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A thread for those of us who never went to the Hacienda, only saw Greenday after American Idiot and missed the Killers playing their student union for £4 in 2003.
Soulwax, maybe it's the fact I don't do drugs, but I somehow feel that no amount of drugs would have helped in a half empty Leadmill on a weeknight.
Kings Of Leon, I'm sure they can be amazing, but it was Reading and I suspect they overdid it the night before and just couldn't be arsed, and the crowd picked up on it and were pretty merciless.
MUSE, somewhere between it being daylight and on the upper level of a 2/3 full stadium the whole experience get's lost.
Eric Clapton, Royal Albert Hall. £30 and he didn't even play Layla.
Tony Humphries. Absolutely abysmal. Played the same track 3 times in his set
Eric Clapton is also the worst gig I've ever been to. All the stage presence of a used hanky
Bob Dylan in Liverpool a couple of years ago was terrible, made worse by the fact that I was really looking forward to seeing him.
Band sounded like they couldn't be arsed, and the classics he played were reworked as insipid rock covers. The bloke busking outside did a better Bob Dylan impression!
Lee Perry at Reading sometime in the late 90s monumental waste of ****ing time. Massive Attack at Finsbury Park similar year(love them to death) but so boring live quickly jumped across tents to see Aphex Twin & big dancing teddy bears.
U2 Joshua Tree Tour at Wembley Stadium. Supported by Spear of Destiny who totally knocked U2 into a cocked hat even though I’d never even heard of them.
Lost Prophets on an NME multi-band tour. They were shit and the singer was just a crap Mike Patton impersonator. Unfortunately, I couldn't get close enough to tell him this cos of all the young girls surrounding him (I did try). In hindsight it was worse than I thought.
MF Doom - was much more boring than I expected/hoped and it was quite an expensive gig (for me).
Nothing else comes to mind
Noah & the Whale at Leeds Cockpit. Was dragged along by the missus and her housemates, and wished I'd made my excuses and sacked it off.
the only one i can think of is Blackalicious a couple of years back. Gift of Gab is in pretty bad shape these days, basically did one tune out of every three, then sat on a chair at the side of the stage while these two hypemen did a couple of tracks of general party hiphop. Which they did pretty well, but it was still kind of depressing
oh yeah, Squarepusher, Sheffield, about 1999. Dragged my non-electronic music fan mates to the gig, which was upstairs in a pub. The support act (Stock Hausen and Walkman) played a load of fart noises and other hilarity such as a spinning a Kylie Minogue 45 backwards. Then Squarepusher came on stage, went up to his massive rig of gear, pressed play on something and came to stand in the crowd and get pissed with his mates, leaving the stage empty for his entire set.
My mates gave it about 20 mins and dragged me back out. which seemed fair enough.
Saw Squarepusher again 3 or 4 years later and he was great <shrug>
65Daysofstatic. I had tickets to see Asobi Seksu in Oxford, but someone decided they’d be better as support for 65Days..., so me and a mate went rather than lose the money. Asobi were good, but we only got thirty minutes of their set. Which is still more than we gave 65Days..., they were just boring, lots of noise and bugger-all else. Alright if you were off yer face I s’pose, but tedious otherwise.
We went to the pub down the road, had a couple, then went home.
Can’t think of any others, although there was a John Martyn gig I wish I hadn’t seen, he was completely shit-faced, barely coherent, and hugely disappointing. I’d seen him several times before, and he’d been fine. ☹️
By contrast, I’ve seen Sparklehorse, and Mark Linkous came on with a bottle of JD in his jacket pocket, which he swigged from through the set, a roadie had to catch him when he pretty much fell off the end of the stage at the end of the main set. It was a brilliant gig!
About 10 years ago I got into Bob Dylan in a big way, I went to see him at the NEC and he was really crap, I’ve not listened to him since.
Kings of Leon (at Manchester Apollo) is the only gig I’ve ever walked out of. They really were that bad. Awful. We all voted to sack it off and go to the pub next door instead of enduring any more of their half-arsed shite.
They were barely even going through the motions, didn’t engage with the audience at all and looked like they really just couldn’t be arsed and they’d rather be anywhere else rather than on stage.
Probably made worse as we’d been to see the Prodigy a week earlier at the same venue and the contrast between the quality of what was going on on stage couldn’t conceivably have been starker
****s!
Florence and the Machine at Ally Pally in the height of their hype, very painful
Can I go for the Isle of Wight festival (2007 I think)?
The whole thing. Like it was designed to crush your spirit.
Oh, I've got another one!
Saw them on the Mercury Prize show - they were giving it some and looked pretty exciting, so I looked em up and they were playing fairly locally. bought 2 tickets. In the end, my girlfriend at the time couldn't go, so I dragged myself out. Got lost on the way, really annoyed by the time I got there.. then, jeezuz the most awful jazz/math rock, up it's arse, bunch of shit I've ever suffered 20 minutes of, spending most of the time texting my mate how shit they were.
Black ****ing Midi.
Since found out the "learned their craft" by attending some fancy music/arts/celebrity school, no wonder, pretentious arseholes.
Stereophonics, twice (more fool me).
I could describe why but this sums it up nicely
hey were barely even going through the motions, didn’t engage with the audience at all and looked like they really just couldn’t be arsed and they’d rather be anywhere else rather than on stage.
Lauren Hill, was utter gash. Half the “set” was a DJ (who was also abysmal) left early to go for a pint.
Oasis when they headlined Reading. It wasn't just that they were rubbish- though they were, absolutely phoned it in. It was also that there'd been so many articles about how much they were getting paid to do it that you could think "Liam just got paid £10000 to spit water over that cameraman" I don't mind Oasis normally but this was just a total abortion of a show. Funnilly enough Rage Against The Machine played that year and also blatantly couldn't be arsed. Daphne and Celeste put more effort into it than either of these.
It worked out OK though because we sacked it off and went to see Muse in a tent, which we wouldn't have otherwise, and they were absolutely awesome- first of a load of great Muse gigs I saw, which were followed by a few not-great Muse gigs.
Leonard Cohen at Brum Arena, he was kin awful but I couldn't mention it because of the cost of the ticket which I hadn't paid for.
Bob Dylan - Wembley Arena
Counting Crows - Shepherds Bush Empire
Aztec Camera - Dominion Tottenham Court Road,
but the Bobster wins for lacking the most lustre.
Madonna at Murrayfield. . What a horrible gig, I only went when my wife's pal bailed after car broke. A thoroughly listless performance preceeded by a beardy guy trying to snog me when we were waiting to get in. Worst of all, the warm up act was avicii.
#1 Primal Scream - Cambridge Corn exchange approx 10 years ago.
Band rolled onto stage, played through 4 or 5 songs, hearts not in it, no crowd interaction, not even a hello or thanks for coming. Atmosphere was horrible, someone bunged the arse end of a pint at the stage. Gilespie stroped off after a few choice words, then Manny too, in fact I recall to this day he said "you are ALL C****". 20-30 minutes later they came back out to play a few more, but we left shortly after.
#2 GnR Olympic stadium. Worst venue ever, turns out I know surprisingly few GnR tracks and sometimes bands are just past their heydays.
#3 Air Cambridge Corn-exchange - it's just not that interesting live!
I'm shocked that someone mentioned Leonard Cohen - his concerts were absolutely stunning. Mind you, I guess if you're not a fan, or don't 'get' him .....
Hot Chip at Southampton Guildhall. All the muso press hyping the band and their performances it was dire. Crowd thought it was awful and as they got less and less interested started winding up the keyboard player chucking water in his direction. Which he didn't find amusing.
Oasis at cardiff international arena.. just awful.
Guns and Roses Headline at Reading Festival...turned up 2 hours late...then got cut off at midnight and threw an almighty tantrum.
The Buzzcocks possibly at Glastonbury sometime in the early nineties. Bunch of old guys in golfing jumpers failing miserably to recapture their glory days.
Most of the bands I ever saw in the Leadmill because the sound was generally ****.
Bunch of old guys in golfing jumpers failing miserably to recapture their glory days.
It's what the punters want!! :'-)
Bjork at G-MEX in January 96, was freezing cold, lack lustre performance and disinterested crowd, went to the pub before the end.
Oh and the Orb at Band on the Wall last year, I knew it was going to be two blokes with laptops playing stems of their tracks, but I went along with some friends for old times sake anyway, it was pretty tedious really.
prodigy in plymouth pavilions about 10yrs ago. half-assed set, started late, finished early, acoustics were awful.
reef - about a week before they got famous with that sony minidisc advert. saw them in the crypt in hastings. lead singer was so drunk he kept falling off the stage.
Primal Scream in Birmingham somewhere, I don't care to remember where.
John Butler Trio at Brixton Academy. The venue was full of people talking loudly who had no interest in seeing the band (to be fair, neither did I but it was a free ticket). I got sick of the noise and left after one pint.
Orbital were really underwhelming too, but I was sober while the rest of the crowd were gurning. So not unexpected really.
Talking of going through the motions - Underworld on one of those anniversary, play the album deals. Was a shit venue, Brighton Dome (ceiling too high, sound gets lost) and only Karl Hyde was there, cos Rick was ill, so they had a stand-in (was someone pretty famous, but that made no difference). And it was just boring, which was gutting cos we'd been to quite a few absolutely awesome Underworld gigs before. I almost got into a fight with 2 pricks behind us too, who just talked about their Miele appliances and Tarquin's babysitter until I told them to shut the **** up.
And I got done for (accidentally) going through a red light on the way home!
GnR Olympic stadium. Worst venue ever, turns out I know surprisingly few GnR tracks and sometimes bands are just past their heydays.
I think there comes a point in a band's lifecycle where your fans use their phones to set reminders to take their drugs rather than using them to phone a dealer and they don't care about the album you've spent 20 years arguing over. They just want to hear those 5 songs from their teenage years and reminisce about getting shitfaced and having sex in cars rather than having to plan 3 days ahead, make a trip to the chemist and hope the wife was till in the mood when they got back.
Most of the bands I ever saw in the Leadmill because the sound was generally ****.
On the positive side for the leadmill as a venue, you're never more than a few meters form the stage, on the negative's neither is the back wall.
One of those venue's which is actually really good as long as the sound engineer doesn't turn it upto 11.
Counting Crows - The Armadillo, Glasgow, very late 90's I think. Not good, Felt like i was an extra in an episode of Friends or something. They were just running through their hits, I ended up sitting for most of the gig. Couldn't even bother showing much enthusiasm trying to impress the girl I was with and very much smitten with at the time.
Edit: Just found the setlist, turns out they played 8 tracks from their new album at the time, which was pretty poor, that's probably why I was so disinterested
I went to the Underworld - Dubnobasswithmyheadman album anniversary gig somewhere in London. The sound was terrible and we were upstairs in a seated bit. It should have been a recipe for a terrible night, but it turned out to be really fun. It might have helped that I was there with a lovely young lady and we had split an E between us though.
Hole, paid only about 10 quid for the ticket at Brixton Academy but wasn't worth that and I love the records
Motley Crue, Vince Neil was shockingly bad vocally and bloated
Maybe contentious, but I'm going to say Knebworth.
We were so far from the stage that you had to watch the performance on the screens, but the sound had so far to travel, everything was out of sync.
Bob Dylan and Van Morrison at the Phoenix festival, 1995, totally overblown and mumbly in equal measure.
The highlight of the weekend however was Spiritualized and everyone shouting 'you fat bastard' at Ice T. I've just looked up the band list on Wikipedia and I don't remember half of them (I may have been a little socially confused).
Dez is going to love both of mine 🙂 …
Fleetwood Mac at the Manchester Arena; started off with The Chain, which was good and I'm thinking "blimey, I'm sitting here watching Fleetwood Mac play The Chain". It went rapidly downhill from there. Talk about self-absorbed, at one point Stevie Nicks had been waffling on for so long about some tape or other with a song on that she'd lost I thought "bugger this" and went to the loo and the bar. It took me ages to find the loos, then ages at the bar and to get back to find the Mrs again in the arena, and she was still going. They didn't even play that well, Go Your Own Way was a shambles.
Bon Jovi at the Ricoh in Coventry last year; having previously seen them a few years previously in Manchester, we though we'd go to see them again as they were massively cheesey but put on a fantastic show (plus the Mrs and her mate are a bit in love with JBJ). Unfortunately this time Mr Jovi had clearly lost his voice, couldn't sing a note, to the point where they pretty much faded his mic out. Somewhat ironically they were supported by the Manics, who I normally can't stand, but who were actually very good.
Dire Straits.
Technically brilliant. Fantastic sound.
All the charisma of a bit of limp seaweed.
They were more exciting when they were still playing the pubs.
Thurston Moore at the Hebden Bridge Trades Club a couple of years ago. I'm quite the fan of Sonic Youth and Mr Moore's solo output, so I was expecting a good night.
Initially I was somewhat bemused by there support act, which comprised of a lady with a trombone and a chap with a sampler. However, it turns out that it was an impressively accurate lead into the main performance itself, which was pure unadulterated 'art rock'. As in, no discernible structure. Or tune. Or rhythm.
I'm told that some people believe they witnessed something really special that evening. It must've been within the last hour, though, 'cos my wife and I had legged it long before then.
I did get to meet him first though. Which was nice.
Ooh - thought of another one!
Evan Dando at The Duchess in York, 2008-ish. A then relatively new Frank Turner as support was the highlight of the entire gig. Dando himself looked and sounded like he wasn't sure where he was, who he was, or what he was doing. No conversation, no stage presence, no apparent desire or happiness to be there, just going through the motions.
Paul Weller, on numerous occasions.