What is the worst live performance you have ever seen

Captain Beefheart - Bristol Colston Hall, UK.

Bored, disinterested bunch of musicians going through the motions. No engagement with the audience at all, many of whom left before the end of a fairly short set.

I was working this show as a local hired hand. At the end of the show,the band's stage crew manager accused us of stealing a microphone and had all the doors locked After an hour's impasse we persuaded the Hall Management to call the police as we knew none of us had taken anything ( there were 6 of us) The duty manager that night knew us well and believed us. After the call had gone to the police the microphone was suddenly 'found' and the Stage Crew were very keen that the police should not come to the venue.

A couple of weeks later when working another gig, the Hall's duty manager told us that something similar had happened at other venues and had been some sort of insurance scam.

Best Wishes
David

 

I agree. They are much better now than a pre-2001. Their instrumental trio is pretty good.

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Worst thing I've ever seen or heard was Smashing Pumpkins circa 1994. Chamberlain was still the drummer, and he sounded great, but the rest of the band was horrible. Billy Corgan sings even worse than AK.

 

Bob Dylan at Holman Stadium in Nashua, NH. 1991. Dylan was either dead drunk or just didn't care, I'm not sure which; sometimes his mouth made it to the microphone, but mostly it didn't. He performed mostly obscure material save for a few hits. The crowd only really got into the show when he did "Knocking On Heaven's Door", no doubt because it was a recent hit for Guns N Roses. I went with a friend who has seen Dylan at least 15 times since then. He's asked me on numerous occasions to see him again but I just can't muster up the courage. Then again, I'm not a huge Dylan fan....

Last year I saw Eric Burdon in Lowell Massachusetts and though it wasn't the disaster the Dylan gig was, it was certainly disappointing. Burdon sat on a stool and beat a cowbell for 90 minutes while the "Animals" (most members couldn't have been born when House of the Rising Sun was a hit) alternated songs from his new blues CD with dull reinterpretations of classic Animals hits.

 

Stevie Nicks on her last solo tour, a couple of years or so ago, in North Carolina. (Don Henley opened for her.) It wasn't Stevie's fault--it was whoever was doing the sound. It was atrocious, and I thought I was going to go deaf before it was adjusted properly. Ugh.

 

I'm glad to see Kennedy's talents have not gone unnoticed. Actually the performance of his Eurovision contender song was the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen - he thinks he can sing, and he thinks he can write songs. Next thing is he'll be writing novels... wait, he does that too. Verily, a Renaissance man in a shining borrowed suit.

 

Johnny Cash at The University of North Carolina sometime in the mid 1960s. Johnny was drunk as a skunk.
June Carter and The Statler Brothers were there too and they were great!

 

There are two that I can think of for completely different reasons. It was out of his hands because his health at the time was going to drastically alter things (literally the next day or two later), but when I saw Eric Clapton in Portland back in (I think) 1982, the show had absolutely no energy to it whatsoever. He even cut out a huge part of the piano section of "Layla" that night. Well, I was to learn why he may not have performed so well that night. The next stop was up in Seattle. I think he may have been out on the water somewhere in Pugent Sound on a boat, but he he collapsed as a result of having (I think) two perforated ulcers getting ready to blow. The tour was very obviously stopped because he had emergency surgery in Seattle. I can't even recall if the tour was ever even finished or if he chucked the whole shebang.
The worst performance that I ever saw where I felt like I got genuinely ripped off by an artist was when I saw James Brown here in Eugene back in the '80s. His set had to have been perhaps 40 minutes at tops. When his section of the show started, it took what seemed like forever for him to make it to the stage. Out of that 40 minutes, I seriously doubt he actually sang much more than 20. He spent the rest of the time noodling around with his dance moves. I do recall that I was close enough to the stage that I made it a point to shoot him a very dirty look at him as I was really angry. This may have been during the time that he was having his problems with freebasing.

 

The Replacements in Portland in the mid 1980s. One time they did a few songs badly and staggered off the stage, the other time one of them staggered across the stage, and that was the show.

 

2 of my favorite acts of all time also put ont he 2 worst shows i've ever seen.

bob dylan in either '87 or '88.
he played for 1 hour, no interaction, no encore, and you i for one did not recognize a single song.
it was so bad i swore i would never see him again.
luckily i did not stick to my word.
i saw him in 2000 (or thereabouts - with charlie sexton on guitar), and it was one of th best shows i've ever seen.

the other terrible show was prince in the mid-90's.
he played a bunch of medleys.
i think the longest song he played was "purple rain" and that was only about 3 minutes.
i told my wife before the 1st encore, "if he plays one more medley - we're leaving."
sure enough that's what he did.
we left immediately, and thankfully we did - they had double and tripled parked many of the cars.
it was an absolute mess.
luckily we were able to pull right out - or i would've really been ticked.

 

Saw that Clapton tour in DC....he wore sunglasses the whole time and played about 30 minutes. It may have been the ulcers, but we figured it was the drugs. Might have been both...

 

"Steppenwolf"/1978 /Redding, California.

Rumor had it that John Kay was actually in the audience gathering evidence for a lawsuit against this fake Steppenwolf.

Redding never got, and still doesn't get much in the way of concerts, so when someone does come through town it's a special treat. And Steppenwolf still had lots of fans in 1978--"Magic Carpet Ride" was still a regular track at all kinds of parties.

But it wasn't Steppenwolf and it was really, really horrifically bad. One original member (the keyboard player--the one decent sounding musician at that concert). A new lead singer fully decked out in his latest satin disco threads (for Steppenwolf?!). The lead singer was too busy swinging his scarf around and striking poses to keep in tune or remember the lyrics. The rest of the band really had a hard time sounding even remotely interested or even keeping in time. Any number of local garage bands could have given them a run for the money. Only the keyboardist sounded authentic.

Normally thankful Redding concert-goers were not amused. The booing started within 5 or 10 minutes. By half an hour in someone had actually gone to a supermarket and brought back a bag of rotten fruit/vegetables to throw at the stage. The only time I've ever actually seen that.

Dale

 

I saw Dylan last summer and he was great so I don't know that bad is par for the course for Bob. But the worst concert I saw was Dylan in 1991 in Syracuse and he was obviously drunk. Worse, Laura Nyro was the opening act. She was greeted with such apathy for her new songs, she stormed off the stage after a couple songs. It was a bad night in the "Cuse.

 

I had forgotten that Laura Nyro opened for Dylan on that tour!! I think that drinking was par for the course on the 1991 tour though! See my post at #28

 

George Harrison...unfortunately.

 

Chuck Berry ...this past September. It was sad, sad, sad. His voice was strong, but he could NOT play the guitar. People started walking out after five minutes. There was one long, painful stretch where he tried to tune the guitar, but couldn't...he was left standing there with no help...to roadie or guitar tech came to the rescue. He carried on..at times just making random chucking noise on the strings.
sad!

 

Well, he is 80+ years old.

 

In the "should have known better" catagory - Hank Williams Jr. twice in Detroit. Early to mid 80's. Arrogant drunk both times.

 

Dylan when he toured with Roger McQuinn and Tom Petty back in the 80's. The NEC arena in Birmingham. Walked on, played a very perfunctionary set of under one hour with no asides or comments to the audience and then walked off. No encore(s). Not that I wanted one. Never had any sort of urge to see him since.

Van Morrison at the Manchester Palace. Sometime in the late 80's, I think. Grumpy old fart. For some reason, he had the house lights brought up after one song or so and played the rest of his very lacklustre set that way.

To this day I can remember being seriously disappointed by the Eagles when they supported Neil Young & The Santa Monica Flyers on the Tonight's The Night tour. Manchester Palace, Nov 1973. I recall how they sounded exactly like the record with no interaction with the audience at all. Boring. Things livened up after the intermission. A lot.

 

Beck, Bogart, and Appice, in Boston, somewhere in the 1973-74 period. Loud, muddy, pseudo-blues/rock "heaviness." Very very bad, and I felt awful for the friends I had dragged there to hear Beck's guitar genius. A year or so later, when Beck had changed course (the early phase of the "Blow by Blow" period) he gave a great show, with the Mahavishu himself opening, at the same Boston venue.

 

Eric Clapton, Blackbush 78 - George Terry played some pretty guitar though
Status Quo, Southampton circa 1982
Rolling Stones, Sydney 22.2.03 - dreadful sound and a washed up setlist, complete contrast to Dylan earlier in the same week.

 

I saw them in 2005 and unfortunately I cannot agree with you. It was a good show, the band was tight, but Anthony still isn't able to sing. He isn't a singer. I liked their "By the way" CD a lot, but I noticed that it was for the melodic touch and the actually sungen harmonies from John. Kiedis one note singing can really get annoying after a time.

 

Deep Purple 75... Stormbringer tour

 

The Grass Roots, summer of '76.

They played at a local night club called Uncle Sam's and tried doing new arrangements of the old hits and fell flat on their faces as far as I'm concerned.

And they were rather wasted too.

 

New Order in '86, I think. They made no attempt to disguise the fact that they were totally bored with what they were doing. It got worse during the encore when they couldn't keep up with the prerecorded tracks they were using. I saw them once more on the subsequent tour and they weren't much better.

The Stones show I saw on the Bridges to Babylon tour was professional but painfully dull. Predictable set list, and seeing a concert in from the rear seats of Giant's Stadium was the definition of misery.

 

I went to see Norah Jones about 2 years ago. She was fantastic; but her opening act was awful. Some guy warbling really bad songs with an acoustic guitar. I didn't boo him (tempted though I was...) but I didn't clap when he was done; either.