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Placebo. Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol. Shit twice. For some reason whenever that happens, I stop listening to them, I become immediately "over it".
I like the first Alt j album so much & I reckon they'd butcher it live, so didn't bother going just in case.
Anyone got a similar curse?
The Stone Roses at Reading in 1996. They sucked balls.
Black Sabbath 1977. Absolutely dreadful, And I mean really bad.
Their support band were so much better........ a relative newcomer to the UK, AC/DC
P.s. Yes I really am that old
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
AGREED
Yeh, Led Zep @ Manchester Free Trade hall in 1971, was completely sober but everybody else including the band were flying. Not a wise decision
Should this be in the chat forum?
Love yeah yeah yeahs recorded output but they do have a heavily produced sound so I can see how they might be a disappointment live.
For me the biggest let down was the flaming lips at the Astoria in the late 90s probably, before the robots album.
Just a mess and made me realise how they were also quite reliant on their producer.
That's better 😆
Counting Crows, really loved their music, August and Everything After and Recovering the Satellites were great
Saw them live.......and that was that, terrible
Motorhead, (sorry Lemmy) I.O.M. TT race week, probably sometime in the late 80's, just a wall of un- decipherable noise, and that was back when I really liked noise!
Stranglers in circa 1980. Truly, truly up themselves and awful.
Guns n roses, because axl rose really is a bell end
Blur, liked their stuff so went with the Mrs to see them. Albarn lifted his t-shirt up to elicit screams from girls, and possibly boys. I didn't scream..or play their CDs again.
Motley Crew. Van Halen. Bryan Adams the third time.
Reef. Lead singer was so drunk he kept falling off the stage.
Prodigy - saw them in Plymouth a couple of years ago. They must have been having an off night. Awful acoustics, started late, finished early(10.30) and lights came up. Disappointed.
The Vines. /end thread.
The Cure. Shit.
Alt-j
Black Grape. First time I saw them in Manchester just as the first album came out, they were really good, that was a great gig, think they did a couple of Mondays songs too. Second time at a festival someone had obviously taken the lock back off the medicine cabinet, they were all mashed and it was bloody awful, left after two songs. Never bothered listening to them after that for some reason.
Soundgarden at Hyde Park a few years ago. Looked forward for nearly 25 years to see them and the quality of the sound was utter bollox. Could hear people talking around me more than the music (why see a band and stand there talking FFS!). To be fair this was apparently due to the noise restrictions there, but very disappointing. Skindred in the tent were awesome tho!
Mint imperial - the Mondays were always like that. Either brilliant or truly bloody awful! There was no middle ground.
I've seen the Kings of Leon live. Not an experience I'd be keen to repeat. They went at it with all the enthusiasm of a bored bunch of teenagers on a rainy geography field trip. This was compounded by the fact that I'd watched the Prodigy at the same venue (Manchester Apollo) a few nights earlier, who were absolutely ****ing awesome! The complete opposite of the bored, going-through-the-motions approach of the KOL. I think they may have have been openly yawning. We certainly were. Left and went to the pub
I saw the editors in a small tent in O2 festival and though they were good. Saw them again at Brixton 18 months later and they were abysmal mainly due to the production. Obviously they went downhill quickly after that.
Van Morrison. Torn-faced auld bastard.
Green Day...saw them in the Dookie era....when they were good, saw them again on a tour a couple of years ago.....on the Bullet in the Bible (or whatever it was) tour
TERRIBLE.....massively SOLD out.....the show was a joke. They had kids up singing their songs.
I've not listened to them since.
Regarding the OP, I wasn't a massive Placebo fan, until I saw them live.
Kelis. Did two songs, left (to booing) in under 10 minutes.
And how could I forget the velvet underground at Wembley arena.
Didn't just put me off their music for a while, but any reformed "legends".
Apart from mbv of course.
About half of the dozen or so Hawkwind gigs I've been to have been a pisstaking pile of old shit.
Great gig or 45 minutes of pointless jamming?
Would Huw Lloyd Langton have a clue where he was?
Gave up after Simon House buggered off after returning for a while - they did all the Calvert stuff while he was there and it was amazing.
They were never going to top that for me, so I stopped going.
Gene Loves Jezebel. Loved them on record until I saw them live, c1988. So boring I ended up playing pool at the back of the venue (Bradford Uni Communal Building). Couldn't leave as I was working the gig so was needed to help pull the sound & lighting rigs down afterwards, but at least I didn't pay to get in
[i]Yeah Yeah Yeahs[/i]
Band I've always wanted to see live and not got round to it. This thread pleases me 🙂
I could say Underworld - as the dubnobass gig was such an incredibly disappointing affair, the crowd were shit, the sound was shit, it was just dull... BUT the previous times I've seen them they were amazing, so they haven't been ruined.
The Cure were dull as dishwater live, that was a jolly long time ago.
MF Doom was bad - just boring. Doesn't stop me listening to recorded stuff though.
[i]Didn't just put me off their music for a while, but any reformed "legends".[/i]
And this! Jesus and Mary Chain going through the motions a few years back. Terrible.
Hot chip. Bought into the hype post over and over.
Effin awful. The lead guy looks like my missus' grandfather.
The crowd were so p'd off they started throwing a bit of water and beer around. The keyboardist got a bit narked about that so of course it escalated...
Foo Fighters. Red Hot Chillis. Both terrible. A friend saw the Chillis live and said they were great, so maybe they were having a bad day
Stranglers in circa 1980. Truly, truly up themselves and awful.
I saw them around that time, at Bath Pavilion, while sitting on the end of the stage taking photos*. Excellent gig, somewhat spoilt by a bunch of Bristol oiks turning up and doing a mass charge through the audience shoving and kicking people out of the way. One of these tossers stood in front of JJ, making 'come on then' gestures, then jumped on the stage and carried on doing it, with no response from JJ, until he turned around and did a big 'look at me' posture to his brainless mates. Meanwhile JJ had walked back to his amp, put his bass on its stand then walked back to our hero, and tapped him on the shoulder. As matey turned around, JJ did a beautiful straight armed punch to the face, the bloke literally flew vertically backward off the stage, before falling onto his mates. After he picked himself up, JJ gestured to him to come forward, which our genius did, earning himself a kick to the face.
I wouldn't have said The Stranglers were a favourite band, but they earned an undying place in my heart after that.
*Sadly, I didn't get a photo of the punch, I was sat open-mouthed, and it never occurred to me to lift the camera and hit the button. Bugger.
Reef. Lead singer was so drunk he kept falling off the stage.
Sparklehorse at the Fleece, Bristol. Mark Linkous walked on stage and promptly took a bottle of JD out of his jacket pocket, which he was already part way through, and he continued to swig from it, getting more and more shitfaced as the gig went on, by the end a roadie had to catch him as he fell off the three foot high stage. He'd actually forgotten one of his own songs, despite being shown the chords and key.
Despite all that, it was an amazing gig, quite riveting, watching someone get utterly, and almost literally legless on stage, yet still function.
The point is, I don't think I've ever seen a 'favourite' band who've actually disappointed me, I have seen a couple who I was expecting good things from, based on past history though, one was Katastrophy Wife, Kat Bjelland from Babes In Toyland's new band.
God's teeth, they were dire, just embarrassingly awful, it was truly a car-crash of a gig. Oh, and a very, very, [i]very[/i] drunk John Martyn at a venue in Bath, which was also pretty awful, it was embarrassing watching him make such a spectacle of himself on stage.
Never stopped me loving his music, though, and being very sad indeed when he died, tempered a bit by the knowledge he was responsible for his own demise.
Guns n roses, because axl rose really is a bell end
Have to agree. Saw them in Manchester on the Chinese Democracy tour. Late, and Crap. Saw Velvet Revolver a couple of months before and they were amazing. Waiting to see how the reunion goes 😀
I'm with duffyc - Green Day.
First (and last!) arena gig, the MEN. Stage was in Manchester, my seat somewhere near Oldham.
Naively on my part, I went along expecting great things, not a pop concert for teenyboppers and families. I don't do pop music and I'll not set foot in an arena again. Awful evening and I haven't played their stuff since either. In fact my daughter bought me that album that came as 3 separate CDs when it came out - they're still untouched in their cellophane.
Bryan Adams the third time.
Wow, really? Bryan Adams is one of my favourite live acts, way better than anything committed to shiny disc.
Foo Fighters.
Ditto. Both great live performers IMHO.
Cool anecdote CZ 😀
I saw them in Sounthampton, that incident would have certainly provided much needed interest! Chances are they were having an off night, although as I remember, we were keen to hear them play at least one or two top tracks, especially from their first album Rattus Norvegicus, except they played their yet to be released album in its entirety. Hey ho.
Red Hot Chillies. V Festival circa 2000/2001, they were bloody awful. No crowd interaction, no stage presence/charisma. Just came on, played some songs pretty much as they sound on the albums, then left. Very disappointing.
PWEI - missed them in their heyday, for one reason or another, so when they (I use "they" loosely, basically Graham plus an assortment of others) played locally a few years ago I thought brilliant. Half way through the first song I realised my stupidity.
[i]A friend saw the Chillis live and said they were great, so maybe they were having a bad day[/i]
They were amazing when I saw them... but it was in 1988 😛
Idlewild broke me of my Idlewild habit. Maybe a bit hipstery but I loved 'em from the start, then after a while they did a drastic change of direciton and suddenly became basically Cheerful REM instead of a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs Now, there's a place in the world for Cheerful REM but you've kind of got to tell people about a change like that, rather than ambushing them with it at a £25 gig. It was not pretty. There was some very impressive mass heckling though, huge block of the crowd shouting all the words to You Just Have To Be Who You Are at them.
@chakaping, one of the best gigs I've ever seen was the flaming lips, but I walked out of the last one I saw halfway through, bored to tears. Very up and down I think
@chubstr, counting crows can be great life- they played a festival one time, Adam had mangled his leg and was off his tits on strong painkillers, so he was in a very happy place. But also, he kept forgetting what song they were doing, watching the band trying to keep up really showed how bloody good they are 😆 It was a great but shambolic show.
John Squire touring his solo debut album at The Birmingham Academy 2. He was a mess and drinking neat vodka during the gig. Now I've drunk near vodka myself (Both good and awful Smirnoff red) but not when a good performance of any activity was required.
This will give you an idea...
I think around that time the booze was the least of John Squires substance worries. There's a certain something that makes you start believing your own hype. It's rarely good for performances and was probably responsible for prog rock, and every stupid bloody noodling guitar solo.
I saw Ian Brown around the same time. A bunch of tuneless self-indulgent shite!!! We walked out of there thinking WTF was all that about? Whatever it was it was bloody rubbish!
I saw IB at a similar time - seen him many times. When he is good, it is great. When he is bad... The atmosphere at the bad gigs is awful too. Very menacing.
Red Hot Chillies. V Festival circa 2000/2001, they were bloody awful. No crowd interaction, no stage presence/charisma. Just came on, played some songs pretty much as they sound on the albums, then left. Very disappointing.
Ditto, same era, think it was 99 or 2000 Reading Festival. Bloody awful.
Green Day.. seriously, what the hell did you expect? Did you really listen to American Idiot? Purely a teenybopper album.