What was your worst gig experience?

[Leumas]

Inspired by @Uncle Vinnie, I'd like us all to share our biggest performing mishaps. Shit happens all the time, and we can all agree that This Is Spinal Tap is more documentary than comedy.

Mine, playing a somewhat swanky outdoor garden party to a crowd of 5-600. My old bandmate had a hard on for monitors. We monitors coming out of our ears. Big ones, small ones, wedges, ear-bleeders, powered, unpowered. WAY more than we needed, and every time he added a new one it taxed our PA, which was temperamental at best, a little bit more.

Less than 10 minutes into the set the PA gave up the ghost. I'm pissed because I knew this thing was a piece of shit and we were asking far too much of it. Not only that, it wasn't even mine, but I was always expected to fix the problems he created. So now, with a mix of rage and embarrassment I'm desperately trying perform life support on this thing. Fortunately, his guitar was wireless, so in the interim he and the backup singer wandered through the crowd serenading guests one by one, and then in a stroke of brilliance started a sing-a-long to Let It Be.

By the time that was done I had revived that old pile of shit, by removing all of his monitors for the record, and we were able to get back into the set.

For the remainder of my time in that band I was the monitor nazi. I told him that if he didn't listen to my input and tone it down with the monitors I would refuse to go on stage.

That said he was a great guy, and a friend to this day.

 

[Kamen_Kaiju]

played an outdoor festival. On blacktop. There was no overhang.

I cooked. The guitar was so hot it was practically melting. Wouldn't stay in tune. And a string broke.

I never wanted to play outdoors again.

 

[Juan Tumani]

Last summer was our first gig since the not flu came.

That was the show I learned our drummer was a full on alcoholic. The show was a fucking embarrassment and the band collapsed in its wake.

 

[edro]

Back in the full time club circuit days, we were contracted to play a club in the northern part of the state. They agreed to the money so we loaded up the bus and headed out.... We weren't cheap.

We rolled up to this club that was a big concrete block rectangle at the edge of town.... We went in and Jeebus that place was a dump...but we were contracted so we loaded in.... I went into the can and turned around and walked back out....went out behind the place to take a whiz behind the bus.... You can imagine why..... I have never wanted to walk on a job more in my life.... Crowd was good but the place was a certified dump.... The last night, we loaded up the bus, headed out and probably an hour on the road, one side of the bus engine blew out.... A couple of us walked for an hour into the next town, found a gas station open to find a tow truck.... Tow truck from hell at 0400 to pull a bus home....way in the day when we got home.... I was never more happy to get home and swore I would kill whomever even considered booking us there again... They wanted us back but hell naw.... A bona fide hell hole..... Money ain't everything..... Only thing missing in that place was a damn chain link fence in front of the stage.....

 

[Lungo]

Band I was in during my sophomore year of college had a chance to be invited to play a festival in front of thousands of people. Couple of the organizers came to watch us play and that’s when the singer ran off stage about to cry because the mic wasn’t working. He just pointed at it and yelled “it doesn’t work!” The festival organizers didn’t stick around and that was the last time I played with those guys.

 

[Freddy G]

I posted this before:

Davidson, Quebec. Late summer of 1983, I was 18.
We had an agent in Toronto who sent us all over Ontario and Quebec. He booked our dates as if he was throwing darts at a map while blindfolded. So we pull into this logging town in the middle of bumf*ck nowhere and set up to play Thursday through Saturday night. The Thursday night crowd was good....they liked us, the bar owner liked us. But then on Friday night the place was empty. We found out there was a big wedding happening that weekend and just about everyone in town was there. At the end of the night the owner told us we were fired and had to get out. He was behind the bar with a shotgun. We took him seriously. He paid us nothing.
If that wasn't bad enough, we had nowhere to go and no money. We were supposed to call the agent at his office Monday morning to find out where we played next. So we drove back across the Ontario border and slept in our truck in a Tim Horton's parking lot until Monday morning. We were cold, hungry and miserable. When we called the agent he said, "You are playing at Uncle Sam's tonight!" Uncle Sam's was a club in our hometown, Niagara Falls. We could have just driven home that night from Quebec.
On the way to back home to Niagara, the singer and I had a disagreement about directions....nerves were frayed and he sucker punched me in the face. Oh, the vibe on stage at Uncle Sam's that night was viscous!
In those days we were told that we had to be in the Musician's union if we wanted to play the good rooms. So we were and we paid out dues. A rep from the union would actually come to the gig and collect money from us. When we saw him we told the story about how we got screwed in Davidson at the point of a shotgun and the union rep said to us "I hate hearing that kind of story, somebody should do something!" We quit the union and the band broke up as well.
Yep, that was my worst gig.

 

[wildhawk1]

County fairground...

It had poured for days. The infield was a swamp. We played on a flatbed trailer and getting to it without getting stuck was a miracle. Because of the gloomy weather the crowd was dismal.

Old renovated theatre...

The place is beautiful. After the warmup band is done we go on. About a minute in the lead singer and I look at each other. We hear a piano. Our band doesn't have piano. We glance back and to our horror the dude from the previous band has jumped right in and started pounding keys.

Parking lot...

Like another said above they're hell when it's hot out. Plenty of those over the years. A constant reminder why I hate outdoor gigs.

The rogue guitarist...

I have rules and one of them is after soundcheck we're done until the show starts. No noodling away on whatever instrument in between. IMHO it's unprofessional. Should of known better when I asked Mr. Ego to join us at a gig. Soundcheck is over and we're offstage talking to people. Suddenly a god awful noise starts blasting. I look at the stage and dumbass has one of those multi colored wigs like you see at NFL games on and starts playing some Beatles tune on his Rickenbacker. Badly. Real badly. I cut the power and told him his day was done.

Big crowd...

So much for that promise. Ended up playing to one person that just happened to stumble in because the individual that booked us months earlier forgot to promote it.



There's so many more.......

 

[Peter M]

Scariest
Playing a club in the Bronx and a guy by the bar was shot dead. Said to be a mob hit.

Funniest
Opening for Danzig: Glenn not allowing the opening bands a soundcheck because he was watching a wrestling event in the dressing room and proclaimed that if anyone made noise "they would get body slammed".

Strangest
Club owner and his son got into bloody fisticuffs right in front of the stage while we were on. Police came and arrested both.

 

[VictorB]

Back in the full time club circuit days, we were contracted to play a club in the northern part of the state. They agreed to the money so we loaded up the bus and headed out.... We weren't cheap.

We rolled up to this club that was a big concrete block rectangle at the edge of town.... We went in and Jeebus that place was a dump...but we were contracted so we loaded in.... I went into the can and turned around and walked back out....went out behind the place to take a whiz behind the bus.... You can imagine why..... I have never wanted to walk on a job more in my life.... Crowd was good but the place was a certified dump.... The last night, we loaded up the bus, headed out and probably an hour on the road, one side of the bus engine blew out.... A couple of us walked for an hour into the next town, found a gas station open to find a tow truck.... Tow truck from hell at 0400 to pull a bus home....way in the day when we got home.... I was never more happy to get home and swore I would kill whomever even considered booking us there again... They wanted us back but hell naw.... A bona fide hell hole..... Money ain't everything..... Only thing missing in that place was a damn chain link fence in front of the stage.....

F'n Northern Alabama!

 

[edro]

Noodling is one sure fire way for me to go full spider monkey on somebody.....

 

[edro]

F'n Northern Alabama!

Damn right.... Full of damn yankee carpetbagger infiltrators and TN river basin mudbank cretins....

 

[Juan Tumani]

I posted this before:

Davidson, Quebec. Late summer of 1983, I was 18.
We had an agent in Toronto who sent us all over Ontario and Quebec. He booked our dates as if he was throwing darts at a map while blindfolded. So we pull into this logging town in the middle of bumf*ck nowhere and set up to play Thursday through Saturday night. The Thursday night crowd was good....they liked us, the bar owner liked us. But then on Friday night the place was empty. We found out there was a big wedding happening that weekend and just about everyone in town was there. At the end of the night the owner told us we were fired and had to get out. He was behind the bar with a shotgun. We took him seriously. He paid us nothing.
If that wasn't bad enough, we had nowhere to go and no money. We were supposed to call the agent at his office Monday morning to find out where we played next. So we drove back across the Ontario border and slept in our truck in a Tim Horton's parking lot until Monday morning. We were cold, hungry and miserable. When we called the agent he said, "You are playing at Uncle Sam's tonight!" Uncle Sam's was a club in our hometown, Niagara Falls. We could have just driven home that night from Quebec.
On the way to back home to Niagara, the singer and I had a disagreement about directions....nerves were frayed and he sucker punched me in the face. Oh, the vibe on stage at Uncle Sam's that night was viscous!
In those days we were told that we had to be in the Musician's union if we wanted to play the good rooms. So we were and we paid out dues. A rep from the union would actually come to the gig and collect money from us. When we saw him we told the story about how we got screwed in Davidson at the point of a shotgun and the union rep said to us "I hate hearing that kind of story, somebody should do something!" We quit the union and the band broke up as well.
Yep, that was my worst gig.

My old band briefly had an agent. He booked us shows in shitty bars all over Southern Ontario. All the shows he got us paid crap and then he took a big cut. After about 5 shows we told him to fuck off. Every once in a while I run into another band with the same stories. More than once when I asked if the agents name was Phil the answer is yes. This was mid/late 90's for our band.

One of the bars Phil booked us in was "The Stage Stop" in Cambridge. The entire wall beside the stage was a Rob Zombie mural and during the second set a couple of guys were shooting up directly in front of the stage.

 

[Leumas]

Noodling is one sure fire way for me to go full spider monkey on somebody.....

Yup. I haven’t walked off a gig because of it, but I have made enemies right before a set.

 

[edro]

Noodling on stage is one of the most unprofessional things one can do....

- No. Nobody is impressed with your wanking.
- Yes. Most everybody out there wishes you'd just STFU.
- Yes. You are waaaaaaaaay too loud because the band is not playing at the same time you are doing your obnoxious Malmsteen bullshit....

 

[dc007]

played an outdoor festival. On blacktop. There was no overhang.

I cooked. The guitar was so hot it was practically melting. Wouldn't stay in tune. And a string broke.

I never wanted to play outdoors again.

Mine was an outdoor gig as well. Fuck playing outside

 

[DavGrape]

First one.
I don't care to talk about it.
Pffff.
Oh, alright...
17 years old we was, band about a year old.
We sucked anyway, and had about 40 minutes of material, if you dawdled.
Junior high school dance; every fuggin' kid in the school was there.
They wanted to have a good time.
We did War Pigs, Bastille Day, Can't Get Enough, others...
Can't Get Enough was prolly the only danceable tune, and that sucked anyway.
At the speed you play live, we were done after a half-hour.
"What do we do!?"
"Take a break... take a break..."
Then jammed thru three or four roughly known ones....
Al comes up with the brilliant idea of "We got a request to do some over again..."

Oh my Lord we did them again... these kids were pissed and were fuggin' yelling at us.
We dicked around all evening, stretching things out, Stairway to Heaven was in there, and that stunk like Ernest Borgnine's clothes hamper.
I think we shut down about a half hour early, holy shit it was horrible.

 

[MikeyTheCat]

We were booked to play three nights at a club, the club owner thought it would a good idea to setup in a town square and drum up business. We thought it was an awful idea but he thought otherwise. So we setup with our smallest PA, used our amps and entertained people in the town square who had no interest in wanting to be entertained. We ended up getting into a audio fight with another club owner who happened to have his club in that same town square, and brought some of his PA out and blasted Sinatra to where we could hardly hear ourselves. We could tell the bystanders were not amused and we packed up.

Anybody want to guess if the guy who booked us knew that his rival had his club in that town square?
Also Les Pauls or acoustic guitars and Low Country summers with their humidity don't go well together.

And of course there was playing to 4000 empty seats in an arena for a music festival that the newby promoter of said festival failed to promote. At all.

 

[VictorB]

Noodling on stage is one of the most unprofessional things one can do....

- No. Nobody is impressed with your wanking.
- Yes. Most everybody out there wishes you'd just STFU.
- Yes. You are waaaaaaaaay too loud because the band is not playing at the same time you are doing your obnoxious Malmsteen bullshit....

Telling whoever it is doing it to “practice at home!” seems to get them to stop.

 

[edro]

Telling whoever it is doing it to “practice at home!” seems to get them to stop.

or....

'If it took that long to set MY amp, I set the sonofabitch on fire and get a real amp....'

 

[Juan Tumani]

Lol.

First one.
I don't care to talk about it.
Pffff.
Oh, alright...
17 years old we was, band about a year old.
We sucked anyway, and had about 40 minutes of material, if you dawdled.
Junior high school dance; every fuggin' kid in the school was there.
They wanted to have a good time.
We did War Pigs, Bastille Day, Can't Get Enough, others...
Can't Get Enough was prolly the only danceable tune, and that sucked anyway.
At the speed you play live, we were done after a half-hour.
"What do we do!?"
"Take a break... take a break..."
Then jammed thru three or four roughly known ones....
Al comes up with the brilliant idea of "We got a request to do some over again..."

Oh my Lord we did them again... these kids were pissed and were fuggin' yelling at us.
We dicked around all evening, stretching things out, Stairway to Heaven was in there, and that stunk like Ernest Borgnine's clothes hamper.
I think we shut down about a half hour early, holy shit it was horrible.

In high school a couple of my friends and I decided to be part of the Coffee House. There were many bands and there wasn't an expectation of filling a certain amount of time per band, it was "let us know how long you want" and they'll arrange things from there.

My buddy was a Bass player and I'm a guitar player but he'd written a handful of songs and wanted to play guitar so we switched. A fourth friend was super excited about the whole thing and suddenly in the "band" despite being fairly new to guitar. He had a shitty Strat copy with a knock off Floyd Rose and was struggling to get it in tune so I tuned it for him before we went up. Before our first note I look over and he's tuning it again but now it's so far from useful we're like "I guess you're on tambourine tonight".

Anyway, after two out of six songs they "didn't have enough time to let us finish".