Has an artist's live performance ever turned you off of them?

I'm not like a big fan or anything but I like some Lemonheads and Evan Dando stuff. Haven't even wanted to listen to him again since my ex-gf dragged me to see him. He was in a bad mood about something and played the whole gig with his back to the audience. Irritable muppet.

 

Yes. Wonder what happened to them that year. I saw them the same week w the Outlaws opening…The whole night was unfocused and terrible….I got the feeling that I had not seen Bad Company at all ….
All of this in one of the best concert years ever seeing others do their best shows….Strange.

 

muse are overblown! I think their live shows are phenomenal. However, I saw them at Hammersmith a few months ago, just them - no production and that was the best I’ve ever seen them.

 

I was never a Dylan fan but in my early 20’s I shared a house with a huge Dylan fan. He somehow convinced me to go with him to a Dylan concert in Sydney and I went with the mindset of getting to see an iconic artist on stage. I tried. I really tried. But it was just an excruciating night of utter boredom for me. Even the “recognisable” songs were unrecognisable. I left wondering what all the fuss was all about.

 

I was never a big fan of them, but love a lot of their singles, which are full of energy. Went to see them on their last tour - and they were awful. I would be prepared to see them at a festival set, because of course they played a lot of Tranquility Hotel )which is just dirge) - but I wouldn’t pay to see them do a show on their own again. Extremely disappointing.

 

Yes, I saw The Black Keys on their tour to promote Thickfreakness and was thoroughly unimpressed by their lack of improvisation. It was basically that album - but louder.

I mean, there’s only two of them, ferchrissakes!! The limits were endless - but it seems they couldn’t be bothered.

At least I bought a cool T-shirt, which I carried on wearing over the years until it was falling apart.

 

I saw Beck one time in 1998 and he was really entertaining and had a good stage show back then. It was a great concert. But I think that was about his peak. Whenever I have seen video of him since he seems just to be dry and going through the motions jadedly. I also have lost interest in him long ago but I still have good memories of that 1998 show (which had Been Folds and Elliott Smith as openers).

 

I get it that that’s their thing, it just means it’s not for me

 

Counting Crows and Sade both dreadful for different reasons.

 

Dylan has given it a red hot go at times…

Deftones have been a bit ordinary too. Chino brings plenty of energy but he’s way off key sometimes. Definitely a studio band for me.

 

On the other side, I never really cared about Beck but I saw him live (in 06) and loved every minute of it. He was funny and engaging and played around with the arrangements of songs. There was a puppet show of his band onstage. The band took a break for dinner and Beck played acoustic while they ate, sometimes playing percussion with the silverware. It’s one of my favorite show memories

 

Yes, Robert Glasper. Not that I was particularly a Robert Glasper fan before I went to see him, but I didn't hate him or his music and I was curious about it so when a relative gave my wife and I tix to she his trio at J@LC, I was kind of looking forward to it. Many times seeing an artist has made me a fan and shown me new ways to appreciate an artist.

But I found Glasper's performance so smug and the music so inane, really it was hard to take. He'd play this short repeating diatonic note patterns over these lite grooves and sit back on the piano bench and smile like the cat who caught the canary, like he had done something special. It was hard to take. Like a 40-year-old very pleased with himself for shaping blocks together. I must say, the rest of the crowd seemed to like it, it was like a surreal Emporer's New Clothes moment for me, seeing their reaction. I would have left -- and I NEVER walk out on a performer mid performance -- but I was there with my wife and I didn't know how she felt and I didn't want to disturb her if she was enjoying this.. After the show she said she felt exactly the same way and would have overjoyed if I had told her I wanted to leave but she was worried about me (I've never seen her walk out of a performance). We both felt like it was a hour and a half of our precious lives that we wasted and wished we had left to go have a meal or see a movie or do pretty much anything else. I've never been able to bear the thought of listening to anything Robert Glasper touches ever again.

I will say, that's pretty rare. I've seen some performers that I love give some desultory or even bad sets, I've seen some flat out trainwreck performances, but I've never had another performer so viscerally turn me off other than Robert Glasper.

To keep things not only negative, I've also had the other experience and fallen for artist whom I didn't know or didn't previously live as a result of seeing them -- The Smiths, for one

 

I've seen the Replacements when they couldn't stand up and only played the opening bars of "classic rock" songs, and I've seen them where they were as good as any show I've attended - ie. I was at the Maxwell's show that was released a few years ago. I was angry at the time during the drunk fests, but it's not like I didn't know you paid your money and you took your chances with that group.

 

As far as uneven artists who can be both dispiritingly bad and stunningly great live, Sonny Rollins. I saw him four times - twice in 1996 (mediocre show in the spring, great one in the fall), 2008 (bad) and circa 2011 (very good).

 

Any artist i see "live" that uses any backing tracks. also a lot of nostalgia acts that stopped creating music and just became jukeboxes of the past.

 

I saw here on that tour playing solo too. And I saw here a bunch back in the day too both solo and with a band. She always was a pitchy singer. As a performing songwriter something more like Kris Kristofferson than Dolly Parton. But I've seen grown men with tears welling up in their eye at a solo Phair performance of "Divorce Song," so not ineffective. Rock, and especially indie rock, does have a lot of performers with iffy relationships to pitch (I mean, have you heard the Grateful Dead sing harmonies?!). A lot of the time, good singers develop a dramatic style out of their physical limitation and can really still put a song over -- I'm thinking about, say, Lou Reed. Phair never really developed that.

I don't know if the show @Rfreeman saw was one I saw. I saw a lot of Liz Phair performances in the NYC metro area back in the day, but I do remember one solo Phair show at town hall where Cat Power opened, and her performance -- Chan Marshall/Cat Power's -- was such a meltdown/trainwreck I had to leave the hall and go stand out in the lobby because it was so painful to watch. I felt bad for her, wasn't sure actually if she was well, mentally.

 

My Bloody Valentine - volume as an artistic statement.

 

Yes, The Clash.
I was a HUGE fan of the band but Sandanista! was a bit of a pain but I went to see them in London after its release anyway (3rd time). This was the tour when they had the graffiti artist Futura 2000 at the back painting a mural while they played (very distracting). On top of this The Clash sounded awful - all echoes and reggae/hip-hop beats. No power. We even walked out before it finished.
Combat Rock restored my faith somewhat but they split soon after of course. I remain a HUGE fan of everything up to and including London Calling.

 

I attended the opening night of Tori Amos' "Plugged" 1998 tour, her first to feature a backup band.

After having been spoiled by the many intimate solo piano performances I caught between 1992 and 1996, it felt weird to see her in this format.

I was not digging it (though looking around, it seemed like I was in the minority.) Not sure if it was the exact reason, but this tour coincided with the cooling of my fandom.

I saw her a couple more times with full bands on later tours, and my opinion remains unchanged. I won't go again. I'll only ever see her again, if she does another solo tour.

 

saw them recently at a festival, and they were poor. I don’t know many of their songs, but those who knew them more said the same.

 

The Who’s latest tour

I see right through your plastic mat


Not totally off
But enough already

 

What are they exactly live? A couple of guys behind their laptops, I guess..

 

Bryan Ferry

It was the Bête Noire or Boys and Girls tour out at Great Woods in MA.

Show was actually fine, it was just that two hours of exposure to Bryan's slick heartbreak and ennui triggered some kind of overdose reaction and I couldn't listen to him for some time after.

All's well now, I spin the Boys and Girls SACD regularly and wish Bête Noire could escape record company limbo. Roxy, if course, especially Flesh and Blood.

 

What I saw was an in store performance at Tower Records in the Village coinciding with the album release. Small stage about 8x8 a foot off floor, with people packed around it on all sides - those in front about 3-4 feet away. She seemed very nervous which may have contributed to the pitch issues.

 

Yep - just that. Relatedly, Kraftwerk (4 guys behind their laptops) was one of the best shows I've ever seen.