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Worst Concerts You Have Attended ??

I just left a remark about a favorite band of mine back in the day - April Wine - that I saw in concert and was disappointed. Could have been that it was an off night for them, or maybe they were never good in concert. Maybe the lead guitarist had too much to drink? April Wine was not the worst, however. I remember Neil Young in the 1990's who was on his one-man acoustic show type of tour that many artists were taking advantage of (perhaps for financial reasons) during that time. While a friend of I had near front row seats at Desert Sky Pavilion (now Ak-Chin) in Pheonix, the crowd was just roused up into a frenzy by the warm-up band (James) and here comes Neil and his guitar/harmonica. Wow, what a sonic letdown. I remember getting up and leaving and feeling Neil's glaring eyes on us as we ushered out. I think, to this day, he probably still remembers me. We all can remember the great live concerts we attended, but what were the worst and why?
goodlistening64
kcroyals
51 posts
 
U2 was awful, they avoided much of their material by playing cover tunes. Also saw a band member of Talk Talk fall off of huge speaker and knock himself out cold. Another band mate just walked over and unplugged his guitar that was in feedback.
rockadanny
1,221 posts
 
As per others' posts, worst concert(s) for me were due to either a deaf/apathetic/non-existant person at the sound board or elitist bands which think they know best how the sound should be set. 
ericsch
750 posts
 
Rockadanny, Yes I agree. Some of the worst concerts I've been to were due to a bass head at the sound board which results in making vocals and the rest of the music unintelligible. 
facten
2,723 posts
 
Give you another one - Rahsann Roland Kirk, unfortunate for him to be the opening act for Santana at the Filmore East in NYC 1971. Not sure what Bill Graham was thinking, but I can definitely say that it wasn't a crowd remotely interested in jazz and he took the brunt of the displeasure.
77jovian
385 posts
 
Nancy Griffiths.  Her reedy, thin voice was weaker and more out of tune than I could stand.  The final straw was her pathetic political finger-wagging between songs.

Steve Morse gets both second and third prize.  I’m a big fan, but the Steve Morse band was so loud I moved farther and farther to the back of the room until I was out the door and just kept going.

More recently, the Dixie Dregs at the Boulder Theater.  Again, deafening, so loud I couldn’t distinguish between instruments.  We went to the bar next door, which was piping in the live concert sound for the last two thirds of the show.  Better, but still a mixing mess.

Fourth prize goes to Dan Tyminski at the Cavern, outside of Nashville.  Dan was trying out his band and they couldn’t decide what genre they were playing.  Lounge-lizard-country-pop-bluegrass?  But the real culprit, again, was gawd-awful sound.  Boomy, thumpy, distorted, aggressively unpleasant.  Complained and were told:  this is the last show Dan’s going to do with this band and is going to re-group (I.e. he was just playing out the string), and they weren’t filming this show for Bluegrass Underground so the usually great sound crew wasn’t being used (but nobody else has complained so refunds were refused).

The really disturbing thing about all these experiences was how so much of the audience loved the show.
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