"Cr*p Things Bands Do"

boogieman

RocknRollDave said:

NOT releasing a live album and/ or DVD of the tours that matter
Prince, I'm looking at YOU Sonny Jim. Where's the Lovesexy Live DVD? Where's the decent live album that WASN'T from your indulgent Jazz-meets-Jehovah's-Witnessing period? Where's the live document of the huge run at the O2? What?! That shitty CD from an aftershow that came with a coffee table book, last seen at branches of The Works?! Is that IT?!
Is there really no official footage from the Purple Rain tour?! The 1999 tour? Really?!

I wonder who controls his estate these days? There must be a ton of unreleased studio material in Paisley Park. I'd be surprised if there isn't a shitload of live footage and recordings somewhere too. 

guitarfishbay

Sporky said:

monquixote said:

cpcompany said:

Having Encores and Stage banter. I prefer bands to just get up, play their set and fuck off. I can't stand crowd participation and stage banter, absolute shite it is. 

Have you considered staying at home and listening to a CD?

That's exactly what anyone who likes music does.

Bands are awful live.

Honestly, I'm jumping the gun as I haven't tried it yet, but evertune might be one thing that redresses this... so much live music is out of tune, either because the musicians are trying to put on a show and are moving about too much to intonate properly, or the instruments just go out as a result of environmental factors etc...  Yes the players are a big part of this but lets assume they're pretty good if it's their day job

If the guitars could only be in tune that'd at least remove a massive variable, and leave the bands to put on a show rather than choose between standing still and being called boring, and jumping about but probably playing half the parts out of tune

Winny_Pooh

It's the singers being out of tune that bothers me more

guitarfishbay

Yeah.

Thing is at high volume it's hard to tell a lot of this stuff.  I've gone on YouTube and checked out crowd footage of gigs I've been to in the past and it's sounded totally different to what I remembered, in terms of quality of performance...

The main thing is I enjoyed being there... there's something to be said about not having every performance filmed for that reason.  That and well there's often a lot of touching up done on some live albums.

Veganic

Tea towels and shopping bags as merchandise?

Courteeners. (Could have been for the support, can't remember)

Other useless merch. Inside out Tshirts?
No thanks REM.

Having rainbow rope lights in front of the stage like a curtain so you can see fuck all.

Wayne Coyne? More like Wank Coyne.

(I realise these may be quite specific.)

RocknRollDave

Intro music.
Kill the house lights, crowd goes wild, intro tape starts...crowd goes wilder....intro tape carries on...crowd gets a bit restless....intro tape carries on...crowd starts shuffling their feet, coughing nervously.....intro tape carries on....

It's like having to stop foreplay to put a condom on and ...where are they? Oops wrong drawer.......argh, they're in here somewhere.....then fumbling over opening the wrapper and .......finally got it out of the wrapper........Is that inside out or is it the right way round or............Where were we...?

Mood killer.



And then when the tape FINALLY ends.......is it BOOM and into the first song? Nah, the band ambles slowly onto the stage, guitarist tests the guitar with a few braaaangs, the drummer hits the snare and a couple of toms, bassist plucks a string, singer eventually steps up to the mic and offers a polite "hello!".
What. Was. The. Fucking. Point?!

DanR

UnclePsychosis said:

Announcing "uk tours" that don't feature any dates north of Nottingham. 

UK tours that are just London.

Nunogilberto

Bands who release greatest hits/singles comes which omit (arguably) big songs - looking at REM who didn't put Shiny Happy People on theirs...

This new (but already getting tired) phenomenon of touring an old album and playing it from back to front. Why not just introduce a few of those old, seldom played songs into a tour setlist for a new album?

duotone

A best of album when the band have only made 2or3 albums so far in their career

prowla

proggy said:

Having more that one farewell gig.

Thunder have been having them for years.

Danny Bowes dancing on stage.



(I was at that gig - great band, crap dancing!)

prowla

Elderly singers swearing during nice songs.



(same gig as Thunder.)

prowla

Bands recruiting a singer from a tribute band.



(Same gig as Thunder & Whitesnake.)

EricTheWeary

Ill advised appearances in movies or TV ( Guns and Roses in The Deadpool for starters, Keith Richards unable to act his way out of a paper bag in Pirates of the Caribbean XXIV). 

Guitar_Slinger

Ravenous said:

Save their best numbers for an "encore" at the end of the gig. It's so fake. We know they'll do those songs last, They know that we know, and it's just so pretentious.  Always has been...

Know what happens if they don't? There was this one time, at Roundhouse, I worked at a Plain White Tees gig. Most of the audience were young girls with at least one parent. some with a younger sister too. The band played their only hit about 9:40 and after that, half the crowd left as if it was then end of the gig - it was a school night after all! The venue wasn't full to start with, so they played another 4 or 5 songs to hardly anybody.

Ravenous said:

RocknRollDave said:

Where's the Smiths live DVD?!

Morrissey was concerned about the ethics of people eating takeaways in their living rooms while watching him perform.

(We could probably do a separate thread about cr*p things Morrissey has done while performing Please let's not go there...)

I worked at one of his gigs too - 9pm start with no support acts. The second night (which I didn't work), he sang three songs and gave up during the fourth.  The staff said it was fucking chaos - angry vegetarians everywhere!  

english_bob

RocknRollDave said:

Carrying on as if nothing changed when a key member dies. 

New Order did the right thing. 

Do you mean Joy Division did the right thing?

Sporky said:

Telling stories on stage. Shut up and play.

Can be great, can be awful. I've never been *in* a band with anyone who could do it, but I saw Newton Faulkner once, who did it brilliantly. 

RocknRollDave

english_bob said:

RocknRollDave said:

Carrying on as if nothing changed when a key member dies. 

New Order did the right thing. 

Do you mean Joy Division did the right thing?

Sporky said:

Telling stories on stage. Shut up and play.

Can be great, can be awful. I've never been *in* a band with anyone who could do it, but I saw Newton Faulkner once, who did it brilliantly. 

@english_bob ; Yeah, I guess I do!

Re the telling stories thing, depends entirely on the gig. Bono waffling on in a stadium, regardless of whatever it is he is saying, just kills the atmosphere. Big gigs need big gestures, not intimate chats.
Saw Andy Cairns of the band Therapy? do a solo acoustic show a couple of years back, in a small venue in Birmingham, telling stories between songs and interacting with the fans. Perfect setting for an intimate gig, and he made it feel like hanging out with your mate. Only works, though, if the story teller has a natural way with a story.

EricTheWeary

Our singer has a way of killing the atmosphere with his stories. If it's a song with a guitar intro I usually just start it whereas the others tend to defer to him.

On the other hand I saw Show of Hands last year and every song had a brilliant story before it. All seated audience listening to mournful folk tunes it needed that balance. 

Hoof

EricTheWeary said:

Our singer has a way of killing the atmosphere with his stories. If it's a song with a guitar intro I usually just start it whereas the others tend to defer to him.

On the other hand I saw Show of Hands last year and every song had a brilliant story before it. All seated audience listening to mournful folk tunes it needed that balance. 

Talking to the audience should be used as a way to fill gaps. You don't create gaps to tell a story. It's a musical performance, not a spoken word gig. 

EricTheWeary

Hoof said:

EricTheWeary said:

Our singer has a way of killing the atmosphere with his stories. If it's a song with a guitar intro I usually just start it whereas the others tend to defer to him.

On the other hand I saw Show of Hands last year and every song had a brilliant story before it. All seated audience listening to mournful folk tunes it needed that balance. 

Talking to the audience should be used as a way to fill gaps. You don't create gaps to tell a story. It's a musical performance, not a spoken word gig. 

I think it just depends. If it's a performance in which the spoken bit is part of the whole that seems valid to me. Show of Hands, for example, did a couple of traditional folk  ballads and some explanation helped my enjoyment of them. That's different than a crap joke told to fill in time because the guitarist has gone out of tune. 

not_the_dj

For some artists the story telling part can be wonderful, Springsteen has a long history of spoken word introductions to key songs (check out the one before War on the Live '75-'85 set).

On the recent Iron Maiden tour Bruce did a nice little speech, basically about Maiden fans having no boundaries between religion, colour etc...leading into the song Blood Brothers. Great live moment.

On the other side of the coin John Mayer's little speech on the "Where the Light" is live set is pretty embarrassing.