I have to say that I've never attended a concert I didn't love. I guess that's because I'm VERY choosy about who I go see and spend my money on.

JohnCragg said:

Without a doubt, CEE LO GREEN May 30th last year at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. £120 ($159) for two tickets.

Took around 20 seconds to ascertain the fact that there was no band, just a girl on a laptop providing the backing tracks and some guy in a suit and gold shoes, dancing around whilst pretending to play sax.

I knew we were in trouble when 'Crazy' and 'Forget You' had been dispensed with in first 20 minutes...At around the 50 minute Mark, Green fucked off backstage while the asshat pretending to play the saxophone pretended to play some songs like 'Careless Whisper', for ten minutes.

Cee Lo back on , played a couple more songs, was presented with a birthday cake, then left for good. Show over after just over an hour. 120 quid jizzed up a wall for what was a basically a club PA set

The final disappointment: as an increasingly sweaty Cee Lo hurried through his songs, the venue began to smell distinctly musty. It's pure conjecture on my part, but I wouldnt be surprised if his pre-gig rider consisted of a slap-up salmon dinner.

CRAZY.

2045RadicalMattZ said:

JohnCragg said:

Without a doubt, CEE LO GREEN May 30th last year at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. £120 ($159) for two tickets.

Took around 20 seconds to ascertain the fact that there was no band, just a girl on a laptop providing the backing tracks and some guy in a suit and gold shoes, dancing around whilst pretending to play sax.

I knew we were in trouble when 'Crazy' and 'Forget You' had been dispensed with in first 20 minutes...At around the 50 minute Mark, Green fucked off backstage while the asshat pretending to play the saxophone pretended to play some songs like 'Careless Whisper', for ten minutes.

Cee Lo back on , played a couple more songs, was presented with a birthday cake, then left for good. Show over after just over an hour. 120 quid jizzed up a wall for what was a basically a club PA set

The final disappointment: as an increasingly sweaty Cee Lo hurried through his songs, the venue began to smell distinctly musty. It's pure conjecture on my part, but I wouldnt be surprised if his pre-gig rider consisted of a slap-up salmon dinner.

CRAZY.

I like what you did there great work!

Empress said:

I have to say that I've never attended a concert I didn't love. I guess that's because I'm VERY choosy about who I go see and spend my money on.

That's not the point. Things happen if you attend enough shows. Like my first response... one of the LOTUSFLOW3R concerts I went to (first show at 8, Prince did 3 that night, plus after parties)....the sound was terrible. But I won't put it down to him. He still did alright, but it was nothing compared to the other 12 gigs I'd seen of him. (live)

I've even heard of bad shows from older friends who attended em: David Bowie (Glass Spider tour), Chaka Khan (in her prime, but very fucked up and jet lagged playing another show the next day),


..the only one that consistenly gets crapped on is the ISLEY BROTHERS, who I've heard are terrible live. THAT would qualify as a "do your research".

ALso we can't forget Sharon (Bitch) Osborne pulling the plug on IRON MAIDEN playing live.

The only other time I'd heard of crap like that was from Steven Tyler who'd pull similar stunts if he felt threatened (band quoted as having this done to them until their roadie made false plugs set up: KANSAS)

Just sayin... Gigs can go bad for any number of reasons. I loathe Jason Aldean's brand of FAKE ASS COUNTRY as much as the next real music fan, but.....look what happened there!... Curtis Mayfield, Johnny Guitar Watson, Nick Menza, ..... the list goes on and on.... Or the time BLACK SABBATH played two songs in Milwaukee....and some asshole hurled a bottle at Geezer Butler, knocking him out.....

Stuff like that really happens. Sometimes it's simply the artist being fucked up, more or less now it's the singer not even singing....(Mariah, I'm talking about you)

Empress said:

I have to say that I've never attended a concert I didn't love. I guess that's because I'm VERY choosy about who I go see and spend my money on.

Sometimes it's not the band but other factors... Spent an Oasis gig trying to avoid flying plastic cups of piss as they sailed gracefully overhead in 2005...had a miserable time watching Elton John, freezing my ass off, soaked by an icy cold rainstorm in June (though admittedly, better than pee)

@2045RadicalMattZ: I don't remember hearing many stories about bad performances by The Isley Brothers. The few clips from live performances in the 70's that I have seen on YT were great actually.

-----------

My most disappointing gig was likely a Prince concert in 1990 in Rotterdam. It wasn't necessarily a bad concert, but circumstances made it a bad experience.

I had convinced a friend to come with me to witness the greatness of Prince in concert. But we could't get decent tickets unfortunately, eventhough I was at the ticket office really early the day ticket sales began.

When we arrived at the stadium scalpers were selling much better tickets for 15 guilders, while we had payed something like 50 guilders for shitty tickets way up high at the back of the stadium. But we didn't carry enough money with us to be able to afford an upgrade. So we went inside and got to our shitty seats.

Then the music started playing but we couldn't see anything on stage as we were at the back of the stadium. In the meantime wind had picked up which had a bad impact on the sound quality, a lot of the times we could only hear the boom of the bass and then suddenly when the wind turned you could actually hear the music again, as the high and mid frequencies returned to our direction. Then it started to rain...

There were some video screens next to the stage, but they were small and after about two or three songs in my mate suddenly asks me: "Has the band started already or are they just playing video clips?"

It really started pouring and we were totally unprepared for bad weather. I think we didn't even had coats with us. Around us smart people covered themselves with large sheets of see through plastic and continued to party like it was 1999. We were grinding our teeth for being so stupid not to bring anything for possible bad weather. Bu we decided to put on a brave face and kept on dancing while the band was going through some uptempo material. But we got wetter and wetter and the wind was hurling and distorting the sound quality.

Then Prince started to play a slow jam and we decided to sit down. Unfortunately we hadn't checked our chairs first or we would have noticed the ridiculous design of them: the seat had something like a bowl shaped pit in the middle, which had filled up completely with rain water while we had been standing and dancing. Now that we sat down in it we were also completely soaked in the crotch/bum area, which certainly didn't help us enjoying the event.

Then -after only 50 minutes or so- the show suddenly stopped and got cancelled as the rain had apparently covered the stage in water and the equipment had become wet as well, which was a potential danger to Prince and the band. The disappointed audience then began singing: "Hij is een hondelul", which means something like "He is a dog's dick". We all walked out the stadium in a sour mood.

So while it wasn't neccesarily Prince's fault at all, it still made for a shitty experiencce...

[Edited 10/3/17 13:28pm]

[Edited 10/3/17 14:09pm]

JohnCragg said:

Empress said:

I have to say that I've never attended a concert I didn't love. I guess that's because I'm VERY choosy about who I go see and spend my money on.

Sometimes it's not the band but other factors... Spent an Oasis gig trying to avoid flying plastic cups of piss as they sailed gracefully overhead in 2005...had a miserable time watching Elton John, freezing my ass off, soaked by an icy cold rainstorm in June (though admittedly, better than pee)

That is awful!!!

funkaholic1972 said:

funkaholic1972 said:

JohnCragg said:

Empress said:

I have to say that I've never attended a concert I didn't love. I guess that's because I'm VERY choosy about who I go see and spend my money on.

Sometimes it's not the band but other factors... Spent an Oasis gig trying to avoid flying plastic cups of piss as they sailed gracefully overhead in 2005...had a miserable time watching Elton John, freezing my ass off, soaked by an icy cold rainstorm in June (though admittedly, better than pee)

Yup...I cant think of a bad show that I ever went to...but I do remember seeing Prince at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, October 1997 or 1998 (?). WORST SHOW EVER, simply because it was soooooo cold. Ive never been so cold in my life! No lie! I dont think my wife has forgiven me yet!

funkaholic1972 said:

JohnCragg said:

Sometimes it's not the band but other factors... Spent an Oasis gig trying to avoid flying plastic cups of piss as they sailed gracefully overhead in 2005...had a miserable time watching Elton John, freezing my ass off, soaked by an icy cold rainstorm in June (though admittedly, better than pee)

That is awful!!!

That's standard rock concert behaviour (at least here in the UK). I saw the Foo Fighters at the O2 Arena couple of weeks ago and when the heavy songs got going and the moshing started many a cup of mysterious liquid went flying.

General rule ... a cup of 'something' comes your way, if its cold you're ok, if its warm you're in trouble

Reminds me of when we saw Foos at Milton Keynes Bowl, I think it was 2011. Was a hot day and most fans had gotten there early, so by the time the Foos were halfway through their set a few folks had had quite a bit to drink. Dave came to the end of the runway to do his acoustic version of Wheels ... the girl to my left suddenly started screaming at the guy behind her. He was trying to pee in to an empty beer cup but was so drunk he missed and was peeing all down the back of her bare legs and shorts. Wasn't pretty!!

@funkaholic 1972

Well... the ISLEY BROTHERS story came by way of my old percussion player (he just turned "21" HEAVY QUOTATIONS.... I think it was actually 60 or 61.)

He said he'd seen them several times in the 1970s. The sound was bad, and so were the performances according to him.

He's a dude that cut his teeth on soul records, but in the 70's transitioned to Lenny White, Patrice Rushen, Jean-Luc Ponty stuff and Return to Forever, etc... but he also kept his soul roots and caught Gil Scott Heron and the Midnight Band several times.

He's also the one who says he saw Chaka and Rufus come into town, and the band was all fucked up.

So...I can't vouch for it.

Love this thread... looking forward to the responses.

I'd befriended a meat head who told me that back in the day he and his friends (admittedly a crazy guy even then) went to a METALLICA gig but were on the balcony... they proceeded to break up the seats and throw them down below.

Imagine that shit? F***ing Stupidity. I'd heard of piss cups flying, but figured anyone seen throwing one would surely get their ass kicked. I Guess not. :-/

Perhaps this may surprise some folks but my most disappointing concert was Joni Mitchell during her Court and Spark tour in the 70s. That album really broke her big-time with a mainstream audience (sort of like Prince with PR but not to that extent). She apparently was bored with the album, it's hits ,and the accompanying arena tour. She sang in such a disinterested way that it prompted thousands of early walk-outs. I was tempted to do so, but I love Joni and was hoping for something to feel but it never happened. I do know that she can be good in concert, but this didn't happen at this concert. In retrospect, I realize that she was such an artist she probably hated to be confined to the mainstream. She never really courted top 40 radio again.

laurarichardson said:

phunkdaddy said:

laurarichardson said: Probably from a fan's standpoint but from his peers very much the opposite. Smokey is a living history book.

I am discussing his public visabilty and the fact that when ever Motown is discussed or old Motown artist are interviewed he is not involved or interviewed.