Most Disappointing Live Act?

It is indeed a wonder to behold! G

Eric Clapton at The Royal Albert Hall about 20 years ago i guess. Everyone stayed seated until the very last two songs. Soulless up until that point. The highlight was that Phil Collins was guest drummer. Says it all!

I used to see them all the time as youngster in Oz. As you say, brilliant.

Dare I be another to mention The Rolling Stones ?  Dare I say their concert in Roundhay Park 1982 ?

Most of the time Mick was so out of breath he couldn't get the words out. The rest of the band seemed like they were on another planet. Keef probably was......

They were blown away by the support band George Thorogood and the Destroyers - now that's what I call a PROPER live band.

Another Stones one - 2007 at the 02 Arena in London. Very poor, even Charlie was off...

Simple Minds milton keynes bowl ,sometime in the mid eighties .

This was a day festival i went  to mainly to see the Cult who i was a big fan of at the time. The line up included The Bangles The Cult , Simple Minds and The waterboys.   All in all a good day out the weather was good ,beer was coldish ,  the waterboys were good the bangles were naff as hoped they would be . Then Simple minds came on and insisted on dragging out all of there 3 minute hits into 15 to 25 minute anthemic sing a longs complete with extended drum, guitar chorus sections. made even more nauseating by Jim Kerrs insistance in prancing around the stage waving flags singing out of time and tune whilst wearing pixie boots. A stadium  experience i have never recovered from .

Cold Play , birmingham NIA , with Idlewild supporting.

A gig or event as  i think it was themed,  I have to admit to being non commital when it comes to cold play i dont find them offensive or that interesting to warrant much attention.Mrs TWP wanted to go  so I went  along with a view to being entertained for an evening . I was however glad to see idlewilde supporting who were superb despite playing to a half empty arena.  Coldplay yes they were note perfect did all the hits , great light show , involved the crowd, crowd singalongs were invited but it was dull,dull, dull and then more dull . sanatised dot to dot  pop music at its worst . i would rather sit through x factor repeats for a lifetime than face the tedium of a cold play concert .

TWP, I was dragged to that Simple Minds gig. It was utter, utter shite.

Having seen them in 1981 and 82, when they were a great live act with great songs, it was doubly disappointing.

Kevin,  i have only ever spoken to one other person who went to that gig since , last year in fact and he also said it was utter utter shite .   it was defenatly  jims brother Wan that turned up that day.

+1 Dylan, Earls Court in the 70's, truly awful. The best bit was buying the tickets, queuing up all night at the Hammy Odeon on a saturday night weeks before. Got there about 7pm. At about 1100pm the management noticed the rather long queue. They opened the place up and allowed us in for the night! Can you imagine that nowadays? Not the best night's sleep in the old seats, but you could smoke in those days..... The iceing on the cake was waking up sunday morning. The poor sod who had to clean the stage came on at about 8am. He got a shock! He got several standing ovations for his sweeping....buying tickets on the web just aint the same.

Cheers John 

+1 more for Dylan. Cardiff International Arena, 2009. I thought I ought to see Bob Dylan just to be able to say that I had seen the man. It was absolutely dreadful. He simply played piano (badly) and croaked along all evening. I can now say that I've seen the man. I shan't bother again!

I saw Lou Reed once in the mid 1980s at  a college in Western New York. He made it clear he didn't want to be there and did his best to suck. He succeeded brilliantly on that count. I dragged a couple of friends along who weren't that familiar with his music. Needless to say he didn't make any new fans that night.

Could not disagree more. They were utterly brilliant but not the best I have ever seen.That is a hard choice from -

1.Cream -  Trent Poly 1968?

2. The Grateful Dead - Alexandra Palace Sept 1974/Rainbow 1980/Wembley Arena 1990.

3. Man - Boat Club,Nottm. 1969.

4. Any Richard Thompson of the last 35 years.

5.John Mayalls Bluesbreakers - Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival 1967.

Worst ever - Deep Purple at the Boat Club Nottingham in I think 1968 and a solo Ryan Adams Nottingham Concert Hall in 2004 or 2005. Hard to choose.

Yes, Hammersmith Apollo about 2003-ish. Anderson//Howe/Squire/Wakeman/White.

I'd seen Yes before many years go at the Crystal Palace Bowl (along with Lindisfarne, Mahavishnu Orchestra & other great bands wot I can't remember now) & they were superb. At the Apollo they played all stuff from their very recent (and IMO poor) albums; I only recognised Roundabout. They were very competent but were just going through the motions.

I'd built them up to SWMBO & she hated them, but found it a real novelty not to have to queue up for the ladies', the audience being almost exclusively composed of fifty-something old geezers.

Steve Reich's recent "Radio Rewrite" at the Royal Festival Hall. Having a signature sound is one thing but this composition was formulaic and stale with nothing new to say.

Probably Steely Dan at Wembley Arena in the early 90s was my real lowpoint - poor sound and every classic Dan song reduced to tuneless self-indulgent noodling.

Back in about 1970 saw Atomic Rooster at Guildford Civic Hall. They were great but the opening band, Spontaneous Combustion, were abyssmal. Or, they may have been the very first punk band, years ahead of their time.

Charles, which night of the Dead's 1990 Wembley run were you at? I went on Hallowe'en night and they were great - the only time I ever saw them, but the opened with Help-Slip-Frank which is my fave dead tune...

I've only ever - to my recollection - walked out of two gigs.

One was Bowie's Glass Spider debacle at Wembley Stadium in the Summer of '87. As a huge Bowie fan, I witnessed his 1980s decline with increasing distress, and this idiotic display was the final straw.

The other was 1991. Yes were playing in the round at Wembley Arena. It was a mega-anniversary lineup, with Rabin, Howe, Bruford, White, Squire, Kaye, Wakeman, and Anderson. My mate, who worked for their record company, got us front-row seats.

They opened with the brilliant "Yours is no Disgrace"... and ruined it. Rabin's leather-trousered gurning and endless fretwanking was even more irritating than the way the band - who had seemingly forgotten how to play together - massacred their best material with an insouciance that bordered on contempt.

We left after an hour and went to the pub.

I had forgotten Yes at the Aladdin, Las Vegas in September '77. Over-amplified by an order of magnitude and with dreadful showing off by RW in particular. We made our excuses and left after less than an hour. I was particularly disappointed having seen them play the Yes album at Guildford Civic Hall in 1971 when they were magnificent.

I was at that Yes gig but don't remember it being that bad. Diff'rent folks I guess...

steve

My wife and I were given tickets to U2 at the Wembley Arena in ? 1987 by their manager. Neither of us really knew their music but we found ourselves in an enclosed VIP lounge with bar.

The support bands included the Pretenders and we looked forward to a great evening. Each new band seemed to demand the volume be raised but it was bearable within the cocoon of (rare) privilege.

However, once U2 came on stage, the bar was closed and we were ushered outside the glass (double glazing?).

God it was SO loud. We agreed to leave after about 5 minutes.

In the car park we passed a disappointed fan who obviously hadn't been able to get in. I wandered back to him and gave him our two tickets.

I was at that concert, only because I was working there, and couldn't stand it either.

I was at that concert too. Paul Young and The Pretenders supporting. I thought it was a really good bash. Sound wasn't brilliant but the stadium seemed to shrink around the stage. 

The following week we saw Peter Garbiel at Earls Court and shortly after we were back at Webmley for Genesis. This was my swan song to attending concerts. Prices going up, facilities getting stupidly expensive (drinks, car parking etc), audience behaviour getting generally worse and everything just seeming to cost more, take longer and deliver less. I was happy to jack it in after twenty odd years and buy the concerts in a box for home replay after the fact. Been to a few  small local ish gigs since but the itch hasn't needed scratching much.

This must have been a problem with the venue. I saw U2 on the same 1987 tour (Joshua Tree tour, right ?) at Elland Road, Leeds. Supports were The Fall, The Mission and The Pretenders. All the support bands were great, and U2 were superb.  

Seen U2 in Munich some years ago - superb sound and a great concert....so it realy depends apparently..