Everyone always asks the reverse question: best live act that can't deliver on record. but what about great album artists that suck in person?

Doves probably don't have enough good albums to qualify for the "best artist" bit.

I don't listen to them, but Steely Dan?

I hear Oasis could very well qualify, but I've never personally seen them.

I was pretty unimpressed with Pavement the one time I saw them, although I wouldn't call them BAD.

Bob Dylan on a bad night.

I saw Steely Dan last year and they were amazing.

i would not agree with either of these. i'm a doves fan. i just saw them live last weekend. they weren't the best thing ever, but they certainly didn't disappoint either. as for oasis, i don't even really like them, but i thought they were pretty good live the one time i saw them.

in my experience, i'd have to say sigur ros. they've been pretty bad both times i've seen them. but those are, like, the only two disappointing sigur ros shows ever, apparently.

weeezer. although the tmobile thing a few weeks ago looked good.

Steely Dan kill live.

I've seen Lee Scratch Perry three times now. Each performance was arguably more of a trainwreck than the last.

i could probably cosign this. first time i saw them was great. but maybe i just remember it that way because it was only songs from the first two albums and a bunch of b-sides. totally unfuckwithable set list. second time was pretty bad. i remember thinking they'd lost it.

Weezer was pretty great when I saw them back in 2002.

Steely Dan definitely brings it live, which is a huge surprise since they're such a studio band.

The Dwarves

Will agree to this. One of the worst things I've ever seen was Bob Dylan @ NIU 4 years ago. I went from buying every Dylan thing I could find to just not giving a shit. Ooof.

Easy.

Dylan. Seen him 6 times, it's like the band decides what melodies they'll play each night and he mumbles along. You might recognize 1 song out of 4.

Maybe recently since they're too old to hit people in the head with mics anymore and have written a few shitty songs this decade.

I wasn't there but I'm pretty sure that a '90s gig of theirs would have been exhilarating.

XTC, I'd imagine.

Bob Dylan.

Nick Drake.

I'll co-sign Dylan...when he's off, it's awful.

Also saw two Grateful Dead shows years ago where they phoned it in...of course, I was the only sober person there, so that may have had something to do with it.

Man, I'm so sorry. The one time I saw them was absolutely mind-blowing... one of the best shows I've ever seen.

I saw Weezer once, but like you said it was way back in the day when Pinkerton had just come out. They hadn't written a bad song yet (at least i don't think they'd written Hash Pipe yet... zing) and they fucking rocked. But I can imagine that a Weezer show in this day and age would be pretty hit-or-miss, to say the least.

I haven't seen XTC (as I wasn't born when they last performed) but judging from the live discs on the Transistor Blast Boxset they were very good even if it was shortlived. Very energetic and sounds brilliant. But this was the early era XTC stuff like White Music so who knows whether they would have been able to deliver the goods which material like Apple Venus and Nonsuch live. It's a real shame that we're likely to never find out due to Partirdge's own personal problems.

The fabulous consolation is obviously the immense back catoluge of studio work - something I'd take anyday over live performances.

It's the opposite. Boring, boring studio band, their best record was Familiar To Millions the live album.

4 night sold out run at 70,000 Heaton Park this weekend, so that doesn't exactly suggest they're bad. Mind you, I got tickets yesterday for substantially less than 1/2 of face value, so who knows...

I saw New Order twice back in the day. First time: brilliant. Second time: Gawd awful. Completely phoned in.

Ah, fair enough. The only live performance I've seen of theirs was fantastic in all fairness, but I just presumed they were generally quite bad at it due to Partridge's desire for them to be viewed as a studio outfit.

It wasn't desire so much as crippling stage fright.

Nah, severe stage fright. But to be honest, I came to this thread to make the exact same post you did, as they quite literally can't deliver live.

edit/ xpost

Surprised no one has said this.

Saw the Flaming Lips this past New Years. While their show is cool, it literally has not changed since I had seen them last at Summercamp the year before. I'm saying like the exact same setlist in the same order. All the cool things they did the first time I saw them (turning Yoshimi into a piano ballad) became infinitely more gimmicky seeing them do the exact same thing again.

Had friends see them in DC more recently... same damn show. For a band that has such a good catalog it is really disappointing to see them try so little at making a nice live performance.

EDIT: Also, the same show is played on their live DVD too. I'm not asking for a Dead type of variance but honestly it makes no sense paying $40+ to see the exact same show... if anything it isn't even marketable.

Was one of a few years back at Park West? The opener was a fat dude who sang Icelandic folk songs a capella? Yeah. I was at that disaster, too...after a few drinks I wanted so badly to go all Soy Bomb on them but people were too busy "Sssshhh!"-ing each other. On a related note that Godspeed You Black Emperor outfit was utter garbage, too, when I saw them at Metro.

Animal Collective. (though they were great when i saw them)
Cat Power.
Dylan.

I'm really hoping the Lips change their show after the new album.....I mean, they have to, right?
That being said, it was a pretty damn good show the first time I saw it.

What they'll probably do is sneak a couple songs into the setlist but I am not too confident that they'll change much. That's what they did with AWWTM.

Don't get me wrong, it is a damn good show the first time around, but to see it again expecting at least SOMETHING to be different and nothing had changed was really lame and made me lose a lot of respect for them. They are definitely a studio band for me now.

Why do you say Animal Collective? Especially when you liked their show?

To be honest, seeing them live actually made me really like the band. I mean they took a couple of their old tunes and changed them to fit the Merriweather sound. I could not have more respect for a band that has complete control and awareness of their own sound like that.

For the fact that now approaching the 20th year of the Never Ending Tour and being 68 years old Dylan shuffling around behind a keyboard isn't particularly satisfying, I don't think there's too much debate that he has delivered live in the past and so really shouldn't be considered for this thread.

I had the same impression. Kind of just went on longer then they needed to.

JAMC was an unfortunate show too. Just wish I just saw them in their heyday.

House of Love disappointed compared to Catherine Wheel who opened for them.

Yeah New Order just blows live. Kept trying show after show thinking my impression would change like it was just an off night but everytime I was just disappointed again.

Ooooh, I wish I'd seen the JMC. I'm jealous. Rotten show or not to have caught them at all is enviable - they're one of those bands.

I think I saw Catherine Wheel open for the Charlatans one summer - they're the 'her skin was black metaaaliii-iiiic' guys, right? I remember them being pretty good, too.

no, i wasn't there. i've seen them at the TLA in philly and civic opera house in chicago. the end of the philly show was pretty good, but too little too late. chicago show was just an aural mess. everyone i knew there said similarly.

godspeed you black emperor was absolutely amazing the first time i saw them. the next time? eh, it was definitely missing something. i was also seething at efrim for a lecture he gave between the set and encore. i've been sour on that band ever since then.

I saw godspeed like 4x and not one of the gigs disappointed.. felt the same about dirty three but then I suppose it's all about what you were looking for I guess.

and that was exactly why I jumped on it but it just sucked something fierce. It was right at the end and I think Jim just looked at his brother and thought.. I think I need to get away from you for a while. 15 years earlier would've been a better outcome I'm sure.

I wanted to throw coins at that Efrim pinko myself - "You Ah-meri-kahns 'sink your zo coo-ell wiss your beeg cahz and your zoap-ee zmelly hair"

oh, i expected that. this was a show at carnegie mellon university. his little speech was basically like, "everyone here is going to go on to build bombs that scorch the middle east. you should be ashamed of yourselves for going to an engineering school. if you really want to do something with your life, you should travel the world and see how other people live. so, fuck you. we're in a band. we're on a higher moral plane than everyone else in this room."

Yeah that's too bad...when I saw them I wasn't even familiar w/ their music but it was an intensely satisfying show.

Thread title is "can't deliver live" not "never delivered live." So Dylan is a valid choice given he's not likely to turn things around at this point.

Modest Mouse

I don't think it's really fair to be discussing pensioners in this thread.

John Lennon, Hendrix and Cobain can't deliver live because they are dead.

dylan live is not for the casual fan, that's for sure. saw him once and was underwhelmed, but certainly couldn't say he was bad. his repertoire and facility (and that of his excellent band) is extraordinary. his voice and stage presence leave much to be desired these days certainly

Ouch. You should've chucked a few quarters at him. Or heckled him. Or grabbed him by his Quebecois-fro' and put him in a headlock.

I was going to say this, but I was *extremely* sick when I saw them and chalked it up to me not wanting to be there at the moment.
Isaac was aloof, didn't engage the audience at all.

Saw Dylan at the world Music Theater in'99 and it was one of the best shows I ever saw. The end of Paul Simon's set overlapped with the beginning of Dylan's and they did some scalding versions of That'll Be the Day and the Wanderer together.

oh, i heckled. i think one of my friends did, too. that was 2 in an audience of, like, 600. everyone else was kinda like, "well, they're on a stage. they must be right."

well, he was still facing the crowd at that point at least

modest mouse can be great from time to time. they're hit and miss. i've mostly seen them be great actually, but then again first saw them in 04 too, which was when they started to get their shit together more consistently on the live end.

would have loved to have seen them in the late 90s though.

I've been underwhelmed three times by Dan Deacon. Maybe his new live band is better.

their live shows, like their albums, used to rule

i realize how cliche that sounds... but it's true


edit: i should add that their older shows occassionally suffered when isaac was too drunk.... but when they were clicking, they were a fucking force