So, a couple of days ago my son wanted to see Bad Religion so we went. Not that familiar with them, but I really enjoyed the show!
Anyway, he later asked me what is the worst live show I've been to. At the moment I couldn't say, but now it dawned on me. It was British Lion at Sweden Rock Festival last year.... Bass player was good though, he should play in a bigger band more often
Aeroshit ("Rock In A Hard Place"; "Pump" - Tyler sucks (was high and drunk at the first show; his voice sucks); boring band; shitty set lists)
Motley Shit ("New Tattoo"; when they opened for KISS - MS sucks)
Eric Clapton ("Journeyman" - so fucking boring)
Genesis ("We Can't Dance" - Phil was sick and sounded like shit. They played a bunch of Peter Gabriel era material that I didn't know, which left out many Phil era songs)
KISS (3 shows "Alive/Worldwide"; 3 shows "Farewell" - all due to how shitty Peter and Ace were)
Iron Maiden ("No Prayer For The Dying" - no Adrian/the Prancer/shitty lp/shitty set list; "A Matter Of Life And Death" - they played the entire shitty cd; "Maiden England" - Alice Cooper blew them off of the stage)
Metallica ("Reload" - shortened set due to two opening bands; set list contained mostly black cd, "Load", and "Reload")
Van Hagar ("OU812" - Monsters of Rock - such a boring show (not a Hagar fan); went to see Scorpions and Dokken)
Julian Casablancas on his Phrazes For The Young tour. I love the Strokes (remember them?) but this was a meandering, aimless mess. Left before the end.
I had never seen them but like a ton of songs. They didn’t play my favorite song that they had been playing until that point. They are also hella boring. No personality at all. They sounded fine but they came off as a new band that was on their first tour and kinda nervous. It was weird. They didn’t act like a veteran band with a ton of known songs. Just bland and the set list sucked. Maybe that’s normal for them. Again they were not ‘bad’ just nothing special and I’d never pay to see them again. I’ve been lucky I had to really think about worst show because there have been few but after Seethers set I was really regretting buying their shirt.
I’ve walked away from shows bummed about the set list but can shrug it off but after Seether I was pretty much like yeah fuck them.
Bad Religion (and FenixTX) opened up, coincidentally.
Just absolute juvenile bullshit for the entire set. I was about to be 21 and still thought it was amateur hour. Terrible live band, terrible band overall. Drummer is alright.
I can almost always find a way to have fun at a show I've paid for.
2 that stand out as being just terrible.
ZZ Top - Went only to see Helix open, and I did like a few of the ZZ Top songs (Legs, TV Dinners etc). Little did I realize, but I hated all their old stuff. Everyone else seemed to love it, and I only have myself to blame for not doing a bit more digging into their catalog
Greta Van Fleet - Opened for Foo Fighters. I actually really like them, but they played for 50 mins, and I think they played a total of 6 songs. Non stop wankering around. Everyone was just standing around, talking watiing for them to play the Highway song.
Tommy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 6:29 am
Blink-182 @ Waterloo Village, 2000
I saw them at a radio promo thing in Boston around the same time. They were so sloppy I couldn't even tell what songs they were playing. When they weren't playing, which was a lot, they were talking back and forth trying to be funny and you couldn't even hear what they were saying.
Smashing Pumpkins opening for KISS, Halloween night in 1998. They came out dressed like The Beatles. They were bad. Sat there and wondered how they even got the gig bad.
TeslaFan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 5:00 am
Gregg Allman. Extremely drunk fell off his piano bench. Band was good but he sounded slurry. He was the opener for 38 Special.
I saw him in college on the ABBs 89 comeback tour. He had 4 different colored Solo party cups on his B3.
Wild Obsession wrote: ↑Sat Jul 13, 2024 6:35 am
Tony Martin Black Sabbath is on the level of Gary Cherone Van Halen.
Mirrored_Iceman wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 12:11 pm
Smashing Pumpkins opening for KISS, Halloween night in 1998. They came out dressed like The Beatles. They were bad. Sat there and wondered how they even got the gig bad.
Yeah, that was pathetic. Im sure they were boring by their own standards, but to open up for KISS and shoegazing all night??
Don't Damn Me wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 7:21 pm
Dummy, are you aware that hydroxy-chloroqin and Ivermectin have since been proven effective?
TeslaFan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 5:00 am
Gregg Allman. Extremely drunk fell off his piano bench. Band was good but he sounded slurry. He was the opener for 38 Special.
I saw him in college on the ABBs 89 comeback tour. He had 4 different colored Solo party cups on his B3.
The yellow one was a clear cup full of Savannah's piss.
ZZ Top was the first band that came to mind, as it was the first show I left early as a teenager. Boring AF.
Some other posts here reminded me of some other dud gigs. The Pumpkins opening for Kiss were terrible, but not as bad as Powerman 5000 opening for them two years earlier. They were still a rap-rock band then and hadn't gone industrial/sci-fi yet, which made them slightly less shitty.
I saw Greta Van Fleet play the Troubadour here in L.A. right as the initial hype was peaking. I was glad that a rock band had some buzz for a change, but spent the entire show more interested in the baseball game being shown on the club's TVs. Terrible.
I've seen a hot mess Ace Frehley show or two, but that was somewhat expected, so there wasn't really a sense of disappointment.
Saw some great Jani shows, but saw some lousy ones too.
The Van Hagar reunion tour show I saw was a major letdown. Eddie was dreadful that night.
Worst performance I've seen over the past couple of years was unquestionably Motley on the Stadium Tour. Embarrassingly awful.
Told this tale on here before too. Other than the aforementioned The Firm show which I had free tix and left anyway it would be Van Hagar with Dokken opening at the Cow Palace. There was a violent vibe in the air all night and tons of fights that security couldn't quell. A guy near me got stabbed and police were literally climbing over concertgoers to get to the perp. I got a boot in the head. The bands were awful . Couldn't hear one note of Dokken and Van Hagar were all drunk to the point of impairment and unlistenable. It was someone in the band's birthday according to the band. I still regret that this was my only live Eddie experience. My last arena show...
Tommy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 6:29 am
Blink-182 @ Waterloo Village, 2000
Bad Religion (and FenixTX) opened up, coincidentally.
Just absolute juvenile bullshit for the entire set. I was about to be 21 and still thought it was amateur hour. Terrible live band, terrible band overall. Drummer is alright.
I was at this show but for blink fans the mark Tom and Travis show tour was the holy grail, I was 15. I saw them two years earlier opening for less than Jake at hunka bunka/starland and it was 100x better without all the production and jokes.
GreatWhiteSnake wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 3:06 pm
Told this tale on here before too. Other than the aforementioned The Firm show which I had free tix and left anyway it would be Van Hagar with Dokken opening at the Cow Palace. There was a violent vibe in the air all night and tons of fights that security couldn't quell. A guy near me got stabbed and police were literally climbing over concertgoers to get to the perp. I got a boot in the head. The bands were awful . Couldn't hear one note of Dokken and Van Hagar were all drunk to the point of impairment and unlistenable. It was someone in the band's birthday according to the band. I still regret that this was my only live Eddie experience. My last arena show...
Your last arena show was in like 1988?
Don't Damn Me wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 7:21 pm
Dummy, are you aware that hydroxy-chloroqin and Ivermectin have since been proven effective?
GreatWhiteSnake wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 3:06 pm
Told this tale on here before too. Other than the aforementioned The Firm show which I had free tix and left anyway it would be Van Hagar with Dokken opening at the Cow Palace. There was a violent vibe in the air all night and tons of fights that security couldn't quell. A guy near me got stabbed and police were literally climbing over concertgoers to get to the perp. I got a boot in the head. The bands were awful . Couldn't hear one note of Dokken and Van Hagar were all drunk to the point of impairment and unlistenable. It was someone in the band's birthday according to the band. I still regret that this was my only live Eddie experience. My last arena show...
Your last arena show was in like 1988?
Pretty much. I did make an exception for Kiss Reunion which was a bucket list thing but that was it...
You know, this is a really tough one for me. I can't think of any standouts.
The last Dokken show I saw (last year) was pretty bad, but I knew how low the bar was and honestly it was better than I was expecting and listenable enough. Plus George came out for a few songs which ruled enough.
I think I'm someone who gets into live energy and I've probably seen some pretty bad performances that I still dug. Or I've just been lucky.
Tommy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 6:29 am
Blink-182 @ Waterloo Village, 2000
I saw them at a radio promo thing in Boston around the same time. They were so sloppy I couldn't even tell what songs they were playing. When they weren't playing, which was a lot, they were talking back and forth trying to be funny and you couldn't even hear what they were saying.
Too many support bands to count, but particular mention to Inner Sanctum who seemed to open most thrash gigs at The Marquee for a few years in the early 90s. Stop-start riffs with ear-splitting screechy vocals. Like Atheist but without any of their talent.
Headline-wise, The Fall were appalling the one time I saw them indoors. Mark didn't even come on stage until mid-way through the third song, mumbled for a while, walked off again after a few songs so we got some more unscheduled instrumentals. Then he came back and mumbled some more. No familiar songs played. When I told a friend about it later, whose brother was a big Fall fan, he said that was standard. They were better at a festival a few years later.
HoldenSSV wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 3:43 am
Slayer, 1987. It was free and I would have walked out, but I was curious to see W.A.S.P. who was the headliner. They were actually better.
As W.A.S.P. on the same tour was one of the worst shows I ever saw - opening for Maiden, Nov 1986 - I can't imagine how bad Slayer must have been then.
Well my friends who saw Slayer on the Hell Awaits tour said they - particularly Jeff - were drunk off their ass so that may have been part of the problem....
