What are some concerts you went to that were disappointing, bad, just plain weird, etc.?
The Smashing Pumpkins in 2008 comes immediately to mind. I've seen SP many times over the years, with different lineups and they almost always put on a great show. The 2012 Oceania show and the concert I went to last week at the Boston Garden were awesome. However, the 2008 shows at the Wang Center in Boston were bad. First, the Wang Center (which is far smaller than the Garden which had a good turnout last week) was half-empty, which kind of gave the show a depressing atmosphere. The band (which consisted of Corgan and Jimmy and friends) totally lacked cohesion. The classic lineup and even the later Oceania lineup were real bands. The Pumpkins I saw on the 2008 tour seemed less like a band putting on a show than a bunch of friends running through a dress rehearsal. They played few songs most people would even recognize, opting for deep album cuts, newer songs and songs-in-progress instead. The audience was just kind of "meh," at which point Billy bitched about the crowd's lack of enthusiasm, which led to people starting to heckle them. When Billy was playing one of his lesser known songs, an acoustic morose balled (might have been from American Gothic) some guy kept yelling "don't call me daughter..." which the audience seemed to find more entertaining than the show that they payed to see.
Scott Weiland in Boston, 2013 and 2015. Weiland, in his prime, was one of the best frontmen of his generation. Saw him with STP, Velvet Revolver and solo several times and he was awesome, a true star. I caught his show at the Wilbur in Boston in March of 2013, about a week after he was fired from Stone Temple Pilots. He was about an hour late coming to the stage (an announcer said he was en route from his hotel, but staff there said he was backstage, just too fucked up to take stage). When he played, he was clearly on something, drugs and/or booze. He was still a commanding frontman, still sang fairly well, but was very sloppy--sort of like a later-day Jim Morrison on an okay night. It was just kind of sad to watch, especially in hindsight. Saw Scott two years later at the Brighton Music Hall, which itself was sad. Here is a guy who played packed theaters and arenas with STP and VR, and here he is playing a 400 capacity club in Boston. He put on a better show than two years earlier and sounded good, but he seemed so joyless, unhappy. His guitar player Jeremy Brown died a week later and Weiland was dead by the end of the year.
Stone Temple Pilots at the Boston Pavilion in 2018. I'm lazy and just going to repost my review from the STP thread. I had real mixed feelings about their set. The band sounded great, they have the goods (their songs are as good as anything that was on the radio in the 1990's IMHO), and new singer Jeff Gutt has the chops to sing all the classics--that said, I felt that Gutt was trying way too hard to ape Scott Weiland. Not only does Gutt sound a lot like Weiland, now he dresses like him, copies his moves, has a similar hair style, etc. It was a bizarre experience watching STP. I know that Scott is dead, but there he apparently is, alive and well, playing with STP, as though the last five years never happened. I like Jeff Gutt, he's a good singer, a good fit for STP and I really like their new album, but I think Gutt should just try to be himself and not try to mimic his deceased predecessor. When Chester Bennington sang with them, he brought his own unique style to the band (okay, he sort of tried to look like Scott, but not nearly to the extent as Gutt). They didn't play any deep cuts, just the big hits from the first four albums and two new songs. Whatever concerns I had, the crowd loved them and they probably got the best response of the three headliners (the others were Bush and the Cult). So while I found STP's set to be a little ghoulish (for lack of a better word), I still enjoyed their set.
Tom Jones at the Orpheum Theater in Boston, 2016. I kind of went thinking it would be kind of a joke--super cheesy, schmaltzy and I'd be the youngest guy there--boy was I wrong. First, Tom Jones was fucking awesome. He was 76 at the time and looked and sounded a good 20 years younger. His voice sounded great, he was in fantastic shape, and his catalog was very impressive and diverse--a great mix of rock and blues. The audience was very diverse--20 somethings to the elderly, about 50/50 men and women, and the bras flew like confetti--it was quite a sight.
Van Halen at Mansfield in 1998. Poor Gary Cherone lost his voice four songs into their set. While most VH hated/hate the Van Halen 3 album (I feel it has its merits), the show was good. Gary might not have been the best fit for the band, but he is a good singer and frontman and tried his best to give the fans a good show. The show at the Boston Garden (called the Fleetcenter then) that past Spring was great. The band made up for the show the next day, but the place was half empty and you could sense that VH 3.0 wasn't going to last. Next time I saw Van Halen Dave was back.
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Originally Posted by thevoid99
