First Gig/Best Gig/Worst Gig

[Hannibal Scorch]

Inspired by and with thanks to @Gus Mears excellent topic of First album/single, I thought this would be a a good idea for a topic.

My first gig was REM Monster World Tour at the Milton Keynes bowl in 1995. They played 2 nights, both with some great support acts (Magnapop, Belly and Blur who were my favourite at that time) played the Saturday, but we could only get tickets to the Sunday.

A Pre The It Girl Sleeper, Radiohead who were not yet too artsy (Creep was amazing live) and a band who seemed to be played on MTV Europe constantly at that time. 

All led up to the main event. REM were great. Really great. The played all their hits as long as a lot of their newest release Monster. I later found out Radio 1 broadcast REM live that night and I do have a CD bootleg copy of the gig, and a promo flyer of the poster. Amazing first gig really.

Whilst N*E*R*D at Hammersmith Apollo in 2004 is one of my favourite gigs, and important as it’s where I met future Mrs Scortch, I’d think we’d both agree that seeing Prince at the o2 14th August 2007 during the 3121 residency was the best. An incredible live act who i wish I’d been able to see more then once.

Worst gig was Kanye West’s Glow in the Dark Tour at the o2 November 11th 2008. Awful storyline about him being stranded on a planet thanks to crashing his spaceship, didn’t seem to want to be there, and he restarted his encore about 5 times because his vocoder wasn’t working. Was getting booed at the end. Just a miserable experience.

What are yours?

Edited February 1, 2023 by Hannibal Scorch

[Egg Shen]

that's one hell of a first show 😲

...great idea for a thread

[Hannibal Scorch]

2 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

that's one hell of a first show 😲

...great idea for a thread

I appreciate I was very lucky. My wife's first gig was New Kids On The Block in 1990/1 ish.

[Nick James]

Can't recall what my first gig was, but my best gig was The Stone Roses at the Etihad in around 2016. Public Enemy was the support and they were fantastic, much much better than I had any expectations of and then the atmosphere when the Stone Roses took to the stage and the opening of I Wanna Be Adored was magic. Just a really good night. 

My worst gig, funnily enough was The Stone Roses at Hampden Park for their last ever gig. The arena was half empty, the beer was warm and they sounded like shit (It's Ian Brown, what's to expect?). You could tell they probably werent on speaking terms because the energy levels were very low as they plodded along through their set. Primal Scream were the support and they were very good, the best part of the show. 

Infant, the best part of the show was standing talking to Greg Hemphill (Victor from Still Game) about wrestling, NXT and his friendship with William Regal. Super nice guy and then I bumped into him in Glasgow airport the next day and he shouted me over and we discussed the show the night before. 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Nick James

[Tommy!]

I've not done many, I've shit taste as you all know and hate crowds so it wasn't until recently I started doing more. 

First was, as I remember, Electric 6. It was the Switzerland album tour and they were good. They were supported by a local group who were quite good and also the ping pong bitches who were awful and generally heckled by the crowd.

Best is tough, objectively my second: AC/DC at Wembley the day Jackson died. Everyone felt so up for it, the non greatest hits were songs off a good album and they weren't too old for it to feel a bit sad. Not the one I had most fun at mind. 

Not being to many I've never had a bad experience to be honest, iron maiden were probably most disappointing (although it was a festival so if it's even in discussion I'm not sure) but if the first time you see them is nearly 40 years past their peak and you've not listened to albums released in the last 25 years I'll forgive the vocals sounding underwhelming. They were competing with Judas Priest and Saxon who didn't feel like they'd missed a beat and had just quantum leaped in from the mid 80s.

[Bus Surfer]

First proper gig I went to was The Stereophonics with Feeder supporting in Newport Centre, December 1998.

I remember having a thick wooly Kickers jumper on which was an absolute rookie error. I recall being in the crowd for Feeder and being hot, sweaty and dehydrated as hell at the end of their set. I went to the vending machine and bought 3 cans of coke which I proceeded to down rapidly. I then spent the entirety of the Stereophonics set with gut ache and cramps with several trips to the lavies involved. 

Gut ache aside, the riots at Leeds Festival 2002 were probably the worst thing. 

[Merzbow]

My first proper big gig that wasn't a local thing was also one of my favourites ever, the Insane Clown Posse with a bunch of mates including UKFF user MMoKonji. They couldn't do the whole Faygo schtick so instead the crowd was covered in Tesco Value Cola which probably cost the band 2 quid for the entire lot of bottles. I wish I still had my red hatchetman shirt from the show but I do still have the copy of Big Money Hustlas that we all must have watched multiple times the week after.

 

Best gig? Do many to choose from but I'd go with the first time seeing my bloody valentine after their reunion, nothing had been so fucking loud as that before and they put all the metal acts I'd seen to shame. I think it was the first time I ever needed to wear ear plugs and taking them out for a second during the "holocaust" section of YMMR was pure pain. It's a shame the sound was so fucked when I saw them again a few years later, Kevin was visibly angry and didn't want to be there.

Worst gig was Uncle Acid and The Deadbeats, just the most boring set ever and the sound was painfully quiet. Zero stage presence from a band that relies so heavily on a spooky gimmick.

[WyattSheepMask]

First that I can remember seeing was Fun lovin’ Criminals on what would’ve been the tour in support of ‘100% Columbian’. Support was by a band called TNT who just banged on about Cheech & Chong between every song they did.

Best is open to interpretation. In terms of the Best Show, Rammstein and Alice Cooper are right up there in terms of putting on a production, Tool were phenomenal seeing them a few years back and Ghost are on fire right now, but in terms of musically, Opeth have been absolutely flawless every time that I’ve seen them.

As for worst, we saw a bunch of shockers at The Adelphi in Hull growing up. There was someone whose name escapes me right now, My Adema springs to mind but I could have that wrong. They’d had a video on Kerrang or Scuzz which was our only basis for going to watch them. They opened with whatever that single was, then played 2 songs and fucked off. Can’t have played more than 15 minutes total and I was down a tenner, shocker of a night.

Actually come to think of it, Queens of the Stoneage. I’ve only ever seen them at Festivals, but every time they have been horrifically boring. First time was at Leeds 2001 and then I think the second was time about 6 years later, although I forget what the festival was. I gave them a second chance figuring that everyone (except for Opeth) has an off day. Nope, fucking boring again. Third & final chance came at Download in 2013, by which time most of the band had moved on and it was just Josh Homme left. Again, offensively boring and I’ve never seen or listened to them since 

Edited February 1, 2023 by WyattSheepMask

[HarmonicGenerator]

First - Nickelback in Newcastle, 2002. It was alright - I remember a lot of pyro.

Best - Springsteen. Maybe Hyde Park. Or Sunderland. Glasgow was good. But also, Paris. Hell, pick a Springsteen, they're all the best. If not him, then there was an amazing gig weekend in (I think) 2010 where I saw Roger Waters doing The Wall in Manchester on the Friday, followed by Rush on their Time Machine tour in Newcastle on the Saturday. Oh - the first time I saw Aerosmith was pretty special too.

Worst - I don't know that I've had a really terrible gig experience, but Santana in 2011ish was really disappointing. The sound mix was way off and you couldn't hear his guitar. Which, considering it's Santana, was kind of the reason to go. So that one wasn't particularly good. 

Edited February 1, 2023 by HarmonicGenerator

[Bus Surfer]

15 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

My first proper big gig that wasn't a local thing was also one of my favourites ever, the Insane Clown Posse with a bunch of mates including UKFF user MMoKonji. They couldn't do the whole Faygo schtick so instead the crowd was covered in Tesco Value Cola which probably cost the band 2 quid for the entire lot of bottles. I wish I still had my red hatchetman shirt from the show but I do still have the copy of Big Money Hustlas that we all must have watched multiple times the week after.

Myself and @Egg Shen went to the London leg of this. Think it was moved to the Kentish Town forum in the end.

After being an ICP fan for several years, finally getting the chance to see them live and witness the carnage was amazing fun. Probably my favourite gig ever. I still have my ticket stub somewhere. I had 20 fags nicked out of my back pocket and I think we broke down on the motorway on the way home too. 

Still the best though. 

They didn't return to the UK for nearly 15 years after that. Ended up going to the Bristol gig in 2017. 

Again it was fantastic but at the end where the fans get on stage, some prick launched a full 2 litre bottle into the crowd which clocked me square in the face. Smashed my glasses and busted my dome open. 

Zero regrets. 

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Silky Kisser

[FLips]

REM are my favourite band so incredibly jealous of that, Scorch.

The first proper gig I went to was Middlesbrough Music Live in 2007 I believe. It was headlined by Tony Christie during his Peter Kay phase but it was free and it was an excuse for a bunch of 17 year olds to get pissed. A couple of smackheads offered us a drink from a clear 2L bottle and we had no idea what it was but still had a swig. I dread to think.

We went again to the 2008 one. We mainly went cos my girlfriend at the time wanted to see Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip who were decent but more her thing than mine. It was headined by Ash or You Me At Six or something. We got bored and went home. There was a band called Late of The Pier who were ok but certainly a generic sound of that time period.

The best gig I’ve been to was Beck and Sparks in Bournemouth a few years ago. Me and my wife split the long journey from Teesside up by stopping off in Buxton and Gloucester for a night each on the way and then Chester on the way back.
The gig was fantastic, with Edgar Wright there to film bits for his Sparks Brothers documentary. It was the week Prince died so Beck did a cover of Raspberry Beret which was really well done.

Sparks were actually better than Beck and sounded brilliant live. Both were ace though and did pretty much every song we wanted them to. 

[BomberPat]

Weirdly, my first "proper" gig was Bob Geldof, supported by Mike Peters from The Alarm. It was fine in a very middle class naff way.  My family had not long moved to Jersey, and there weren't many good gigs there, so I tended to just go to whatever was on for a while, which is how I ended up watching Geldof with my parents, and Jools Holland with them a month or two later.

I'd seen other stuff before that - local bands, open mics, and the like, that I don't really count; my brother was in bands when he was a teenager, and the bassist in one of them went on to play in a U2 tribute band, so I saw them twice. The drummer ended up playing for Gorerotted, which was a very different career trajectory.

The first proper gig I went to of my own volition was Nine Inch Nails at Brixton Academy in 2005, supported by Saul Williams, which was really good. Saw them again last year, and they were almost my favourite gig of the year, except...

Sparks. Probably the best gig I've ever been to, just an absolutely brilliant, flawless, and joyous show from start to finish. Absolutely phenomenal, and can't wait for the Royal Albert Hall show this year.

Worst is trickier. I saw a fair bit of landfill indie bollocks in the mid-00s, but it was largely so forgettable that it would be unfair to call it the worst. Maybe The XX, who just bored to me tears, or The Horrors, who I saw as either support acts or on festival bills a few times and were never anything but shit. 

If it's bad in terms of disappointing, then it's either Primal Scream at ATP - so many people tell me that they're usually great live that I can only assume I caught them on a bad night - John Cale at Field Day, who was just lifeless and seemed like he would rather be anywhere else, or Van Morrison at Folklore Festival in Jersey, who was a miserable prick who definitely would rather have been anywhere else.

Edited February 1, 2023 by BomberPat

[Jazzy G]

That REM gig sounds like a heck of a first one for you. 

My first gig "on my own" as it were, was going to see Garbage at Manchester Apollo in 1998 with a guy I worked with, his girlfriend who was a dead ringer for Alanis Morissette, and two of her friends that it turned out I went to school with. We all stood at the back, it was the Versión 2.0 tour. They were pretty good. 

The best gig is Daft Punk at Wireless Festival in 2007. My friend got me a ticket for Christmas. We went with his dad, who drove us there. We watched Simian Mobile Disco, LCD Soundsystem were great as well, then when they finished we waited for an hour while they set the pyramid up. I bought Crescendolls figures instead of buying food that day. It was just starting to rain a little, but it was so refreshing. When I remember it its just me in this big empty field while they perform. It was my favourite band live, and it blew my mind. Chemical Brothers in 2019 was a great gig as well, especially with 2ManyDJs supporting. Justice in 2013, the first time I saw Mew with my friend and his dad, and they blew his mind. Björk at Glastonbury 2007. I've been so lucky. 

The worst gig I went to was The Donnas at Manchester Academy 2 on March 7th 2005. I remember the date because it was the day after I moved to Manchester. My housemate Adam, and his friend were going to see The Fall (who I ended up seeing about 3-4 times, every time with some guys I was in college with playing bass and drums), but I didn't really want to, a mistake in hindsight. I bought a ticket from the box office above the EasyInternet cafe on St Ann's Square, and was quite excited for them. Mando Diao supported, and were interesting. God Knows isn't too bad of a song. The Donnas came on, and played through all their songs at about 80% of their usual tempo, and whenever Brett Anderson (the girl one) had to play piano/organ she would disappear from view. It was almost as though somebody else had played on their albums and they were struggling to play it themselves, or that they'd deliberately slowed down because they fell into that trap of playing everything faster because of the excitement of playing live. They finished with the worst version of Take It Off I ever heard and almosg everybody buggered off before they could do an encore. 

[Bellenda Carlisle]

First gig I saw was  Bruce Willis! It was a pretty noteworthy first gig and very cool for my 14 year old self to see the real Bruce Willis singing blues before me. My big brother snuck us in for free for bonus cool points.

I took this poster and it was on my wall until I left home.

[deathrey]

My first gig was an 18th birthday gift from my cousin and was to watch Limp Bizkit at the MEN in Manchester. We got very drunk and I dont remember much of it but a great time was had.

My favourite gig is a tie, same band but 2 different gigs. Faith No More are my favourite band and I got to see them at their reunion gig in 2009 at Brixton which was honestly a dream come true for me. I also very briefly met @Chest Rockwellthere. I also saw them in Edinburgh a couple of years later and it was brilliant again. I've seen them 9 times in total but those two stand out as favourites.

 

The worst is actually quite hard. I saw GZA in Leeds a couple of years ago, that was a bit disappointing but not bad. This one might be a little unfair as I wasn't actually a fan but my mum made me accompany my young teenage sister and a couple of her friends to see Nightwish in Manchester many, many years ago, I didnt particularly enjoy that.

Edited February 1, 2023 by deathrey