Worst Concerts You Have Attended ??

Best:  Roger Waters Us and Them tour Newark NJ.  No comments necessary. 

worst:  Joan Biaz. 1984 Cologne, West Germany.  Opened for Santana who opened for Bob Dylan.  Or maybe it was the other way around.    I enjoyed the train ride up and back from Baden but I had no money and cheaped out on tickets.  It was a soccer stadium.  Enough said. But hey.  It was West Germany!

When I saw Van Halen for the first and only time (David Lee Roth days), I found myself wishing they'd have introduced themselves to each other before the gig. But for me, bad gigs are bad gigs primarily because some sound crews would appear to be unclear on the concept. 

I can’t remember the worst (probably Aerosmith at the “Big A”) but I can surely tell you about the best! I saw Led Zeppelin on 6/23/77 at the LA Forum. Seventeen years old and twelve guys from the High School football and baseball teams scalped tickets from Troy ticket agency. We were halfway back on the floor of the Forum and to this day, THEE best concert I’ve ever seen, to this day. That was the night a very drunk Keith Moon came on stage and pounded Bonham’s drums during a couple of songs....I’ll never forget it! 

Aerosmith, 1975 at the CNE Grandstand in Toronto. Absolutely horrid sounding, and of course they were wasted too. Saw Peter Frampton the same year (I think) for his Comes Alive tour, and it was wonderful. I still consider it one of my favorite concerts to this day

Kansas a few years ago. Came out played about 35 minutes and then just left. Plus they sucked

Seems that poor sound mixing/too loud and distorted is a common theme.  I do agree that some of these sound techs must clearly be deaf (understandable) but loud does not equal better.  

The last several concerts I've attended in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace Auditorium and the Venetian Theater (which have excellent acoustics and sound) have been outstanding.

I imagine there will be a flood of concerts coming after the current pandemic restrictions ease.  I already did snag tickets for Chicago in September @ the Venetian which was one of the last concerts I saw in March, 2020.  That was at the Venetian Theater and the sound and performance was excellent.

Kid Rock opening for the Rolling Stones at OSU stadium, a few years back. Loudest concert in 50 years of concerts, ears rang for 2 days. Volume level did not compensate for other performance metrics.

Billy Joel. Somebody's bored old uncle needing to pay alimony.

... in Atlanta at Chastain Park. This is an expensive outdoor amphitheater and the typical problem with concerts there is the audience who’d rather talk about work, tell jokes, and be inattentive to the music period.

Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me. I hated that place - worst audiences ever. For most of them, after setting up their lavish tables/spreads, if the performers never showed up they'd not even notice. After all, going there was all about them, not the performers. 

Herbie Hancock at the QE Theater in Vancouver 2019. Great band including guest mutli-instrumentalist Terrace Martin and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums. Although the sound rig itself looked perfectly legit (I worked in pro sound industry and as a pro musician for the earlier portion of my adult life), save for the lack of center fill to cover those like myself sitting 9th row center, the dunce running the main console had a severe case of tin ear. One of my fellow attendees went back to position himself next to the main sound console to see if it was as bad back there, and he said that it was much worse. Wow.
One of my friends had flown in from Toronto just for this show. All those that I knew in attendance including myself were deeply disappointed and angry. I tried to contact the Vancouver Jazz Festival to ascertain who was responsible for that disaster but could not find any contact info for the organization on their crap website. Infuriating.

Oregon. Never heard a more obnoxious piercing sound as that freaking amplified oboe.

"Chicago" at my college in 1969.  Off key horns and flat, dull vocals.  Terrible.

Without a doubt the worst concert I ever attended was about 12 yrs ago in Atlanta at Chastain Park. This is an expensive outdoor amphitheater and the typical problem with concerts there is the audience who’d rather talk about work, tell jokes, and be inattentive to the music period. Women feel it imperative to stand and dance right in front of you, obscuring your view and looking around to make sure they’re getting other peoples’ attention. Selfish! But regarding the artists themselves, they almost all do their best to entertain even with a rude or disengaged audience, however, I had the misfortune of paying for tickets to hear Aretha Franklin. The concert lasted exactly 46 minutes start to finish. 46 minutes for $100 a piece tickets. The crowd seemed stunned as no explanations or excuses were made, no claims of illness, technical problems...Forty Six minutes! It was pure highway robbery. The only redeeming factor was that the typical inattentive audience, the selfish women dancers, and the people who go to the shows to discuss work, the weather, and whatever finally got the same rude treatment they usually give lol !

James Brown in the mid 60’s came on stage and started singing.  Ladies in the first rows started screaming.  “Mr. Brown” started screaming through the mike, “Stop the music.  Stop the music.”  Music stopped.  

“Mr. Brown” said, if you all want to hear me sing, “sit down and shut up.”  He started singing again, ladies in the first row started creaming again.  He walked off stage and did not return. 

No concert and no refunds!

Allman Brothers. Not the music, but the venue. Made the mistake of getting lawn tickets instead of pavilion. Could not see the band, only an endless parade of drunk bikers blindly following the person in front of them, loosely circling the perimeter of the lawn, staggering over peoples blankets with muddy boots, spilling beer, shouting, and staring around with stunned gormless expressions leading me to believe it wasn't just beer.

T-Rex
Blue Oyster Cult

The best and most prolific touring band ever, Dave Mathews Band. It was horrible not because of Dave, he was fantastic. It was the two inconsiderate moron girls sitting directly behind me. They talked at a scream volume non-stop the entire time. Loud screeching talk so they could be heard over the music. My wife could tell I was about to blow a fuse so she squeezed my arm and said please don't.
After about an hour of this when there was a pause in the show I turned and ask why they were there. They looked at me stupidly and I said you are obviously not here to listen to Dave so why don't you go out to the common area and talk so you can here each other without screaming and still hear the show.
They got mad and left which was my goal all along.

Back in 1983 or so, I was working security at a Grateful Dead concert at the University of Maine.  A new security feature (UV light) was catching LOTS of counterfeit tickets and everyone was pissed!  The AC wasn’t working, the acoustics sucked, and Jerry Garcia singled the staff out as jerks.  

"Cheap Trick"  This was a CHEAP TRICK to put people through

  Back in the 80's they opened for UFO & Rush

Sly and the Family Stone, early ‘70s. The start of the show kept getting delayed. We waited probably two hours. When it did start, Sly was so blitzed he was incomprehensible. My date had to be home by 11. We pushed that a little bit, but heard about 30 minutes of music. My friends said he finally got booed off the stage after a total of about 45 minutes. It was a disaster all the way around. One great thing about concerts back then was if there was good crowd interaction, the band would keep coming back for encores. These days it’s all choreographed. An encore is just built into the show, then you’re done no matter how much the crowd cheers, generally about 11 pm. When the house lights come on, show’s over. 

Rush…every time they have been out west. The last show was Vegas at the MGM Grand. When they played “Headlong Flight”, everything in the arena stopped. Everyone working there gathered at each portal…there was no one manning the concessions. Even the older men and ladies working the shows gathered to watch. It was magic. 

World series of rock n roll Cleveland stadium 75’. The Rolling Stones with Billy Preston and still had Mick Taylor. J Giles opened, both were great. I was like 14 or 15.

Hundreds since then. 

Best- the Levellers, numerous times throughout the 90's. Those cats could play. 

Worst- dead heat between Bob Dylan, Wembley Arena 1989, and the Rolling Stones the last time they played Glastonbury. Actually the Stones were worse, completely unwatchable,  i left after one, well i hesitate to call it a song.

I wear those foam earplugs to any live show but the absolute worst was KISS on their first farewell tour. It was Albuquerque at the Tingley and was so loud and distorted even with the earplugs was unintelligible. Left midway through. The next worst was Nugent. No further comment needed on him. Made it 4 songs...  

Some of best concerts have been ZZ Top in an outdoor venue, Steely Dan at the same venue and STP. All time favorite band live is Los Lobos! These guys are tight, fun and bring the musical goods, never seen a bad show from them and their sound crew is always on point.

Always an admirer of Bob Dylan, several years ago he played in Chicago and we couldn’t wait.  It was the worst performance by any musician I’ve ever seen. On top of Dylan’s mumbling, something fully expected, the music was loud, but not in a good way.  Painfully loud, high distortion loud, unintelligible loud, so loud and distorted there were no dynamics, just loud.  Dylan didn’t say a word and I honestly couldn’t say that he actually sang anything.   A puppet might have had more personality.  
I’m just now recovering from the experience.  His music won’t be denied and I began to listen several years later but man we’re we disappointed that evening.  

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

Hot Tuna at SUNY Plattsburgh in the fall of 1972. They were so LOUD that my ears started to hurt badly. I had been to loud concerts before but this was ridiculous. I needed to leave the auditorium about halfway through the set. I couldn’t hear for a week afterward and I’m sure everyone that attended the concert probably got some permanent hearing loss. 

Worst was Aerosmith in 78' so wasted it was just noise, couldn't tell one song from the next.
And last year David Gray terrible mix and unintelligible gibberish like he was coked up.
Best concert, hmm, Jethro Tull Thick as a brick and in modern times U2's last tour was a stellar production of sound and light.
Oh and Bryan Ferry's reunion tour and Prince last tour

Ginger Baker , 1972 Central Park Amphitheater in NYC. Not exactly sure what you'd call the genre of music he was playing that night but it was African influenced. Remember the crowd calling for him to play Toad and his response " Toad is Dead". It was concert best forgotten, but since you asked. 

Bob Mould sounds nothing like his studio work.  It was awful.  

Saw Lucinda Williams at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair NJ maybe 10 years ago. Before the concert she was boasting about having "Neil Young's sound guy" at the board. She started playing and the sound was terrible, slowly driving people out of the venue. I spent most of the concert at the crowded bar listening to the same complaints. At one point she ridiculed members of the audience for leaving--all of us big fans (up till then). Funny thing is one of the best concerts I ever attended was probably 10-15 years before that when she had just released "Passionate Kisses". She played at Maxwell's in Hoboken NJ. Just her and Gurf Morlix (her then producer) on guitar and about 20 people in the room. The sound was amazing and it was an incredible opportunity to see an emerging artist in such an intimate setting.

More than I can remember. One show was Mason Williams at the Valley Forge Music Fair. I hung out with the band after the show and shared a joint with Mason. Pretty cool. Stan Rogers at The Cherry Tree in Philadelphia. The line to get in was crazy. Stan hadn't been there for a couple of years so people were hungry to hear him. That was the single best show I've ever been to. One month later he died on a plane of smoke inhalation. It still saddens me. Joe 

 ZZ Top.  One of my favorite bands, but they need a new sound man.  I've seen them multiple times in multiple venues over 40+ years and the sound is always bad.  Too loud, can't hear the vocals.  

Best concert?  Pink Floyd at the old Cleveland Stadium.  The sound was fantastic for a huge outdoor stadium.

"I saw the CSNY concert at the Hollywood Bowl that Joni Mitchell opened and that started Joni's and Graham's long-running romance?"

They began their relationship in 1968 and it ended in 1970 around the time Deja Vu came out so in the interest of accuracy, there was no CSNY in 1968...

dwmaggie -- did I mention on this website that Steppenwolf played at my high school?  University High in West L.A. They were good. They didn't do The Pusher, probably at the instructions of the Principal.

Gordon Lightfoot at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia in the early 1980’s: He was stinkin’ drunk and slurring his words while  he sang. Very disappointing! 🤬

Living Colour in Santa Ana at the Galaxy Theatre. Wanted to see them for years, finally got t a show and all Vernon could do was turn up the volume to ear-piercing levels and look and laugh at the audience. Just downright disappointing.

 Just a decade and a half correction, the date for B B King should have read 11/30/2013!

I have been lucky I guess or perhaps I haven’t been to as many concerts as you guys.
I remember in the 70’s (or late 60’s) enjoying Alice Cooper, CCR, Neil Young. Perhaps the least enjoyable was Chicago.

Worst, when my kids were young I remember taking them to a New Kids On The Block concert...uugh! Torture!
But, they enjoyed it.

For payback, in the 90’s I took my kids to see John Fogerty, Neil Young, and the Rolling Stones concert’s and they enjoyed it!

ozzy

'72 or so, Z Z Top @ Celebrity Theater Phx AZ Front row, so loud I still have ringing in my ears, excruciating. Left after 2 numbers.
'73 or so, Clapton @ an outside venue in Phoenix, can't remember which one, smack and booze, what song is that?
11/26/99 Celebrity Theater again, it's a rotating stage that Zappa referred to as performing on a lazy Susan.  R.I.P.  B B King. Love him, worst show ever. Played most of 'The Thrill Is Gone' and then we left after about 30 minutes of 'You Are My Sunshine' renditions. Hope the family enjoyed the ticket money.

Eric Clapton's band in 1973 at JFK Stadium in Bridgeport, CT, My mom went with me - he was so drunk he could not stand up.

The Black Crows when Shake your Money Maker was out. It was hands down the worst concert, we left about a half hour in along with probably half the crowd. 

Neil Diamond in the late 70's. We made a spur of the moment decision. Had Bob Uecker seats. The reverb off the wall was horrible. We left after the second song!

Bob Dylan. Again. At Coca Cola Parke in Allentown PA. Could not make out one single word. Also we sat far away and couldn't even tell if it was actually him. Even the music was incomprehensible, had no idea what songs they were supposed to be. Same concert as Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, they sounded just fine.

Boston, shortly after their first album was released. I was told that it was only the second time they had played live and they were terrible. Painfully loud and distorted. Another  show that was way to loud was The Joe Perry Project. During the brief time that he left Aerosmith he decided to torture his fans by playing painfully loud. I left both of these shows early, but not early enough to avoid ringing in my ears for days.