I can back you up on one of those: I saw MGMT supporting Radiohead in Manchester during the summer and it was weedy, empty nonsense. Mind you, Radiohead were dreadful too. It turns out Old Trafford (LCCC) isn't a great place for shows.



Bob Dylan, on the other hand, phew! OK, the only time I saw him (Odyssey Arena, summer 2004) was disappointing (he played piano most of the night, and turned *everything* into pretty standard old-person rock music), his early albums (and by that I mean everything from 1963 - 75) are uniformly stunning. The simple folk of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", the snarling protest of "The Times They Are A Changin'", the magic epics of "Another Side Of..." - and they came out within a couple of years of each other! That's to say nothing of Blonde on Blonde, Bringing it all Back Home and (especially) Blood on the Tracks.

One happy summer, possibly 2002, I spent two weeks camping in England with friends and we brought a CD player and just those albums, and it was pretty much the best time we ever had.



Having said all that, I distinctly remember borrowing Blood on the Tracks as a boy and passionately hating it. He did seem rather to be rambling. Speaking of which, this post is OVER!

That video is painful to watch, with the awkward dancing on stage and the guitarist dancing and strumming like a 55 year old playing power chords...



Snow Patrol, sadly, have let me down twice. The first time was the Ulster Hall gig a couple of years ago, the "homecoming " after the success of Snow Patrol. I can't think of how many times I've been told over the years that the December gig was one of the best in Belfast in the past few years but it was dreadful. At times it sounded like a cover band! Granted, I heard after Gary was struggling with throat problems, but I would have preferred a fully fit Snow Patrol at a later date instead.



Eyes Open also let me down. Too repetitive at times and it never really got going for me. A Hundred Million Suns is the album Eyes Open should have been!

There's been a few people who have had bad MGMT experiences and I'm gutted they are poop live, if that video is anything to go by! Cringe!!!



Re Bob Dylan, I have heard other people drunkenly admit that they aren't impressed or fans, but won't say it out loud for fear of being chased down the street with burning torches. Personally, I love Dylan.



If we are talking sacred cows, here's a few of mine that I would happily have sacrificed. Two artists I just don't get the hype about are Paul Weller and Bruce Springsteen. Fair enough, they are popular and people worship them and all, but I just don't see it. Springsteen to a lesser extent, but if someone would like to get Paul Weller outta my face, then please, please do so. Send him into space, whatever. I'm not fussy.



I won't even waste my words commenting on Metallica *shudder*.

You know, i was thinking about Snow Patrol when I wrote that blog as an act I've shied away from criticizing in the past.



Problem was, not only have I been a genuinely massive fan for ten years, but I also hold them dear because I've so many fond memories of seeing them play (amazing) tiny gigs back when no one cared - one in particular, in Morrisons (before it became a trendy cocktail bar) with about 40 people in attendance, during which Gary smashed his guitar.



They're probably the only band that went on to be massive which I was besotted with and saw many times at the very start of their career.



But on the other hand, i've seen them do dodgy gigs - when Gary was just in plain old bad form (bitching about people from the stage once, in the Empire, i remember) - even at Vital there was a couple of songs were the vocals were a bit off.



But I guess I turned a blind eye, cause I held the records so dear - and for every dodgy gig (at the start) or dodgy song (post-'Run') there'd be a bunch of incredible performances just around the corner.



Still though, a good example of a band I personally (and others too I'm sure) have avoided criticizing when they probably deserved it!

Weller, mmm yeah but you can hardly argue with the Jam, a seminal act, but I agree the reverence relative to the canon is a little skewed. Springsteen tho? You gotta be kiddin me! The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, Born to Run, Nebraska, Tom Joad, and thats not to mention epoch-defining 80's output. No, that cow deserves a reprieve, surely?

Never thought much of the MGMT anyhow...I would probably have walked out of that show on account of thon fellas ridiculous headscarf, alarms bells should have been ringing Rigsy.



But yeah, I would happily drag Led Zep to the abatior and butcher them without mercy. Ok there is that one riff, but that's it. One (stolen) riff and the rest a mess of silly mysticism, drum solozzzzz and a sweaty hippy grunting.



Pink Floyd....i don't have to explain, music to take drugs to for people who don't take drugs. I hate it when Spiritualized get compared to Pink Floyd, absolute tosh - Pink Floyd ain't got no soul.



Oasis, obviously.

I agree with oasis. It all seems a bit pointless to me when I'm watching them live. Primal Scream let me down last week in the same way.



Radiohead are pretty inconsistent live, sometimes they're incredible, sometimes they're barely audible past the drone of effects gone wrong.



Talking of the in-audible, Wu-Tang should've just put on 36 chambers and sat on stage snorting coke, that way I could've actually heard something that wasn't a garbled mess.



But, the sacred cow I must slay today is The Prodigy. Ladies... Gentlemen... I think when people say how incredible they are live, I think you'll find that's the pills talking.

With the exception of MGMT who just seem to be a terrible live act who should be confined to producing good stuff in the studio, the general consensus here seems to be that if you've been around for a while you generally lose the plot when it comes to live shows.



Most examples people have listed, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Springsteen, Dylan and even Oasis and Radiohead have all been around for a long time and obviously aren't going to have the youthful onstage vigour they once had.



I imagine they've probably become bored with a lot of their earlier songs. Particularly with Dylan, he'll try and get around this by re-working a track in a new style. Ryan Adams does the same now when he's touring with The Cardinals but for the most part people just want to hear the tracks as they were written and recorded years ago.



I'm not saying this is the case for all bands but can you really expect all those old folks to rock out as much as they did in their youth?



What worries me more is that bands like MGMT will just come along every now and again, put out a decent album and then disappear off the face of the earth once people realise they're woeful live. Didn't the same thing basically happen to Klaxons? Where are they now?

MGMT bored the pants clean off me at Oxegen. The crowd shenanigans were the only thing of any interest at all. Utterly unimpressive, despite the fact that I love the singles. The album disappointed me too to be honest - like I said, I really do like the singles, but the album just doesn't grab me at all. Maybe it's just my ignorant ears, but there's no sense of cohesion to it, and it all feels a wee bit self-indulgent.



Is there any room on that space shuttle for Richard Ashcroft? I cannot understand why people go mental over him and The Verve. Talk about the triumph of mediocrity.

hmmm, I've seen Klaxxons twice and they where shockingly bad the first time in mandela but the second time about six months later they'd improved greatly, still weren't amazing, but much better. Donno if MGMT can do this if they haven't improved since oxegen.



Ashcroft's voice is far too Jaggerish these days for me to even take an interest in the Verve beyond hearing them by mistake. One Mick Jagger's pushing it as it is.



It's horrible to be dissapointed by an act who on paper should be incredible. I thought the Raconteurs were shite at oxegen. There, I said it. Sacrilige in my house. We're not even alowed to slag coca-cola anymore!

One listen to the MGMT album was plenty for me. the filler tracks were massively average and i'm not surprised they were gash live. most disappointing live act i've seen recently - get cape. wear cape. fly.



the whole social injustice message is very admirable, the piss poor performance is not.