Wow, I had no idea! I thought this whole time that they were lip synching, but I just listened to a couple songs on Youtube and they're most definitely playing and singing live.
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Worst band you've ever seen?
- Thread starter Lukc
- Start date
Van Morrison in the late 90s.
Van was wrapped up in black leather, black hat, and black shades loooking just like Spy vs Spy. He played one song and then 30 seconds into the next song he started fussing at, nagging, and insulting his band in detail. The band was doing good work. This fusing went on for at least 30 minutes and we got disgusted and walked out. It was many years before I would even listen to his songs again.
On an up note, The Guess Who, a favorite band of mine, opened for him and they were fantastic musicians and showmen.
Van was wrapped up in black leather, black hat, and black shades loooking just like Spy vs Spy. He played one song and then 30 seconds into the next song he started fussing at, nagging, and insulting his band in detail. The band was doing good work. This fusing went on for at least 30 minutes and we got disgusted and walked out. It was many years before I would even listen to his songs again.
On an up note, The Guess Who, a favorite band of mine, opened for him and they were fantastic musicians and showmen.
Yes, Aerosmith was proof that drugs don't make you play better. They were great when they started but got godawful live once the money and drugs started rolling in, but when they cleaned up and righted their ship, they improved immensely.
edmidlifecrisis
Registered mediocre bass player
I may have posted this before way earlier in this thread, if I did I apologize.
Lots of bad opening acts in the early seventies, the worst one I can remember was "Curved Air" who opened for Emerson Lake and Palmer at the Fillmore East. Ugh. Some of those bad opening acts (many were British) went on to fame and fortune, which always amazed me as they were pretty sucky early on. I mentioned Wishbone Ash and others in an earlier post.
Lots of bad opening acts in the early seventies, the worst one I can remember was "Curved Air" who opened for Emerson Lake and Palmer at the Fillmore East. Ugh. Some of those bad opening acts (many were British) went on to fame and fortune, which always amazed me as they were pretty sucky early on. I mentioned Wishbone Ash and others in an earlier post.
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I'm not an Aerosmith fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I've seen them 3 maybe 4 times and they sounded good (read: clear and balanced, and no noticable mistakes).
I've always thought Rush was pretty awful though.
A venue (and your seating therein) can really make a band sound better or worse depending...
I've always thought Rush was pretty awful though.
A venue (and your seating therein) can really make a band sound better or worse depending...
I hesitate to say "worst band". As has been said, even good bands can have bad days. So I'll say worst performances. I've been going to concerts for over 45 years and I've heard a lot of good and some bad too. I've only walked out of two shows before they were done. Robin Trower back around '75 or '76. He was so stoned I could see the red glow from under his eyelids from 100 feet away. Very lackluster performance. His opener (Starcastle) on the other hand, was GREAT! The other concert I walked on was Jethro Tull in I think 1998. I'm a big fan of Tull but just could not get past the horrible mix coming out of the PA. I couldn't tell you if the performance was bad or not because I couldn't hear it. The opener at this show (ELP) sounded and performed GREAT! It was an outdoor show with separate stages/sound systems so I'd say this was mostly on their engineer. I was also not impressed by their decision to stop in the middle, drag out ratty furniture, and do acoustic versions of the guitarists solo album.
Yup. I saw them during their height of popularity (terrible) and again last summer (still terrible). It was like watching a bad cover band play their songs. Just goes to show how far a few hit singles will get you.
Holy Diver
Commercial User
- Aug 14, 2018
- 120
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- Disclosures
- I was endorsed by Gallien Krueger and ESP in 2002 but am no longer on either company’s roster.
Most of mine were local openers for us. When Soilent Green had a wreck and had to drop off our tour with GWAR midway through, we became direct support and most of the remaining shows had a local opener which almost always sucked. I don’t remember the names of any of them, like the black metal band (with the obligatory pasty white chick playing keyboards and “singing” clean vocals) that opened the show in Scranton. Picture Cradle Of Filth trying to play a set while high on cough syrup and you’ve got the idea.
One band of notable local yokels that I do remember the names of were a Springfield IL band called Hate.Gone; the girl singing looked like the poster child for inbreeding and sounded like Yoko Ono on helium, and the rest of the band spent the bulk of their aeons-long set playing the traditional Chinese standard, “Too Ning.” Abysmal. My first high school garage band sounded better than them, and that’s a bold statement.
Another was Ordained, out of Louisville KY. Their cheesy DIY pyro wasn’t quite enough to counteract the singer’s 1/8th octave range or the band’s utter inability to lock in with each other. Nice guys though, if you ignored the fact that the gui****** smelled like a cat peed in his hair.
As for bands you may have heard of, we did a one-off show in Lawrence KS with Nothingface and a Miami band called Endo. Nothingface was great. Endo must have been named for the weed they smoked right before they went on, because they sounded like Outdo’. And I saw Dope play a now-defunct club in Nashville about 2005-ish. It was a small crowd, and Edsel was obviously in an “I-don’t-give-ten-@##&s-about-this-gig” mood. They were passing an industrial-size bottle of Jager around and were all nicely pickled by mid-set. I was guest-listed by the promoter and still felt cheated.
The preceding is only what readily springs to mind. I’m sure I’ll remember more later.
One band of notable local yokels that I do remember the names of were a Springfield IL band called Hate.Gone; the girl singing looked like the poster child for inbreeding and sounded like Yoko Ono on helium, and the rest of the band spent the bulk of their aeons-long set playing the traditional Chinese standard, “Too Ning.” Abysmal. My first high school garage band sounded better than them, and that’s a bold statement.
Another was Ordained, out of Louisville KY. Their cheesy DIY pyro wasn’t quite enough to counteract the singer’s 1/8th octave range or the band’s utter inability to lock in with each other. Nice guys though, if you ignored the fact that the gui****** smelled like a cat peed in his hair.
As for bands you may have heard of, we did a one-off show in Lawrence KS with Nothingface and a Miami band called Endo. Nothingface was great. Endo must have been named for the weed they smoked right before they went on, because they sounded like Outdo’. And I saw Dope play a now-defunct club in Nashville about 2005-ish. It was a small crowd, and Edsel was obviously in an “I-don’t-give-ten-@##&s-about-this-gig” mood. They were passing an industrial-size bottle of Jager around and were all nicely pickled by mid-set. I was guest-listed by the promoter and still felt cheated.
The preceding is only what readily springs to mind. I’m sure I’ll remember more later.
I used to go to a $.98 night at a local club. $0.98 at the door, $0.98 per beer.
For $3 I saw some incredibly bad bands. But I had a lot of fun.
edg
For $3 I saw some incredibly bad bands. But I had a lot of fun.
edg
Jethro Till, late '90s? About when I saw them (in England)... Abysmal sound, far too loud. A shame, as the only time I got to see them live and I've always worshipped the ground they walk on. Martin Alcock was on guitar posturing and Ian Anderson was getting more than a tad irritated: I was guessing that his was the only ego allowed on stage.
We used to use Dave Pegg's (Tull bassist) studio when making albums and had some nice chats: Anderson sounded a control freak as Pegg apparently had to learn the bass parts he was given. We also used Tull's engineer which saved a lot of time as he used to spot minute tuning issues, etc.
Used to use Pegg's double bass as it was much better than mine... It was reassuring to see he had chalk lines on his too as ''fret' markers.
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