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Worst Live Performance?

#101
The B-52's at Clemson U, although it was not their fault. The concert was at the baseball park, it rained off and on the entire concert and the power kept crapping out. This was probably in the late 80s, around the time "Good Stuff" was released.

Funny thing is, years later Parade Magazine had one of those fluff articles where they asked about 6 bands what they remembered as their worst show. The B-52s were one of the six and, you guessed it, they tagged that Clemson show as their worst experience.
 
#102
Protest The Hero - Warped Tour in Kansas City. This wasn't their fault, it's just that Warped sucks. It's hot, all day, every day, AND they were playing on a side stage while a few other nondeserving bands got to play on the main stages. They were apathetic and pretty much **** out their performance to GTFO and get back in the tour van.

I saw them again at The Granada in Lawrence, KS with Unearth headlining. AWESOME show! :hyper: Got a chance to hang out with bassist Arif and vocalist Rody after the show. Really cool guys, about my age too so we all had a good time.
 
#103
Aerosmith in Billings MT 1977 IIRC. At that time the band was a bunch of drug addicts. Joe Perry could barely stand up and Steven Tyler singing was terrible. On the other hand the opening act was a band me and my friends had never heard of. They kicked ass and got called back for 2 encores. It was AC/DC with the original singer Bon Scott.
 
#104
Robin Trower, and it was his fault entirely. Nothing wrong with his playing, he was just too freakin' loud! The show was in a pretty good size club. Before the show, we were having to talk really loudly across the table to hear ourselves over the DJ. Right before Trower came on a roadie stepped out and hit a G chord on Trower's strat. It melted our faces off!. The whole show, Trower overpowered the PA and nothing else could be heard above him. We had cigarette filters in our ears so we could remain in the building.
 
#105
The worst act I've seen is a tie. Both at the Fort Wayne Memorial Coliseum in the 90's. The first show I ever went to was a 7Mary3 show (anyone remember them?)...I was 15. The lead singer was pissed that they didn't fill the venue and acted like a twit the entire show because his ego was hurt. I did discover Poe because of that show so not all was lost. The other band was when I saw 3 Doors Down open for someone (what was with all the bands with numbers in their names?)...no energy and the singer acted like he just woke up. Sevendust came on after them and made everything better.

The worst crowd had to be for a local radio all-star show in '97. The Foo Fighters were playing and they're who I really wanted to see. First, some guy in the front row must have been getting too physical with one of the female attendees because Grohl stopped in the middle of the song and really laid into the guy. I mean, he *really* lays into him. That didn't deter him though. 3 minutes later Grohl stops again, the entire band looks like they're about to jump in and kick this guy out themselves, and they wait until security takes him out. 2 or 3 songs after that episode the guitarist gets hit in the head with a shoe, they call it quits, and Fort Wayne never sees the Foo Fighters again.
 
#106
Ricky Lee Jones at Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley, (my wife insisted on this show - I wouldn't have gone with a free ticket.) Jones babbled incessantly between songs, played a bunch of vapid tunes I had never heard or would ever have wanted to, and had to have her lead guitarist help her tune her own guitar at least 3 times. ...Probably the least professional performance I have ever seen. (And I saw Chuck Berry in the '70's.)

The kicker is, even my wife was ready to leave by about 30 minutes into the show.
 
#107
i_got_a_mohawk said:
I've seen flogging molly a fair few times, and on at least 3 of those occasions, the bass player has passed me a tinnie of Guinness. Bass player equivilant of the spidey sense? :bassist:

They have always kicked ass when I've seen them.


Worst band, without a doubt has to be Rancid. I used to be a huge Rancid fan, certainly one of the reasons I wanted to start playing bass 9-10 years back. Saw them in 2003, and they were just terrible.

I've heard high school bands sounding much tighter than that. All the support bands just blew them out the water.
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I certainly agree that Flogging Molly is amazing live, although the only time I've seen them was on New Year's Eve a couple years back....which meant that almost the entire crowd could barely even stand up. They were selling $2 Guiness and $3 shots of Jameson the whole show :rollno:

Unlike you, I thought Rancid was actually pretty decent when I saw them two summers ago, but the fact that the show was at Red Rocks helped I'm sure. They weren't really anything special, but they certainly didn't suck (and Matt Freeman's bass solo killed!). They were opening for Rise Against though, who absolutely blew them, and just about every other live band I've seen, out of the water.
 
#108
Saw Queens of the Stone Age open for NIN.. and I STILL cant get the Hour of my life back!!!... They all played their songs VERY WELL, unfortunately, NOBODY in the band was playing the same song at the same time!!!!:rollno:
 
#109
Led Zeppeling at Cobo Arena in Detroit for the "House Of The Holy" tour. I LOVE Led Zep, but what I saw and heard on that stage was nothing more than drunken slop from all of them. We all have off nights but this was about as un-proffesional as you can get. I left about halfway thru the show because I was so upset with what I heard. Turns out that some people who I met years later were at that same show and they told me that they even left early because it was so bad.

Then I heard the live DVD that came out a few years ago and all I could say was "why wasn't I at one of THOSE shows?"
 
#110
The very worst for me was Weezer, they were having guitar problems and were switching insruments between every song, for the type of music they play they were very boring and uninteresting to watch on stage.

A close second would be a toss up between The Smashing Pumpkins or Cheap Trick, both were painfully loud.
 
#113
One of my favorite bands-The Foo Fighters in Dallas a few years ago, I could not believe they sounded so bad, then I saw them on a PBS show and they sucked again!!! Both shows seemed like they were stoned. What a shame.
 
#114
R D Maynard said:
Ricky Lee Jones at Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley, (my wife insisted on this show - I wouldn't have gone with a free ticket.) Jones babbled incessantly between songs, played a bunch of vapid tunes I had never heard or would ever have wanted to, and had to have her lead guitarist help her tune her own guitar at least 3 times. ...Probably the least professional performance I have ever seen. (And I saw Chuck Berry in the '70's.)

The kicker is, even my wife was ready to leave by about 30 minutes into the show.
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Ha! I hear you. Chuck Berry might have been the worst I've seen. The good thing was that it was at a multi-stage festival, so there were plenty of other acts to make up for it. But my drummer kept bugging me, "Let's go see Chuck Berry!" After saying "No", several times, I finally relented. He was awful that night.

The next day, a reviewer in the newspaper made this dead-on comment: "Chuck Berry is the only guitarist alive who cannot play 'Chuck Berry' licks..."
 
#115
xgator4u said:
Aerosmith.

I've seen them 3 times, they sucked 3 times.

I don't believe Mr. Tyler and his numerous claims/attempts at sobriety, when he can't even remember the words to songs like Dream On.

Absolute crap. I assure you I will not go see them again, not even for free.


Obviously this is IMHO
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+1

I always thought they were overrated. Even with their $ success, they come off like a band of wanna bee's.
 
#116
The worst live performance that ive seen (well prolly not the worst) was the one my band I used to be in put on. It wasnt are fault. The venue we played at sucked for a setup. No one was running through the PA system (except for vocals) so there were no monitors. The speakers for the PA system were on the roof above the stage so I couldnt hear what the singer was singing. There wasnt a sound guy there so it was just us equaling out the sound which didnt go over well.

My amp was on the right side of the drummer and so was the lead guitarists amp and the rythme guitarists amp was on the left side of the drummer so i couldnt hear anything the rythme guitarist was playing. So when the lead guitarist was soloing me and the rythme guitarist were looking at each others hands to make sure we were both on time.

My friend recorded it all on video and I was dying to see it. Surprisingly enough we never really got off timing it was all pretty much perfect. The only thing was is that my amp was so loud during the guitar solos you couldnt hear the rythme guitarist. We played a couple Ac/Dc covers so during the solos all you could hear was the bass pumping root notes and the drums and the lead guitarist.

When we played Orion by metallica the rythme guitarist and lead guitarist would switch on the solos. So when the guy that normally played rythme played the 2nd guitar solo in orion you could not hear him at all. It was pretty funny to watch on the video cause he was getting all into the solo but you couldnt hear him at all. We messed with him about that forever at band practices.

*Edit I saw Ac/Dc live in 2009 for the black ice tour in Chicago at the allstate arena, the 2nd show of the whole tour they played. I must say it was the best show by a band Ive ever seen. I also seen Zz top they sounded good (Didnt play very loud) but it was just kinda of boring to watch because they just stand there.
 
#117
after thinking about this one for a while i've managed to narrow it down to two..

mushroomhead at mayhem festival 09 - seriously, does ANYONE like mushroomhead? they were the first band on the main stage and they totally killed the crowd until slayer came on a couple hours later.

bigelf - saw them opening for porcupine tree a couple months ago. i was really digging their stuff, but they were so loud that we were all plugging our ears. after a few songs the lead singer says "is it too loud?" (sidenote: how awful of a soundguy do you have to be to not realize something is off when literally half the crowd in a 500 seat venue is plugging their ears?) they turn down the vocals a tad and everyone continues to have their hearing blown out by the time porcupine tree starts playing. thankfully they were amazing.
 
#119
about twenty years ago I saw a concert that just sucked -- the Jan Hammer/Tony Williams band in Boston. They had Fernando Saunders on bass and a well-known rock studio guy (used to play for David Bowie) who's name escapes me at the moment.

It was dreadful.....the band was woefully under-prepared, stupid little 3 chord jams, and the worst.....Hammer cavorting around in front of the band with a Keytar and cheesy synth sounds, acting like a 14 year old rock-star wannabe. Absolutely horrible....and to make matters worse, they were opening for the John McLaughlin trio with Trilok Gurtu, who came on later and just blew everybody away.

Some friends of mine produced the show and told me later that the Hammer/Williams part of the tour had been cancelled after about 7 dates because the word got around about how bad the band was.

Still have a bad tast in my mouth from that one...

bigtiny
 

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