A Band You've Seen In Concert But Wished You Hadn't

Focus in the Phillips Theatre, Eindhoven as a guest of DAF Trucks. About as shit as you can get. We snuck off early and had a Chinese. Far better.
You can stick your Hocus Pocus up your *rse.

 

Went to see 'Pop will Eat itself' back in the 80's at Portsmouth Poly Student Union.

Can't say I enjoyed it.

 

Dragged to see Madonna at Wembley years ago by a friend.

Was the opening concert of her Girlie Show tour - 70k+ people - the atmosphere should have been electric - it wasn’t.

It was such a dull experience - I spent most of the show with my spine slowly being crushed by the girl on my shoulders - trying to give her a distant view of the tiny little figures on the stage. (and I have just realised that’s the source of occasional recurring back pain that started sometime in the 90’s! )

It was so dull in fact that I had forgotten I even went until recently finding the ticket in a box full of other such random memorabilia in my parents loft.

“Yay I saw one of the iconic stars of the era in concert at the old Wembley”
“Wow what was it like?”
“Shit”

There are a number of artists that I would love to have seen in their heyday - maybe Madonna would have been one of them in an earlier phase - but this was a truly forgettable experience.

 

Two stick in my mind.

The first was Eric Clapton back in about 78/79 at the Rainbow in Finsbury park. Utter shite, crowd booing and jeering. Fortunately the support act was a good crowd pleaser “Chas & Dave”. They even had to come back on stage to help rescue Clapton’s performance and most importantly to keep the crown happy.

Second was also at the Rainbow. This time not the main band but the support. Tom Robinson was support for Van Halen in about 1979. I had no interest in Tom Robinson perform as I was there for Van Halen. Fortunately the metal heads managed to shorten his stint as the warm up. Utterly dreadful he was.

My wife went to see Harry Connick jnr years ago. People heckling and walking out as most of the time he was on stage he wanted to bleat about how good he and his father was. Hecklers should that they had payed to he him sing not to stand up there talking.

 

It means nothing to me…

 

Not a band I appreciate, but recently went to the Forum, Bath to see Sara Pascoe. OMG, utterly terrible and absolutely NOT remotely funny.
My wife & I gave up and left at the interval......
One major plus though, was supper @ Bosco's Italian: excellent

 

I've never seen the Stereophonics, and would probably struggle to name a single one of their songs. The only thing I know about them is that when we saw Black Sabbath at the NEC in December 1999 ("The last Sabbath of the millennium") there was a bloke standing at the bar with a t-shirt that said "The Stereophonics are shite" on it... I've never bothered finding out if he was right or not...

 

Three support acts that stand out for their dreadfulness:
Smashing Pumpkins, supporting the Stones at Miami Orangebowl. The opening act were the Dave Matthews Band, who did impress. Then the Pumpkins came on and were truly awful. We had no idea who they were but the American woman in front of us got it spot on when she described them as "a shitty, shitty band".
System of a Down, supporting Sabbath at the NEC. They obviously thought everyone had come to see them. They were abysmal. The hall emptied - the bar and the merch stand were about twenty deep...
Kaiser Chiefs, supporting Green Day at the Emirates Stadium. So bad that Kerrang magazine didn't even mention them in their write-up of the event. Probably the most boring, soulless, band I have ever seen - utterly lacking in any stage presence whatsoever...

 

The absolute worst, ever was the support act for Snarky Puppy at Wembley Arena last year - Nate Wood. All of our group thought it was in danger of becoming the night that music died. We still can't understand how Michael League (mr snarky puppy) could be so supportive of the guy. It's not that what he was doing was out there experimental - it was just pure, unadulterated shite with an extra helping of crap on the side. Not an experience I ever want to repeat.

 

Vengaboys who were supporting Steps (who I'd taken the wife to see, along with my Uncle and young female cousins. Stepswere actually quite good).

 

have remembered another one, it was ELP in a big venue in London (can't remember). It could have been partly the mood i was in, but the whole thing was massively disappointing. I just remember lots of pompous strutting about, lengthy solo sections by Keith and Carl that I couldn't relate to, and overall just a soul-less experience, a great shame. Alan Freeman used to big them up a lot at the time, and i think I just got swept along with the hype at the time. If this type of performance had been the sole type of representation of prog, then I could almost forgive the onslaught/overhauling of this genre that soon followed.

 

Oh, and another support act, so terrible that I had almost completely blocked it from my memory...
One of Rick Wakeman's sons - I honestly can't actually remember which one - playing as part of a duo. They were supporting Karnataka (who are brilliant).
After some, seemingly endless, keyboard noodling he announced "this is from a project we are working on, a rock opera based on H Rider Haggard's novel 'She'..." That was the point we decided it was time to go to the bar, as did a lot of other people.

 

Ive had the misfortune of seeing several fascist skinhead bands. ie Skrewdriver, No Remorse etc...I had a friend who worked at the same place I did and invited me along. Despite knowing I was a northern souler/psychobilly at heart (at the time as I'd transitioned from being a mod), he tried his best. In my 20's I wasnt really political. I just wanted to have a good time and score chicks, like you do. But I got to know Ian Stewart etc through my freind. Its strange that I had a racist freind, I would not tolerate that now. But he was a misguided guy and was generally nice to me.

I also knew the band members of the 4skins as they lived on the same estate as I was at the time in Eltham and we were mods 1980-82. So no, we werent fans. Ive been beaten up by them several times. One time in Danson Bexleyheath. Bastards.

Incidently at about this time I worked at a Greengrocers in Bexleyheath and got to know Nicky Crane from OI fame as his brother was gay and would visit the shop and I got friendly with him coz I'm basically an amiable person. I owe him protection from the gangs who were told to leave me alone. Like some pet mod.
Bexleyheath at that time was skinhead central and I'd commute in every day on my Lambretta. They'd hang by the clocktower opposite the greengrocers. I was about 16-17 yrs old.

 

Never ever understood why people were into the Kaiser Chiefs. Utter utter wank.

I remember working in Chelmsford in 2005 and the V Festival rolled into town. To a man, everyone in my lunchtime local was there to see them. There's no accounting for taste.....

Even when 'I Predict a Riot' comes on for one of the seemingly ceaseless gambling ads on TV, I have to reach for the remote before the contents of my stomach reach my mouth.

 

Cvnts - I'm glad I was too young to be affected by any of that.

I tried out for a band called Eskalator years ago and they we're members of SHARP (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice) - it hadn't dawned on me that sections of that community had to try really hard to distance them selves from the knuckle draggers.

 

I knew loads of rude boy skins. Proper trojan skins. Them lot are cool as. You can tell the difference with a trained eye on attire.

The Redskins were also part of that SHARP. Love the Redskins, they were brilliant.

 

I was watching Desmond Decker in Tiffany's in Gt Yarmouth (Sccoter rally mid 80's) when they got on stage an assaulted Desmond. Wankers.

 

I grew up in 70s Coventry and most of the skinheads I knew weren't racist at all. Shame about the spitting.