[Closed] Worst live band

The Farm and Primal Scream spring to mind as being particularly bad.

Christian Death at the London Astoria. We and a lot of other people were there to see Hunters Club supporting.
They played to a back drop of death camp scenes and when the singer brought his son on the chant " I am death" the audience responded with " your daddy's a ****er."

I was at that KOL gig in reading.

shocking. quite possibly the worst performance ever.

Flaming Lips at the Astoria 2 were a massive disappointment, just a terrible din.

This was before "Yoshimi", probably promoting Hit To Death in the Future Head - an album I loved, along with In A Priest Driven Ambulance.

Foo Fighters - London Wembley
Haven't listen to them again.

i saw reef just after they got famous with that sony minidisc advert. the crypt in Hastings I think.

lead singer was so drunk he kept falling off the stage.

I remember being disappointed with Midlake when I saw them live, they felt leaden and plodding. On the other hand other people who were at the same gig (O2 ABC Glasgow, 2010) have commented on this forum that they thought the gig was great, it just goes to show there's a subjective element to it all.

I saw MGMT at Barrowlands the same year and they weren't very good either. Northwind can back me up on that one.

Flaming Lips at the Astoria

I saw FL supporting the Chili Peppers and thought they were awful.

One memorable shocker was Die Toten Hosen supporting, I think, Therapy?. They didn't go down very well.

Guns N Roses once Axle got fat.

It ceased being a rock band and became the demented mewing of a stray cat that had suffered an aneurism.

My worst. a perfect circle at the Astoria 2003, think it was a pre tour or pre festival warm up gig. Performed for less than 30 mins then Maynard leaves the stage. The rest of the band just jammed for another 30 mins out of embarrassment I think.
At the time I would buy a few tickets for any gig I wanted to go to and see if any mates wanted to join me. No one did that night so I also ended up offloading the spares at a huge loss to a tout. So not only was it a shit gig but it cost me loads too.

Pitchshifter, I forget who they were supporting but they were dire.

The Pogues during Shane's 'too drunk to stand' period.

It Bites. Aylesbury Civic Centre circa 1986.

No heroes were called.

Oh man, I went to some cracking Pitchshifter gigs back in the day (late 90's), they used to generate a proper whirlwind of limbs, BO and dreadlocked lunatics.

Must have caught them on a bad night.

Also, I was persuaded to go and see Muse at Benicassim in about 2007.

My friend thought I'd like them, but I just thought it was an overblown racket with waaaaay too many notes.

Dunno if they were below their normal standard, or just always sound like that.

I saw Metronomy live at the Albert Hall a few years back.

They were atrocious. I know their style is minimal but they all looked so bored to be there and barely spoke between songs. There was no atmosphere, the live renditions of their songs weren't different in any way except being slightly less well-tuned and there was no other or new material. By the end of the gig I'm pretty sure a lot of the crowd were bored by them as well.

Saw pavement at Leeds festival just before they broke up. They were so bored and so was I.

I’ve seen the kings of Leon at a couple of festivals now. They were really underwhelming.

I saw The Fall about 15 years ago - Mark E Smith was wasted and the songs were barely recognisable, he lurched around for a bit and then mumbled ‘bleeearrrrgggh **** off’ at the end..

1981, won tickets...

John Cooper Clarke was awesome, but I wasn’t ready for 4 boys stood behind synths. So dull. I actually had a review printed in the NME, which I was very chuffed about.

There have been others, usually ones picked by friends 😉 eg. Embrace: christ almighty, its A GIG, not a bloody singalong! The Coral were pretty bad when they decided to go off on a 20minute jam session, tedious.

oh, and I’ve mentioned Lost Prophets before: they were shit and the paedo’s Mike Patton impersonation was so bad I went down the front to shout abuse at him when they finished, but I couldn’t get close enough as he was surrounded by clueless kids autograph hunting. Most of them girls, which would be sickening, but they were probably too old for the sick bastard.

Can you pop pickers remember this band's scandal? 😆

I saw the strokes supporting Foo Fighters in Manchester and thought they were awful. Some guy in a Chinese takeaway after wanted to fight me because I said they were shit.

Chilli peppers weren't great and man city's ground either, they kind of lost the audience when flea started saying people shouldn't have boo'd the support act, which was some all girl rock bamd that just kept banging on about politics and we're really shit. James Brown was the other support act though an he was ****ing awesome!!

Can you pop pickers remember this band’s scandal?

Of course, but surely it was only a scandal if you actually cared about them.

Tool, at Milton Keynes. No interaction whatsoever, no interesting playing or Events, just the band hiding in the corners, Maynard in his pants standing up t he back of the stage facing away from the crowd for the entire show. It was technically excellent of course but you might as well have just put on the CD and put some cardboard cutouts on the stage, at least they might have blown over or something to add some interest. I've seen less capable performances of course but never a worse gig.

First time I saw Biffy, I thought they were the shittest thing I've ever seen. It's not often I'll actually take the piss while a band's still on stage, even if I don't like it I can usually at least appreciate musicianship or whatever. But when they did Hope For An Angel I almost died laughing. Oh it's gone really quiet, there'll be a loud bit, wait for it, wait for it... AND there it is. AAAARGH AAAARGH AAAAAARGh AAAAARGH DUR DUR DUR DUR, DUR DUR DUR DUR, AAAAAARGH AAAAARGH AAAAARGH AAAAAARGH. A year and 4 more gigs later and I was getting a biffy tattoo... seen them more than any other band and they're at least 2 or 3 of the best gigs I've ever seen. So I guess I was a bit off on that one.

I'm just refusing to believe in a bad Pitchshifter show tbh.

ChrisL
Full Member

I saw MGMT at Barrowlands the same year and they weren’t very good either. Northwind can back me up on that one.

My favourite bit was when I said "This is shite, I'm off to get some chips" and all of you lot plus a bunch of other bystanders went "**** yeah, chips" and walked out. I am a leader of men, as long as I'm leading them away from boredom towards junk food.

+1 for Pitchshifter gigs!!!!

I saw Ian Brown at glasto many years ago
It was amzaing, he managed not to hit a single correct note on any song

it sounded worse in person

@ads678 I was at that gig. Was it Dixie Chicks? They were rubbish, totally lost the crowd and I remember the Chili Peppers struggled. Although I also remember James Brown not being that good. Seemed to be half an hour of the MC shouting 'JAMES BROWN!!! ' repeatedly, and not much music!

Also been very disappointed by Kings of Leon, once at a VFestival, once a couple of years later at Hammersmith Apollo.

I saw Pitchshifter live in about 1993. One of the most intense gigs I've been too.

Saw Nirvana in 1991 and they were just dull (I liked Nirvana at the time too)

I saw Sigue Sigue Sputnik in Queens Mary’s college London on their first ever tour. Top gig full of incident, breasts and blood.

I saw them 5 years back in the Queen Victoria in Swindon. Two fat old men miming to an ipod. It was so terrible we stayed to the end just aghast at how terrible it was.

Oasis, Man City ground (new one).

B o r i n g

Deftones. Just a drunken noisy mess and Chino's voice was awful. Honestly worse than the kids in the metal bands at the local music project.

Tool. Crushingly boring and uninvolving. No surprise or spontaneity, like listening to a CD as stated above.

Marilyn Manson. I was so excited for this as I was a young kid at one of my first gigs and Mechanical Animals had just came out. Turns out the band was a bunch of wasted goths who clearly couldn't be bothered and it was the first time I was really miffed by a live performance.

Lost Prophets. Calculated nu-metal, cash-in designed to be big on Kerrrang TV. Brand new clean skating outfits, edgy haircuts and coordinated jumping around. An Aldi own brand Linkin Park. It was like watching a mildly angry boyband. Not sure what ever happened to them.

I'll stick up for Pitchshifter though. Saw the in Newcastle and they were mint.

Seems a concensus among people who've seen KoL is that they are not performers....

The Pixies. Saw them in Minneapolis in 1992. They sucked.

Easy, Ramones @ Barrowlands circa 1985 - so stoned they could barely play and threatened to walk-off if the spitting and flying beer cups didn't stop - sadly, despite the audience's efforts they stayed on stage and inflicted their turgid music upon us.

About the same time, The Fall - they were pretty awful too.

Ironically, I saw the Pogues a couple of times and despite Sean McGowan's attempts at getting paralytic, they we're that bad.

Massive Attack have been both one of the best bands I've ever seen live, and one of the worst.

Saw them in Birmingham. Absolutely amazing. Horace Andy on stage with them. Epic night. Amazing atmosphere. I even danced a bit, and I never dance.

Saw them at Brixton Academy a few years later. Just really rubbish. Didn't seem like they were in any way interested in being there. Just endless political slogans projected. Boring as hell and no atmosphere.

MGMT. Boring.
The Fall (saw about 5 times early 80s. No idea why.
Police - after they'd had some success but before their run of no.1s. Full of themselves ****s.
I could go on...

I'd second Massive Attack. Saw them at Brixton, thought it was cos I was one of the few not stoned that I found it really dull.

And Oasis at the old Wembley. Well boring.

Couldn't name them but I recall chatting with a sound engineer whose band was playing later while a local band was soundchecking in the front bar. The way he stopped mid-sentence, his face a rictus of utter horror and incredulity at what we were hearing, will stay with me forever.

Somewhat gratified to see people piling in with me to defend the good name of Pitchshifter.

🙂

Sex Pistols
Phoenix Festival mid 90s filthy lucre tour. I was clearly naive but they were awful on every level

Regarding MGMT...

Northwind Full Member
My favourite bit was when I said “This is shite, I’m off to get some chips” and all of you lot plus a bunch of other bystanders went “**** yeah, chips” and walked out. I am a leader of men, as long as I’m leading them away from boredom towards junk food.

I remember waiting until the final song of the encore, just in case they finally managed to pull something good out of the bag for it. They didn't, so at that point I was easily persuaded to head out with you and the other guy we'd gone to the gig with.

My diary entry for the gig is not very kind to MGMT. I remember that the average age of the crowd was very young and we felt bad for anyone who was experiencing this as their first ever gig.

PWEI, saw them a lot in their early days, always utter rubbish.

Tackhead disco - almost left the gig before the headliners

Guns N Roses once Axle got fat.

It ceased being a rock band and became the demented mewing of a stray cat that had suffered an aneurism.

I went to see the "new G'n'R" headline Reading with an old mate a few years ago. He'd made a special trip specifically to see them with me. He got quite annoyed at me and the other several thousand people that Booed the Elton John impersonator that waddled on late and warbled out of tune in Axel's place... On the plus side I'd really enjoyed Gogol Bordello earlier that day...

Saw Enter Shikari at last year's Reading, Jesus Christ they're shite...

Somewhat gratified to see people piling in with me to defend the good name of Pitchshifter.

May have been an off night I saw them but we re-named them Shitshifter.

Stone roses '96 Reading festival.

Shocking.

Slash and the conspirators in Birmingham. Musically note perfect, the band are fab and Myles Kennedy is a rock god but the sound was shite and Slash just didn't engage at all. It was just showboating (we know he's incredible but 10+ min self absorbed solos are dull)

Airbourne supporting Maiden. Bit meh, wouldn't pay to see them. The singer was so hardcore, downing a bottle of white wine 😂
Considering Maiden's standard with their own performances I was surprised

Band I would love to see/have seen live would be Mötley Crüe, now that would be a show if nothing else... At least it would have been in c1986

In November last year The Coral supported Courteeners and were just awful. Too many instruments all fighting for attention and it ended up as just tuneless noise for the most part. Thankfully Courteeners and The Snuts made the gig a success with blinding performances

Funny int'it. I love the coral, enjoyed every gig of theirs I've been to, think they always sound Bob on (although their audience interaction can be lacking!)

Courteeners on the other hand I find extremely naff nowadays. Bit more interesting earlier on, just naff now.

Worst performance I've seen is probably Baby shambles. On late coz Pete was out scoring smack. He then kept forgetting how to play the guitar and the lyrics and kept falling asleep. Had a physical fight with the other guitarist who stormed off stage. Pete disappeared then came back out with a tourniquet round his arm and did a bizarre attempt at an acoustic solo set sat on top of the speaker stack, but again he'd forgotten every song ever written.

We hung around for a bit, think there was probably about 50 people left when we called it a day. Venue holds 3000.

The Ramones were one of the best bands I've ever seen, Brixton Academy early '90s.

So much energy from them and the crowd - in a venue that I'm not that keen on usually.

1970s -
Pink Fairies at Sheffield Poly. Dreadful noise.
Also Suzi Quattro at Sheffield Uni Rag Ball. I popped up to the coffee lounge instead where Bert Weedon was playing.
Coliseum II at Reading Festival. So boring the audience all turned to watch a group of guys building a pyramid out of Party 7s. The band stopped mid song to find out what was going on.

Catatonia (reading '99)were so bad we left the area but the sound of strangling cats travelled. Red hot chilli peppers were terrible too, also at reading in 1999

PWEI, saw them a lot in their early days, always utter rubbish.

Everything they did was, at best, shit.

Remember seeing Black Grape, appalling, completely off their tits, which made up for it 😀

A few memorable ones here

De-la-soul....can't remember where but they were rubbish.

Happy Mondays...a few times...Ryder was mashed and pretty much just mumbled incoherently throughout the gig.

Blur at the Pitz in Milton Keynes..way back. They got kicked out when (I think coxon) threw his guitar at a heckler in the front row and knocked him out

Zodiac midwarp ..roadmenders in Northampton....****in rubbish.

Grand master flash..at MK11 in milton keynes...piss poor..pretty much just pressing play on an iPod.

Sly and the family stone.... Band played for ages before they pretty much wheeled sly on for one or two songs at the end.

DavidB

I saw Sigue Sigue Sputnik in Queens Mary’s college London on their first ever tour. Top gig full of incident, breasts and blood.

Ah Sigue Sigue - me and my mates went up to London twice in their early days - all the hype about miming and stuff was just bull - they were a superb live band. Really put on a show

I saw Blue Oyster Cult at Hammersmith during a dodgy period in the bands internal dynamics.
When the band go off for a break and the bass player comes out and does an insanely angry 5 minute solo and goes off without saying a word and then the drummer does the same it is a bit weird. And a total vibe killer.
Also they are the shortest band I've seen since Stone The Crows.

I saw a reformed Jesus & Mary Chain go through the motions in Brixton, some charity gig. It was the complete opposite of the excitement they generated in their early days. And they had some woman stand in for the Hope Sandoval part in Sometimes Always who was completely out of tune. Dismal.

Tool, at Milton Keynes. No interaction whatsoever, no interesting playing or Events, just the band hiding in the corners, Maynard in his pants standing up t he back of the stage facing away from the crowd for the entire show. It was technically excellent of course but you might as well have just put on the CD and put some cardboard cutouts on the stage, at least they might have blown over or something to add some interest. I’ve seen less capable performances of course but never a worse gig.

Amen to that, when they went off at the interval ,they put on recorded music, didn't even know they had gone off.
Shame as Maynard really used to put on a good show.

David Bowie played in Cardiff supported by Morrisey, mid-90s. Morrisey’s fans disappeared after he’d played a wholly forgettable set, not including anything famous. Bowie - who I love - came on and played only his recent stuff. The stuff nobody remembers. It was empty enough that you could get close enough to him to see his odd eyes!

I saw Ian Brown at glasto many years ago
It was amzaing, he managed not to hit a single correct note on any song

it sounded worse in person

Brown supporting the Manic, 2003ish. Came on, argued with the audience, got booed off. It was probably for the best, considering the little music we heard from him.

Meatloaf, Knebworth 83.
Utter, utter dross: fairly sure he was off his face, the crowd booed and chucked bottles of suspicious amber fluids at him. He stormed off stage, came back in and announced that if the crowd didn't stop chucking bottles he was finished. That had the expected result, never seen so many bottles airborne before or since.
Deep purple were headlining, I remember they were really good. Long time ago now!

The Shamen at an anti nazi rally in Newcastle 1992. Turns out they'd charged 5k or something, which offended the crowd who booed them off. The band threw some chairs into the crowd and it all kicked off. Brilliant fun.

Black Crowes at Leeds (can’t remember the venue). They basically played no songs from the album they were touring and the brothers just stared at each other with pure hatred the whole time. Utterly boring.

Saw Fu Manchu at the cockpit a few weeks later and they were ace. Just a wall of speakers with the band wedged in between. Remember the singer saying “man, this is the smallest ****ing gig we’ve ever played” then the band proceeding to go nuts. Honestly thought I’d lost my hearing for afterwards. Total opposite of the Black Crowes experience

Band I would love to see/have seen live would be Mötley Crüe, now that would be a show if nothing else…

Saw them 4-5 years ago supporting Def Leppard. First time I'd seen them, and was disappointed. The drum kit trick is impressive if you've not seen it before, but the sound was awful - made me wonder if the headliners had set that up. (Steel Panther opened the show. Now that was a blast!)

Hold on, that guy from the Lemonheads.

Glastonbury, 93/94/94 no idea which. So bad I’d have been better.

Edit, Evan Dando. That was the most I’d seen anyone heckled. He stormed of after a couple of, ill be generous, things attempting to be songs.

Worst: Saxon, went to accompany friends. The music was dire, but worst of all was how lame they were.

Most disappointing: Bowie. Too many people. He couldn’t hit the high notes.

Most tedious: Michael Jackson

Best for entertainment value: Slade. They put the whole audience in a great mood!

Mary Chain were crap on the Rollercoaster tour in the 90s as well TBF.

Haha! Meatloaf - sure that wasn't Castle Donington in 83? Terrible. Best bit was the half full bottle of p!ss bouncing off his forehead as he tried to replicate Dee Snider earlier in the day threatening to kick the asses of 100,000 people...

White Denim. A mate was going, said they were good, id heard a song or two on six music, so I togged along and blagged my way in. I got about halfway through before adjourning to the bar - their first song had more time signatures than a whole Rush album and I couldnt keep up. They were very proficient, The rest of the crowd were clearly fanatics and loved them. But I found it self indulgent pompous nonsense.
I think i've been fortunate in that I cant remember seeing any band who were truly rubbish. Counting Crows almost, but It couldve been dodgy sound..

Best for entertainment value: Slade. They put the whole audience in a great mood!

Ha! I saw Slade at the Top Rank in Doncaster when they were still skinheads. Absolutely brilliant.

Yep, Slade, 1984, week before Xmas, last date of the tour, Liverpool Royal Court. Brilliant gig.

Newcastle City Hall 1984, Status Quo on their End Of The Road tour. Power packed up half way through - wasn’t their fault and they got going again but the whole show had the feel of going through the motions. Think Rossi had collapsed with exhaustion at one of the other tour gigs, and it showed.

They managed another 30 years though...

New Order are my absolute favourite band but absolute shite live. Seen them enough times to know better, from Finsbury Park in 86 to Victorious last year - Barney's voice is so bad live.

Arctic Monkeys probably the most disappointing. They were way too cool for school and clearly couldn't be arsed.

Best: probably Green Day at Reading 95 or Chase and Status at T in the Park 2011 - had never heard of them before but a couple of thousand pilled up Scots bouncing in a sweaty tent was nuts 🙂

Blue Oyster Cult and The Killers , decades apart but both shite .

Another vote for the Kings of Leon. The only gig I’ve walked out of, after looking at my mates and saying ‘is it just me, or is this utter gash?’. We were all in agreement it was complete shite - they looked bored, we most certainly were - so we went to the pub instead.

They didn’t engage with the crowd at all, not one word, and looked like they’d rather be anywhere else on earth rather than on stage. *s!

It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that 2 nights earlier we’d watched the Prodigy in the same venue (Manchester Apollo) and they absolutely took the *ing roof off!

I saw the Happy Monday’s loads of times, back in the day, and they were either absolutely brilliant or absolutely ****ing awful, depending on how many days they’d been on a bender for.

Billy Bragg
Nick Cave

Arctic Monkeys are a good shout but to be fair the crapness of the gig was mostly caused by the bloody crowd who insisted on singing every word at the top of their voices so you couldn’t actually hear them.
Supported by Maximo Park though who were awesome.

Catatonia (reading ’99)were so bad we left the area

That was getting towards the band finally breaking up, Cerys had a reputation for hitting the bottle, and the internal pressures were really starting to show. I saw Catatonia a bunch of times, and they were always loads of fun, but later gigs were showing some ragged edges for sure.
The worst gigs I can remember are Katastrophy Wife at the Fleece in Bristol. I’d seen Babes In Toyland before and really enjoyed them, so I was looking forward to Kat Bjelland’s solo project. It was awful, difficult to describe other than a catastrophe!
John Martyn in Bath; he was completely shitfaced when he came on, could barely play or sing, the whole gig was a complete shambles.
65daysofstatic - I hadn’t planned on seeing them, I’d bought tickets to see Asobi Seksu at a venue in Oxford, but for whatever reason they became the support act for 65daysofstatic, so rather than lose the money me and my mate went to the O2 to see both bands. Asobi were ok, but only had 30-40 minutes, so that was disappointing. We left after 65daysofstatic’s first number and went to a pub down the road. Dull, duller, dullest.

Saw Catatonia in the early days when they had just released Way Beyond Blue and they were great. Their first album was and still is a great pop record but everything after that went downhill in my opinion.

Ash - Murrayfield Stadium supporting RHCP 2004

@ads678 I was at that gig. Was it Dixie Chicks?

Could have been actually....I just remember them talking far too much and getting booed off.

James Brown was only on for half a song at a time but it just felt great actually seeing him live.

Hawkwind in the late 80's, old men going through the motions.

I saw FL supporting the Chili Peppers

Oh lord, a twofer! RHCP are the only band I have regretted seeing. No crowd interaction at all.

Gene Loves Jezebel, late 80s

Never was a pool table more welcome