is, if you can imagine such a thing, a Canadian Human-beat-boxing folk poet. He really was an unimaginable vortex of suck. So bad I was wondering at some point if there was ironic “Flight of the Conchords” thing going on, but he really wasn’t that funny either. The only conclusion I could come to is that he was attempting to use human-beatbox based folk poetry as a legitimate, serious, art form, and failing dismally.
Billy Bragg was awesome though 
Vanilla Ice at The Milk Bar, Jacksonville, FL 1998 or 1999 (yeah, I know).
My friends and I, in high school at the time, went for the aforementioned cheese factor. This was the tour where Vanilla (Mr. Ice?) was trying to reestablish himself as a rap-metal artist, including rerecording “Ice, Ice Baby” as a metal song. At the time, I was an angsty teen and had already seen Limp Bizkit when they were a local band without a record label.
About a week before, I had chatted with a guy in a local rap-metal band and he told us that they were opening for VI and would try and hook us up somehow. The show came, and when we got there we found that VI had canceled all the opening acts and instead had a DJ. The DJ was ungodly loud, and he spun for close to two hours while the makings of a riot started to foment in the crowd. Finally, mercifully, Mr. Ice(?) came onstage, made no apology for making us wait two hours, and played so loud that I couldn’t hear anything but ringing in my ears for two weeks afterward. They never did stop ringing.
Also, he sucked.
I attended a concert at the Wichita State University auditorium back during the fall of 1974. (Money was tight, but a friend-of-a-friend got a student discount for the tickets.) Billy Preston opened for the main attraction. He had the audience in the palm of his hand (the herbal aromas permeating the room may have helped) when he finished his round with his wonderful song, “That’s the Way God Planned It.” We were all feeling fine when the featured attraction came out & proceeded to let us know how much contempt they felt playing for small-town Bible-belt middle America. (If memory serves, about half the audience left during intermission). I haven’t cared for the group since.
I’ve read raves for this group’s studio work, but I remember how little they seemed to care for their audience.
Two notes: (1) Billy Preston’s “That’s the Way God Planned It” may be listened to on youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UYxzPdv67yA
(2) The featured attraction at that concert was Jethro Tull. As far as I’m concerned, they stand as all ego, little talent.
Love, Phil
I was completely unaware of Billy Preston (other than hearing one or two of his songs) before I saw the first episode of Saturday Night Live that they showed a couple weeks ago after George Carlin died. Preston was hugely talented and had lots of charisma.
Christmas week, 2000.
I took my brother to see a holiday concert at The State Theater in Portland, ME. The opening act, Angry Salad, was okay. They played “The Milkshake Song” and “99 Red Balloons” like everyone expected, but they were kind of brief.
Guster was fine. I expected that they would be since I’d seen them before.
Then came the third act, Shootyz Groove. I like them, since I find rapcore interesting. I have one of their CDs… but the venue is a theater. A real one, with mezzanine and everything. It was okay when Guster played, because this was when they were still making the transition between acoustic to electrical guitars and so forth. While Shootyz Groove played, however, the room’s design played hell on their set. The echoes and what have you made their songs totally indecipherable. I do mean totally, we couldn’t even identify what songs they were playing! It was just incomprehensible buzzing noise for a solid hour.
Apparently figuring out that the audience had been appalled by how SG sounded, Jimmie’s Chicken Shack played a largely unplugged set, which was kind of odd. I have never returned to The State Theater, nor will I ever attend a concert there again.