What's the worst show/concert you have ever been to?

I just remembered a headliner that I did walk out on. It was the David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails Outside tour. NIN were on first. The band was great but Trent was just horrible. I think that was his addiction era which is the only explanation. Then Bowie came on with a weird band playing weird arrangements that sounded like muzak in a dentist’s waiting room. Everybody who wasn’t a Bowie devotee walked out. Imagine 15,000 people walking out of a 25,000 person amphitheater during the headliner—that’s literally what happened.
 
Haven’t see a terrible whole concert. With that in mind probably 1979, Doobie Brothers during the Minute by Minute tour. Starting the guitars were not in tune with each other and they were off. Couple songs in they got dialed in better.

Never bought a ticket to GnR. They showed them in concert on MTV I think. I was excited to watch it and then I was really disappointed because they sounded like shit. Made think that the studio did a lot to polish them up on the records.
 
The worst show I ever saw was the final (until they reunited) Replacements show at the Taste of Chicago in the late 80’s. We got there early, waited in line for a few hours to get pavillion seat and were treated to a horrific atrocity falsely billed as music.

Years later I heard a tape of the radio broadcast and it was worse than I remembered.
 
I also can't think of a headliner that I saw that was bad though sometimes the mix wasn't great particularly in arenas. I have seen few bad opening acts but also some good ones and one that was far better than the headliner (unknown band INXS opening for Men at Work, they were awesome and you knew they were going to be a big deal, M@W was meh)
 
DinoMikeSr said:
Never bought a ticket to GnR. They showed them in concert on MTV I think. I was excited to watch it and then I was really disappointed because they sounded like shit. Made think that the studio did a lot to polish them up on the records.
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That was the At the Ritz show. The Ritz being a small club in Manhattan, it’s now called Webster Hall. Axl does sound terrible for the first half of the show, but it gets much better after he warms up. Which means that he was a professional singer and couldn’t be arsed to warm up before a show that was being recorded, which is about as unprofessional as it gets. I’ve heard this phenomenon from him on lots of recordings from that era.
 
None where the band sucked. The venue for Black Sabbath with Dio back in 91-92 was this marble hall thing in DC that just reflected sound all over. Couldn't recognize a single song in there except the intro to War Pigs. Prong was the opening act, Tommy Victor was frustrated at the end, threw his guitar into the air and left the stage. The guitar sat on stage feedbacking for what seemed like at least 4 minutes before a guitar tech was finally allowed to go get it. Shit way to start an evening.
 
TomcatMF said:
When GNR and Metallica did that tour together in 1992, I thought GNR were terrible.
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I caught that show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Motorhead were there too. Not being a Metallica fan, they played a fun, energetic set. Motorhead was good too. We had bad seats. When GNR played, they were drowned out by fans singing along. Axle was playing way too much piano for my liking. They came in a distant third place in my book.

I do enjoy those GNR, late 80's, garage band sounding shows at the Ritz.
 
dmn23 said:
When was that, do you remember? Was that one of the New Year's Eve shows?
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IDK but it wasn't a New Years show. It was quite a while back, not that long, maybe a year, after they hit it big with the Wagon Wheel video.
I think it was probably just inexperience, the wrong engineer at the. board. My guess is they let their own guy do it and they shoulda relied on a house guy.
Ive seen a lot of Rhyman shows and it can be kinda a crapshoot up in the rafters.
 
smurfco said:
Bob Dylan circa 2006 or so.
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I forgot about my awful Dylan show at a small intimate concert hall in Birmingham. The first time I saw him he was great, back around '98-'99 when he was touring the Time Out of Mind record. But I saw him again 5-6 yrs ago and he was truly awful, and seemingly on purpose.. He had a great band but he played a little Farfisa organ all night and stared into the distance off stage, mumbled thru all his lyrics, and kept changing the melody to all his familiar stuff. I finally gave up and walked out shortly before the end.
 
Pine Apple Slim said:
Ive seen a lot of Rhyman shows and it can be kinda a crapshoot up in the rafters.
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Me too. And yeah, the sound is often amazing but sometimes they've got the wrong person at the board for that room. I saw Dwight Yoakam there one time and it was a poor mix and too loud for that space.

I've seen two of the NYE Old Crow shows, that's why I asked.

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Pine Apple Slim said:
I forgot about my awful Dylan show at a small intimate concert hall in Birmingham. The first time I saw him he was great, back around '98-'99 when he was touring the Time Out of Mind record. But I saw him again 5-6 yrs ago and he was truly awful, and seemingly on purpose.. He had a great band but he played a little Farfisa organ all night and stared into the distance off stage, mumbled thru all his lyrics, and kept changing the melody to all his familiar stuff. I finally gave up and walked out shortly before the end.
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I saw him in '96 at the Alabama Theatre and that was great. Actually it was so good that I deliberately chose not to see him again, given his reputation for inconsistent shows.

 
dmn23 said:
Me too. And yeah, the sound is often amazing but sometimes they've got the wrong person at the board for that room. I saw Dwight Yoakam there one time and it was a poor mix and too loud for that space.
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My ex is a big fan so Ive seen Dwight several times in various venues. He's always too damn loud. In some rooms annoyingly so. I think he's deaf to high frequencies. Look up his live guitar rig it's insane.
 
Bob Dylan in 88-ish. He clearly didn't want to be there, phoned it in for 45 minutes and walked off.
 
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