The Fun Club

Really. The worst.

Danm wrote:I've been to some pretty terrible shows. The worst acts in the past year though, were probably (off the top of my head):

A Static Lullaby - great musicians, TERRIBLE singer. I stayed to watch the drummer though.
Dream of Radio (or something like that)

A Static Lullaby is one of the worst bands I've ever heard in my entire life. They write atrocious, tuneless, new-age "hardcore" drivel. When I saw them they had 2 lead singers on the stage... one who screamed incessantly and one who just went "RAAAOOWWWW!" every now and then. HORRIBLE!

"Dream Of Radio" sounds like Death By Stereo. I saw them open for Mastodon and it was one of the few times I found myself slinking to the back of the venue. Their trite, predictable songs, pseudo-profound (and extremely laughable) stage banter which went something like "don't let me tell you what to do! don't let MTV tell you who to be! just be yourself! alright! this one is called God Awful Shitty Song, Lets GO!", and constant jumping around like imbeciles rank them as one of the worst live bands I've ever seen. Fuck this band. They've partly ruined The Lost Boys for me.

Seventh Grade Underdog (terrible name... and the overly happy bassist with a wireless unit, walking off the stage to dance around amongst the crowd with a big shit-eating grin on his face who always wore a scarf no matter what temperature it was outside) and Knockout (more jumping around like morons, awful lyrics and whiny, melodramatic awfulness) are two of the worst modern pop-punk bands I've ever seen. The each played two separate shows at the fireside. SGU played in the basement of a bookstore during a show a attended there, so I'm sad to say I've seen them twice.

I saw both Yellowcard and The Starting Line before they were on MTV. They both fucking sucked back then, too.

Horrendous pop-punk-ska band who I can't remember the name of, start playing opening chords of a song, then the bassist says "EVERYBODY GET IN THE AIR!" and the band and the audience all proceed to do the pop-punk equivalent of the "pogo" known as "bopping", which is basically jumping up and down in place and looking like a fuck-wad. Fuck that shit.

Darkest Hour is more modern hardcore B.S. that I can't stand. They were a tuneless mush of noise when I saw them. Fuck this band.

I saw Taproot once. That really sucked. They spent an hour setting up fucking furniture on the stage (huge mirrors, couches, etc.) and finally kicked into their whiny, nu-metal assault on my eardrums. This band is awful.

I've seen a good number of horrible bands.

So many years of shows, rock shows, live music settings, what have you...

So much boredom and ultrasuckage, though a few surprises and inspired moments make it worthwhile...

But here's what stands out in my expansive SUCK file-

1. Blood Circus- a Sub Pop band from the late eighties. They suck a mile of corn studded shit, the Blood Circus. An absolute blight on all of the Sub Pop canon. Not even so bad they were kinda entertaining, because that would've given them some redemptive value. They are all in hell, because they have to wake up in their lives and live with the reality that they are/were in Blood Circus. No love, no respect for the Blood Circus. By far among the worst live bands, if not the worst live band I have ever witnessed, and that's saying a fuck of a lot.

2. Slint- Yes, Slint. I've seen them two times fifteen years apart and both times they set the gold standard for boring as fuck stagecraft. Slint. Die.

3. When I lived in Austin there was this band that was kinda being hyped so I went to see them. I saw three guys with the same haircut swagger on the stage all cocky, like they thought they was the Rolling Stooges, and proceed to suck. That band later became famous. You know them as...And They Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

Sure, there's many, many more, but those are the ones that stick out right now.

I've seen so many bad shows in my days, but the worst was a band called Mason Dixon from (big surprise!) Brooklyn. The singer was very confused - equal parts Robbie Robertson and Paul Stanley. A couple of the guys in the band seemed like music school drop-outs and they had the obligatory "band member's girlfriend who is around to play the tambourine and caterwaul behind an already awful neo-weird old Americana noise". The show was in Providence. I needed a shower after their set.

zom-zom wrote:Swans

Royal Trux

Don Caballero

'

stories, pretty please?

The worst of recent is probably Satellite Party. They were so bad they made me bleed out of my ass.

The scene was a bit like this:

+ =

Been thinking aobut this for a while now.

The second worst artist/band I've ever seen is Cat Power. And I really, really like her records, save "The Greatest".

The absolute worst band I have ever seen was a friend's band, and therefore, to misappropriate a quote from Wittgenstein:

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence

MrFood wrote:Cat Power.

Its still Cat Power.

Seconded. I mainly went to see Dan Higgs do his solo thing that night but I stuck around for Cat Power. What a bullshit excuse for a performer. How could she reasonably expect to get paid? I fucking paid money to watch some cowardly talentless mental patient limply stumble over her own whispers and RELY on the sympathy of the audience to carry her set. Cat Power is total bullshit. I walked out.

that damned fly wrote:

zom-zom wrote:Swans

Royal Trux

Don Caballero

'

stories, pretty please?

I already asked him for the one about Swans...you can see that in the Flipper C/NC thread.

The worst live band I ever saw was Wolf Eyes. They actually played my high school. Some kids invited them to headline this gettogether of local bands at my school and they accepted, which was pretty NC on their part. What was Crap was the...um..."music"...if you can call a muddy wall of noise that sounded like a car failing to start up fed through an infinite delay pedal amplified to jet-takeoff levels music. I personally can't. They seemed pretty into it, and it was fun for a bit as a sensory overload type thing, but it got old really fast.

I also hated it when the lead singer for Cake started fucking lecturing the crowd about how we should be so happy that we had running water. Wanted to kill that fucker. They actually sucked pretty bad too. They're second worst.

beloveless wrote:

MrFood wrote:Cat Power.

Its still Cat Power.

Seconded. I mainly went to see Dan Higgs do his solo thing that night but I stuck around for Cat Power. What a bullshit excuse for a performer. How could she reasonably expect to get paid? I fucking paid money to watch some cowardly talentless mental patient limply stumble over her own whispers and RELY on the sympathy of the audience to carry her set. Cat Power is total bullshit. I walked out.

When I saw her, she was singing with a band. She never even picked up a guitar.

The women in the audience too...it was what I imagine a Jimmy Buffett concert might be like on a smaller scale. The way that they were "groovin'" to the music to the way they would cheer...it was all pretty sad. The phrase "adult contemporary" comes to mind.

I saw Jim White play drums though...which is NOT CRAP.