I was talking to my friend when we were waiting for The Killers to come on a couple of weeks ago at the M.E.N. about the best and worst support acts we've seen. Who've you seen that have been really good or really bad?

For me, the best is either Editors, who I've seen quite a few times as a support act now and then the one that surprised me more than anything was Sound of Guns who were brilliant before Miles Kane at the Deaf Institute in Manchester. The worst has got to be a toss up between Eagles of Death Metal and Ratatat, who were both absolutely dismal.

Best Aerosmith

Worst Dr Feelgood

I attended a week long rock concert at ally pally - London 1973. The climax of the gig was Friday night Black Sabbath
which was jam packed with among others a large number of German/Japanese tourists. The support band for the night was Stackridge whose performance was surreal/outstanding. Their main song was "do the stanley" which appeared to be a take of "the Lambeth walk". They took the audience so high they were still coming down when Ozzy started his stuff and it was hard work to hold the audience - bet Stackridge never supported 'em again

Best I ever saw - Bad Manners' support at Manchester Uni in about 1990. They had the then unknown (on this side of the water) Bim Skala Bim who promptly blew them off stage.
More recently I saw DC Fontana support The Lambrettas, and were better by a large degree.

I went to see Shed 7 at Hull uni in 98 , I didn't know Puressence were supporting but they were were f**king amazing and loved them ever since.
Worst was Carter usm at Manchester supporting Madness.

I saw Carter supporting Madness too.

Bet the bar did well at that point.

Saw The Cribs support Kaiser Chiefs many a time and they were ace in those days!

Worst, oh man! Always hated Maximo Park live as the lead singer was irritating (and my ex at the time loved him)

Best support bands
The Subways supporting Razorlight
The Cribs supporting Kaiser Chiefs and vice versa
Kasabian supporting Oasis
The Black Angels supporting BRMC
Rodrigo y Gabriela supporting Muse
Art Brut supporting Maximo Park (only reason I went to that gig was to see Art Brut)
Mind has gone blank for bad support as I try and forget them, I will have to look back through ticket stubs to remind me.

Aye , Most of the bottles ended up on stage !

Saw Shed 7 at the NYNEX Arena (M.E.N) in 97, they where supporting Aerosmith on their Nine Lives Tour, on this particular occasion they actually blowed Aerosmith of the stage IMO

one of the best : The Verve supporting my own band in 1990 lol.
one of the worst : Too many to mention lol

Just out of interest who was your band?

Tenacito, before the verve got signed.

Not really a support act but caught Swedish band Kent first on on the mainstage at Leeds 2000, they were pretty amazing and almost noone was there.
Worst... hmm, probably one of the multitude of Oasis/Manc influenced clones that seem to swagger in the pubs of most towns at some point or other.

From the very minimal gigs I've been to;

Worst - Brian Kennedy (Went to the Clannad gig as my mate had a spare ticket, and sadly I was sat next to a middle aged woman who spent the whole time with the shouting and singing and stood up)

Best - I Am Kloot (This must have been in their very early years, when they were supporting The Webb Brothers, I have liked them ever since)

Worst: I saw Andrew Sachs grandaughter and her friends perform a burlesque act before a My Vitriol gig


Fair play Russell Brand....

Off the top of my head , Suicide ,Specials and the Slits all supporting the Clash at different gigs.
One of the worst, Joy Division supporting John Cooper Clarke

Wow I am very surprised to see Joy Division on the worst list. I thought most people who saw them loved them? out of interest why were they so bad? Much love to John Copper Clarke and still doing the rounds today.

They came across as a dire muddy dirge that seemed to go on for hours

My Vitriol.. I had forgotten about them! I actually got into Leeds Festival with a My Vitriol artists pass many years ago and had people asking for my autograph... which kind of made me smile as I am not sure any of the band look remotely like me!! are they still going? Remember they were touted as something special around the time Coldplay, Muse, JJ72 were doing the rounds.

There playing a gig in London in May(?) but they havent released any material since 2008 and the only have album they released came out in 2000 so they are a strange act!

I use to love JJ72

Yeh, me 2, although in retrospect he was a little whiney

I was more of a fan of the bassist

Hillary

She was a stunner !!

Just done a bit of researching and she released an album last week under the name of 'The River Cry'

Very dark & morbid sounding songs