bands you stopped liking after you saw them live

Fan Modine put on one of the most stage-struck shows I've ever witnessed (aside from my own) at a Grimsey Records showcase in '99. Chris Brokaw from Come was on guitar, but I think Gordon (Zacharias) did more sweating than singing. That qualifies as "Bands you pitied after you saw them live," though, not "stopped liking."

This thread could also dovetail with prior "Bands/artists you liked until you realized they were assholes" thread(s), in which case I'd rope in The Magnetic Fields as the principal example.

For some strange reason, mainstream female soloists have done badly out of this. Macy Gray (dear Lord, what WERE we thinking), Alicia Keys, Beth Orton, Nanci Griffith. And also My Morning Jacket, but I accept it might have been a bad night. (MIGHT have been.)

OTMFM!!! Also the way he kept humping the lamptop or at least that's what it looked like from where I was standing.

Anyway, to answer the question... Seeing Four Tet is definitely a deadly dull experience. Still can't listen to him without getting boring flashbacks.

Also, I saw Beck on a whim recently, and I'd never really been a fan, but I thought the show would be fun. It was maybe the worst concert I've ever been to in my life. I nearly walked out. It was just so self-consciously staged and "fun" in a terribly overbearing way. All wacky dancing and puppets and whatnot. YOU WILL HAVE FUN. FUN. FUN. But they all kind of seemed like they wanted to kill themselves. It was really bizarre. It was especially a disappointment after Jamie Lidell as the support act.

Lawd save us from grateful-to-be-here bands.

i can't bear to say more as it still infuriates/upsets me to my very core, but i'll just say 'glastobury 1993' and be done with it.

Still can't listen to him without getting boring flashbacks I listen to him and the boredom has nothing to do with flashbacks :)

Also the way he kept humping the lamptop or at least that's what it looked like from where I was standing.

There was humping a-plenty on this occasion too.

oh?
cool.
i'll pass anyway, thanks!

-- latebloomer aka 'the sun'

If you mean that weird thing where you find yourself analysing too much because there is a band you really like -on stage- -right now- and you must must must take it all in as you might never see it again and then you kind of feel "hang on, am I being underwhelmed by this not blowing my mind all the time?" and "it would be nice to stop and go for a cup of tea at some point here" then yes, it happens to me quite a bit.

The new answer: A few years ago, I went to see Leon Russell in Santa Cruz. I had always loved Leon Russell's music, mostly from listening to my mom's copy of 1970's Leon Russell. At this concert, just like Boston, he made no attempts at all to connect with the audience. He just launched into note perfect renditions of his songs but with no emotion at all. We left after the first set and I felt like my big statue of Leon Russell had just been pulled over in front of me. Very disappointing.
(I still love his and Bonnie Bramlett's Superstar!)

Ditto.

Seeing them at All Tomorrow's Parties in Long Beach a couple of years ago was particularly heinous. They'd finish a pretty, sad pop song, and then the Marty guy would scream into the mic things like "Yo, Dog, We here in the LBC! Snoop Dizzle and The Shizzins! LBC, Muthafucka!" in an exaggerated accent. The songwriter would stand there awkwardly (though seemingly amused) as the other guy would riff on things like "Funny Hip Hop Voices" and "Lord of the Rings." It totally and completely turned me off of the band.

I have to say that Dinosaur Jr. was terrible live. First of all, J Mascis is a total dick with no personality, unless his personality is being a dickhead. Second, it was incredibly loud. I mean dangerously loud. I've never been to a show that loud, and I'm young and I have been to a lot of shows. I saw some college girl actually start crying. It was so loud that you couldn't make out the instruments, and you couldn't even understand which song they were playing. Interestingly enough, one of my friends fell asleep standing up at that show. And he's a huge Dinosaur Jr. fan.

that's probably otm.
Half the bands I see don't seem to know how to put on a good show and that's why I quit going to these newbie indie gigs.

Isis seconded. Boring awful droneage. Though, I can't say I was a big fan in the first place, but now I just won't listen to them.
Bloc Party seconded. They were such a disappointment, I guess because this was before all the hype and the "Helicopter" sampling and I didn't really know much about them except for the fact that their songs were fun and the drumming was pretty good. But their show was so dreadful. For them I always refer back to this review on TMT: "They suck live. And because of that, in my eyes, they basically now suck. Good album be damned, Bloc Party sucks more than anything has ever sucked before."

Architecture in Helsinki. Meh.
And I can't take the Liars at all, now. too much satan for me.

Doornroosje, Nijmegen (The Netherlands), probably in '97/'98/'99? I can't remember the exact year. Tried to google it to find it and see that he's playing there in just three days from now! :)

_hip as I tried to feel the rest of the night, I felt like Colonel Sanders attending a high school dance.

― When I am afraid, I put my toast in you (Neanderthal_

Me at the bar

I could never enjoy his voice again without thinking of that embarrassing performance that really was like witnessing teenager having a massive strop.

― kitchen person, Wednesday, October 23, 2019 11:13 AM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

How awful that something could cause you to associate Conor Oberst's vocal delivery with that of a whiny teenager. How unthinkable.

_ I'm not sure this has ever actually happened to me._

Same. Records are documents, shows are a different animal. Sure some bands have no presence, are less skilled than you would assume, storm off stage...who cares. Maybe it’s just being in their presence for awhile that is what I expect and not a lot more

Feel that there could be an interesting adjunct thread for folks that have shared a bill alongside asshole musicians with the same outcome.

How awful that something could cause you to associate Conor Oberst's vocal delivery with that of a whiny teenager. How unthinkable.

― Evan,

Haha, true. I guess when I got into them I was still heavily in my teen angst phase (leading into my remarkably different early 20s angsty phase) and I thought his voice was raw, emotional and spoke to me in some way. Seeing him on stage behaving like that really made see how embarrassing his whole shtick was. I still wasn't out of that phase in 2005 and had some rough years ahead, but I often thought to myself as long as I'm coming across better than Conor Oberst at Glastonbury I must be doing ok.

Remember sitting down to watch Bright Eyes pre-Wilco at Glastonbury 2004, the first band of the day in the glorious sun at first ever visit to the festival. This is going to be amazing, I thought, being full of youthful excitement for simply being there, despite having never heard a note of his music. Very quickly formed the opinion that CO was the worst person in music at that moment in time.

Needless to say I wasn't at his set the following year, but I was told he referred to John Peel as being "a cokehead, just like myself"

Garcia Peoples

― alpine static, Sunday, October 20, 2019 10:05 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Gotta say I wasn't expecting to see that answer. I've never seen them live myself, but I've heard a lot of very, very good sets they've played. Usually I hear the opposite, folks weren't into them at all until they saw them live.

took me a very long time to be able to listen to anything by sisters of mercy after i saw them back in the 00s.
after an hour of seeing absolutely nothing but smoke i gave up and went home.
could have been a cd player via the PA system, we genuinely could not see anything the whole time.

You’d think I would give Ariel Pink another chance after a decade or so has passed since I saw him perform but nope, he was that bad

The Mars Volta in 2003. Incredibly boring, I never got to appreciate their albums since.

Nothing to add to this, probably the most tedious attempts at jamming I've ever witnessed and I've seen Phish

The Roots were booked to play the state university I went to in 2000. When I went, there was no Questlove or Black Thought; just Dice Raw, some hype men and replacement players.

Nearly all bands I've ever seen live, I pretty much stop listening to. Something to do with being subjected to music in that way for 90-120 minutes feels like it's absolutely my fill of that noise for a long long time

90-120 minutes? Most bands I've seen haven't played that long, it certainly would be the exception rather than the rule.

Yeah, most bands I see play 60-75 minutes. 90-120 if the band's headlining an arena, but club shows are substantially shorter than that.

Bands you stopped licking

In my experience 90 mins is the norm.

Yeah 90 minutes of licking, tops

re: Sisters Of Mercy, I don’t think the point ever was that you’d be able see ‘real’ artists playing ‘real’ music. I’ve been to two of those ‘let’s pump the room full of smoke and turn everything up to eleven’ shows and absolutely loved the experience, esp the flashes of Eldridge weaving in and out of the fog, hollering away.

Lol omar