Entertainment For Lively Minds
Rubbish support acts
Posted by Big Jim on 13 February 2009 - 11:36pm.
This must have been done before but if it was I missed it. Anyway I was just just recalling Eric Clapton's 1976 tour date at the Glasgow Apollo where his support act was "MR Pugh's puppet theatre" You can imagine the rest... Glasgow and rubbish puppet acts just don't go together but I seem to remember that amongst all the booing (and worse) the show still went on and the Pugh meister managed to complete his 20 minute "set" so he was at least brave if a tad foolish.
Clapton learned his lesson and returned in 1978 with Muddy Waters. THAT was more like it
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Muddy Waters *supporting* Eric Clapton, I presume...
that is so wrong it hurts, no matter how much 'God' loved him.
Similar to
the New York Dolls supporting the White Stripes. Not right. Needless to say I left before the Krankies (c) came on.
To be fair
The Mudster had been off the radar for a while and to be honest I wasn't sure who he was. I can't honestly remember much about this night as I'd just been introduced to "Lanliq" which I wish I'd mentioned on the drinks we never see post.
Road Crew
I once saw a knife swallowing act (with skewers through arms and neck) supporting The Q-Tips.
Also, back in '77 The Damned were touring with The Adverts (The strapline for the tour was "The Damned know 3 chords and The Adverts know 1. Come and hear all four!).
For some reason The Adverts didn't turn up to the North Staffs Poly date so Rat Scabies came on the introduce "Road Crew" as the support. They amazingly managed two and a half excruciating versions of Chuck Berry songs before retiring under a hail of abuse and beer and went back to their chosen career of saying "one-two, one, one-two".
I try to put it out of my mind but I also had the misfortune to see U2 two days in a row - we tried to avoid them the second day but things were running late.
Cud
Newcastle City Hall they may have been having a bad night but they were dreadful .
a veteran of the Glasgow Apollo writes
20ft stage, stoned 'heads' - do the math
worst I experienced was Colin Friel supporting Hawkwind of a Sunday night, Richard Herring may want to take note here:
Friel: this song is the last song
GA crowd: Wahooa! Ya Baisturt! Fuckye! Aye Yir Man n'aw! etc.
Friel: ...it's called the 'Last Train'... but it's gonna be late tonight
- 10 mins of pish and near folky noodlings then followed -
GA crowd: already over the road in Lauder's Bar for a pint of Tartan Special or in 'the bogs skinnin up maahn'
<----young impressionable chap with mate from the south side: sat and watched all it's sorry glory
FEAR that's what I miss from gigs these days.
Patrik Fitzgerald
Hawkwind did have form in picking their support acts. In their Hawklords incarnation they chose the 'Punk Poet' to warm up the crowd at Edinburgh Usher Hall. And they got pretty warm. The words 'chalk' and 'cheese' come to mind. It was the first gig I ever went to, and I wondered if the opprobrium that was poured upon him was the norm for a support.
At least Patrik Fitzgerald
later went on to be Graham Coxon. You listen to 'Safty Pin Stuck In My Heart' and tell me i'm wrong
Uriah Heep
Were headlining. The two bands on before were worse. Imagine that.
Either I have a lack of imagination...
or that's a musical impossibility.
Catherine Feeny
With Robyn Hitchcock in Bury last night.
Not actually rubbish - she's sounds quite good - just missing, as she explains on her Myspace page.
Van Morrison
had a "comedian" supporting him at a gig in Glasgow (in the early 90s) who was so bad/offensive even I resorted to booing and it takes a lot to make me do that.
Definitely the worst,and most baffling, support act ever.
An then there was always (and IS always) John Cooper Clarke
I saw him support bands I have now forgotten back in the dying 70s, with an uncertainty as to whether his dreadful reception was meant in hate or in warped affection. Funny that it is he who I remember, enjoying both his bravery and his content. Todays Times tells me he is on tour soon, advertised with a cartoon of his besuited stick thin spikery. I'll bet he looks like a skeleton with a black straw barnet in reality (little change there?) but I bet he'll be good. Less spitting, too.
JCC: You know how he looked in the late 70's?
He looks like that. OK with old man Steptoe's face
Saw him at the Union Chapel last year and he was great. Ammused himself greatly by spot on impressions of Mark E Smith and less spot on Ray Winstone
Ah, poets is it?
I am probably wrong here but I am sure Mark Miwurdz (correct spelling?) "supported" John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett at Aberdeen Uni in 1978/9. Now I may have got the time scales wrong here because quite frankly anything pre 1982 all meld into one supergig, but whoever it was he supported....he was rubbish!
Ah, poets is it?
I am probably wrong here but I am sure Mark Miwurdz (correct spelling?) "supported" John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett at Aberdeen Uni in 1978/9. Now I may have got the time scales wrong here because quite frankly anything pre 1982 all meld into one supergig, but whoever it was he supported....he was rubbish!
Didn't Mark Miwurdz
become him off Red Dwarf and Corrie? Name gone right now.
Nah Mark Miwurdz
became the v poor stand-up Mark Hurst oft heard around the 80's\90's on radio. Craig Charles (him from Dwarf n Corrie) was an equally poor poet thou
Angus Og
Lanliq - famously advertised in the Daily Ranger by Angus Og walking through a wall!
Dog Soldier
supported Nazareth at the Glasgow Apollo, the Heavy Metal Kids did similar for Uriah Heep. Pants them all, and I must spring to 'The Heep's' defence, they weren't a bad band, 2nd div Deep Purple maybe, but they still had some fine tunes. The thing that tours under the UH moniker these days is on the 'pie & beans' circuit, so that doesn't count.