Introduce yourself with ten terrible bands you've seen

If, like me, you spend too much time online, frittering away your life reading other people's half-baked nonsense, you'll have seen those music posts which say something like, "Introduce yourself with ten bands you've seen". Ffs. Yeah, they're everywhere on X. I usually just scroll past - mentally jeering at them - but, like an idiot, I sometimes get hooked. Sort of. Or at least I might halfheartedly check out a thread - again more in a spirit of derision than anything else - "What, these bands? These ten bands! You're fucking joking". To prove my point here are a few I saw the other day: 

1. Charlie Daniels Band

2. U2 (War)

3. Journey

4. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

5. Hall & Oates

6. Night Ranger

7. Kiss

8. The Ramones

9. Def Leppard

10. Dire Straits

1. The Cult

2. Stereophonics

3. The Bangles (on the beach in Daytona!)

4. Sloan

5. Spirit Of The West

6. Cheap Trick

7. Platinum Blonde

8. Metric

9. Genesis

10. Arctic Monkeys 

1. Rolling Stones

2. The Who

3. Soundgarden

4. Stone Temple Pilots

5. Beastie Boys

6. U2

7. Smashing Pumpkins

8. Black Crowes

9. Radiohead 

10. Oasis  

Obviously, if anyone in real life actually introduced themselves by somehow mentioning these clusters of bands I'd run a mile. Or at least think: who's this idiot and how can I get away from them? Grimly fascinated by these lists, the other day I must admit that I stupidly looked at dozens of them. Presumably all done by Americans, they had a preponderence of MOR rock bands with a smattering of acts like the Beastie Boys. It was a little bit like the Kerrang! "100 Greatest Rock Albums Ever!" feature I blogged about recently: a vortex of heritage rawk. The real point, though, isn't that the contributors to these infantile threads have what I think of as bad taste in music (though I do think this), it's that the ten bands seen thing is so utterly cringeworthy in the first place. Who the fuck cares about which bands another person has or hasn't seen, good or bad? In certain situations it might be reasonably interesting to briefly trade "bands seen" with an acquaintance, but only rarely and only if it's done with a light touch. No, keep your live musical experiences to yourself (unless, of course, it's in the entirely-OK-if-it's-done-like-this form of a 20 best bands seen blog at the end of every year by a hardworking blogger with exquisite taste in music). Instead, what would be more revealing and altogether more acceptable is a response to the alternative prompt: introduce yourself with ten terrible bands you've seen. This is much better. Off the top of my head (more or less), and in no particular order, here are mine:

1. Danse Society

2. Sex Pistols

3. Half Man Half Biscuit

4. Herman Düne 

5. Pete & The Pirates

6. The Cure

7. Wolfhounds

8. New Model Army

9. Neils Children

10. Unnamed recent bands

A rare shot of Niluccio on noise making a list for a forthcoming post

Yeah man, beat that. It's a great list, no? Of course, timing and location are all. As those "U2 (War)" and "The Bangles (on the beach in Daytona!)" entries suggest, in many cases it's all about when and where you see a band. The reformed Sex Pistols at the Phoenix Festival in 1996 (my own sad experience) was a travesty. Anyone who'd see them at (say) West Kensington's The Nashville Rooms in early 1976 would barely have recognised the plodding big-stage punk heritage act of 20 years later. The "reformed and now utterly terrible" syndrome also applies to a couple of others on my list of shame: the Danse Society (smallish venue in Nottingham in about 2012 but still utterly boring), the Wolfhounds (ditto in London in about 2018). In my defence I didn't go to either of these two gigs to see these bands, but instead went to see their much better support acts. But still, it was depressing to witness how poor they were, especially, in the case of the Wolfhounds as I'd seen them in their mid-80s heyday and really enjoyed them. Reformed bands are a special category of awfulness, but meanwhile most of the others on my list - Half Man Half Biscuit, Herman Düne, Pete & The Pirates, The Cure and Neils Children - were bad because they were past their best when I saw them. Half Man Half Biscuit: a boorish gig in a central Manchester venue in (about) 1992 with lots of the football-shirted HMHB ultras bouncing around and shouting along to their heroes' lyrics; Herman Düne: a post-André show in Brussels in (about) 2007 with HD transformed from a mesmerising small-venue communal experience to a run-of-the-mill indie act; Pete & The Pirates: an utterly naff show at the utterly naff Kasbah in Coventry in 2008; The Cure: an all-seated howler at the NEC in about 1986, four or five years past their peak; and the once-excellent Neils Children reduced to doing a showy "indie inglesi" thing in a pricey nighclub in Milan in about 2007. Eugh. Even the memory of these mistimed gigs is slightly traumatising. Meanwhile, there's New Model Army, a band I saw (I think) three times in rapid succession in the mid-80s, each time wondering what all the fuss was about with this mediocre alt-rock/goth band. In my defence, it was a period of getting freebie tickets at a student union venue so I suppose it was ... er, something to do. And that leaves the all-important "unnamed recent bands" category from my list. Yes, these are the unnumerable bands I see year on year who are anything from outright terrible to "OK, but slightly boring" to "not as good as I'd hoped and ultimately pretty forgettable". In my case these are usually bands I go along to see on an ultra-casual basis at one of the east London venues I regularly patronise. If a band/artist is - in my view - substandard I usually beat a hasty retreat and just go straight home. It's the price of gig-going, a tithe paid to the gods of live music in the hopes of seeing better stuff the following week. So yeah, from now on I'll try introducing myself to strangers with this list of ten terrible bands I've seen. It's sure to go down well. People will instantly find me interesting, cool and eminently likeable. They'll probably want to hear more of my musical reminiscences. Then they'll want to become my friend. To start hanging out. Going to gigs with me ...