Two years ago I visited some friends at their school only to find out that they had tickets to see Jason Mraz in the gym that night. I went.

The opening act was (I think) the lead singer from Weezer and two waifish chicks. They played really quiet, really dull folky type stuff. They took the cake when they covered Lou Reed and the singer actually sang the line "and all the white girls sing"...
The audience actually booed them throughout, but the band was very gracious anyways.

When Jason Mraz came on the audience went apeshit, and my friends and I moved to the bleachers. About 3 songs in I fell asleep. My friends woke me up to tell me we were leaving... at first I thought it was cause they were pissed at me... but it turned out that they were just as bored.

I fainted at a Sonic Youth show. I guess cause I hadn't eaten all day and was standing for a long time. It was pretty awful, and I didn't enjoy the show at all.

well, matter of opinion, really. I only liked the theatrical element of it, pouring of red paint and stuff like that. but the music was just too lame. I enjoyed the beers at the bank of the river with you and christoph WAY more, so to speak :)

worst show I ever have seen

Meat Puppets opening for sonic youth. the youth were amazing as ever, but the meat pupets sounded like someone killed them all ten years ago, re animated the half rotten bodies and made them sing fucking country tunes.

and the sad part is it was only just worse than when I saw the meat puppets in 1992. god that was horrible, what a fucking shit band../

Monster Magnet a few years ago. It's like by trying to become an MC5 tribute band they'd forgotten what made them great in the first place.

Esoteric at Camden Underworld, April 2007 - doom metal stuff. A band so atrociously lame and weedy I walked out in disgust after one song. Also of "note": Nebula at The Garage in 2005? (the support was Electric Wizard, and Sir demonrail was there). 15 minutes of suvb-standard boogie riffing and "Ah've lost man woomann, but ah steel got mah geetar" lyrics, and I was ready to dynamite the venue with everyone in it.

30 seconds to mars,

such a bizarre procession of cultish lamery that i was seriously scouting around for sharp implements with which to gut myself so I had something with which to hang myself.

I was there because my friends band were (highly inappropriately) supporting them and wanted me to do some photos. on the plus side i I did get to goof around on stage a bit and pretend i was ziggy stardust (it was actually a very fun night but was just highly bizarre with an absolutely execrable soundtrack)

that or the llama farmers.

Ack. That band gives me a headache. I'm not sure if I could last thirty seconds at one of their shows.

Actually, not a band I was going to the show to see (which was Manic Street Preachers) but the support band Dodgy. I remember, while having to endure their semi-acoustic indie/folk waffle, that - what if i died now, what if this was the last thing I saw and heard before i died - it nearly gave me a panic attack, seriously.

what were they like live?

I skipped to the end and somebody has probably said this, but Bob Dylan was the worst concert I've ever seen.

He rearranged all of his songs into one really long, really shitty blues song, didn't give a fuck about the audience, and gave the impression he'd rather be dead than playing that concert. It was so shitty I don't even listen to him anymore. Just fucking terrible.

Xiu Xiu the second time was also terrible.

I was at that same show and thought the puppets were awesome. : /

Exactly.

you can have em!!!!

I'm not sure if I agree with the "anyone can play like that" mentality. Anyone could play like that perhaps, but everyone DOESN'T play like that. That doesn't mean his music is particularly enjoyable, it's just silly when people say, "Hey, I could do that -- I just need to practice more." Well, no shit, you can say that about anything in life.

It's like the Strokes (for lack of a better example)... anyone here can play their songs right? That's nice. You didn't WRITE their songs, though, right? It doesn't matter that you can play the songs, you didn't actually compose them though.

Anyone can do anything probably, but they haven't done it yet, so it's not really worth mentioning.

I understand and somewhat agree with Everyneurotic's way of thinking (that he has no real talent beyond ability, it's all technique; there's nothing interesting or unique about it, it's just fast scale playing), but I'm not sure if I'd say "oh anyone can do that if they practice."

summer 2005....dinosaur jr at pearl street , magic markers opened....ive never seen a crowd openly angry after an opening act. maybe the worst band ever...next to eagles of death metal, i walked out of one of thier shows, after the NES band Minibosses wiped the floor with them.

^^^
best post in the history of this board.

MINIBOSSES rule!

That's pretty much what I was trying to say, but it just came out a bit stupid when I tried to say it.

Anyone CAN play like Malmsteen with practice, but it takes a lot of practice to do, so it's not as simple as the "anyone can do it" statement implies.

smashing pumpkins around siamese dream in sfx dublin

why? cuz it sucked, awful sound, boring as shit and i met billy no mates at it....wanker... i also met james iha....gentleman!

James Iha has always seemed like a cool guy. His hating Billy only furthers that assumption.

check out his solo album, pretty good record. you can see how he alone added that coolness to the early pumpkins sound

Wintersleep.

God damn it, it was cliche "indie rock" bullcrap. Boring as hell.

re: yngwie malmsteen, like i said, it's not like everyone plays guitar like that, but everyone could if they weren't lazy bastards, it's not like, as much as you practice, you will start writing songs like don van vliet or, like, if you practiced a shitload you could be as good as michael jordan in basketball (yeah, you would be a good player, but you don't have his talent, so to speak.)

i mean, it's not like it's a world of difference or that i'm implying he's one of the best musicians ever because he has flaws, but joe satriani plays pretty much the same style of music a whole world better than yngwie because he plays his own way, tries to experiment and to write songs instead of wanking off for 40 minutes a record. and techniquewise, they can pretty much go neck to neck.

I figured that's what you meant Everyneurotic, I just wanted to expand upon it, but yeah I agree definitely.

I wish I could write like Van Vliet :(

This is why I hate bands that attempt to make up for uninteresting songwriting with complex technical skill (which seems to be really big these days). If you are talented at writing interesting songs, whether you're noodling all over the place or playing just power chords doesn't really matter.

writing good songs is not easy.

writing a standard rock song is very easy though.

Hm.

I don't think writing good songs is as difficult as realizing what songs you write are actually good, or have the potential to be.

haha

I want to bump this thread because I realize it's more fun to talk about shitty bands rather than good ones!

weezer -( about 6 or 7 years ago.) whatever summer they played.?? the strokes supposedly were going to open for them ,but cancelled right before the show.unknown to us. we stayed and watched Weezer for about five minutes and it was time to go. terrible.

I can see khanate being terrible live.

the casualties...

and i dont think i need a reason...

this crappy dutch band called moke opened up for paul weller last night.

they were horrible. they had tallent and they sounded really good but their songs were just plain bad. they had no meaning and they sounded like ripoffs.

hat sounds horrible, but where did you see that talent then? :)

did paul weller play any jam songs?

worst shows ive ever seen:

of montreal
blink 182/fenix tx/bad religion at mgm grand when i was 12 (i guess its sorta cool ive seen bad religion though)
modest mouse opening for rem
the counting crows when i was 7
kanye west/rihanna/nerd over the summer (talk about a waste of money, went with my ex girlfriend after falsely assuming id get pussy out of it, fucking gip)
interpol

There's so many to choose from, I would take a crappy local band in a pub over a shit major label band in a big venue any day. At least the local band aren't getting paid loads of money for sucking, and I can go get a nice pint of beer whilst they do.

In no particular order:
Susanna and the Magical Orchestra/ Jamie Liddell, Manchester Halle Concert Hall, 2005. I was stewarding at a festival and I got free tickets, and it was an ordeal to stay til the end. Both acts utterly turgid and soulless cack.

The Darkness, Stoke on Trent Sugarmill, 2003. Just rubbish. The guy I went with just went oh my god, kurt died for nothing. Which is weird cos he was about 45. Sorta knew what he meant though.

Galway Festival 1998, Pulp, Cornershop, Beastie Boys, Garbage. This wasn't bad because of the bands, but I was on holiday with my dad, and not being into 'loud music' he dropped me off on my own in a football field on the outskirts of Galway filled with about 5000 irish students getting progressively drunkerer and drunkerer and more blarney with it. There were about 3 food stalls and 2 stalls selling strange neo pagan/Catholic/Wiccan trinkets.
I watched most of the bands queuing up in the beer line which stretched the length of the pitch, or queuing in the toilet line, to have a piss in what resembled and probably was a pig run. The Beastie Boys were pretty good as I remember, didnt know many of their songs then, Cornershop were inoffensive. It got dark before Pulp came on and I got a bus back early cos I was bricking it, was bitterly disappointed to miss my only chance ever to see them, walked in the B+B to find my dad listening to the entire concert on the local radio who informed me it hadn't finished yet. Garbage lived up to their name.

V2001 Festival. I stewarded, it rained, the bogs leaked, RHCP and Nellie Furtado, nuff said.

Aphex Twin at ATP, 2002, dull as ditchwater.

Blur, Birmingham Arena, 2000, Awful Sound, lacklustre greatest hits performance, odious psycho fan scum crowd, got a pint of beer tipped down my neck in 30 seconds, grown men were trampling teenage girls screaming in agony underfoot to get a foot closer to Damon Albarn. He seemed to really enjoy this spectacle.

VVM at Birmingham Supersonic 2003. Guys dress in plastic pigs masks, one plays vague laptop noise, the other stomps about and yowls (sort of reminds me of some other 'legendary' noise band, yawn). Everyone carries on with their conversations. After 10 minutes Stompy says 'Right, we're only doing one more, then we're fuckin off, cos yers all reet boring basteds int yuh?' People's conversations are simply too fascinating for them to care.

There's loads more, but think I've said enough. I think I've learned that gigs you pay to go to are generally better than ones you sneak into, especially if you're not familiar with the act. Oh, and the only one that was a headlining gig and not a festival of these was the Darkness, so I guess they must be the fuckin worst! Oh, no I missed Blur, they are the shitness too.