Nothing specific, but when the audience tries to be the headlining act, it's bad. I'm remembering an Eagles concert that was great, but during the acoustic stuff, the cell phones were getting out of hand, even though the Eagles demanded them hidden.. Also, the off-beat clapping, and those who "sing" along.. I wish people would wait til the song is over and then clap and go nuts.
All true. But I think his ultimately very successful career demonstrates the ultimate wisdom of just being yourself, warts and all. At the end of the day, he got what he wanted - audiences who'll turn out to hear him (and won't get drunk or rowdy) and buy enough of his stuff to make his musical career viable (at least in those spaces when he's not re-jigging the hotrods).
Great read this thread, pretty flabbergasted how crap the audience is/was at Dylan gigs and some other's experiences at shows that just blow my mind. Recently the worst one for me would have been whatever Stinson brother is still alive's band (I'm NOT a fan of The Replacements) opening for The Psychedelic Furs in Nov '17, complete drunken/stoned clown and a mess, 3-4 songs and they were gone/yanked off the stage just pathetic. Furs were great. Earlier in time and this isn't anyone's fault but my own ... eating three grams of something native to Morocco prior to the first Lollapalooza at the Ex everything was fine for a few hours (completely forgot about it) then BAM it hits and well ... seeing NIN play at 2:30pm in broad daylight with dry ice and ... yeah Reznor wasn't pleased, I can recall him attacking the drum set. At this point I was gone, I remember Siouxise singing Kiss Them for Me and swore she was singing to me alone ... I was nowhere near the stage don't remember Jane's at all save for Mountain Song
Phish Buffalo 1995. I was, and still am a huge Dead head, and was convinced to go to this show with college friends at the time. It was awful. The band. The people. The music was cheesy, and the fans were hipster hippie kids. Very shallow environment. I will never understand the comparisons to the Dead!
Yes. 11 dead. Wasn’t really trampled, people weren’t running, just a huge mass of people being pushed back and forth. The ones that fell were just crushed by the crowd that got shoved on them. Tragic.
"Is that when fans got trampled to death ?" yeah it was. I think WKRP even gave a moment of silence for that. I was too young to remember coverage of that but it was very sad. There was a similar incident at a football match in England some years ago, there is a lot of footage out there of people trapped against gates with only a couple of alley sized exits for 1000s of panicking people. it's pretty harrowing. I wonder if the media blamed the music the way they do now sometimes. Maybe not, 10 years earlier it would have been forsure. But Im thinking of a festival I went to a couple of years ago or maybe last year. a lot of kids got wasted and dehydrated and there were a few little scraps. Nothing on that level of course, not much of a parallel at really. But this was a rap concert so hardly any glares were pointed at the organisers or the underage drinking. I must have heard and read the word "thugs" 500x that week, fingers pointed directly at the music.
I'd say Tom Petty & Bob Dylan...horrible amphitheater sound, nosebleed section. Bad performance. This would have been in late '80s, Dylan not even trying to have the proper phrasing, annunciation or melody, like he just gave up. I'm not a big Tom Petty guy.
I think thats about the same time I had my first live Dylan experience. Maybe a little earlier, Steve Earle opened for him at the show I was at. I walked away scratching my head wondering whether Dylan was drunk or if he was just in some kind of eff u mindframe like, I aint your monkey. He's a tough nut to crack but that was just a brutal phase. Or maybe isolated to certain performances, I only saw the one during that period. But jeez just dont tour man if you're not even going to pretend to try. Guy was my hero before that concert and was again later but he was worse than the most smashed guy in the world somewheer right now singing in front of a liquor store. I know, Dylan good shows/bad shows have been addressed ad nauseum but boy what a first experience that was. Part of the mystique I guess but there was no way youd convince me of that then.
Dylan is indeed a crapshoot. I've seen some real gems. And I've seen some real stinkers. At least he's not Van Morrison. I'm O for 5 with Van. There won't be a 6th.
Never even attempted to crack the Van nut. I've seen some great Dylan shows, including Dylan and the Dead circa 1987.
Todd Rundgren, the tour after the “Nearly Human” one. He spent a half hour complaining about Ozzy Osbourne and someone else, I can’t remember who.
Kamasai Washington and Band in 2016. (After the opening number) complete self indulgent garbage. Too loud, unmelodic, terrible overlong solos, stuffy venue, packed full of standing hipsters pretending they understand the music. AND before they started playing, it took them an age to set up ensuring everything was just so, and Kamasai who seemed to be a lovely chap, blew all the mystique and anticipation by launching into a long and boring spiel about playing some music for us blah blah blah ... all a bit semi precious for mine. In other news, grumpy old man shouts at cloud.
I used this Neil Young line to comment on a dreadful Brian Jonestown Massacre show in town. How Anton Newcombe is so revered and totally hip in some quarters is beyond me. Not my worst concert experience, but the worst I've seen in the last few years, that's for sure. These pointless, samey extended jams, Anton being totally a pain in the ass to the audience (licking his feet no matter what), uuugh.
Reminds me of this infamous Pumpkins show. It was a shock to read about it at the time because I'd seen them days before, front row, holding tight to the barrier. 90s crowds were crazy. The comment section tells how crazy it was. "I've been to over 60 gigs since-and having slammed and moshed my way through circle pits, walls of deaths over the years, I still remember the utter mania and the following terror in the crowd that night. The immence craziness was exploding everywhere even when support band Filter were warming up the boiling Point audience. " "Was at this show too, right up the front at the barrier, terrifying experience. The problem was not moshing or crowd surfing, it was the uncontrollable surge of bodies towards the front. You had a crowd of 8,000 people with no barrier to split the crowd from the back to the front. You were so tightly packed between standing bodies that you had absolutely no control of where you stood. Three songs in is where it reached breaking point when the crowd started swaying causing many people, myself included, to slip down to the ground. I was lying on the ground throughout the third song, nobody standing above me was able to pick me up or they would have slipped on top of me and made things worse. They stopped playing after that song which is where the audio here comes in. More would have died had they not stopped at that moment. RIP Bernadette O'Brien" I wonder if any member here was at this Dublin show?
I had the exact same experience at a Lenny Kravitz show about 10 years ago. To this day, I still think they oversold the place. I'd never seen anything like it. I was with a couple of friends. We arrived late (I was pissed off about that) and with our cheaper tickets we had only access to the pit/standing area and to the upper bleachers, way up there. It was impossible to make our way through the pit, it was so crowded. We found ourselves in the back with people going to the john or getting some beer. Every 2 seconds, it was "excuse me, excuse me" and it was difficult to see anything. So we went up to the bleachers and it was another pain in the butt. It was there : Every time we would try and see if there was any room somewhere, there wasn't. So there we were walking/running in these seemingly endless passageways. Eventually, we found a spot up there on the side of the stage - way on the side of the stage - and from where I was I could only see a friggin' NRJ flag blowing in the wind (NRJ being a sponsor of the show), the crew and all their machinery (for the monitoring and all that) and speakers. With the occasional view of musicians and of Lenny depending on where they stood and depending on where that flag was.The sound was dreadful as from where we were the PA was in the opposite direction - I'd get snare beats reverberating. Every time they would light up the place, we'd be the one bleacher left in the dark! Also our area was a bit derelict to be honest, I think they have been fixed since but as you can see on this picture, the upper rows look quite old, unlike the 2/3 below. Some were quite dangerous. The most frustrating thing is it's by far the best, more generous, longest show I've seen Lenny Kravitz play. I've looked into it and some of his fans think it was a unique show. I've seen him play shows in much better conditions - well, one time he was sick and played 12 songs, another one was average etc...I ALMOST saw one of the best Kravitz shows apparently.
Grove Stadium Winston-Salem NC around 1975 or 6. ZZ Top, Lynard Skynard and several other bands. Chaos near the stage. Stupid me walked toward rather than away with girl friend. Hell's Angels were fighting random others. It was ugly. W-S police in riot gear move through crowd that parted like the Red Sea for them. Ronnie Van Zant had tried to get them to cool it but it did no good. When the police finally reached them the subdued the Angels, arrested them and marched off the field. The crowd cheered for the cops.
The Everly Brothers, Liverpool Empire, June 1989. It's not that it was bad - they sounded great - it was more that they seemed to be just going through the motions. Phil actually looked bored - and this was only a few years after they'd reunited. I was expecting a few anecdotes but they said very little to the audience. It seemed a very short concert - two 45 minute sets. The real highlight was when their backing band played before they came on. Albert Lee, Buddy Emmons, Larry Londin ... and the name of the bassist escapes me because I was so utterly transfixed by Albert and Buddy. They sounded like one instrument - I've never heard a pedal steel player and a guitarist blend so seamlessly.
Not that I can recall. I was 14 at the time. There was a lot of blame placed (not unreasonably) on "festival seating", i.e. general admission. The fans had been waiting outside for the doors to open, I think the doors were late in opening, and a big part of the mob scene was caused because people were pushing/rushing to get close to the stage. As I recall, some states or cities passed laws against big general admission shows after that.
A friend of mine is a casual VM fan and wanted to see him maybe 5 years ago. I'm not into VM but from posts here, I knew he had a reputation as a problematic live performer so I warned my friend. She went to the show with lowered expectations and still was disappointed!
