For me, the list includes Rush (Birmingham, UK) 'Power Windows' tour - (never wanted to see them again after that - or hear them), Dream Theatre at High Voltage 2011 (dull beyond belief) and Opeth at the same festival the year before (2010) - I call them 'Opeless and can't see why they are treated as a prog band...

Genesis at Roundhay Park (Leeds, 1987) only just rescued the situation by playing most of side 2 of 'Wind and Wuthering'

Unexpected joy?: stumbling across Gorky's Zygotic Mynci at Leeds Heineken Festival in 1996 - pure Canterbury!!

A nascent Ozric Tentacles at Stonehenge 1984 and Twice Bitten supporting Pendragon mid 80s (venues forgotten)

Supertramp in Detroit mid 80's.

They seem to play the songs note for note without any real passion or improvisation, Bored the livin' 5hit out of me. Good thing I had some mushrooms with me, at least the light show was fun.

Followed closely by Pink Floyd at CNE stadium in Toronto. The sound was horrible, way too loud and distorted.

Lastly, The Who at CNE stadium in Toronto. An October concert that for some unknown reason they played at the west end of the stadium, when the hard winds blew in off the lake (towards the band) the sound completely disappeared. Half the concert wasn't even heard. Joe Jackson opened for them and again for some unknown reason, people close to the stage didn't care for them and pelted them with empty water bottles and hotdogs apparently. They left the stage after only a short set of maybe 5 or 6 songs.

The Stranglers - Feline tour Newcastle City Hall in the 80's - they stopped playing mid gig as they didn't like the security in the aisles who were there to stop any trouble. A stand off lasted 15 minutes until the security finally left. The crowd promptly started ripping up seats and throwing them around. Completely crap.

Unexpected joys

Most of mine would be at festivals where I discovered loads of bands I never knew but that's a bit of a cop out.

Mike Keneally Boston '14 - an unknown to me Bent Knee were the support band, became an instant fan and have seen them around 14 times since then. 

The DVD Live at Luna Park by Dream Theater's rating currently sits at 4,12 stars, with over 150 reviews. I went to one of the gigs where the concert was filmed without even knowing that they were planning on taping everything. And well... It was easily the worst gig I ever attended in my lifetime. Sound was horrible, setlist choice was dreadful, and the worst part of them all is when they broke out the string quartet and LaBrie sang two "acoustic" renditions of their tunes.

It was horribly cheesy, and not in a good way. Melted plastic-y cheddar can be delicious and actually serve a purpose while it's hot and you have a bowl of nachos or anything to dip your hands into it. This was cheesy in a similar fashion to what happens in The Curse Of Monkey Island, in which you have to use molten cheddar that went cold as an unbreakable miraculous substitute material for tar to repair your washed up pirate ship.

Horrible, horrible gig all around. They didn't have any cool merch around, the only availiable record on sale was a greatest hits compilation 

Greatest surprise? I don't really know. Maybe Magma, they were amazing when they played here, and I didn't expect such a great show. Other than that, not too many big name prog bands come down all the way to Buenos Aires, and most if not all of them delivered in spades when it came to their concerts: Snarky Puppy, Meshuggah x2, Opeth x2, Steven Wilson x2, Focus, Yes x2, Deep Purple x3... So I'm inclined to say that the best surprise was one G3 tour gig in which Mike Portnoy unexpectedly filled in as Petrucci's drummer. I'm by no means a Dream Theater fan or anything, but it was nice seeing them both playing live.

Lima96 wrote: Greatest surprise? I don't really know. Maybe Magma, they were amazing when they played here, and I didn't expect such a great show.

A friend of mine says "If you don't see the face of god the first time you see Magma they're just not for you". Stunning experience seeing them for the first time. I had the added bonus that Thinking Plague were the band playing before them.

I'd forgotten how bad Jethro Tull (Ian Anderson & hired guns) were last time I saw them 3 (?) years ago. Thoroughly professional session musicians playing but zero spirit or heart. Ian Anderson's voice is completely shot, seeing on his tiptoes trying to get a note to come out was horrible. We walked out after 45 minutes.

Ian Anderson doesn't have a bad voice night. He has a bad voice quarter-century. He should have stopped singing decades ago. It is painful to listen to him sing. My face hurt from cringing every time he tried to hit notes on Aqualung or Locomotive Breath. 

I was quite disappointed by Knifeworld  in 2015. They played together with Cleft and Vennart, but I really was there to see them. They had a quite terrible sound, very flat and saucy, with little detail to appreciate. Also the singing wasn't good.  I like them a lot on their albums so would really like to see them on a better night.

My first Kraan gig was one of the best ever, for the second one I had very high expectations, but they overdid the volume and left me with ear problems for days.

A number of bands I love now have convinced me when seeing them live without knowing them. Strangely the first one that comes to mind is the experimental jazz trio Doran/Studer/Mangenat; I saw them on a political event in the end eighties and would never have expected this kind of stuff there. Linton Kwesi Johnson and Al Stewart were also playing and they surely did not disappoint. It should probably have made me a lifetime voter of that party.

I flew over in '17 to see Knifeworld, Admirals Hard, Guapo & Spratley's Japs. Knifeworld were acoustic at the Islington. Superb gig, one of my absolute highlights. The whole weekend was a hoot. 

Hah, I saw both Camel and Soft Machine in 2018 and loved both their performances to pieces. Soft Machine of course wins on new material.

I heard a story about a well known late 80's pop singer who played at a high school in a town I lived in for a little while. Apparently he did one song then right as he was about to do another he told the crowd to ignore what the principal or whoever said and stand up and act a bit unruly. The lights when on after that(or maybe during). I wasn't there and I'm glad. Can you imagine your high school winning a contest to see this rising star and then he shows up at your school and plays one maybe two songs at the most and then the principal or whoever shuts it down? 

Unexpected joy? Don't do proper festivals but remember Magenta opening an indoor prog 'festival' in London just about when Seven was released. Was hooked almost immediately.

I'm glad to read this, considering the fan worship for Marillion on these pages!   My chum Curt and I went to see Marillion at Chicago's excellent Park West Theater on 15 August 1995, expecting a fine show.  Instead, it was dreadfully boring, with sub-standard musicianship.  We actually left before the end of the concert, something we'd never done before.  

Unexpected joy was seeing Yes on their CTTE tour, 22 September 1972, in the acoustically-perfect Arie Crown Theater in Chicago.  I hadn't heard the LP CTTE, and went expecting to hear their AM radio hit "America," so imagine my surprise when the classic Yes sparkle ball descended and they began Close to the Edge!!   An added bonus was the then-unknown band, The Eagles, opening for their friends, The Yes (that is how they introduced them, like The Who)! 

Van Halen were a bit as Dave Lee Roth spent too much time posing and not enough singing. Maybe the biggest disappointment, although not really the band's fault, was having to leave a Talking Heads gig early as they went on late (can't remember why) and I had to leave to catch the last train home from Hammersmith. 

     Bruce, who I've seen many times and always far exceeded any and all expectations, was on the final night of a 18-month world tour. He and the band were just calling it in--going through the motions. All the hits, none of the emotion. 

Disappointing: Tangerine Dream at Glasgow Apollo circa '78

Three stoned telephone operators and a drummer all mercifully hidden by lasers for the most part

Unexpected Joy: Tangerine Dream at Glasgow Apollo circa '78

They stopped (eventually)

None really ... but there were a few things that were sad along the way which made things not as good as they should have been. But we're talking 50 years here ... not just 10 or 20!

Ozric Tentacles, a few years back when they were touring the country on their van ... I had warned them on their Forum/Website about Portland not knowing how to do sound and having a knack for messing it up. In 94 (or 95 not sure now) they were here at La Luna and of course the keyboards were not wired properly and Seaweed spent the night with the wiring since half the time there were no keyboards heard. On the sound board from which I have heard a tape from the show, including John's potato joke and all that, the keyboard was fine, which means that the club did not have enough for keyboards but the drums, bass and guitar were horribly over done!

A few years later, even with a warning, they still played Portland at a dive location, and of course, Silas could not get the keyboard going half the time, and they did not have a sound person, and you could see into the sound board, the keyboard volume was setup at half the other members. The band sound so poor, that I ended up leaving halfway through ... to not pay attention and make sure they can get what they need to protect their music is ... senseless and pathetic. They should have unplugged everything and just played an acoustic set which might have been more interesting!

A lot of great things along the way ... one special moment was MAGMA, and I was scared that the show might not be good, forgetting I had at least a couple of live albums (!!!!NK) and it was magnificent, but at the end I cried ... I knew that something special and different like this would not happen again in my life. They did come around again 2 years later, and it was beautiful ... but I still cried in the end, knowing how special it had been and how much this "individuality" has been for my own writing and artistry.

I can not say there are "disappointments" but if there was one, it would be Damo Suzuki by himself with a 2nd rate band, and before the show he was outside having a smoke, but he would not talk to anyone, just stare out somewhere. I think he was trying to be cool and this and that, but in the end, the show was sad, and the redos of old CAN material were poor and sadder still with the band not having the proper cohesiveness to do it right. All in all it was just another night of busking for a tired old man, if that is fair to say. I still love what he had done before, but he should have moved on and added more to it, and instead he is trying to make the old photograph come alive again, and it ain't happening. The musicians behind him do not have the learning and pedigree of those before. 

Saw TD five times, including their 1st and 2nd tours in LA (Santa Monica Civic and The Greek Theater with the trees on fire picture on the live album) ... and they were great each and every time. I would have liked to see them during the time with the girls, but never got the chance.

Saw PF four times, and they were excellent, not withstanding the bummer at the Sports Arena when 714 people got busted, and the narcs walking the concert and taking people out during the music ... totally pathetic. Typical of the police force style that later got them in trouble, but it was happening before in a lot of different ways.

RW did the WALL here in PDX and it was cheesy for my tastes, although it was fine. The stage was in front and the sound went from left to right and from right to left ... the original show way back when the sound WENT AROUND YOU AND ALL OF US, and it made the whole thing more "real" of an experience. All of a sudden, I felt like it was just a cheap version, or a type of MET redo of some old opera again, with no changes or updates to make up for the "time" ... RW made sure that this time he got touchy about other wars, instead of Vietnam, but the audience didn't give a poop about it all and some folks were getting drinks during that moment ... typical rock audience ... the respect is where? But then, RW's idea of respect is just an idea, not real! This simply showed the difference between the early days of "progressive" music when the idea was to make it REAL and SPECIAL ... and all of a sudden 30 or 40 years later, all you can see is the cardboard reality of it all ... very disappointing compared to the original! And the millions spent on the tour should have been spent on something else ... that made better sense to his politics and ravings!

Yes, it's a shame about the Ozrics - they have done this in the UK too.  One notable time they were on the same bill as Caravan at Brixton Fridge.  Caravan produced a crystal clear sound, not too loud but Ozric managed to produce loud sludge - out of the same PA!!

Surprise: I went to a hall party in River Rouge, Michigan (a fairly dive VFW hall in a fairly dive city just south of Detroit) for a $5 keg night in the early 80s. Did not expect much (except to get drunk), and didn't even know if a band was going to play. Who walks out but Leslie West. Yeah, Mountain's Leslie West -- the Great Fatsby. He was obviously a little drug addled at the time, but put on a damn good show. Unexpected and off the wall, but a great jam given the circumstances.

I went to a Groundhogs gig in Newcastle in the 80's with middling expectations. They were very very good, great night.

Did see 'Donovan' at a small folk club in the same town  a few years earlier and that was great....got to meet him after the show.

I have seen Damo a couple of times, last time maybe 10 years ago. He would just do his thing in front of a local band who'd be up for it, and he'd play with all kinds of bands. Of course the odd one will not be top notch. I think I saw four of these, one great, two fine, one not really. However in none of the gigs I've seen he did old Can material (except there was one show in the mid-nineties with Can members doing solo sets, and he did Mother Sky with Michael Karoli's band). I'd suspect the band you saw him with wanted it, but it's not that he does this all the time.

Surprisingly good: Crack The Sky 1978 (Toledo.) I remember being blown away...

Tool's lead singer hidden in the shadows.  

Mahogany Rush and Nine Inch Nail surprised to the upside.

Hi,

It's a strange comment because in those days, TD was still doing a lot of improvising to try and show their pieces, but the machinery used was not always on par with everything else. Edgar Froese in his book, talks about a lot of it during the band tours and the real difficult issues for their instruments and band in general, like freezing hands in Poland, and no heat except that from the electricity from the instruments and perhaps the crowd warmth ... and guess what? It's on an album!

When I saw them about that time, it was not bad, but you could tell that they were having difficulties adjusting to the new equipment, and they were not able to play the material like STRATOSFEAR as well as they wanted, and had to flow with what they had. 

The sad thing about the comment, is that it was around that time that they got comfortable with the new digital stuff and it ended the run of 6 or 7 years of massive bootlegs ... ALL OF WHICH WERE DIFFERENT because it was impossible to make the hardware repeat the same thing they had created. Too many wires and plugs ... and the result was different each and every time.

I think the comment is due to the fact that recognizable material is kinda mixed in with other stuff and it was down, to just a main theme sometimes and it wasn't until much later, for example, that they were able to do Phaedra on stage ... when we saw them on their first tour something was there from the new album, but when you listen to the Live in America album (their 2nd tour I think) with the pictures of the Greek Theater trees on fire (part of the show with lasers!) ... you can tell how they handled the newer material ... it was very different ... 

I imagine that Exit was looking for something he recognized and didn't get it ... not sure ... but their sound and mixes every time I have heard it, has been very good.

A triple concert at the Leverkusener Jazztage some twenty years ago. Jean and I went there to see Magma, who were the last to play. I have forgotten who the first act was; it did not impress us much. The second act was Mari Boine, and her gig was fantastic; usually we would have said "this was the highlight of the evening".

But apparently Magma felt challenged by Mari Boine and put on an exceptionally brilliant performance. They played "Köhntark" and "Mekanïk Destruktïẁ Kommandöh" and as encores "Kobaïa" and "Hhaï". A woman who stood near us and had never heard of them before was totally overwhelmed and gasped "What was that? That was absolutely incredible"! We could not have agreed more.

Hi,

They did, at least MUSHROOM from Tago Mago.

Sure, I believe you. My point is that he doesn't do it all the time, and it may not even have been his idea on this evening, because he adapts to the bands with which he is playing (which as you wrote are not always top level).