The Worst Gig You've Ever Seen

[ruffers]

Inspired by a post on the Sisters live thread.

For me, Tears for Fears, Southend West cliff pavilion. My girlfriend at the time was a huge fan which was why I was there but this was dull. No atmosphere, nothing from the fans, just dead.

The bonus of the location is I went for a walk along the sea side and got back for the encore... Which was...ok

[ruffers]

Although the Astoria in 2006 wasn't great....

[sultan2075]

I hate saying this, but it was Swans earlier this year. They were just boring and self-indulgent, without the raw power they’d had the last few times I’d seen them. I actually left early which I never do.

[mh]

There's bad performances by good bands, bands that are well-rated but just don't do it for me, and bands that are just flat-out bad.

I saw Dry Cleaning earlier this year and they left me cold. The young 'uns were well into it, but it was not for me.

Top (or bottom) of the pile award goes to a guy I saw supporting Front 242 15-odd years ago. He comes on stage with a ghetto blaster, plays bad techno music on it, and spends 30-40 minutes just doing bodybuilder poses in front of it. That'll take some beating.

[Being645]

The worst thing I've ever seen was Macka B & Mad Professor at the Losheim am See Festival in 1993 ... the bass was so loud that you couldn't escape it even far in the back so that one could hardly hear nor concentrate on the music. People were virtually doubling in front of the stage and that guy even ask them come on, why don't you dance ... oh my ... I went as far away from there as possible. Fortunately, the sound got better from band to band, still bad with the Chilli Peppers but perfect, fortunately, with The Sisters.

[sam1]

Having been to 100’s of gigs in my time and having seen 100’s of artists in my time, worst gig award goes to…the bloody Lightning Seeds…..I was off one night and they were playing a headline set at the Garage in Glasgow 1995 (where I lived at the time)…so I went along just as the house lights were coming down and 35/40 minutes later the gig was done…nothing about it was good…just a band going through the motions then buggering off….I thought there was gonna be a riot when they left the stage cos the set was so short..you could feel the tension from the audience cos they were all short changed…I buggered off so I’ve no idea if anything kicked off afterwards but the atmosphere was terrible even if I thought the Lightening Seeds were not capable of inducing such emotions from their “fans”…….

[Nikolas Vitus Lagartija]

I remember this topic coming up before, probably well over a decade ago though!
My worst gigs were both at Rock City in Nottingham, Iggy Pop in 1981 and Christian Death at one of RC’s “Longest Day” Alternative All-Nighters. Iggy was not in a good place and flounced off when someone threw a plastic glass at him, and CD were just self-indulgent and dull.

[ribbons69]

Another Rock City one, 15 year's or so ago Black Metallers Satyricon played, they were the darlings of the extreme metal press at the time so when we arrived it was a surprise to see them playing the small basement bar, apparently they simply hadn't sold enough tickets. The support band played and were fine but when Satyricon started the sound was so quiet that you could have a normal conversation without raising your voice. It was dreadful and didn't improve. I've seen much worse bands over the last four decades, but this was the worse gig where I've actually been a fan of the band.

[Fallon]

Saw the UK Subs about a decade ago. I was never a fan of those second wave UK punk rock bands that cropped up after the first wave had already started to move on to more interesting sounds, so I wasn't expecting to have a brilliant time but sometimes you just pop along to a gig because the opportunity is there.

It was a joke. Absolute wreck of sloppy drunken nonsense. I've seen footage since, where the band appears to be a bit more switched on, but when I saw them it was just variously boring, idiotic and incompetent. And I was raised by punk!

[Icon]

My worst gig was probably Sonic Youth in Bielefeld, Germany, in the early nineties. It was the „Goo“ album they were supporting. They were really bored and unenthusiastic in the first place, and it was all a wall of undefined noise. You couldn’t even recognise the songs most of the time. I remember Thurston Moore putting his guitar on a speaker or amp or something and left the stage to a wall of backfeeding. Me and about half the audience left the building and stood chatting outside. After we heard something like a tune and singing from inside we went back in. It was really a shame since I had been looking forward to that concert for weeks. I love the record.
The people I went with at the time still sometimes speak about it as the worst gig ever.

[ExPsichonaut]

Butcher Babes in Ludwigsburg

[Debaser]

I remember this topic coming up before, probably well over a decade ago though!
My worst gigs were both at Rock City in Nottingham, Iggy Pop in 1981 aIggy was not in a good place and flounced off when someone threw a plastic glass at him, and CD were just self-indulgent and dull.

Whenever this type of post comes up I give exactly the same answer - he was a right prima donna.

[abridged]

My worst gigs tend to be because of the audience behaviour (usually in Belfast for some reason) rather than the band. 60 years old with ipads held up the entire concert in front of me at a Gary Numan gig and really annoying drunks at a Bunnymen gig there.

[Dan]

My worst gigs are (1) ones where the venue was too large and the stage too far away, (2) venues with poor acoustics, (3) outdoor gigs with bad weather. And none of them are worth mentioning the names of the bands because none of that was their fault.

[Drummy B]

I think I'm going to go with Smashing Pumpkins, 2007 or so, when they'd announced a big comeback tour, booked the Manchester Arena and MASSIVELY undersold it... I got a really good seat on a resale site for £3! A three hour show, the first hour was packed with the songs that people wanted to hear, OK, so far so good... the second hour not so much, newer stuff that nobody gave a crap about and as the show went on Billy C just got more pretentious to the point where he was literally noodling around on his guitar and playing with his effects pedals for about 15 f-ing minutes... I swear the arena couldn't have emptied any quicker if it was raining spiders. Ones with big fangs.

I left at that point, an arena employee said 'oh, they're gonna do an encore' but apparently Billy C refused to come back on because he wasn't getting the respect he deserved or something...

[Pista]

I swear the arena couldn't have emptied any quicker if it was raining spiders. Ones with big fangs.

[villiersterrace]

I used to be in a cover band so when we played shows I would see other cover bands. Some of them were pretty bad. The good ones were the bands that now make original music. It got to a point where I would just talk to my friends outside the venue instead of watching the other bands play. That was rude, but I don't think anyone really cared.
I haven't had the time or money to see a lot of real bands but the ones I have seen have all been great.