Worst Live Act (Pushing it a bit too far)

[prowla]

15 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

The Exploited 1994 F**k Reading Festival, Brixton Academy. Worst sound I've ever heard at a gig. Far too loud, everything just sounded like an horrendously loud thud. Not sure what they were hearing on stage.

I saw Marilyn Manson at Brixton - the sound was so bad I couldn't even make out what the music beiong played over the PA was before the bands came on.

[prowla]

Linkin Park at the O2 - they were so far away and didn't have screens to watch and the sound wasn't working to the upper tiers where I was;it was an unpleasant waste of time going.

[Steve Browning]

Two spring to mind.

 

National Health (sorry Neil) supporting Steve Hillage at Lancaster University (1978, I think). I was bored sh1tless.

 

Meat Loaf (mid 80's maybe). Every announcement oozed insincerity. Not a fan to begin with tbh. Rock music written by someone who doesn't know what rock music is.

 

Honorary mention to Supertramp. Not quite as boring as National Health but I'm not a fan of 'characters' and James Helliwell fancies himself as a character. Tw@t.

[Rosie C]

1 hour ago, Cat Burrito said:

I have seen the Mission a few times recently and they completely get the importance of playing the songs people want to here now. Vastly superior to seeing the Sisters of Mercy these days and I never thought I'd say that. I think it helps having Craig and Simon back in the band, 75% of the classic lineup. 

 

That's good to know. Rather depressing, I realise I'm talking about a gig nearly 25 years ago, which was much nearer to the 1980s and singles chart success than now     I'm not sure what the line-up was when we went to see them though.

 

I've never seen the Sisters - I still love Floodland, but in an interview I read way back, Eldritch was very unkind to his goth fan base so I could never bring myself to give him more money (love the art, not the artist dilemma). As an aside it was very strange years later to begin reading Pratchett and find that 'eldritch' is a real word, I'd only heard it used before in the context of Andrew Eldritch.

 

Edited October 7 by Rosie C

[MacDaddy]

55 minutes ago, police squad said:

 

Francis Dunnery recently in Islington. Band wern't very slick as the line up had changed, Chad Wakkerman on drums was good though

 

Has the bassist changed? He's a member here.

[bassbiscuits]

Also Amy Winehouse at V Festival, Staffordshire, in 2009 I think. At the height of her “tabloid fodder” period unfortunately. 
 

Band started up, no sign of Amy for a good ten mins until she stumbled onto the stage. Show was an absolute shambles. 
 

Clearly was in a bad place at the time and sadly it showed. 

[Leonard Smalls]

I remember seeing Mudhoney supported by Hole in 1991... Hole were just appallingly dreadful, it was like they just couldn't play or perhaps had never played together and thought that folks might think they were deep'n'meaningful noiseniks like Sonic Youth.  I also found Ms. Love to be annoying and rather too MeMeME!!! but they most certainly fooled this Melody Maker reviewer! Mudhoney were quite a lot better...

 

[Cliff Edge]

The Band. Reunion tour somewhere in London. Utter shambles. They should have stayed retired.    Tangerine Dream last year in Bexhill. Convinced they were miming the whole show. The light show was good though.    Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, the most god awful racket from a show off guitarist. Had to leave at half time.  Similar issues with Joe Satriani. Way too loud.   The Mavericks back when they had a couple of hits. Shepherds Bush whatever it was called back then. We left before the end. More entertaining bands in the pubs. 

[police squad]

1 hour ago, MacDaddy said:

 

Has the bassist changed? He's a member here.

no same bassist, he's excellent

I went the year before and it was tune after tune, slick as hell.

But this year just was a bit disappointing. I'm a huge It Bites fan too.

Too much waffling between songs, as funny as Frank can be though, I just wanted songs

[christhammer666]

fear factory brixton 98 - burton was clearly miming

cradle of filth LA2 97 (i think) was so bad i actually laughed. was such a mish mash as if every member was playing a different song

machine head brixton 2001 - robb flynn  was trying so hard to be hip hop it was utter cringe

metallica twickenham 2019- was in the middle of james relapse and the whole thing was a dialled in mess. while i sympathise with peoples struggles it was £100 a ticket

[police squad]

also Meet Loaf on his 'farewell tour' as few years ago

His voice was shocking but the backing singer carried him through and the band were on fire. This was at the o2 and the second set was Bat out of hell in its entirity

[lotte]

Ian Brown

I'm pretty sure it was his first tour as a solo artist. I think we'd heard that he could be a bit ropey live but wasn't prepared for just how incredibly bad he was. It actually made me wonder if he had really been the singer on the SR album(s).

[TrevorR]

I’ve been quite lucky with headliners But my four worst bands were all supports…

 

Heavy Pettin’ supporting Magnum in the late 80s. Talk about a mismatch in styles. The lowest grade hair metal. Actively painful on the ears.

 

Speaking of painful on the ears… Dave Hole several times supporting Gary Moore. Australian slide guitarist but his schtick was playing with the slide way up beyond the fretboard creating almost ultrasonic sine wave tones. Once or twice in a set as a bit of stunt guitar would have been fine but every solo on every song! AAAAARGH!!!

 

Primus supporting Rush at Wembley. Was really looking forward to this but it really did sound like a bag of spanner’s being tipped down a stairwell. Went to the bar.

 

The Opposition - a doomy, gloomy goth type band who were second in the bill at Penwith Rocks ‘83. Rest of the lineup was great (Billy Bragg, Porky the Poet (I think), Renaissance, Chuck Berry, Aswad, 10cc, Meatloaf). But The Opposition  were just unutterably dull.

 

And special mention for Brooke Fraser a really great Kiwi singer at The Scala. It looked like she was doing a great show but the sound was so bad that literally all you could hear was a huge bass drum and keyboard sub-bass swelling and booming around the room. Could barely hear any vocals and for all I could tell the guitar player may as well have been miming without his amp turned on. I literally did not hear a note he played all night. Hugely disappointing. 

Edited October 7 by TrevorR

[amnesia]

Guns 'n Roses 2006 aka Axl and friends. Two hours late on stage, acted like a proper primadonna, and who is interested in solos by session musos nobody in the venue had heard of? Left well before the end. 

 

Marylin Manson...maybe 7 or 8 years ago? Pretending to cut himself with 'glass' bottles. Terrible. Apparently he's in a much better place now so its a shame we missed out on tickets for this tour.

[SteveXFR]

The Fall. Mark E Smith could barely stand, wet himself, couldn't sing and detuned the bands instruments as they tried to play. He disappeared after three songs and didn't return. The band were pretty decent without the old alcoholic. 

 

Blur. Glastonbury headline show. Dull. Really dull.

 

Earthtone9. Arctangent Festival this year. After starting 10 minutes late following tinkering with pedals they started playing and the sound was dreadful. The tent emptied fairly quickly. 

[Cosmo Valdemar]

9 hours ago, christhammer666 said:

fear factory brixton 98 - burton was clearly miming

 

I adore Fear Factory but Burton's vocals always left a lot to be desired live... I don't remember any specific issues at this show though. Wasn't this the Halloween Obsolete show? Me and my mates all went in slightly amateur corpse paint and put up with dirty looks in the queue, only to be vindicated when FF came out looking like the Misfits!

 

 

But I digress.

[lurksalot]

Elvis Costello at the Liverpool Philharmonic .

they completely trashed the sound , the audience were shouting at him , he was swearing and shouting back , loads of people walked out , and so would I , but Mrs Lurks knee was playing up and she wouldn’t go in the dark.

loads complained to the venue staff and they said that Costello insisted on using his own sound rig with the main desk on the side of the stage .

An appalling example of a total cock who messed up the sound in one of the best sounding rooms in the country.

he made loads of excuses on the socials , but walked off with everyone’s money , twàt ! 

Edited October 7 by lurksalot

[Jackroadkill]

11 hours ago, Rosie C said:

I've never seen the Sisters - I still love Floodland, but in an interview I read way back, Eldritch was very unkind to his goth fan base so I could never bring myself to give him more money (love the art, not the artist dilemma). As an aside it was very strange years later to begin reading Pratchett and find that 'eldritch' is a real word, I'd only heard it used before in the context of Andrew Eldritch.

 

Exactly, on all counts!

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

11 hours ago, christhammer666 said:

fear factory brixton 98 - burton was clearly miming

cradle of filth LA2 97 (i think) was so bad i actually laughed. was such a mish mash as if every member was playing a different song

machine head brixton 2001 - robb flynn  was trying so hard to be hip hop it was utter cringe

metallica twickenham 2019- was in the middle of james relapse and the whole thing was a dialled in mess. while i sympathise with peoples struggles it was £100 a ticket

Funny thing regarding Metallica . I was a huge fan etc . I did see three play at the o2 on 5he same tour That was good, but if I sneezed I would have fell to my death. It broke records for the most fans in the o2 . . What was memorable was that I moved from Twickenham were I used to live a short while before that tour . A friend of mine got let down and had a spare ticket. He was offfering it for free , but I sensibly declined .  He didn't quite grasp that it would be impossible to get home and was offended 🤦‍♂️

 

As for machine head. When they supported slayer, the security messed up and many of us missed them . I saw them play a blinder that they added to make up for it . I heard a few tracks from a new album at the time in virgin records . Rap?!? Awful! I knew then that they were nothing special and are also rans compared to the hype they had .

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

I missed primus supporting rush apart from the last 2 songs , as some of us went to the bar outside the venue. A couple saw them and thought they were good . 
 

As for meat oaf , he was tragically bad at knebworth in '85. 
He came out aggressive calling us c#nts . Then the mud and p bottles covered the stage ,and deservedly so.

So much so, he fell on his broken leg leaving the stage  ..🙂 A bad day at the office ..

[Stub Mandrel]

On 06/10/2024 at 17:22, MacDaddy said:

Lots of jazz gigs when I was at college, where every single song (all instrumental) had the same format, song tune/solo/song tune/solo etc until everyone in the group had a solo 😖

 

As of yesterday I can confirm they are still doing it. Reminded me why I stopped going to see jazz bands.

 

Best bit was the end when some guy who didn't know Jazz Etiquette started chanting "one more song"... mind you I could have chanted "no more songs MUCH louder".

[Stub Mandrel]

P.S. you are all wrong.

 

The worst gig ever in the history of music was Cornershop supporting Here & Now and Gong.

 

Actually, Here & Now were the tightest prog psychedelic jazz rock I've ever heard. Gong were exactly the same musicians plus Daevid Allen. They were chaotic and random and utterly incredible.

 

The gig would have been sublime, except Cornershop dragged the whole thing down below the level of any performance ever.

[Stub Mandrel]

In case anyone is thinking "Brim full of Asha", this was before then when they sounded like this but with more feedback and less music...

 

 

[Count Bassy]

Bob Dylan at the NEC about 27 years ago. He was just like a parody of himself. Gave the appearance of wishing he was somewhere else, and said about 3 words to the audience all night.

 

It was sh1t.

[wateroftyne]

6 hours ago, Count Bassy said:

Bob Dylan at the NEC about 27 years ago. He was just like a parody of himself. Gave the appearance of wishing he was somewhere else, and said about 3 words to the audience all night.

 

It was sh1t.

Felt the same way when I saw him in Newcastle in 2002. Not even his great band (including Jim Keltner) could save it.