I also saw the chilli peppers in 88 ,@Newcastle riverside, I still have john frusciante’s chilli pepper baseball hat!

Hilel was on guitar when I saw them. Supported by a just post-Housemartin’s Norman Cook on the decks. 🙂

LCD Soundsytem stank when they did the wireless fest few years ago..

Crikey, that’s a shock! – their Brighton gig stands out as one of the very best I’ve seen. Wonderful. Hoping to see them again seeing as they’re making more music.

Pretty much anyone I liked back in the day that reformed years later for a tour.

@dezb,I’ve just checked ,I was wrong ,it was 1990. 🙂
That sounds like a quality evening and possibly another thread along the lines of the best gig line ups you’ve ever attended……?

Could be, but I’ve got loads! That RHCP gig… Soho (remember “Hippychick”??) were also on the bill. Klub Foot, London. Was marvellous!

I remember Soho & Klub Foot. Syndrome was the place ….indie pop star hangout par excellence…
My fave ever was Daft Punk at Stoke uni. The support was Andrew Weatherall . For me ,heaven.

I saw RHCP around that time (positive mental octopus?)

That daft punk / Andy weatherall gig would be top of my wishlist

Prince at Wembley Stadium in the early 90s. Occasional flashes of brilliance buy mostly an impromptu jam. May have worked in a small venue but alienated the audience and many left before the end.

Ozric Tentacles. Unbelievably dull gig.

Simple Minds – it was about 5 or 6 years ago; very disappointed

Surprising how people’s experiences differ (or bans have good and bad gigs). My main rule is to avoid comeback gigs and bad venues – anywhere larger than Brixton Academy (outside of a festival) is unlikely to be a good experience.

Alt-j at Williams Green (Glasto) a few years back were great – didn’t expect their music to work live at all but it did that night. I saw Guillemots at the Astoria and remember them being excellent. LCD Soundsystem at Brixton were superb(although one of the triggers for my tinnitus)

Primal Scream have been most variable. I’ve seen them when they’ve been brilliant but also bad enough I’d vowed never to see them again (their last Glasto Pyramid performance was embarrassing.)

Worst? Nearly any hip hop act I’ve seen – really hard to make it work live. Grandmaster Flash dj ing. So much for the wheels of steel – had to wait while he rebooted his Mac.

Hot Chip have never done much for me live – their music just feels roo lightweight to work over a whole gig.

Saw Florenece and her machine as support for MGMT before she’d had any exposure and left for the bar very quickly. Wailing atoanal hippy.

Human League.

Absolute boredom live and no passion/energy.

80’s Rewind Festival 2015.

Midge Ure is still getting the crowds bouncing!

People are generally saying avoid comeback tours/gigs bit FNM at the roundhouse last year was probably the best I’ve been to. Brilliant.

If we are adding bands that were surprisingly good, the Pretenders

1985, The Pretenders supporting U2 at Cardiff National Stadium, along with The Alarm. Chrissie Hynde started making fun of the Welsh. The act didn’t go down well with the crowd. Surprise.

REM – their songwriting is great but it doesn’t quite carry through live. Glastonbury 2003 I think was the last time I saw them, really not enough engagement with the crowd. Shame as I still love their music.

Saw them twice at smaller venues and they were good. Maybe the size of venue helps?

Midge Ure is still getting the crowds bouncing!

Ultravox, one of my favourite bands in the 80s, reformed a few years ago. They were excellent, even taking into account that I desperately wanted them to be good for old times sake. 🙂

Ah. Worst gigs are coming back to me now.

Blur. At Hyde Park. Terrible sound where half the crowd couldn’t hear them above people chatting (anyone getting a common thread about Hyde Park gigs – don’t do it kids, it’s just not worth it). I’m really not a Blur fan anyway (even their Sunday night Glasto comeback gig left me a bit cold though the crowd atmosphere was really strong)

Gorrilaz on the Pyramid stage. Love the records, big fan of everything Damon’s done post Blur but just didn’t work.

Some of the best gigs –

Bowie on the Glastonbury Pyramid, 2000. I’d grown up with 80’s Bowie and was a bit meh but it suddenly all made sense. Fantastic.

The Good The Bad and the Queen at the Coronet in Elephant&Castle. Great musicians, great sound and great atmosphere from an album that’s quite downbeat and I wasn’t expecting to make for a good gig.

Bad gigs don’t really stick in my mind, I’m sure I’ve been to plenty but I just don’t remember.

A couple do jump to mind though. Saw Rage Against The Machine at a festival (Donington? Maybe) a couple of years back and they were dire. Spent more time making political rantings than playing music. Caught Skunk Anansi at Donington ages ago and they were equally bad for similar reasons; Skin spent half her time banging on about how she was a black lesbian and we could all lump it. No-one cared except her seemingly, massive chip on her shoulder.

Extreme at Donington (there’s a theme here isn’t there) shot themselves in the foot with their attitude as well. Came out with the mistaken belief that the weren’t welcome and ragged on the crowd for half an hour. Tosspot.

Whitesnake have gone to pot in recent years. Saw them in 1990 (at Donington…) and they were ace, Coverdale sounded great and they had Steve Vai propping them up. Fast forward to a couple of years back, I saw them double-headlining with Def Leppard and DC’s voice was wrecked; backing singers were carrying him through most of it.

Speaking of wrecked voices, Paul Young has lost it too. Saw him at one of those Rewind festivals a few years ago and he was flat as anything. (Drugs are bad, mmmkay)

As for bands I didn’t care about but were incredible live, Muse stands out for me. I don’t own a single album and am ambivalent if I hear them on the radio, but I got dragged to see them at LCC recently and they were simply awesome. I’d happily pay good money to see them live. Properly tore the roof off, Matt Bellamy is just something else.

J. Mascis solo at the Rescue Rooms the other year, utter bobbins. I just felt he couldn’t be arsed.

On the other hand, I saw him in Dinosaur Jr. blow away the crowd at Reading 93. What a wall of sound!

CountZero – Member
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.

I was there too! It was one of the first gigs I went to (I started late) and it all seemed very rock ‘n’ roll. It was weird, by the end Mark Linkous was so drunk he could barely stand and had so little co-ordination that changing guitars was almost impossible but as soon as he had his guitar on and was in front of his mic it all worked perfectly. Except for Hundreds of Sparrow but after he stopped apologising for that we got a great replay of Pig (I think).

Do you remember that between some songs he ducked down to the stage floor to make strange sound collages with some box of tricks? I never spotted this but a mate at the gig said at one point he managed to get one of the boxes to spew its tape everywhere. Jonathan Segel (the other guitarist/multi instrumentalist at the time) apparently saw this and just rolled his eyes in an “oh no, not again” sort of manner.

Anyway, more on topic, I’m not sure that any gig has totally put me off a band. The closest would be MGMT at Barrowlands a few years ago. They’d just released their second album so it was already becoming apparent that the songs of theirs I liked the most didn’t seem to be the ones that interested them the most. But the gig helped bring it to a head. Many fairly dull songs with only two or three fiffully spread through the gig to really catch my attention. Also a band should probably think long and hard about what they’re doing if they introduce one song by admitting that most people find it boring…

I saw Pearl Jam in Hyde Park a few years ago. Despite what others have said about gigs in Hyde Park I thought that the sound was good. Pearl Jam were good too but it did put me off seeing them live again. They were too good, in a way. It was all so slick and polished it felt more like listening to a live album than being at an actual gig (except for the crushing crowd anyway). I don’t need something quite as unique as Sparklehorse’s Brsitol gig every time but I do want to feel like I’m experiencing a one-time event. It’s not like there wasn’t any audience interaction but it still felt like it could all happen again.

Actually, I finally thought of one. I’ve enjoyed Alabama 3 for many years now but their Edinburgh gig last year seemed to confirm that they’ve moved too far away from the aspects of their sound that made me like them. Plus they were late on and it was far too crowded. So unless they choose to change direction back towards their older sound fairly sharply (which has been hinted a little bit) that may be the end of them, for me.

Eagles last year at men , in Manchester, was really looking forward to seeing them live, and was dissapointed, no energy at all, I was bored by the end

Went to see Duran Duran with my wife a few months ago , didn’t really want to go , was a present for my wife, and they were fantastic

ChrisL – Member

Anyway, more on topic, I’m not sure that any gig has totally put me off a band. The closest would be MGMT at Barrowlands a few years ago. They’d just released their second album so it was already becoming apparent that the songs of theirs I liked the most didn’t seem to be the ones that interested them the most. But the gig helped bring it to a head. Many fairly dull songs with only two or three fiffully spread through the gig to really catch my attention.

That was pretty funny, though… I stuck it out as long as I could but as soon as I said “I’m off to get chips, it’ll be better than this” you guys were like “Take us with you!”

St. Etienne in 1991 at Uni of Northumbria. Good tunes, but not great live. Fortunately they were supported by the unheard of (to me at the time) Pulp who were brilliant.

I am generally getting less tolerant at gigs. Idiots talking loudly, people being massively pissed and pushing past unsteadily 5 or 6 times to get to the bar… Most sets are less than 2 hours! Can’t people just have one or two pints and be done with it or let their inane chat wait!

Also, I have never understood why some ****tards love throwing beer/piss/beer & piss around. What the **** is wrong with them?

Spiritualized.
Became very evident,very quickly that they were a bunch of unts.
And to agree with the you I did listen to the music alot less.

Spiritualized too. Warwick uni I think. Could barely stand for how bored I was.

Jello Biafra spoken word in Brighton. Just a fat old dude wittering on about American politicians etc for hours.

Primal Scream in Wolverhampton. Walked out in boredom. Don’t think they were much into it.

Massive Attack in Brixton. Seemed like they didn’t want to be there. Boring, short and essentially just a political rally. Conversely, saw them in Birmingham a year or so earlier and it was one of the best gigs I’ve been to.

The Cure at the NEC Disintegration tour. Tiny little dots miles away. Rubbish. Reminded me why I prefer the high energy intimacy of punk/hardcore gigs I grew up on.

I accidentally saw Ash once at Glastonbury, which I’d also accidentally attended after a night at the pub while at uni. Just happened to be in the field. Rubbish.

80’s Rewind Festival 2015

Why oh why would you even bother?? 😆

Agree on MGMT – saw them in Bournemouth and they were awful. Only got 2 decent songs anyway!
Haven’t seen Spiritualized after a mate told me about the way they go all **** at the end of the gig. 10-20 mins of squwaking is just no entertaining.

Which reminds me… The Coral, they were ok for 20 mins, then went off on a solo wankfest of instrumental rubbish for about half on hour. Haven’t listened to them since.

The prodigy last month/ before christmas anyway. They were crap, played latest album guff. The crowd were a bit blokish and lively. They were out done by public enemy, flavor flay comming on stage backwards on a hoverboard rapping cant be beat.

Sas the prodigy on the invaders must die tour and they were fantastic though i enjoyed kissy sell out a lot.

Clapton

All the stage presence and charisma of a dog turd. Played the same turgid solo in every song and it bore no resemblance to anything on the original recording. Just awful

Not a fan, but went to see Terrorvision at the parr hall a good few years ago and they were complete t urd, couldn’t play and the songs didn’t work live (which considering how straightforward they are is some achievement )
OCS I saw and they were donkey balls, did the three big hits from the first album first in the set to get them out of the way and then played all their new stuff which was anonymous dadrockk
However saw Ash the same day and they were great, not especially charismatic but could play and had a bag full of good songs

Went to Simple Minds recently. TBH was probably not expecting too much. However a surprisingly good performance.

So opposite of what OP wanted…

The Music. Turged todgers. Unable to handle over an hour without a hit from the bong, just wandered-off after a while… Really annoyed the crowd. Oh, and some eejit dived onto my head, near breaking my neck.

Ash, on the other hand were EPIC.

I’ve been to a few howlers that put me off listening to the band/person.
THe Stone Roses 1st Glasgow Green gig. Awful atmosphere, awful sound and awful performance.
Bob Dylan at SECC- (well it’s the SECC so it served me right) crap.
Primal Scream- terrible stones cover band made good by Andy Weatherhall.

Saw spititualized on their first tour and it is one of the best gigs I’ve ever experienced, mind blowingly good.

Could barely keep my attention when I saw them again doing ladies and gentlemen a few years later.

And didn’t really listen to them again. Which was handy as I sold my mint copy of ladies and gentlemen for £100 the other year.

Frank Zappa was bloody terrible when I saw him

Stranglers in circa 1980. Truly, truly up themselves and awful.

Saw them at IoW Festival in ’08 and they were incredible. 🙂

On a similar note I saw the Chilis at the O2. Tight, but no heart. However I imagine there’s people out there that will beg to differ.

Papa Roach at Oxford O2. Rock by numbers. Talented, but dull dull dull. A long way from Last Resort.

I think I saw The Jesus And Mary Chain last year. Not totally sure though due to the thickest layer of dry ice I’ve ever seen.

Jello Biafra spoken word in Brighton. Just a fat old dude wittering on about American politicians etc for hours.

What did you think it was going to be like? 😆

Spiritualized after a mate told me about the way they go all **** at the end of the gig. 10-20 mins of squwaking is just no entertaining.

Luckily when I saw them at the RFH years ago I fell asleep (comfy seats) just as they started their encore and woke up just before they finished. Saw them quite a few times though so must have enjoyed the rest.

At a slight tangent: I had a ticket to see Ian Brown in the late 90’s, which got refunded when he was sent to prison for an air rage incident. Sounds like I wouldn’t have missed much.

Usually any bands past there sell by date; Stiff Little Fingers/The Damned/The Buzzcocks to name three i have seen in the last couple of years and been really saddended by what they are churning out now. Really hard when you have seen bands in their prime and then gone back to see them again years later.
U2 where pretty dire when i saw them as a support band, in fact it was only when they became famous that i realised i had seen them!

Hawkwind – Edinburgh Usher Hall 1978

They had a power cut – loads of us cheered and went home!

Haven’t seen them in person, but Alt J and Red Hot Chilli Peppers have been consistently awful whenever I’ve seen them on TV.
Not too many stinkers I’ve actually been to. Blur were pretty bad when they headlined V in the 90s, generally gave the impression they just CBA.