Who do you wish you had not seen play live ?

[stratamania]

There is a who do you wish you had seen play live thread so this one is who did you see that you wish you hadn't.

I will start...

The Damned, got dragged along to it as someone had a spare ticket. It was to me painful on the ears. Still it was the height of the punk era.

 

[bagman67]

The Cars, Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas, 1984, on the "Heartbeat City" tour.  Wang Chung  opened.  Most tedious show I ever saw.  All the hits!  None of the charisma!  Wang Chung came out and knocked themselves out, but of course only had one hit so the bulk of their set was kind of wasted on the crowd; and then the Cars came out and basically sleepwalked through their set.  Boooooring.  They seemed like they'd have rather been anywhere but on stage.

 

[Cagey]

Some bands are like that. I've seen Trower 3 times, and it was always the same. Basically, if you had a huge sound system at home, it was the same thing. No stage presence, no "act", every tune was played perfectly. Essentially a non-event, unless you counted listening to what was essentially a CD through a 20,000 watt sound system.

 

[SustainerPlayer]

Frankie Goes To Hollywwod - sometimes back in the 80'es. Almost a non-concert.

Scorpions (maybe the worst show I ever saw), Spin Doctors (just after their guitarist left), Carlos Santana (he had a very bad day).

 

[AutoBat]

P.O.D. & Meshuggah.

P.O.D. was one turd in a sea of gold during Ozzfest '99
Meshuggah opened for TOOL sometime around 2002.  I would've preferred interpretive dance by mimes and a rectal exam.

 

[crash]

Some bands are like that. I've seen Trower 3 times, and it was always the same. Basically, if you had a huge sound system at home, it was the same thing. No stage presence, no "act", every tune was played perfectly. Essentially a non-event, unless you counted listening to what was essentially a CD through a 20,000 watt sound system.

You gotta see Trower live just for the faces he makes!

 

[Cagey]

Hehe! Yeah, he's got quite a repertoire there <grin>

 

[swarfrat]

White Lion?Great White? Sorry  that was in bad taste. I've had to watch the video a couple times in training over the years. The fear is palpable.

 

[stratamania]

Totally off topic but you never know where a thread might go...

Did anyone see this ?

http://youtu.be/teAUvTgQ2XQ

 

[bagman67]

White Lion? Sorry  that was in bad taste. I've had to watch the video a couple times in training over the years. The fear is palpable.

Are you thinking of Great White?

 

[whitebison66]

I saw the same Cars/Wang Chung bill in Norfolk VA in 1984, and it probably sits at or near the top of the list. My clearest memory is that Ric Ocasek never said a single word to the crowd, second clearest being that the sound was a mess.

Bon Jovi opening for The Scorpions in 1984.

Orion the Hunter opening for Aerosmith 1984.

Bachman Turner Overweight opening for Van Halen in 1986, but then again VH always seemed to have awful openers. I can't remember 1982, but 1984 was Autograph pre-record deal.

Dokken opening for Aerosmith 1987.

1989, The Who @ Foxboro. I just felt like they were going through the motions. I actually left before "Won't Get Fooled Again" because I didn't want to hear them do it.

I saw a passel of 2nd and 3rd-tier metal bands back in the 80s that I could have done without: Malice, Lizzie Borden, Hurricane... But I guess I can say I saw King Kobra when the singer was a man.

I saw Yngwie-era Alcatrazz but would gladly trade it for Vai-era.

 

[swarfrat]

Are you thinking of Great White?

Yes, my bad.  Totally goofed on that one.

 

[Cagey]

@ Whitebison...

Notice a common theme there? Opening act.

I've also noticed a lot of opening bands sounding like shitonashingle, and have often thought that whoever was running the boards was being deliberately unprofessional in how they handled them. I mean, the band may have their own amps on stage, but it's the same PA system, so WTF? How can it be so bad? All the PA is supposed to do is reproduce the stage at a high enough volume to fill a large space, so how can the warm-up sound terrible but the headliner sound great? The audience isn't really hearing the stage, we're hearing the PA.

But, I've also sometimes had the thought that they choose opening bands to create anticipation, in that they're so bad you can't wait for the headliner. Seems counter-productive, because good music will sell while bad music goes in the bit bucket. But, then, labels aren't interested in selling concerts, they're interested in selling recordings. Not much of a business these days, but they brought it on themselves by trying to rape the bands and their fans simultaneously.

 

[stubhead]

Bachman Turner Overweight opening for Van Halen in 1986, but then again VH always seemed to have awful openers.

There's quite a long list of ridiculous & horrible things that headlining bands have done to their openers to ensure that they can't be blown off the stage. Some of it can barely slide into the category of "Good-natured Rookie Hazing" - like, the openers do their final tune-up, the headliners say
    "C'mere! C'mer! Quick!  - how 'bout a little bump for the show?"
Opening band sets down their instruments (bad idea), runs back and snorts some quite generous & hefty lines of baby laxative, maybe cut with a little cocaine. Lights go down, opening band grab guitars, run out plug in, and hit the opening "chord" of their first song - and somebody has totally dicked up the tuning, on each & every string on each & every instrument. Only the drummer is in tune... :toothy12:

That's the kind stuff. It's customary for the headliner's sound man to do the entire show,  and he can turn up the drum mikes during the guitar solos, turn a few vocal mikes on and off sort-of randomly, leave the vocal mikes on and hang enough chorus & pitch shift on the lead singer to make him sound like triplet Shirley Temple's bad PCP trip - being run down by a road grader. And still the important Q: Do you run offstage in shifts, just try and hold on, or simply poop your pants?

But as kind and generous the Van Halen boys were, I'm sure they'd never do anything wrong.

The single most awful thing I saw was "legendary" Roy Buchanan, he was so drunk that when he popped a string, he was too drunk to find the hole on his Telecaster where the new string was supposed to go... finally a roadie came out and changed his string for him. The point that went beyond tragic into the "God's a little scamp, ain't he?" category  was that the opening band was Shakti, John McLaughlin's acoustic Indian "world music" band (there wasn't world music till he invented it, pretty much).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGW4nrsZJ3o

A farce only equaled by the 1967 Monkees tour - Hendrix was the opener.  :cool01: McLaughlin's earlier band, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, was famous for munching headliners too. They got hired to open for Frank Zappa. First night, Mahavishnu opened. Second night Mahavisnu opened, and Zappa refused to play. Third night onwards, Zappa opened for Mahavisnu....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD36-Zn2bA4

 

[Updown]

I've also noticed a lot of opening bands sounding like shitonashingle,
and have often thought that whoever was running the boards was being deliberately unprofessional in how they handled them.

Maybe the main sound tech was having his last day ......  :laughing7:

Well thats how it sounded at a 'Tears For Fears' concert I went too .......  :sad:

 

[Cagey]

Hehe! Good ol' Gary Larson. Guy has an incredible sense of humor.

 

[swarfrat]

After the big hoopla broke in the late 80's /early 90's about bands using canned music in their shows, Arsenio Hall had a 'no prerecorded music' rule. The pop one hit duo 'Boy Meets Girl' came on the show (pre autotune), and absolutely died on stage. Forget about waiting for a star to fall, I was waiting for a gong to ring. Please, have some mercy and cut to commercial, or something/ Don't just let em suffer in front of the cameras.

 

[Cagey]

Yeah, people are more sophisticated and well-educated these days, and you're not allowed to do that.

Time was, a lot of broadcast acts were mimed. You look at some old-time videos of famous bands on variety shows, and a lot of the time you could see the instruments weren't even miked or plugged in, so if you you knew how things worked, you knew everybody was play-acting. But, few people knew any details about how things worked, so they could pull it off. Today? Not so much.

 

[Ddbltrbl]

There have been several that were less than stellar performances, including a tired out ZZ Top at the 1st show of the last leg of their Afterburner Tour (Feb 1st 1987) , in the horrible acoustics of the Budokan. I've seen them many times, most of them really good, but this was definitely a low spot for them.

I saw Santana in Yokohama July 27th 2005. His playing was OK, but most of the show he spent pushing various guest players like Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter to the forefront and focusing on jazz jams to highlight their playing. No knock on Herbie or Wayne who are both great, but it just didn't jell for me that night. It was generally pretty depressing since it was billed in Japan as "Santana" and we hardly got to hear him to anything.

I like Tommy Bolin, but Deep Purple MK4 was pretty bad! I saw them March 2nd 1976 at the Salt Palace; their next to the last show ever in the US! The opening act was an unknown band that simply rocked the house (more on this later). They were followed by Rare Earth, who were fairly good, though this was not one of the best shows I saw from them.

Then DP MK4 was delayed coming on stage for what seemed and eternity! What we were told was that the infamous big rigs with all of DP's equipment hadn't arrived so they wound up forced to use Rare Earth's equipment! The sound was terrible and the chemistry even worse! Bolin got so frustrated at one point he zinged his slide through one of the speaker cabinets! After about 3 songs they were basically boo'd  off stage.

This was still one of the best shows, because of that unknown opening band! They weren't on the bill, and none of my friends caught the bands name at the time. They only did a 3 song set, that none of us had ever heard before. But, they had an really powerful, unique, driving sound! In late August of that summer I heard what I thought was that same band, with that same unique sound on the radio! Then a couple of days later, a friend that was at the concert with me called me up talking about hearing the same band on the radio too. The song we both heard was "More Than a Feeling!" I can't prove it, but my friends and I are all convinced that we heard Boston that night in '76 before they released their album later that year. One of the other songs they played I am certain was "Rock and Roll Band"! I heard later that they did do a few test runs like that to see if they sounded as good live as they did in Scholz's basement, but again I can't prove any of it! But, man it was a great sound who ever it was, and a tough act for Rare Earth or DP MK4 to follow!

But of all of them, Van Halen was the absolute worst! The show was the 1984 Tour, the March 13th show in Rosemont, Illinois and they sucked! Eddie was asleep, Alex was pissed (in both the British and American definitions of the term); probably at David. And, David Lee was drunk and looking for someone to share his misery with! He couldn't get the words to the songs out, repeated parts of verses, and stopped at least 3 songs in the middle to share some jewel of wisdom with the audience. Seriously, he talked to the audience more than he sang! The only one playing worth a damn that night was Michael Anthony! In the end, it was a freakin horrible concert!
:guitarplayer2:

 

[whitebison66]

I admit, some of it may be opener-itis, though I've also seen a fair bunch of bands eat the headliners for lunch. As odd as this may sound, Loverboy was actually a rock band in 1981 and kicked Journey all over their own stage.

Even some openers who didn't go over well with the crowd (i.e. pretty much all of them) were impressive to me; Fastway, Love/Hate, Faster Pussycat, Loudness, Kim Mitchell, Enuff Znuff, Gary Moore, Sammy Hagar, Motorhead...


Good lord, the more I write the older I feel.