In last month’s UNCUT, our writers, friends and favourite musicians reminisced about their favourite gigs.
Well, in this month’s issue we’re looking back on the worst gigs we’ve ever seen – including The Stone Roses, Bob Dylan, Kevin Rowland and David Bowie – with rare photos from the shows too.
We’re also going to publish one of the worst gigs every day, with online exclusives, so feast your eyes on this, and be glad you weren’t there!
*****
George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars
Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Winter 2000
John Lewis:
I had seen the latest incarnation of George Clinton‘s travelling Funkadelic circus at the 1996 Phoenix Festival, playing in the pouring rain in front of a huge crowd, and had a fantastic time. Grown men in nappies! A six-foot-six black bass player in a wedding dress! A backing singer sporting an enormous elephant trunk! Ha ha! It was also the heaviest funk band I’d ever seen at the time so, several years later when they visited London, myself and a large gang of friends turned up en masse to relive the experience.
Unfortunately it was, from beginning to end, sheer torture. The visual gags seemed a bit tiresome, the liquid funk replaced by a tiresome brand of plodding metal. Then there were the dreary song introductions, the torturously extended versions of songs that weren’t that good to start with, and the utterly excruciating guitar solos that went on and on and on. You’d take a piss, come back and he’d still be widdling away, you disappear for 15 minutes to get in a round, you come back and the guitarist’s still just warming up, you nip out and write a few postcodes and return to find that he’s still bloody chundering away, hitting the highest notes on his fretboard, hunched over the speaker stack while wanking the tremolo arm. Jesus Christ. I left half-way through a particularly interminable solo (just as it was entering its 12th minute, yes I did time it) and found that I’d missed the last tube home. I’ve never quite forgiven George Clinton since.
*****
plus WERE YOU THERE?
Not even UNCUTs war-weary gig-hounds have been to every show in history – but you lot probably have.
Email Allan_Jones@ipcmedia.com to share your memories, of the ones we’ve published or any which we have missed, and we’ll publish the best in a future issue!