Big Bad Concert Rankings: 213-201

Listening to good music when writing about bad music is a weird sensation. Currently I’m listening to a mixture of the artists I ranked very highly, and some that pop into the various YouTube, Spotify and Pandora feeds.

And all of them are very good in my mind, which was making this edition of bad concerts even harder to jot down. But I think I’ll make it through.

Organizing the concert rankings was a task and a half. Over 200 shows, with over 250 artists (not all mentioned) makes me really appreciate all of the time and energy it takes to attend or work these shows.

That said, some are real stinkers.

Select openers in [brackets].

213 - Fastball

Sometimes, after a long day or career, there’s only so much one man could take. Unfortunately for the crowd, that man was also in the band. And what he couldn’t take were the other members of the band. He didn’t leave the stage, but you could tell he wanted to. Fastball made one decent song 20 years ago and everyone in the building knew it.

212 - John Mellencamp [Lucinda Williams]

Twenty-one of these shows will be from my days working Summerfest when I was a wee boy of 18 and 19 years old. To this day, I can’t name any other artist who started and stopped EVERY SONG of their set. And that was just the opener, Lucinda Williams. She said she wasn’t feeling her setlist and that feeling bled into Mellencamp’s performance which was lackluster, at best. Also, this article is some revisionist bullshit that gets William’s set right but also says it was a nearly sold-out crowd. I worked in the Lawn and Bleacher sections (cheap seats) and I could have done snow angles in each section without touching a soul.

211 - Kari Jobe

I don’t have any ill will against the Christian Music crowd, but I do think they’re misguided, music-wise. They put an emphasis on being Christian before making good music, which often leads them to make so-so music. There’s a reason only a handful of Christian artists ever break into the mainstream charts, and Amy Grant isn’t necessarily rock-star status. Kari Jobe wasn’t Amy Grant. Her songs were like listening to someone make paper mache Christmas ornaments - delicate to the point of frustration. Oh, and I know it’s a big Evangelical thing, but a group of a thousand white people raising one hand to the stage/sky while one hand is on their hearts is a sight. IN NO WAY am I saying they looked like Nazis. But they looked like it wouldn’t take a big push to get them there ifyouknowwhatimean.

210 - Steely Dan

My first real day on the job and it’s … Steely Dan. I told you I worked in the Lawn and Bleacher sections, right? Well this Amp had a 23,500 seat capacity. Nobody sat in the Bleacher and Lawn. Or much of the section below that as well. If you look up sparse in the dictionary you’ll find a picture of this concert.

209 - Nickelback

The Suh Stomp is the main takeaway from Thanksgiving 2011 but the other noteworthy thing was the giant booing of Nickelback as the halftime performer. They didn’t even play a hit. It was one new song where nobody knew the lyrics. But, it wasn’t all for naught, a Lions player tripped and fell over the production cables and had to be taken off the field by medical staff. “Can you really call this a concert?” It’s my list, so, yeah.

208 - Hollywood Undead

Do you know what’s hype? Rap Rock. Do you know what’s not? Lip-syncing.

207 - 2 Chainz

Do you know what’s even less hype than lip syncing? Walking on stage and not rapping while three of your own songs play in the background. Mr. Chainz’s power move is the only reason he ranks ahead of the Undead.

206 - Panic! At the Disco [Gym Class Heroes, The Academy Is …]

I am not emo. I don’t understand it. I wear black, but I’m not in love with wearing black. Nobody in the crowd, who all paid to be there, seemed to want to be there. I have nothing a against the bands, but the crowd took emo/sad/somber to new level. If the show was held in the basement of an abandoned carnival ride storage warehouse, it would have been a smash.

205 - Kip Moore

The joke about a country music singer and his truck? Well, this guy wrote a song about his truck.

204 - Ani DiFranco

DiFranco released over 20 albums in the last 30 years. The very definition of quantity over quality.

203 - Trey Anastasio

Phish fans unite! But can they not unite for three hours at time?

202 - The Magpie Salute

Speaking of long-winded concerts, a guy brought a tripod recording device. There was also enough incense that an ad orientem priest would have turned around to tell them to tone it the fuck down.

201 - Lil Baby [City Girls, Blueface]

There were more openers than just these two, but at least they had discernible talent that wasn’t Tourettes burbs over a backing track. Blueface tried and failed to promote an after-set meet and greet that was filled with both people who paid for a picture, and those aimlessly wondering where the bathroom was. City Girls reminded me a lot of Ciara’s set when she opened for Ludacris all those years back. And Baby? The crowd loved him. To death. As in, some of the crowd wanted to fight to the death. One girl was about to curb stomp another so hard that her shoe flew off. 10/10 would work his show again.