Worst Concerts You Have Attended ??

Nancy Griffiths.  Her reedy, thin voice was weaker and more out of tune than I could stand.  The final straw was her pathetic political finger-wagging between songs.

Steve Morse gets both second and third prize.  I’m a big fan, but the Steve Morse band was so loud I moved farther and farther to the back of the room until I was out the door and just kept going.

More recently, the Dixie Dregs at the Boulder Theater.  Again, deafening, so loud I couldn’t distinguish between instruments.  We went to the bar next door, which was piping in the live concert sound for the last two thirds of the show.  Better, but still a mixing mess.

Fourth prize goes to Dan Tyminski at the Cavern, outside of Nashville.  Dan was trying out his band and they couldn’t decide what genre they were playing.  Lounge-lizard-country-pop-bluegrass?  But the real culprit, again, was gawd-awful sound.  Boomy, thumpy, distorted, aggressively unpleasant.  Complained and were told:  this is the last show Dan’s going to do with this band and is going to re-group (I.e. he was just playing out the string), and they weren’t filming this show for Bluegrass Underground so the usually great sound crew wasn’t being used (but nobody else has complained so refunds were refused).

The really disturbing thing about all these experiences was how so much of the audience loved the show.

Always an admirer of Bob Dylan, several years ago he played in Chicago and we couldn’t wait.  It was the worst performance by any musician I’ve ever seen. On top of Dylan’s mumbling, something fully expected, the music was loud, but not in a good way.  Painfully loud, high distortion loud, unintelligible loud, so loud and distorted there were no dynamics, just loud.  Dylan didn’t say a word and I honestly couldn’t say that he actually sang anything.   A puppet might have had more personality.  
I’m just now recovering from the experience.  His music won’t be denied and I began to listen several years later but man we’re we disappointed that evening.  

I wear those foam earplugs to any live show but the absolute worst was KISS on their first farewell tour. It was Albuquerque at the Tingley and was so loud and distorted even with the earplugs was unintelligible. Left midway through. The next worst was Nugent. No further comment needed on him. Made it 4 songs...  

Some of best concerts have been ZZ Top in an outdoor venue, Steely Dan at the same venue and STP. All time favorite band live is Los Lobos! These guys are tight, fun and bring the musical goods, never seen a bad show from them and their sound crew is always on point.

Best- the Levellers, numerous times throughout the 90's. Those cats could play. 

Worst- dead heat between Bob Dylan, Wembley Arena 1989, and the Rolling Stones the last time they played Glastonbury. Actually the Stones were worse, completely unwatchable,  i left after one, well i hesitate to call it a song.

World series of rock n roll Cleveland stadium 75’. The Rolling Stones with Billy Preston and still had Mick Taylor. J Giles opened, both were great. I was like 14 or 15.

Hundreds since then.