If you’re anything like me, for starters, I’m very, very sorry. However, I’ve subjected myself to so many shows that had virtually no merit whatsoever it is difficult for me to discern where bad ends and where beyond bad begins.
I keep coming back to the first time I saw Spoon. This has been my early gut-check least favorite for years, because there wasn’t anything at all going for this set.
There have been so many awful shows over the years it is absolutely stunning. Yeah, I’ve seen a whole lot of good shows by now. Many more good than bad. I’ve paid more than the total cover charges, it appears.
Some debacles in my personal top ten (in no particular order): London Quireboys/LA Guns/Enuff Z’Nuff; Ratt/Warrant; David Allan Coe; Faster Pussycat/Slaughter/Kiss (through no fault of Kiss, except booking the openers); I know I went to a Kix/Britny Fox mess of some sort, but can’t find out exactly when that mess happened; Phish in St. Louis (do not remember the trip, the company, the theater, or the show. This would have likely been the first time I saw Phish.); Phish at Bonner (again, nothing to do with the music.); Cracker; Yo La Tengo. That mess covers a lot of ground.
Other offerings (I’ve been surveying others, for help finding the worst suck of all possible sucks.): David Allan Coe (repeat offender, but this was a truly awful effort.); Milli Vanilli; Counting Crows; Lita Ford; Bulletboys; Blackeyed Susan (from a different party, for different reasons than the previously mentioned Bulletboys concert. Blackeyed Susan was the opener for Bulletboys, somewhere in Westport in the early ‘90s.); Third Eye Blind; Pavement; Dave Matthews Band; Kenny Chesney; Schloss Tegal (without hesitation); Sebadoh; Jane’s Addiction; Citizen Cope; The Cold War Kids; Beastie Boys (due to awful acoustics in Kemper); Grant Hart (forgot guitar, amp, etc.); Chemical Brothers (preference for 180 decibel level); Danzig (free tickets, circa 2002, no crowd, sad Danzig); Shawn Mullins (The Lullaby guy);
After hearing other’s lamentations, I really haven’t had it that bad at all. I only attended four of the eighteen shows mentioned, and have only seen maybe half the offending acts. Most of the better quality bands were just having off nights (as in my case), and the ones that just sucked, most people including the performers probably knew in advance that they sucked. Since we are embracing the suck, we’ll hit a few highlights:
The Bulletboys/Blackeyed Susan fiasco in Westport intrigues me most. (This could have been at the Hurricane, Aug. 10, 1993. The Bulletboys would have been just about washed out, and this whole mess would make some sort of sense.) CT cited heavy drug impairment, while TAL noted the poor overall quality of the opening act. Same show, two completely different sources went to the show together, and still noted this show for totally different reasons. TAL remembered only a bizarre and awful harmonica set in the Blackeyed Susan show. CT thought the Bulletboys were skipping like a broken record. They were probably both damn close to spot on. If I was there, I was blacked out. Certainly possible, and probably the best way to be for a mess like this. I was blacked out at the Hurricane several different times. This could have been one of them, but who knows? I know I would have been very unlikely to make such a trip at that time, because I never liked Bulletboys. For as shitty a venue as the Hurricane was, they drew several strong acts for a number of years. I don’t know that they ever nudged out Lawrence for premium shows, but some of these mid-sized acts had a place in KC where 300-400 tickets might be sold in the summer. I guess that counts for something. Big fire hazard, if you asked me, but no one ever asked me. I think that place is closed now…
BB1 has absolutely no proper excuse for Milli Vanilli, and he knows it. I guess Young MC and En Vogue were also on the bill. This deal was at Sandstone in 1990, and he was old enough to know better, but we all make mistakes.
JS suggested that Counting Crows at the Legends grand opening in KCK was the worst he’d seen. It was a free show, which makes this achievement a little more special. He just recalled there was nothing good about the act, and that he was more or less disgusted by wasting his time in such a way. At least he wasn’t out anything but the price of gas, but he’ll never get that gas money back.
Now, sometimes I feel like Kreskin the goddamned psychic, and when I suggested that LR submit her pick, I said, “Just in case she went and saw Lita Ford or something similarly awful.” Turns out LR had already submitted Lita Ford as the worst she’d seen, with Pat Benatar a close second. I am hoping she told me this at one point or another and there is just some random part of my brain that still works.
No one should ever be at a Third Eye Blind show. Ever. For any reason. Especially Third Eye Blind. They should have stopped whatever they think they’re doing a long time ago. SA knows this, but he is able today to proudly wear this suck, being a grown man, etc.
A moment on the Pavement: This was indeed a bad show. I was there. It was the worst of the four times I saw them. I ended up backstage trying to get Malkmus some water. He got it, but it was too late, and there wasn’t enough vodka in it for his taste at the time. It started bad, and unwound fast. It was embarrassing. Sometimes, rock shows can go this way. It just takes some mixture of too much liquor, drugs, and discontentment. TD nominated this show, so it is mentioned here, though he insists Dave Mathews was far worse sober than Pavement was drunk. Sounds about right. Also, Pavement was on the fast track to splitting up as a band on Oct 13, 1999. They played additional shows in St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and finished the final European leg of the Twilight Tour. And that was it. They split up something like a month after this concert, but they were clearly already living in splitsville. They played an unbelievable rendition of The Hexx, but that was as good as that show was going to get. I missed their reunion tour as a direct result of this 1999 performance, but I’ve been known to hold a goddamn grudge a little too long sometimes.
I didn’t even bother to ask KT what made Kenny Chesney a bad performance. I’m positive this was bad if a person isn’t all Chesneyed up.
Schloss Tegal was offered up without hesitation by BH. He knows shitty music when he hears it, and Rick the Cook doesn’t suit anyone’s taste, within the kitchen or without. German industrial death metal has limited appeal, we all know this. I chose early and often to get along with Rick because I certainly didn’t want him as any sort of enemy. He was the best-armed person I knew, and he lived in the fucking basement. Fuck, I mean…come on. People who chose to be adversarial with Rick created their own issues, I’m afraid. Rick was always a known quantity to me, why the fuck else would I be buying his glow-in-the-dark T-Shirts and shit? I figured he’d stab me last, or first, and either way would be better than to be one of the random other dozens or so that might be shived out once he finally snapped and had a full head of steam after smelling all the blood. BR once said of a Schloss Tegal show, “It sounded like whales…and other things dying.”
Sebadoh at Granada, circa 2006, is an interesting choice right up until a person learns Sebadoh was touring without a drummer. BB2 offered this one up quickly. Said he wanted his money back. Goodness, I guess. I’ve probably seen Sebadoh four times, and I would have been appalled if they took the stage without a drum kit. It’s insulting. It wasn’t even an acoustic set, they just played a drum loop on a box, I guess. How awful. Sebadoh knew better than this, but I suppose the boom box didn’t demand much of a cut of the ticket. Another show cited by BB2 was a much later Jane’s Addiction show, sometime in the past five years or so, up at the soccer stadium I think. Perry Ferrell’s voice was apparently shot at that point, Dave Navarro looked embarrassed to be there, etc. Bad rock show by old rockers. It happens.
Citizen Cope and The Cold War Kids were nominated by JN, and credit where credit is due: New contempt has been cultivated on the fertile fields of these acts. Somehow, I’d never heard of either, or didn’t want to ever hear of either. She says they were popular ten years ago or so, and I’ll just have to believe her. I was amazed that either of these shitstirrers had any following at all, but there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who put up with nonsense like these outfits with some consistency. JN had offered tickets to a boytoy of the day, and it appears this was a tremendously unfair punishment to pay for trying to be nice to someone. I couldn’t make it through 25 seconds of Cope’s most popular track, and I actually freaked out a bit trying to shut down the Cold War Kids track and was forced to listen to way more than I wanted to. I didn’t get that shut down until a minute or so into a song (I’d heard this song before, never liked any part of it), and fumbled around closing the wrong windows a couple of times before finally reloading the Spotify and slaying that beast. What an awful couple of acts. I can see where this could become a dead heat. Hard to tell which is shittier, for sure. I don’t want to know.
I have to mention I’ve seen this fool Cope live a couple of times and never knew it, if he was actually touring with Basehead. I cannot wrap my head around Citizen Cope being the DJ for Basehead, and then moving on to do whatever Citizenry he’s suggested since. He should have stuck with Basehead. Smart money here suggests he got the boot. Basehead seems entirely incompatible with Citizen Cope.
SF nominated Grant Hart, who forgot his guitar, borrowed an electric guitar, but lacked an amp as one of two worst shows he’d seen. I strongly believe I attended the other nomination, Oct. 1, 1999 at the Uptown. This was the Chemical Brothers. I am damn near certain I went to this show, because my ears are ringing. SF claims it’s the loudest thing he’s heard. Well, I guess. I am certain it was loud, but I don’t remember much about this deal. It would have been my what..28th birthday or something, so I’m sure I felt entitled to get insanely fucked up. I mean, it was a Friday, so I very likely blacked out and pissed myself. I don’t know if I was driving again by that point. I hope not. I shouldn’t give SF a third nomination, but he won free tickets to a sad Danzig concert in 2002 or so where there were only about a hundred people in attendance in a much larger venue. Sad Danzig.
MF might have the single worst show of the whole survey. Shawn Mullins. He’s the lullaby guy. I watched the video tonight and it freaked me the fuck out. So bad.
David Allan Coe. Goodness. This is another show I attended, and it remains a remarkably bad memory. For starters, it wasn’t cheap. $15. For David Allan Coe, I consider this outrageous today. However, on Wednesday, May 30, 2001, several hundred Douglas County dipshits anted up this fee, and went to Abe and Jake’s Landing on the riverfront in Lawrence.
Then we waited. And we waited some more. We kept on waiting and drinking and waiting, and finally DAC came out and played maybe seven uninspired and unoriginal songs, and spent just about as much time promoting a fucking boxer buddy of his as he did singing. It was awful. His band was shitty, he was shitty, and he was something like an hour and a half late. MP rightly pointed out that this was an awful way to spend fifteen bucks and/or any Wednesday evening. I don’t think he even performed the one successful song he wrote in his life, but played about a half dozen covers, and I guess it wouldn’t be a David Allan Coe concert if he didn’t play “Mamas Don’t Let Your Daughters Grow Up to Be Strippers.”
The worst single moment I’ve had at a rock show was the opening of the Faster Pussycat set when they opened for Slaughter and Kiss, May 12, 1990. For about thirty seconds, Bonner Springs was the worst place on earth, including Bangladesh. Some jackass on helium repeated the word pussy on a tape loop, loudly, and layered the thing so it sounded like an army of dipshits were chanting pussy while sucking helium. After about thirty seconds, the loop erupted into cat. There may have been a meow. I was hissing. Then they just played their shitty music, and all was relatively well.
Spoon gets the nod from me because I haven’t seen anything quite like it. It was a Sunday night. I’d dragged a relatively-newly-married lawyer buddy out with another friend, because I wanted to see this band. It must have been 1997 or 8. Maybe 1999. I don’t think I had a car or license to drive at this point. Burt lived on the east side of Lawrence, and we walked to the Replay from his place.
It was a Sunday night. Maybe that is why I can remember this mess, Kansas used to be dry on a Sunday, and we would have been limited to whatever liquor was left about the place from the previous evening. I wouldn’t have spared much. I’m not sure how the hell I’d heard of Spoon. Probably heard them on KJ. Anyway, I had that first (oops! Second…) album “A Series of Sneaks.” It was great. Hell, it was fun. It rocked its ass off. Damn right I wanted to see Spoon. Anyway, I don’t know if I had the album or if it had even been released yet. My pressing was red, I remember that. It was sold long ago for generic vodka…
So I’ve talked these two into making the trip, and it wasn’t a big investment. I want to say it was a three dollar show. The Replay served hard liquor so I probably would have spent whatever they demanded in admission at the time. We got there before the opener had played a note, and we spent most of the time in the beer garden out back.
It was pleasant in the beer garden before the opening act took the stage.
For starters, there was a pretty fair crowd at the Replay for a Sunday night. There had to be something like 80 people stumbling around at the beginning of the show. The crowd simply couldn’t maintain itself once the opener started throwing that fit that they claimed was music. I can’t find the date of this show. There’s some sort of national acclimation of the Replay citing a White Stripes show that only a handful of people enjoyed in 2002. I can’t speak to the quality of that show. I can speak to the mess of Spoon and other that was scattered across the front room that night.
Sometimes the Replay had outdoor concerts. This wasn’t one of those nights. I don’t think the neighbors probably liked the outdoor shows that much. A lot of them weren’t very good. Few could be worse than this outfit that weeded out the Spoon crowd.
There was only one topic of conversation once that opening band hit the stage. It was how bad the music was. It wasn’t music, really. It was just a whole bunch of noise. BH (who cited Rick the Cook, of Schloss Tegal fame for his nomination.) finally said, “Guys, I’ve got to go. I prefer musicians who can play their instruments.” Enough said.
So this is twenty years ago now or so. I’ve drank a swimming pool full of vodka since that point, that memories can fade was something of the point of my whole operation. I’ve never quite been able to erase what happened next, though I’m sure I was drinking double whiskeys by the end of the opener.
Spoon would have taken the stage, but they pointed out several times that there wasn’t a stage to take. They had a point, I suppose. They set up in front of a bunch of pinball machines with yellow tape across the floor where the customers were not to cross during shows. It had varying levels of effectiveness.
And the Spoony bastard lead singer had another point, that whatever crowd that once existed was forced to flee by the opening act. Now, I’m not sure there were ten people left in the Replay that weren’t working or a part of the opening act. Bryan and I were still there. Spoon had already checked out.
“It was a great show for about twelve minutes,” BB1 suggested twenty years after the fact. He was about right. I don’t know that Spoon finished three songs, and the mike stand was getting kicked, the singer was bitching about there not being a stage, and how utterly disrespectful this whole operation was. It was good for comedy. Just about everyone that was left was just laughing about this meltdown. I was, at least. So was the bassist. And the drummer. It was kind of a disappointing debut for Spoon in Lawrence, Kansas. At least most of the band didn’t take it too seriously.
I’ve seen a couple of Spoon shows since. That Spoony bastard will never forget that Replay show. Neither will I.
