Greatest live disappointment

Next time they came to my home town (Utrecht) I didn't go, but I did visit the concert - with - orchestra (Magnification tour) in Amsterdam. Then they were fantastic again.

 

But the Open Your Eyes tour was the most disappointing, no doubt.

I have a recording of Greg Lake, and at the end he thanks the audience for allowing him to work for them.

 

 

 

I saw him again at the Tower Theatre in Philadelphia in the 80's. Same deal only worse because the volume in this smaller building had no place to bounce around. It was like a trapped sound that was extremely in your face.Times when he would simply stroke the string with his guitar pick and your internal organs felt disconnected. You know that sound when a jet's wheels are first touching the landing strip? My friends wanted to stay so I sat in the lobby.

Weather Report, Tower Theatre.......I don't remember the date. It was the first tour they did after the departure of Jaco and Peter E. I stood at the side of the stage watching Wayne Shorter. What an amazing player. They had hired new players and Wayne Shorter paced back and forth gawking at them and for the whole night. Once he walked over to Zawnul and complained waving his hands and eventually having some choice words for the new members. The music had no soul. The new members raced through the beautiful compositions of W.R. like a day at the race track. Wayne Shorter is technically brilliant but melodic so really, they were missing the point causing the band to lose it's impact of performance.

I saw Yes at the JFK stadium. During their performance of "Ritual", members of the audience decided to set the seats on fire. Eventually the fire extended across an entrie side of the stadium and the fire department was brought in. Yes continued their extensive and errie jam deriving from the center of the "Ritual" piece throughout the end. I'm off thread again because Yes were very great that night however the fire was quite dangerous and it's a reminder to many how any act of extreme violent measures can reveal itself to you at a Rock concert.

Procol Harum at the Spectrum May 13th 1977. They were God awful as they fumbled through the old classics and performed also,...their new material from "Something Magic". That night it was known to me as "Something Tragic". It just sounded like a bunch of guys who were no longer Procol Harum. Brooker and BJ were the only members left from the salad days and the new members really didn't compliment the band's compositions. They were at the end of the line.

5/13/77 Return To Forever. They had 2 of the original members Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke. Clarke sat on a stool during the middle of the band's performance and played various Classical compositions using a bow and it was just incredible. All the musicians were impeccable but the essence of what I felt with the Romantic Warrior version was lost. Changing of members can ultimately dissapoint the fan.

BTO opened for Ten Years After at the Spectrum May of 74'. It was horrible. Cheap chord progressions stolen from "The Who". "The Who" had originality. This was commercial and on the ashes of "The Guess Who" and they were just writing the same style but with a harder edge to it. Staduim Rock.

Reo Speed Wagon opened for Mott the Hoople and they were bland middle of the road Rock music. They had zero hits at this time. The "Hi- Infidelity" album had yet to surface. The style was Staduim Rock and difficult to sit through.

Johnny Winter at the Spectrum 5/21/76 was a huge disappointment. While being a great guitarist that night, the material itself was cheap boogie and fashioned to a "Stadium Rock" trend. I was thinking only of how inspiring he was with his first 2 Blues releases and now he had to be like everybody else. Rotten show!

Black Oak Arkansas headlined over 2 great bands....Back Street Crawler and Rory Gallagher. Black Oak Arkansas played their stupied "Jim Dandy to the rescue" and their style fit into the arena rock era. A real painful show. Jim Dandy had the David Lee Roth look years before Van Halen hit the scene. He had his scrub board and assistant bimbo Ruby Starr on stage with him. For all the fantastic musicians that derive from the Southern United States, this was if anything, a disgrace to them.  

I've actually seen Indigo Girls many times, most of them awesome but they had one gig where the sound was terrible and Amy went into a free form poem ending in her screaming "I'm a killer" over and over.

 

I think Dylan back in his prime did some amazing work, but don't waste your money.

 

I've seen alot of bland gigs but few truly bad ones. (Van Hagar anyone?) I love music so I give quite a bit of leeway. The hardest is inconsistent bands where you've seen them be just magical and you tell your friends and the next gig they're boring.