I heard they suck live...Yeah that's why theyre the openers.

Some white reggae band opened for Dropkick Murphys in Boston on St. Patrick's Day a few years ago. They got booed off stage.

 

Focus The worst opening act I've seen was a band called Rhetoric. We went and saw Eminem right after The Slim Shady LP came out, so there was only about 150 people there, and these guys opened up for him. You could tell they just went and found whatever white rappers there were and let them on stage because they were awful. They had a shirt on sale there that we were tempted to buy just because we knew that was once of the only shows they'd play.

Alt-Focus I guess seeing Eminem would count here. There really couldn't have been more than a 150 people there, and within the next year he was selling out coliseums. Throughout Ozzfest we saw some big bands on the second stage that ended up getting pretty big. I still remember when Slipknot played there was barely anybody by the stage when they came out. By the end of their set there wasn't an open spot to see them from. Mudvayne was another bad that for a year or two used to open up for everybody. I think in one year alone I saw them about 10 times. They would always come out into the crowd after their set and hand out cassette singles of their music, since their debut CD wasn't out yet.

 

I went to a Guster concert, and the opening act was The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players

They were a family that went around to garage sales purchasing old slides, and making songs about what was in there, and then projecting it as they play. It was fucking absurd, and god awful. The youngest girl in the family must have been 8, and there she is in a room full of pot smoke, playing the fucking keyboard.

 

My Chemical Romance, when they opened for Green Day.

Snoop Dogg, when he opened for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

 

Rubber Room opened for Run DMC, and it was painful to watch, even blitzed out of my mind.

"I say 'Rubber' you say 'Room'" was on loop for 20 minutes minimum.

Alt Focus- I have hung out with multiple times, and share several mutual friends, with Zac Brown.

Been to his pimp ass house and his old restaurant.

 

Alt Focus: I used to see a little band called the Dave Matthews Band every week at Trax in Charlottesville, VA for $5.00. I still like them even though I recognize the general douchiness of most of their fans now. And it sucks to see them at a huge venue after being so close. Actually in general, I really don't like seeing shows in a huge venue.

 

Alt Focus: I saw Maroon 5 and Jason Mraz is 2002ish at the Stone Pony. Very cool show.

Focus: Mars Volta opened for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Some of their music is pretty cool, but god were they awful live. Completely out of tune and the lights were completely out of sync with their music.

 

I used to work for a division of a company based in Greensboro, North Carolina in the late '80s early '90s (yeah, I'm old) and I would travel there on a monthly basis. I used to stay at a Holiday Inn Convention Center that had a night club and one night as I was sitting at the hotel bar I saw a sign advertising the Dave Matthews Band playing in the night club that evening. I asked the bartender about them and she said - "oh they are some new band - I guess they are okay". I decided to see them that night - for free. Little did I know that a couple of years later that's all I would hear my then teenage daughters play!

 

Saw Incubus right after they released S.C.I.E.N.C.E. The opening act on our tickets said S.O.A.D, we couldn't figure out who they were. Turns out they were System of a Down.

 

Just thought I'd mention, I've heard many people have the same reaction to TMV on that tour and since I didn't see them I can't discount that. With that said, I saw them in 2008 as the headliner in Detroit and they were absolutely spectacular, payed for 2.5 hours virtually non stop. I've heard from many people that they simply didn't have adequate equipment to play properly during the RHCP tour.

Focus
I've seen some pretty bad openers, but the worst was Be Your Own Pet, opening for the Arctic Monkeys in 2007. Their music isn't great to begin with, the sound setup was terrible and it culminated when the guitarist broke a string. While he was trying to tune his guitar the bassist let loose with this joke.

What do you call a gay guy in a wheel chair?
Roll Aids

Cue groans from the audience and a chorus of boos.

Alt Focus

I saw Against Me! just before they started to show up on MTV and the like (the beginning of the New Wave tour), the show featured them and 3 opening acts for $16.

 

Focus: The worst opening act EVER was a band called Speech which opened for 54-40 and Hootie and the Blowfish in 1997. Granted I was 12, and was naive to the African culture at the time - But watching a bunch of 'rappers' stumble over their lyrics while making bad jokes about Canada while wearing cultural African garb (eg. man-skirts) soured me on Speech forever more.


Alt. Focus: In 1999 I saw Nickelback open for Creed and thought they were wicked. Creed weren't exactly the Beaverton Goat Fuckers, but they were pretty damn close. It was just before they released The State, and their only 'real' release prior was their album Curb which saw minimal radio play outside of Vancouver. They were raw, edgy and sounded awesome live. A far cry from the pyro and theatrics that go on a current Nickelback show.

 

Mars Volta for sure. They opened for System of a Down a few years back and it was just terrible. Wasn't much of a System fan myself either, it was a friends birthday and a bunch of us just went to have a good time since he was a big fan. The show they put on converted me enough to re-check out their albums.


Alt Focus: Ian Moore opening for Big Sugar. Some of the shit he pulled off in a live set was astounding. He had a series of stomp boxes and amps. He'd play a riff and step on a switch and that riff would repeat over and over again while he played something new along with it. Then he'd hit something else and it'd play again in reverse while he messed around some more. Never seen anything like it. Bought one of his albums that night from the stand they had set up in between shows. Worst 10 bucks I ever spent. Album was terrible.

 

Focus: YACHT

I saw this band at Fun Fun Fun Fest (austin) because my friend said she had liked one of their songs. After only perhaps 2-3 songs we gave up trying to appreciate their music and just starting laughing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC9GNbsh5X8

Awkward, confusing and hilarious. Their band is composed of an effeminate, unfunny guy and a girl with one of the harshest jaw lines I've ever seen. Their shitty music is only worsened by the fact neither of them play any instruments, sing poorly and do weird rain dance like moves the entire song. You'd think with only a guy and girl on stage there'd be an element of sexiness, but even if the girl whipped out a 13 inch strap on and started plowing the guy's ass on stage you'd still think they were faking it.

Shitty shitty band.

 

I have two, actually.

I saw 30 Seconds to Mars open for Incubus (and blow them out of the water) in Columbus, OH. This was sometime in 2002.

I also saw the Killers open for someone, can't remember who, at some point in 2004. The Killers sucked, and nobody knew who they were. Oddly enough, everyone knows who they are now and they still suck.

 

Alt Focus - I remember when Rebelution first started out playing only in Isla Vista. They played wherever they could - birthday parties, house parties, club events and etc... They were a pretty big deal locally, but not too many people outside of Santa Barbara knew about them.

Eventually they got bigger, started touring, and produced a top reggae album.

 

The best concert I've ever seen was RHCP on the By The Way tour in '02. Papa Roach and another band I can't remember supported and were absolutely phenomenal, as were RHCP. I was excited when they came back a couple of years ago for Stadium Arcadium, and while the Chilis had nothing on their previous outing they were still pretty good.

However, their support act was fucking terrible. Har Mar fucking Superstar - supposedly he was pretty popular in the states at the time? He's a 30ish fat balding pasty white dude whose schtick is to strip down to his jocks and stand on his head while singing/rapping/whatever. He was awful, his music was terrible and I don't know how he stayed on stage for his whole set with all the bottles and abuse being hurled at him. He even threw his sweaty shirt into the crowd which was promptly thrown back.

Visual - not safe for eyes:

NSFW

 

We have a music festival called Golden Plains, it's like a smaller version of another one, Meredith music festival, same place, but half the crowd and with fewer famous headliners in favour of little-known bands. It sells out every year and you have to enter a ballot to get tickets. Friends go every year, so I put my hand up last year when tickets came up, and we got a group of about a dozen of us, a mini-bus and a trailer. A few of us, new to the festival, sat down to hear the first act: Deaf Wish. Oh how appropriate. It looked like a 50-something bloke and his 3 teenage boys. They couldn't decide who was lead singer, probably because they were all equally horrendous. I don't mind metal, but it has to actually have a coherent melodic line and beat. Here's a little sample from the gig:



Friends and I looked at each other and all we could think was 'Oh my god, is the entire weekend going to be like this?' Thankfully they were outstanding in their shittyness, and the rest of the weekend was great. Some of the others had their strange moments, but we could always look at each other and say 'Well, they're bad, but they're no Deaf Wish.'

 

Focus:

I saw Limp Bizkit at Ozzfest with some great acts like Sabbath, Tool (too awesome to believe) and Megadeth. They emerged from a gigantic toilet, which pretty much sums up their skills as a live band (...or studio band. Or songwriters. Or celebrities. Or...or....FUCK THIS BAND, and fuck you if you helped make them famous). I hated them then (which was the first time I ever heard them), I hated them when they were the (ha ha) most popular band in America and I hate them now.

Although I forget the name, I saw some terrible female Japanese electro-band open for Boys Against Girls on their Freakonica tour back in 1998. They played 3 songs, because those songs were over 10 minutes long each. It was worse than being forced to listen to "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon on loop. Yes, THAT FUCKING BAD.

Alt-Focus
Nickelback used to be good. Seriously. Before "How You Remind Me" turned them in to cookie0cutting Top 40 tablescraps, they had an album called The State that was a great album and the used to play at the bar Call The Office here in town at least 2 times a year with about 20 people watching. They were funny guys and smoked shitloads of pot, which I took to. One night Chad Kroeger got REALLY fucked up and tried to steal a city bus that was parked outside, but he was too wasted to put it into gear correctly.

A hidden gem of a band (especially in the form of their guitar player) I saw was a rockabilly band called The Sadies, opening for Big Sugar. Gordie from Big Sugar who's a living legend ax player himself said that their guitar player Dallas Good was the best in the entire world, and he put on an unforgettable show to say the least. Watch him cut loose in grand fashion here:

 

I'm usually either running late or don't give a flying hoot about the openers, so I haven't seen too many. One that springs to mind was the band Ludo. They were opening for O.A.R. at SUNY Oswego in 2007. Somewhere in between the line about 'pterodactlys swarming' and the hilariously awful lyric 'fingerbang my heart,' they cemented their spot as the worst opener I'd ever seen. I was too busy laughing during the rest of their set to pay attention to their performance.

On another note, I've since realized that O.A.R. pretty much sucks and I will not be caught dead at one of their shows anymore. I give them props for making a living off of the same crowds that you'll find at a DMB show, but it's just not for me anymore.