worst reunions

weezer announced they were 'taking a break' and the members moved to separate cities and started new bands. they reunited for a high paying festival gig and then did a small reunion tour after that that generated befuddling (to me at least) enthusiasm. it's around this time that pinkerton's 'lost classic' status goes mainstream. the green weezer album had high anticipation, came out same day as amnesiac and i can remember maybe a third of the crowd at the midnight sale (remember those?) were there for weezer. interesting if their hiatus has been largely forgotten, like w/ roxy music or talking heads (or sleater kinney except everyone knew they really were taking a break - corin had a baby). a group that just peaks early and then gradually starts to suck more is different than a band that releases to perfect albums (in theory) and then reunites and releases a stream of increasingly worse records. no doubt never actually broke up though i guess you could be forgiven for assuming their hiatus would be like nsync's. gnr either never broke up or never reunited.

I remember a magazine feature on this.
Os Mutantes had a troubled reunion but I don't know if that had anything to do with the reception.
Happy Mondays did their reunion on a Jim Davidson show or something.

I recall some reviews saying the Von live reunion was a disaster.

came out same day as amnesiac

what's that? I remember the other big thing that came out that day as Lateralus by Tool.

It's the Radiohead album.

ah - you're right! i confused the midnight sale for radiohead w/ the midnight sale for rem - weezer/tool/rem came out in may, radiohead was june i think

I was just trying to make a dumb joke about amnesia and missing wildly, I guess.

Distinct memory of buying that Weezer album at midnight, listening to it with my college roommates and realizing they would never be good again.

Personally, I think the Pixies reunion burned through the most goodwill for me, but due to personal/personnel reasons and general dickishness, carrying on too long, etc.

Some of these reunions (thinking of the Stooges and the JAMC here) were actually quite good fun!

But if Slowdive were on this list, I'd have voted for them as worst out of principle. (Also MBV, but I've had retained a lot more goodwill for them if they'd not released an album.)

Dunno, I think the album was good enough to justify..

Only one of these bands made a record with Skrillex.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a new Slowdive album. Would have been nice if Chapterhouse had another album in them but it was just a live tour.

I'm not actually that enthused about live reunions in general.

See, I don't mind live reunions. It's a moment, a rush, a single night of nostalgia. It's when they gotta go and piss all over their legacy by recording something that sounds so completely out of date and embarrassing that I wish it hadn't happened. I have a lot more respect for bands that do the reunion gigs, then leave it at that.

There's a few album-reunions that worked, though -- Mission of Burma, the Who, New York Dolls...

GBV otm
leaning way too hard on the unsustainable "party band" model
no respect for selves

Violent Femmes 2013 reunion deserves mention here if only because they almost immediately fired Victor Delorenzo and replaced him with Amanda Palmer's friend.

kinda inclined to say the Velvets but their reunion was a blip that doesn't obscure their canonical work at all.

this reunion actually seems like part of the legend at this point

it probably would have been really embarrassing if it happened in the 00s

Very few of these I actually want to player-hate on at all, worse things they could do with their songbook and time. but there are a few.

Velvet Underground is kind of embarrassing in hindsight thanks to lou's "Severin take the whip baby severin take the whip now" scattage but as a young aspiring alt-kid at the time i was ecstatic.

queen + paul rodgers was actively embarrassing and while i wish may & taylor had just done some kind of low key small hall thing where they'd just sing the stuff they wrote I can't hate on them for wanting to do "we will rock you" at the big places and they've since replaced rodgers with adam lambert so they've learned their lesson.

The post-Deal Pixies have been pretty embarrassing but i was all for the foursome raking in the $$$ on the road.

So I'm probably voting for Doors 21st Century because holy shit Ian Astbury are you fucking kidding me

LL - I seem to remember from past posts ya dig the GBV - I'm disappointed on that 'OTM'. Give the new stuff a chance - I'd rank Cool Planet up there w/ Propeller, UTBUTS, Vampire On Titus ... I think they're post 2011 stuff (yes, 'let's go eat the factory' was a mis-step) gets better as each album comes out. Now that they've gotten rid of Fennell as a drummer, they're only sounding better. Yes the Pollard 'bro'-y' performances are a little cringeworthy live, but the original spirit is there for sure. Don't give up. They won't hit re-united MoB or DJr. levels, but I think what they're putting out is special in its own right.

That said - Black Flag debacle may be worst on this list.

doubling down on doors 21st century as my choice since the guys were gradually forced by lawsuits to make their name less doorsy as they went from the singer from the cult to the singer from fuel to the singer from steelheart to the singer of a doors cover band.

I recall some reviews saying the Von live reunion was a disaster.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, July 18, 2014 5:09 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if this is the black metal Von I saw them play to like 20 ppl tops and I thought it was fine

seen reformed GO4 twice, both at (indoor) festivals, first time was great and second time it was Andy Gill + dudes who I doubt were born when they broke up first time. they reduced a ~1000 audience to about 200 a while before the end which was tough to witness

in terms of cred damage, it might be hard to beat Lynyrd Skynyrd 1987-present

didn't densmore sue the rest of the doors for using the name almost immediately, forcing them to use 'doors of the 21st century'? he also wrote a big thing for the nation congratulating himself for singlehandedly preventing cadillac from using 'break on through' in an ad.

brad c otm - ppl know about the crash but that doesn't prevent them from letting clownshow skynyrd paint their impressions of actual skynyrd. not sure even mike love can top that.

oh yeah probably would have voted for skynyrd if that'd been an option

and had no idea about andy gill & friends version of go4, thought that reunion was just the short tour they did a decade ago.

re: doors, group was always called Doors Of The 21st Century, the lawsuit is what forced them to change it to D21C in 2005, then Riders Of The Storm, then Manzarek-Krieger as they went through singers

def knew the gang of two had gone on without the original rhythm section, but i was shocked when i belatedly heard jon king left

hahahaha i had know idea the doors kept changing their name after that, my lord.

Pixies have gone on waaaay too long as someone mentioned upthread. I had no problem with them reuniting at first. I went to their gig in Phoenix Park in 04 and it was great but the recent Glastonbury performance was lifeless and at a recent gig supporting Arcade Fire, Frank Black walked off after 30 mins saying that his guitar was "broken". The new tunes are wretched. No Kim Deal either.

VU reunion was a heap of shit too but at least it was short and they didn't release any music

the fake kim deal vocal on "bag boy" is definitely the saddest reunion-related thing i've heard since paul rodgers and queen's "c-lebrity"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOIfqbKVvrI

that vid probably wins saddest reunion-related thing i've seen

Guided By Voices. Bad enough that I began to wonder why I ever thought they were good. Still undecided, but leaning heavily towards purging the 5% of their albums I own (which is like 8) and just keeping Human Amusement.

― campreverb, Friday, July 18, 2014 10:51 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

would probably go with this too. releasing a 4 hour live documentary called The Electrifying Conclusion and reuniting 6 years later is one of the most irrationally-angry-making things I can think of.

Feel like Steely Dan should have at least been an option. I've never listened to the post-Gaucho albums myself, or seen them live ($$$), but there's something weird about a band that was so much about hermetic perfection and no-live-shows becoming such a touring machine (including full-on human-jukebox whole-album shows).

Yes it was Von the black metal band. It was a review in Terrorizer of an (indoor?) metal festival that Ihsahn, Jarboe and Watain also played. It was highly anticipated but apparently it was awful. But that was just one show.

I didn't mean that I disliked live reunions, I just can't get that excited about even some of my favourite bands playing the hits. And some bands build such a legend in your mind that even though the idea of them playing live is exciting, it's very unlikely they'll perform at the level you'd hope for (actually Slowdive and Chapterhouse might fall into that category for me but I'd go see them if I could anyway). I found Butthole Surfers mostly quite underwhelming but that was a hiatus, which they seem to have went back on.
The two early gigs from the Pixies reunion were amazing, about as good as I could have expected aside from the dream situation where I could request two more songs ("Alec Eiffel" might have made it perfect).

Live reunions with no new recordings make total sense if they have no new worthy material, which might be most of the time.

I thought American Music Club's reunion albums and tours were very good and I don't recall anyone being unhappy about it.

I heard the Bauhaus reunion album was great.

Slint reunions totally acceptable to me. Nothing too embarrassing, and it allows Brian McMahan to support his family, and Britt Walford to support whatever the hell he does with his time.

Go4's rerecording of their best songs was pretty pointless, tempted to vote for that.

for the most part, but the original line-up versions of the Songs Of The Free were pretty outstanding

the Songs Of The Free material, I mean. LOOOOOOOVE their take on "We Live As We Dream Alone" esp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWb8_dDAaL4#t=47m23s

at 47:23

Most of these I don't even give half a shit a shit about but the whole Pixies debacle is pretty grim.

I don't know why people are being so down on GBV, I still find them kind of endearing.

man it totally hadn't registered with me that the Pixies had been back together for so long. why do they bother?

They've been reunited now for as long as they'd been broken up, and longer than they were together in the 80s/90s.

^^A thread idea I've never pulled the trigger on: "Bands whose reunions lasted longer than their original tenure"

OK, I totally forgive the Bauhaus reunion album, because it was both great, but also revealing of the cracks that broke them up in the first place.

what did them in finally? My recollection was that the final breakup was quite sudden.

Daniel and Peter; conflicting egos. Both of them got too used to being the sole frontman, I'd say.

They seemed to have several rounds of reunion, too. Like I remember seeing a reformed Bauhaus in NYC before I left in 1998, and then the album, in what, 2003, plus second lot of touring?

^ absolute nonsense. Stamos is not in the band, Cowsill and Foskett are both 61, Totten I'm guessing is in his '50s since he's been playing for over 30 years, and I'd never pay to see them but "as I can imagine," hiring the dude who was Brian's right-hand-man and musical director for his entire solo touring career would be the best possible way to make the Brian songs not sound hella fucking weird.

looked up the keyboard player: he's 56 and has been in the touring band for 20 years

I was guessing based on the way that they looked. I was off a few decades I s'pose. (this was also 8 years ago that I saw them)

Stamos is not in the band full-time, but he played pretty much the entire show that I saw. Even sang lead on a song. It became a Stamos side-show at times, they kept drawing reference to him.

They sound weird because they're not Brian Wilson. I didn't say they didn't sound "good" - but they didn't sound like the Beach Boys, either.

there's also the fact that unlike you, I've heard them

so because John Stamos guested at one show you saw eight years ago, all of the changes to lineup, arrangements and setlists that writers about the Beach Boys have noted since then never happened, and Jeff Foskett did not swap places with Matt Jardine after the 50th anniversary tour that only used two of Mike's players. since I saw that lineup, I guess I have a better claim to "having heard them" than you?

according to http://esquarterly.com/bellagio/gigs.html, Stamos has guested at three shows in the last eight years (two of which were benefits for Goodwill in Orange County, organised by Stamos, whose brother in law is the CEO). the Mike & Bruce band play over 150 shows a year.

it's entirely plausible that they sounded weird eight years ago (especially if they were playing to the sort of crowd that would even care if Stamos was there!), or that 20 of those 150 shows a year are duds now due to any number of factors. but to double down on saying "the current touring act" sounds weird on songs Brian Wilson wrote, when Mike's Beach Boys started adding loads of Brian album tracks and non-hits into their setlists for non-state-fair gigs in 2011, and JEFF FOSKETT (re-)JOINED IN 2013, is pretty pointless.

hiring the dude who was Brian's right-hand-man and musical director for his entire solo touring career

Apols for a dumb question but who are you talking about here, Sic?

Stamos was on the UK tour earlier this year.

omg who cares who is a bigger authority on the shitty mike/bruce band? yah even foskett sucks now with that shitshow. jesus.

Tim - he's talking about Jeff Foskett

Ah OK, I was under the impression that Darian Sahanaja was the Musical Director / Band Leader for most of Brian's solo touring, hence my confusion.

When I saw Bri perform Pet Sounds last year, the band leader was the sax playing guy, Paul Von Mertens - confirmed in this piece about the group:

https://www.npr.org/2016/07/09/484983061/pet-sounds-and-the-band-that-gets-to-play-it-onstage

that's interesting - can you remember whether Darian was in the band that night? I know he's not there the whole time these days. This one (from 2015) says he'd been musical director since 1999: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/meet-brian-wilsons-secret-weapon-darian-sahanaja-20150630

I don't think he was, Tim - but there were a lot of ppl on stage!

and I'd never pay to see them but "as I can imagine,"

unexpectedly I saw them for free two days ago, standing eight feet from the stage

it is with a heavy heart I must report that the "Beach Boys" sounded fucking great

not a fan to begin with, but the sublime one seems particularly gross/egregious.

like if they could afford or legally rationalize touring with a hologram, they would totally be doing that.

Well, they in that case is just Eric Wilson the bass player and Rome Ramirez at this point, as Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh quit in regret pretty early on and hired gun Josh Freese left a year or two ago.

In March 2015, Ramirez appeared on Blues Traveler's album Blow Up the Moon, co writing the song "Castaway" and "Vagabond Blues" with Dirty Heads.