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Most Disappointing Concert Ever?

marshall1987

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With a few exceptions, I avoid going to a concert where the performers are aged 60-70+ y.o. Classic Rock stars who made their mark back in the '70s or early '80s (or God forbid, the '60s). I would prefer to remember them as they were back in their prime; before excessive stardom, drugs, and alcohol took their toll. Luckily, I avoided attending the really bad shows where impaired performers could barely take the stage, let alone sound good. What a rip-off that must have been for the fans.

As of late there are a quite a few aged solo artists and reconstituted bands that have been revived and are playing some good music. In some of these instances they may be in great form.

But paying upwards of $100.00 to $500.00, or more, for a ticket is something I can't stomach. :hmm
 
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Cliff Gress

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I don't know. Saw the Stones in 2015 and I can still remember them like they were in 72 too. No prob.
 

clearmudd

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the Greatfuldead, oakland california late 80's......puke........sorry i just remembered the fowlness.
 

Garincha

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David Bowie in 1990 in Frankfurt, Festhalle, Sound+Vision tour. This was before they overhauled the building and espacially the acoustics. It's still bad today but was much worse then. A complete reflective steel construction with a metal dome on top and no damping whatsoever.

Many bands sucked in that old hall, but Bowie topped them all. It was earbleeding loud (that was before a loudness Limit was set by the authorities years later) and the sound was such a mess, I couldn't tell what Songs he was playing. At that particular evening they had the instruments set up at the side of the stage (including drums) and I couldn't see that side from my seat. So I couldn't even tell which instruments were playing. I couldn't even make out the line-up until I went down to the floor and to the stage after the concert.


As I said, many Groups tanked in the Festhalle, Frankfurt. But one guy always got a good Sound there: Phil Collins. But that was for a reason: The FOH equipment seemed to come out of an expensive recording studio and was certainly smarter (and more expensive) than the usual rig of other artists. That probably helped a lot and then the fact, that he had the best sound-guys in the business.
 

Mr. Papa

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We saw Willie Nelson in 1998 in Salem, Virginia. He talked all of the lyrics and seemed like he could just not give a F.
It's too bad, we love him, still do, but that was the last concert my wife ever freely consented to go to for nearly 15 years, I think he broke her heart.
 

Cogswell

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the Greatfuldead, oakland california late 80's......puke........sorry i just remembered the fowlness.

To be fair, there's probably some deadhead walking around who would swear that was the best concert they've ever attended
lol
 

Ace139

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Re: Most Disappointing Concert Ever?"

U2 - "Met Life Stadium" 2011 "360 Tour". Not the fault of the band - we bought tickets late and literally got the top row in the stadium. Everyone knows that Edge Ises delay - but from where we were there was delay on top of delay on top on delay and the sound was horrible.

Also getting to and from the stadium was a nightmare. NYC Metro traffic at rush hour to get to the show and all the concert traffic on the way home.
 

CDaughtry

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When Lou Reed's "Rock n Roll Animal" came out in the mid 70's, it immediately became my favorite album, and Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner became two of my favorite guitar players.
So when tickets went on sale for Lou Reed in Houston less than a year later, I was thrilled!!!
I got GREAT seats for the show...third or fourth row as I recall.
I show up, a weird intro that sounds vaguely like Sweet Jane starts, the lights go up and I see it is a totally different band. I was crest fallen. They played none of the songs like the record. I later learned that Lou had fired that band because they were taking too much attention away from him.

It took a long time to get over that one.:dang
 

Shakey

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Buddy Guy in 2016, the only gig I've paid to see and walked out of, It was in the symphony hall Birmingham which is one of the best sounding rooms I've ever been in. Buddy's guitar was soo trebbley it was painful to listen too and you couldn't hear a note he played it was just trebley mush, like wah-wah toe down into a hot rod devil with the presence all the way up treble. On top of that buddy just played half a song told a joke then stopped the song it was awful and psychically painful to be in the room with.
 

bern1

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Albert King in the early 80's, Santa Barbara, CA
He came on with the guitar completely out of tune and started telling everybody in the band to tune up to him! Pretty soon nothing is in tune at all and Albert is trying to tune the guitar mid song on just about every song. It was a train wreck and I think everybody was happy when they stopped.
He got a few good bends in though between the tuning sessions. Oh, he also had what looked to be a nice pipe.

I put on his live set from the Stax concert when I want to hear what he was like on a good day.
 

johnnyslim

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Hard to pick one so....

Def Leppard on the Pyromania tour. They were not ready for prime time as a headliner. I walked out in the first five songs. Jon Butcher Axis and Foghat were in support. Leppard was way out matched by both.

Bruce Springsteen. Okay, 23,000 other people really enjoyed it. I just don't dig starting every song with a five minute story. I walked out during an encore after he kept playing Twist and Shout for eight minutes.

A friend (Steve Craw) mentioned this thread to me. I will add Styx to this short list. If you have seen the Behind the Music on Styx they mention the Texas Jam debacle. All true. Cotton Bowl in July is 110 in the sun. It was beer, quayludes, weed and "show us your tits" all day. A line up of Uriah Heep, Triumph, Ted Nugent Sammy Hagar and Styx. Hagar did three encores and brought Nugent out to jam some Zeppelin songs. THEN, for the Styx laser show...no kidding...2 1/2 hours to get dark before Styx took the stage. The Cotton Bowl went from 65,000 to 25,000. It was one mass exodus. Kilroy was the wrong thing to do.
 

Otto 57

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David Bowie, late 80's, Giants Stadium. I don't know what the tour was called but the stage set looked like a giant spider and D.B. sat out on the end of one of these arms and sang into a mic rigged into a telephone. He didn't move from that perch all night. He did not play one song that anyone knew. All of the songs he did sing sucked. Nobody was standing or moving, people snoozed in their seats, it was brutal.

worst mix: The Smithereens opening for The Pretenders at Radio City around '89 or so. Sound was a wall of mush. You could not hear one frequency over another. White Noise.
 

Ed Driscoll

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I'm not sure if I got the concept behind it, or the meaning of the stage set and how the dancers/performance artists were supposed to be interacting with Bowie, but the Glass Spider tour produced a pretty cool concert video that I think I still have on laser disc; it also was Bowie's attempt to rehab Peter Frampton's image as a working guitarist, and not just a bubble-gum rocker. The combination of "Sons of the Silent Age" and "Heroes" was pretty awesome, at least on video:




But yeah, I could see how people in the stadium might well respond "huh??" I know I did at times watching it on video.
 

Wilko

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Glass spider tour was pretty lame from nose-bleed seats at Anaheim stadium. This from wikipedia: "The tour was generally poorly received at the time for being overblown and pretentious."

1987. Early 80s tour that was awesome was the "Serious Moonlight". Saw him do that show at the US Festival in 1983.
 

Ed Driscoll

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Well, that same paragraph in Wikipedia goes on to add:

The tour was generally poorly received at the time for being overblown and pretentious. Despite the criticism, Bowie in 1991 remarked that this tour laid the groundwork for later successful theatrical tours by other artists, and the set's design and the show's integration of music and theatrics has inspired later acts by a variety of artists. Starting in the late 2000s, the tour began to collect accolades for its successes, and in 2010 the tour was named one of the top concert tour designs of all time.

Though hey, it's Wikipedia after all -- come back again in an hour and it could say something entirely different! :laugh2: I found the Glass Spider concept generally overblown and pretentious myself watching the concert video (and missed the non-pretentiousness of the "Serious Moonlight" era), but as those videos above illustrate, there were a few good moments there. And it was fun to see Frampton back onstage, and out of the teenybopper heartthrob mode he was in danger of being stuck in by the late 1970s.
 

Wilko

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Probably much better in a reasonable sized venue. From the huge distance from the stage, it just didn't click. It was good to see bowie and Frampton. Not at all the most disappointing for me. Just not a great show from crappy seats!
 

corpse

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Serious Moonlight was the most fun, perhaps best sounding 1980's show I ever saw. Eardrums left intact- played a ton of his catalog.
 

Otto 57

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I saw the Serious Moonlight tour at the Philly Spectrum, it was the same show they filmed for the Modern Love video. It was a great show.
 

K701

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I went to a gig where they ran out of beer once (at Wembley Arena of all places!). That was very disappointing. Can't remember who the band was.
 
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