Once in a while the most horrible thing you can think of happens. Something so bad it stops the show, and/or leaves you embarrassed, and possibly ends the band.

Start with mine...

My old band gets into a small BOTB at a nightclub in Providence. We decide to do mostly covers since our originals were works in progress. We go through Smells Like Teen Spirit, Brainstew, and Self Esteem. (I know, horrible choices, but we had to pick simple stuff that we could master in a week of practice...). Our last song was Santeria. We do amazing, the crowd was singing along and I felt on top of the world. Until.. the singer forgets the lyrics to the last verse. He stops, the guitarist is caught off guard and stops playing, and the drummer follows suit. I stop last...we look at each other, and pack up and leave.

The band never got together again.

ALWAYS use your best musicianship to play through mistakes - sing one of the other verses again, stick another solo in while the singer gets his **** together - do it all with a look of fun and confidence and all will be forgiven.

But just stopping... no.

Had a jerk of a band leader blather on about our band name for ten minutes. During a 40 minute set.

Afterwords, my cab was knocked off stage. It exploded.

Also, the strap button on my bass fell out.

This is all the same show, BTW.

Drove 3 hours to play to a basically empty room and it comes to the last song of the set and the singer/guitarist snaps the head stock off his £2,000 ES335, doesn't even know how he did it. that but a Sh*ter on the whole bands night.

One rule - no matter how bad someone misses, never stop playing.

One night we were playing our version of Funky Miracle which included a short bass solo in the middle. I would play it basically the same way every time...same count...same notes leading out...etc. It was one of those we've done a million times things.

One night our guitar player just competely blanks when I'm coming out the solo back into the regular part of the tune....so I continue to solo thinking, I'll just noodle a bit then play the walk up back into the song again. Wrong, by this time the drummer is also a bit out of touch because of the deviation. So I start the walk up out the solo, make eye contact with the drummer, and.....nothing. They both miss it again.

Luckilly after the third solo they came back. Very few people were wise to the mistake, and some even came up and said, "Hey man - great solo" and stuff like that. I was just happy to be able cover for the extra 40 seconds or whatever it ended up being. Fealt like an hour.

had a guest drummer get up from behind the kit, trip, and spilled an entire pint of beer all over my amp. immediately destroying it. never saw him again, wouldn't return my calls, no offer to cover the damage. brand new amp too. man i was beyond pissed.

One of the bands I was in a few years back was playing our first ever show. There was a young man in a wheelchair in the audience and he wanted to hear "Turn The Page" by Bob Seager. We didn't know the song. Five minutes before we are supposed to set up and start playing the lead guitarit/singer pulls up a halfassed chord chart on his portable laptop. We did one quick run through before taking the stage and then used it for our opening song. :rolleyes:

The band never played together again after that show. :rollno:

Guitarist called out a tune...........I played something different.

whew.........horrible lost feeling.

I hate it when that happens!

Playing in Jersey (showish type band)

I did the "sing to the girl".. went out in the audience.. it ended up being a fluffy rocker dude.

Next day.. sing to the girl.. she 8.5 months pregnant.

Never knew either ones until they were standing to applause

About a month ago I was playing my 7 string and couldnt' for the life of me remember how it was tuned.. all this at a signature insttumental break.. that lasts for about 30 seconds.

last night guitar calls out Righty & starts the intro. my opening note is loud & low in this tune & BAM! i let my Eb ring loud & long & the guitar is playing Bb!!!!

so everyone starts looking at me like i did it. good thing it was only the soundcheck. but it was still in front of a good size crowd.

Playing in Jersey (showish type band)

I did the "sing to the girl".. went out in the audience.. it ended up being a fluffy rocker dude.

Next day.. sing to the girl.. she 8.5 months pregnant.

Never knew either ones until they were standing to applause


http://smiliesftw.com/x/bowrofl.gif (http://smiliesftw.com)

The worst gig I can think of off hand was at a bar with one opener of a band. We had the headliner cancel, so we were the head liner, and expected to play well over an hour, maybe even two to cover the time.

The opening band shows up late, and takes forever to set up. They play 45 minutes (all the material they had since they were a new band), and took FOREVER to tear down - over 45 minutes just to tear down.

They finally finish up, we very quickly set up, and we start playing... for 15 minutes.

I was absolutely livid.

All the while, the guitarist was passing a kidney stone. He was writhing in pain at the time. As soon as we were done, his girlfriend shuffled him off to the hospital.

To top it off, the bar stiffed us on the pay, claiming that too many people drifted off because we took too long to set up. I explained how the other band had acted like rockstars and just left the stage with their crap, but the bar owner didn't want to hear it.

We'll never play at that bar or with that band ever again, but it's far too very small of a comfort for how crappy that night went.

last night guitar calls out Righty & starts the intro. my opening note is loud & low in this tune & BAM! i let my Eb ring loud & long & the guitar is playing Bb!!!!

so everyone starts looking at me like i did it. good thing it was only the soundcheck. but it was still in front of a good size crowd.

No matter how right you might be, you will always be wrong when playing with a guitarist :scowl:

A few weeks ago my band is booked to play a show at 9:30. We all plan to show up about 8pm to chill together and have a few drinks before the show. We arrive at 8pm and the place is closed, no one around. Luckily we all brought some beers along. We drink in the parking lot and the guy who booked us shows up. The place is still closed. We drink more.

Finally the place opens at a little after 9pm... great.

We begin setting up and my drummer can't seem to find his tom. He gets angry, his snare has been stolen, he claims. We all look around, and now we're all mad as well.

"Are you sure you brought it?" we ask "Of course I did" says he. (I'm sure you can see where this is going)

Oh, I forgot to mention, one of our synth players is hardly conscious. He was depressed and took too many pills that day (very out of character for him).

Most of our stuff is all set up, minus the missing tom & the drummers cymbals. It's now about 10pm, the show hasnt started yet. I'm ready to just break down my gear and leave. Our drummer insists we play on. So we play two song, really badly, and walk off stage.

Our drummer found his tom back at his house.

A few weeks ago my band is booked to play a show at 9:30. We all plan to show up about 8pm to chill together and have a few drinks before the show. We arrive at 8pm and the place is closed, no one around. Luckily we all brought some beers along. We drink in the parking lot and the guy who booked us shows up. The place is still closed. We drink more.

Finally the place opens at a little after 9pm... great.

We begin setting up and my drummer can't seem to find his snare. He gets angry, his snare has been stolen, he claims. We all look around, and now we're all mad as well.

"Are you sure you brought it?" we ask "Of course I did" says he. (I'm sure you can see where this is going)

Oh, I forgot to mention, one of our synth players is hardly conscious. He was depressed and took too many pills that day (very out of character for him).

Most of our stuff is all set up, minus the missing tom & the drummers cymbals. It's now about 10pm, the show hasnt started yet. I'm ready to just break down my gear and leave. Our drummer insists we play on. So we play two song, really badly, and walk off stage.

Our drummer found his tom back at his house.

Okay, i'm confused, was it his tom or his snare he forgot?

No matter how right you might be, you will always be wrong when playing with a guitarist :scowl:

So true. I compensate by learning the songs and nailing them. I don't argue with guitarists any more. Whatev'

As far as my own experience: strap coming off at the horn, good thing while playing, I managed to catch the neck before it hit, put the strap back on and came back in. 4 bars lost.

And it was a Dunlop strap lock. I am seriously thinking about going Schaller.

I once broke my bass jack, my cord, and the input on my amp in one fell swoop in the middle of a song.

I was playing a gig in Philly in 1989, at a place called Dobbs on South Street. It was a "battle of the bands" and I had my brand new Ibanez four string. At the end of our set I threw the bass up in the air, missed it, and it landed on the edge of one of the floor monitors. It cracked from the bridge all the way to the neck. My mom was in the audience.

I was playing in a band that got booked to back an Irish violinist, I'm pretty sure his name was Dermot McConville. He played Stephan Grappelli, hot club style jazz.

Somehow he recognized me as a gearhead and in the break is showing me his special violin combo. He tips it forward to show me the speaker and, thinking I have hold of it, let's go where upon it falls on my foot (breaking a toe I found out later).

So now the combo doesn't work, I identify a broken fuse and, being the bass player, I have a spare in my car. What I didn't know and should have checked is that our Irish friend has tried switching the amp back on while I'm at my car.

I push the fuse in and promptly get electrocuted and blown back 10 feet across the dance floor (this was in the UK, 240 volts there!). Spent the rest of the evening at the hospital.

Worst. Gig. Evahhhh!

"So true. I compensate by learning the songs and nailing them. I don't argue with guitarists any more. Whatev'"

you can nail the song as much as you want but it still won't sound like you nailed it when you are in different keys.

I was playing a gig in Philly in 1989, at a place called Dobbs on South Street. It was a "battle of the bands" and I had my brand new Ibanez four string. At the end of our set I threw the bass up in the air, missed it, and it landed on the edge of one of the floor monitors. It cracked from the bridge all the way to the neck. My mom was in the audience.


Now that's rocknroll

We played this show at a wannabe sports pub in a relatively affluent area of town. We had the owner call us three hours before the show and convince us to cancel our show. We declined because we were travelling and were halfway there. We got there, set up and played the first set... great set! However, the owner is furious with us because two of his so-called regulars didn't like our music (we were playing a variety of rock / alternative and indie music; the so-called regulars wanted to hear urban pop music). after a very uncomfortable confrontation (for him), we agreed to play one more set and try to cater to these two people's "taste". When we hit the stage, we played the worst set we've ever played and only played obscure stuff. After our set, our (expletive deleted) singer wanted to leave... so he mumbled to our guitar player about getting paid and left us to take down all of our equipment and deal with the owner. There's a silver lining in all of this... 1) we got paid every penny after another awkward confrontation with the owner. he paid by check and the check cleared!, and 2) we got rid of our singer.

I remember someone here telling a story that they used to have a drummer who no matter how drunk he got, he would play like he was sober. In fact, he could play better with a few in him, loosened him up.

Well, one night he got in a fight with his girl or something and drank wayyyy too much. The monitor setup on stage wasn't the greatest, and the bassist could hear that something was off with the drums, so he looked over and the drummer was flailing about knocking over his cymbals drunkenly trying to play. He fell over the front of the entire kit and passed out mid song. Hilarious.

one scenario that seems to be repetitive:

guitarist forgets to move capo
guitarist plays intro
I come in
I look like an idiot

I'm usually standing in the back -- can't see where the capo is. I don't know how to get around that one.

guitarist forgets to move capo
guitarist plays intro
I come in
I look like an idiot


I think every bass player has experienced this; if you haven't, send me your guitarists. :P

Oh, and I used to know a bass player that would play with a capo as well. If the guitarist had a capo on 4, so did that bass player. I never did understand it. :eyebrow:

I showed up and found out I'd been replaced.

I showed up and found out I'd been replaced.

^ LOL ouch....

A few that happened to me recently:

- One gig, the power situation at the place is horrible. My amp is plugged into an outlet on the *front* of the stage (stage is a whole 6" high). Mid song, some guy bumps the plug and unplugs my rig. All the sudden I'm just completely dead. Figured it out quick and got back in before song was done.

- Second gig with my new band, I just completely blank out on the intro to "Interstate Love Song". The guitarist launched into the wrong part and it just totally threw me. I missed the entire intro just staring at the guitarist's left hand trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Thankfully my brain kicked into gear on the downbeat of the first verse so it just looked like a flubbed intro instead of trainwrecking the whole song.

Oh yeah, and I almost cracked a rib years ago jumping off the drum riser. Pro tip--make sure when you land in a crouch, your bass isn't wedged between your thigh and your ribcage. Thankfully it was at the end of a song, so as I rolled from a crouch to lying on my back in pain I hit the last note and the crowd went nuts thinking I meant to do the whole thing.

Around 1986 or so...

Played in some dive bar that the owners, their daughter and her husband lived in apartments upstairs. We were taking equipment out to our cars when suddenly the son-in-law comes running down the steps and starts chasing me down the hallway. It seems he believes that I was flirting with his wife. I could have out run him, except I was stuck behind a very large Leslie speaker in a very narrow hallway. :help:

Being the non-violent person that I am... I got the crap beat out of me.

Two weeks later, the bar burned to the ground... it wasn't me. ;)

Lesson learned, Leslie's are more hassle than they're worth. Be it a speaker or a woman. :D

I push the fuse in and promptly get electrocuted and blown back 10 feet across the dance floor (this was in the UK, 240 volts there!). Spent the rest of the evening at the hospital.

Worst. Gig. Evahhhh!


Now that's a bad night.

Oh, and I used to know a bass player that would play with a capo as well. If the guitarist had a capo on 4, so did that bass player. I never did understand it. :eyebrow:

I was playing at church one day when I capo'd the old axe. 4 of 6 strings to boot. The problem with having 3 hours of sleep and then going to church is that when your worship leader decides to change the key from E to Ab, is that you don't have the brain power to get your head around the whole thing.:D

"So true. I compensate by learning the songs and nailing them. I don't argue with guitarists any more. Whatev'"

you can nail the song as much as you want but it still won't sound like you nailed it when you are in different keys.

Given that I practice solo over the recording, I know I am in the right key.

Been with a guitarist who never wanted to retune. So we played everything at whatever key he wanted.

I am now good at transposing.

Okay, i'm confused, was it his tom or his snare he forgot?

My bad, it was the tom, not sure why I said snare, or why I almost wrote snare right now instead of tom, again...

Two gigs where a guy got stabbed to death.
One gig where the drummers best friend got beat to death in the parking lot.

About 5 years ago I was in a band that played a nudist dance.

Only 3 people showed up. And yes they were (horribly) naked.

At least we still got paid.

Bad gigs are never fun..

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154960/?searchterm=erection

Two gigs where a guy got stabbed to death.
One gig where the drummers best friend got beat to death in the parking lot.

Suddenly I don't feel so bad.

Haha, that has never happened to me. Though if it did, that would be a total riot :P

Haha, that has never happened to me. Though if it did, that would be a total riot :P

The getting beaten to death part? Or the knowing-people-at-a-gig-who-got-beat-to-death part? [various shocked smiley face emoticons]

last friday i was doing a gig with my band at a halloween party. unfortunately for us, we had a DJ also inside the building. it was great he was providing our band with lighting and fog, but... when we finished our set, the crowd was yelling for an encore and as soon as the DJ heard, he BLASTED his dance music and we got mad and quit out.

you'd have to be a REAL jerk to deny an encore but we were forced out of it :(
i really hate that DJ now.

And it was a Dunlop strap lock. I am seriously thinking about going Schaller.

i have em. they work like a charm tho the bolt holding it can get loose at time. well i didnt really use a tool... they work great overall but make sure the hole in your strap isnt TOO large.

The getting beaten to death part? Or the knowing-people-at-a-gig-who-got-beat-to-death part? [various shocked smiley face emoticons]

I was talking about the video where the kid is onstage and "bell rings"

Whew...after reading some of these I don't feel so bad.

I picked up the bass only a few months ago and was immediately 'in the band' with a group of my buddies (they were already playing as a band...unfortunately no bassist). Anyway, I had next to no time to 1) learn some basics to get me by for the short-term, and 2) learn their 'catalog' of songs (thank goodness most were easy...relatively speaking of course). Right after picking up the bass I had to leave for 5 weeks for a school and upon my return immediately left on a 2-week vacation with the wife.

The night I returned from leave I received a phone call that we were playing the post-inspection party for the base...early the next morning. Doh! Talk about nervous as heck, not only was this my first 'gig', but we had a total of 30 minutes of practice together (at least with me included)!

The first couple of songs went okay...I was shaking like a leaf, but played well (not too many foul-ups, though some). My confidence slowly started to build and I was getting more comfortable...starting to really feel it...you know what I mean.

Until...that one song. You know the one...the one that you just know you have nailed...comfortable enough with it that you can play it in your sleep.

Anyway, about 3 bars into the song the guitarist (whom crammed me into a tiny space because he likes to jump and wail all over the place) he turned to me and shouted "you're playing it wrong!!!":eek: What really sucked was that next to the stage where said guitarist and I were at, were a few tables crammed with our work collegues and friends...and all of them clearly overheard the comment! Talk about embarassed...

Needless to say, I was very gun-shy for the remainder of the gig. Come to find out that I had learned the song right (I know how to read music) but wasn't aware that while I was gone (and after our initial practice together) that they decided to change keys! Oops...guess someone didn't think it was important enough to tell me beforehand!!!

This one dates back to about the mid 80's in L.A., playing a gig @ Club 88 (wonder if it's still around anymore), I was playing guitar in an original band, and I could NOT believe this, the bassist, after having ONE beer (I kid you not) starts forgetting MAJOR portions of songs onstage, material we had rehearsed and played NUMEROUS times. Talk about Embarrassment City, It got to the point I was shouting out chord names to him onstage. That was the longest 45 minutes I ever spent onstage. Plus, a girl I just started dating was in the audience too (I'm thinking, I'M FREAKING TOAST!!!). Thankfully, that girlfriend was so gracious and understanding and completely supported my decision to quit that band.

Shortly afterward, the singer and I dumped that band and started something that was much better, and NOBODY forgot their parts.

What a dive! the stage smelled like cat pee! And I played there, too way back then

Played a rich kid's party, & somehow the singer got dosed with something trippy. And he barely drank, much less smoked. Poor guy started to freak out pretty bad during the set, looking real wild eyed and scared, and we stopped playing to try to help calm him. The F'in party goers laughed at him, and commanded us to start playing again, or they would kick our A$$eS. I told them I am calling the cops and an ambulance, and suddenly they got real helpful. We got our gear out, and got paid, but I still get angry when I think about that....

Guitar player made a quick move with his headstock and caught the (female ) lead singer right on the mouth. Blood everywhere, a few stitches at the end of the night.

What a dive! the stage smelled like cat pee! And I played there, too way back then


Oh yes, I do remember the "cat aura" all too well.

Played a rich kid's party, & somehow the singer got dosed with something trippy. And he barely drank, much less smoked. Poor guy started to freak out pretty bad during the set, looking real wild eyed and scared, and we stopped playing to try to help calm him. The F'in party goers laughed at him, and commanded us to start playing again, or they would kick our A$$eS. I told them I am calling the cops and an ambulance, and suddenly they got real helpful. We got our gear out, and got paid, but I still get angry when I think about that....

That scares me.

Last night was horrible. We got a new singer about a month ago, and we had to play a full night. We busted our asses doubling up practices, learning songs he knew and I took on the responsibility of singing more songs from our old setlist. So out of the 37 songs we played (definitely not enough) he sang 20 from our old setlist, 9 were new and I sang 8. I had to bail the singer out repeatedly (timing, lyrics, inflection, etc.) I don't smoke and I needed a cigarette after the first set.

My breaking point was when the guitarist called an audible and started a song that was supposed to be played later in the set. The singer just walked off and thought I was singing it. I never sang this song, nor was I supposed to. I did my best to recall the lyrics from memory and play at the same time. It was f****** awful. I blew up right after. I can't remember the last time I was that angry. I wanted to quit right then and there, but I managed to keep myself in check and finished the gig.

I talked to the guitarist for a bit and I'm pretty sure this guy is gone. If he's not, then I will be.

one scenario that seems to be repetitive:

guitarist forgets to move capo
guitarist plays intro
I come in
I look like an idiot

I'm usually standing in the back -- can't see where the capo is. I don't know how to get around that one.

been there...

even worse- the song used a pitchshifter as well

My band played our first show back from tour in 4 months last night with 2 new members, I jumped up and when I landed, my strap ripped. Haha. Set was kinda sloppy too, but whatever. I had fun. We played with a bunch of our friends. It just felt good to play live for the first time in awhile.

It started when the guy busted a whiskey bottle on the mixer and said, "When you boys gonna play some country music?"

It ended when I got home and realized I'd lost my wallet...and the band's pay for the night, $1,000.

Need I say more?

hey i have done worse. my band and i were playing at a club and the lead guitar forgot the whole solo and just stopped and it didn't help that the drummer stopped too. the vocalist stopped and it was just me and the rhythm guitar. he stopped and to make matters worse just when i stopped my bass strap snapped and the bass fell on my foot. let me tell ya it didn't sound good through the amps. the audience just left and went to the bar for more drinks. all in about a minute that happened. NOT FUN

1st 'real' band in high school, a bluegrass band, 1st real paying gig at a dive bar out in 1 of the scruffier suburbs. 3 Fridays & Saturdays in a row. 1st Friday night, not bad. We were a little nervous but we remembered how all the gear hooked up and the crowd, though small, was appreciative. We come back for the Saturday gig to find the place JAMMED because the cub had a special promo - $5 pitchers for any industrial league softball players that came in uniform from their game. Most games ended by 6 - 6:30 & we didn't start til 8:30 so these folks were hammered! Spent much of the evening dodging the peanut shells they were trying to throw into the soundhole of the guitar player's guitar.

Ahh the glamourous showbiz life...

Show up to a gig. I tie into the power panel at the club. I did a voltage check on a couple of outlets on our distro and everything seems fine. Fire everything up and smoke EVERYWHERE! Stuff is burning up left and right. Guitar amp, two keboards, bass pre, couple of power amps.....all fried. The club owner comes out about 30 seconds later and says "Hey, I forgot to tell you guys we got struck during the storm the other night. Our power system is all over the place. Be careful!" Needless to say I had some choice words for him. We didn't play there that night, or ever again. His insurance paid for everything but it took a few months. What a PITA.

2nd fun one - I was between bands and doing the occaisional PA rental for other bands in the area and was booked for a frat party. I get set up, we're about ready to do a soundcheck, I turn everything on and a loud pop and a puff of smoke comes out of the stage right Perkins bin. It's 50 miles round trip to where I store my gear but I jump in the station wagon, haul ass back there & grab my acoustic 2-15 cabinet, haul back to the frat party, unload it, patch it in in place of the dead bin and off we go about 45 minutes late. Decent gig, band was good, sound was ok for an outdoor gig with mis-matched cabinets. At the end of the night I go to get my wagon to load up and it's gone - towed by campus police for being parked illegally when I unloaded the bass cab.

The impound fee was $150 - exactly what I got paid for the gig.

2nd fun one - I was between bands and doing the occaisional PA rental for other bands in the area and was booked for a frat party. I get set up, we're about ready to do a soundcheck, I turn everything on and a loud pop and a puff of smoke comes out of the stage right Perkins bin. It's 50 miles round trip to where I store my gear but I jump in the station wagon, haul ass back there & grab my acoustic 2-15 cabinet, haul back to the frat party, unload it, patch it in in place of the dead bin and off we go about 45 minutes late. Decent gig, band was good, sound was ok for an outdoor gig with mis-matched cabinets. At the end of the night I go to get my wagon to load up and it's gone - towed by campus police for being parked illegally when I unloaded the bass cab.

The impound fee was $150 - exactly what I got paid for the gig.

Similar story, Booked for a Oldies show at a theatre in Stroudsburg, PA. Old place with no parking lot. Unloaded and told to "park on the other side of the fence across the street". Did so and went in for sound check etc. Went for dinner and got back to the theatre to find I had been towed as illegally parked. Got a ride and got my car out of impound cost a borrowed $150...exact pay for gig

Opening for Bad Religion at a pretty big theater in Detroit. Somebody in the audience is throwing things at us, can't tell what they are. Finally we get a good look at these projectiles and they turn out to be severed gopher heads. This nut job had a whole bag of them. Our guitar player was so outraged that he jumped into the audience and confronted the guy, almost got into a fist fight before the bouncers took the guy out. Other than that, it was a pretty good set.

Small club in Germany. I took some kind of pill, not sure what it was (this was in my younger and more indulgent days). Anyway, about half way through the set I blacked out. To this day, I don't remember anything from half-way through the set until the next morning.

Warfield Theater in SF. Big homecoming show after a long tour -- all of our friends and family are in the audience. We're excited. Drummer counts off the first song, I do a big rock n' roll leap into the air and fall flat on my ass.

Hole in the wall club called the Icepick in some town in Michigan. Walk in, bunch of scary dudes that seem sort of like a cross between skinheads and the hillbillys from Deliverance. Tons of grafitti all over the walls, including a bunch of scary racist crap. We hang around a little and get freaked out, so we decide we are not going to play. We hadn't loaded in yet, so we just try to slip out and make a quick getaway. The scary dudes literally chase us out of town and then show up to the next night's show in a different town. We had to hide out in the dressing room until they left.

I got a million terrible show stories -- those are just a few!

I remember someone here telling a story that they used to have a drummer who no matter how drunk he got, he would play like he was sober. In fact, he could play better with a few in him, loosened him up.

Well, one night he got in a fight with his girl or something and drank wayyyy too much. The monitor setup on stage wasn't the greatest, and the bassist could hear that something was off with the drums, so he looked over and the drummer was flailing about knocking over his cymbals drunkenly trying to play. He fell over the front of the entire kit and passed out mid song. Hilarious.

Our drummer had just gotten out of an alcohol rehab class after getting a DUI. He invited a bunch of people from rehab to see our show. He wanted to drink, but didn't want them to see him drinking. He normally drinks beer and was drinking water (we thought) from a sports bottle. We found out later that the bottle was full of straight vodka. He was so trashed that he got up and walked off stage right in the middle of the second set with the dance floor full of people. He announced that he had to pee, headed to bathroom, took a cigarette break, and then came back with no explanation. We still had an entire third set and he was so drunk he could barely play. It was the worst and most embarrassing set we ever played. When he was packing his drums after the show, he fell over one of the floor monitors and knocked over half of his drum kit. We have a new drummer now. :)

Show up to a gig. I tie into the power panel at the club. I did a voltage check on a couple of outlets on our distro and everything seems fine. Fire everything up and smoke EVERYWHERE! Stuff is burning up left and right. Guitar amp, two keboards, bass pre, couple of power amps.....all fried. The club owner comes out about 30 seconds later and says "Hey, I forgot to tell you guys we got struck during the storm the other night. Our power system is all over the place. Be careful!" Needless to say I had some choice words for him. We didn't play there that night, or ever again. His insurance paid for everything but it took a few months. What a PITA.

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t199/yvonnerippel/FOOD/Stir_fry_pita.jpg

The worst thing that's ever happened at one of my gigs was when both of our PA speakers blew before we finished the 2nd set at that band's very first gig. Besides that happening, 1/2 the band was drunk/stoned out of their mind and our singer was sick. It was my first and last gig with that band.

guitarist beaten up by bouncers, hospitalised
singer arrested for drunk & disorderly
this was the same gig...

i fell offstage once but that was more funny than anything else.

oh and i played a big outdoor community gig in East London that was shut down by the police after some poor kid got stabbed.

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t199/yvonnerippel/FOOD/Stir_fry_pita.jpg

You sod - I'm reading this at half 7 at night, dinners not gonna be for ages and I'm BLOODY 'ungry now!!! :D

I was playing guitar for a band and we played a show at Cleveland's Peabody's a few years back. I was enjoying the band that was on before us and we are all good friends with the band, so I jumped on stage and decided to do a stage dive. Jumped right off the stage and everyone moves out of the way. Woke up to our roadie yelling my name to get on stage. Couldn't remember any of the songs, my head was bleeding, and it was all on tape. Watching it was funny just seeing my a$$ fly into the air and then seeing me do a nose dive and with my feet straight in the air...funny but horrible show

I was playing in a band that got booked to back an Irish violinist, I'm pretty sure his name was Dermot McConville. He played Stephan Grappelli, hot club style jazz.

Somehow he recognized me as a gearhead and in the break is showing me his special violin combo. He tips it forward to show me the speaker and, thinking I have hold of it, let's go where upon it falls on my foot (breaking a toe I found out later).

So now the combo doesn't work, I identify a broken fuse and, being the bass player, I have a spare in my car. What I didn't know and should have checked is that our Irish friend has tried switching the amp back on while I'm at my car.

I push the fuse in and promptly get electrocuted and blown back 10 feet across the dance floor (this was in the UK, 240 volts there!). Spent the rest of the evening at the hospital.

Worst. Gig. Evahhhh!

/thread.

Erm mine is proabbly the best one....

Around 5 years ago, i was playing in a busy wedding and function band, i was also doing alot of other work at the same time. One night we we're playing a wedding gig, i had been working stupid hours that week and had driven straight to the gig very tired. The start of the second set my body decides to let me know that i should get some rest....by giving me my first and only (touch wood) epileptic seizure....

I blacked out, dropped to the floor and started convulsing... The singer thought i had been electricuted.

Luckily there we're several nurses attending the wedding....

Erm mine is proabbly the best one...
If you say so, but did you read #36?

At least you survived!

Played a seedy bar years ago in a blues/rock band and a fight broke out . Our singer/guitar player broke it up. Well the guy he kicked out wouldn't stay down and came back and stabbed him in the back.
I took my buddy to the hospital and sat in the parking lot drinking beer while he went in and got stitched up.He's fine.

...they turn out to be severed gopher heads....Despite this site being around for over a decade, with the multitude of members, and exponentially more posts throughout that time frame, I am willing to bet my entire rig (and a kidney) that no one person has EVER typed the phrase "severed gopher heads" before. Ever.

Severed gopher heads,the new bacon.

One even snuck into my sig. :atoz:

One afternoon before a gig, our one and only roadie got abducted bij aliens. We had to do everything ourselves.

Little while ago, i was doing sound for a Jazz concert... Some gal comes stumbling in drunk and has to *walk* past me to an open seat. About two minutes later she tries to stumble back out to relieve herself, but she does not make it. she manages to get by me, but managed to splat a nasty puke hand print right on my chest.

And I had to clean up.

And I never got paid.

And the gal she threw up on is a nice gal I've been flirting with, but she seems to associate me with vomit now.

Which is not cool.

Ok, I've got one. Back in the 90's I was in a popular original band in Atlanta. We were booked to play the local music awards show at the Cotton Club-a large and pretty prestigious venue at the time. It was about a 900-seater and totally sold out. EVERYONE in the Atlanta music scene was there: radio personalities, signed bands, the works. Each band or performer was allotted 15 minutes to play and of course there were no soundchecks. We tune up backstage and then go out there. We start our first song and something is VERY VERY wrong but the the sound is so bad we can't even tell what it is initially. We finally (probably only a minute or so but felt like days) figure out that the guitarist is terribly, horribly out of tune. In tune with himself, but out of tune with everyone else. That's easily enough fixed, then: he has a spare guitar! He picks up his spare guitar and starts playing again-sounds exactly the same! He checks his tuner-according to it, he's perfectly in tune! He's probably 1 and 1/2 steps out and our set is 3 songs long. He tries to struggle back into tune by ear while we continue to play and pretend nothing is wrong but the set is far too short for us to redeem ourselves. We play our 3 songs and slink off stage in humiliation. Afterwards, we figure out that while he was tuning, he accidentally hit the "calibrate" button on his tuner and calibrated A440 to some random note. Horrible!!

Hah, our lead singer would always forget some line to at least 2 songs at every gig, walk over the lead players chorus, etc. We got to the point we could adjust within a quarter note due to the frequency of his mistakes (they were never in the same songs or same place, but we were always ready) How good did we do? Well, we went in to cut a CD of covers to shop around at the local bars, ran the 5 songs as a live band performance, three tries on each song then out, overdub the vocals on a scratch track. Singer missed a bridge bar in "LA Woman", we all caught it in 1 quarter note and continued, the engineer, said to us he was impressed insofar as there was a bridge he was expecting to hear that the singer missed but that the whole band caught it in one quarter note, the lead guitar and I laughed, said we have been doing this with the singer for years, engineer laughed and said, yea, old school ****!

I left my Hartke amp head in another city (Louisville). Still haven't arranged to have them ship it back.

In 1977, I was playing in a mainstream/progressive cover band. We had just started out third set, ironically with Yes' "All Good People" :eyebrow: when a huge fight broke out. Chairs were broken, bottles went flying, cops came in. :eek::hiding::eek: The place was shut down. The mamager was rushed to the hospital with a huge cut on his head. And we never got paid. The only good from it was that we helped ourselves to free drinks while we waited for his brother to come and close up.

I guess my worst experience has been on a party we were covering blink 182`s song i miss you and the drummer finished the song at the 2nd verse after the 1rst chorus with no lyrics!! Then we all stopped (great mistake!) and we got mad with him!

Opening for Bad Religion at a pretty big theater in Detroit. Somebody in the audience is throwing things at us, can't tell what they are. Finally we get a good look at these projectiles and they turn out to be severed gopher heads. This nut job had a whole bag of them.

Damn!

so he looked over and the drummer was flailing about knocking over his cymbals drunkenly trying to play. He fell over the front of the entire kit and passed out mid song. Hilarious.

OMG that's funny!!!

Played a rich kid's party....
Don't you know you can't trust the rich people.

Two situations in two different bands.

Playing in a country band. We were opening for some friends of mine (it's my reputation on the line) as an audition for the club owner. We had been together for over a year and had a tight enough set, so it shouldn't be a problem or so I thought.

Singer spends the entire set with his finger in his ear claiming that he can't hear himself through the monitors although it's loud enough to split skulls. And to top it off, the fiddle player, to cover for the singer, decides that he'll sing one. He turns to the band and yells "The South's Gonna Do It Again" at us as if that's a song that everyone should know off the top of their heads. We had never played it before. I knew how the song was structured but not the key and the drummer had no clue. The fiddler kicks into the fiddle intro and we try to keep up. He stops playing and says over the open mic, "Let's try that again". Without any direction at all he kicks off again. This time I know the key, but the drummer still has no clue and the guitar player has quit playing all together. Again the fiddler stops and says into the open mic, "Sorry, boys, I don't know any two chord songs that you can keep up with". To say the least I was livid and offered to show him the two fists of retrobution if he ever pulled that again. We never got a call from the club owner.

Second situation: Playing the first gig in a roots rock band that a guitar player friend and I joined. The singer and the drummer had played together for years. The drummer was a good player as far as practice goes but when we got onstage he fell apart. He would yell "what's next?" between every song (even though he had a set list) and then yell "How does that one start?" His meter was all over the place and he looked lost all night. It was if the good practice drummer had been replaced by his evil twin.

Those two of many stories from over the years.

I was playing in a classic rock trio when the guitarist decides to add a female singer with whom he had played "back in the day". Nice girl, good voice, but somewhat "nervous". Well, our second gig as a quartet she decides to drown the butterflies with alcohol. She forgets almost all of the lyrics, but cleverly substitutes the f-bomb for any word she can't remember. After 2 songs, she stumbles of-stage, never to return. We finished the night with songs the rest of us could sing, but never went back to that club.
This, of course, was the gig I had invited all my friends from work to.

I was a last-minute sub for another bassist. I know all of the songs well enough to function except for one. I get handed two chord charts, same song in different keys. We rehearse, it turns out good. I can the right chart and leave the wrong on my stand. I go listen to the mp3, which is in the wrong key, to try to catch some of the nuances of the bassline. I play through the opening line on the bass and in my head over and over to make sure I get it right. Get on stage, in-ears go out, everything on stage is so loud I can't tell what the guitar and keys are playing, I play the song (and nail it) in the wrong key, the singer is lost and I don't realize it all until the last line of the chart. The crowd looked bewildered and befuddled. At least the rest of the songs went well.

Back when I lived in Chicago, played a gig at a local bar in the middle of winter, our drummer caught a bad case of the flu, he wanted to cancel but we convinced him otherwise, we're in the middle of our 3rd set and I look over at him and he looks BAD, ask if he's "ok" he says "yeah" and we start playing, we go into " Workin' for a livin" ( this was along time ago) and about 8 bars in he starts throwin' up and I mean ALOT!! but he keeps playin' and every time he hits a cymbal or drum, barf is fyin' everywhere now no-one except me notices not even the crowd dancin' in front, his drums are covered, and with every beat barf is bouncin everywhere, after we finish he uses the exit door behind the stage to get some air, meanwhile the place is stinkin up from him, we all go to our cars and get whatevever colonge we have and dump it on stage, we all clean his drums off as best we can and he comes back and finishes the set and our next set, 20 yrs later we still laugh over it, we changed our set list from " Workin for a livin" to "Barfin' for a livin"....oh the memories.

So far in my short gigging "career" the only bad thing that has happened was me stepping on my cord twice and our guitarist stepping on my chord once during the same gig (all 3 times resulted in a loud BANG as the cords fell out of the jack), since then I have learnt to put the cord between strap and guitar to add a little coil so that such a charade won't happen again.

One of our motorcycle club friends broke his hip right in front of me. We were playing our first set, and I was at stage right, next to the stairs. Our friend came in to see us play. He was already on a cane, recovering from a broken leg he got in a bike accident. He was right in front of me as he looked up to greet someone, causing him to miss the next step, and he went down HARD. He was so close to me, I heard the hip break. Oh, it was horrible! The cops and the paramedics came, and we stopped playing for about an hour, and used the time to keep the crowd away from our friend so the paramedics could get him out of there. He was there w/o his MC, and so had no brothers there to help. That was last year, and he is only just recently able to drive his truck and ride the three-wheeler the guys custom built for him. The stairs have since been shortened and modified to be safer.

But he still comes to our shows! :)

Cherie :)

I was playing in a classic rock trio when the guitarist decides to add a female singer with whom he had played "back in the day". Nice girl, good voice, but somewhat "nervous". Well, our second gig as a quartet she decides to drown the butterflies with alcohol. She forgets almost all of the lyrics, but cleverly substitutes the f-bomb for any word she can't remember. After 2 songs, she stumbles of-stage, never to return. We finished the night with songs the rest of us could sing, but never went back to that club.
This, of course, was the gig I had invited all my friends from work to.

Ayup. I've been embarrassed by drunken sitins before. Which is why I have a rule now...if I've never heard someone sing or play before, they will not be allowed to sit in. And I might not let 'em, even if I have heard them. Once they get up, its hard to get them to leave the stage. If they ask if they can sit in, I answer "no". Only if we invite them, and we've all agreed on it. No exceptions.

Cherie

It started at the show.....

Female singer and her boyfriend got into a HUGE argument during the middle of a show. Made a terrible scene.

It ended at home....

They continued the arguement later. He shot her 3 times at point blank range with a .38 when they got home.

The band members acted as the pallbearers at the funeral and were all subpoened to testify at the murder trial.





dcr

It started at the show.....

Female singer and her boyfriend got into a HUGE argument during the middle of a show. Made a terrible scene.

It ended at home....

They continued the arguement later. He shot her 3 times at point blank range with a .38 when they got home.

The band members acted as the pallbearers at the funeral and were all subpoened to testify at the murder trial.





dcr

Wow...that's not funny but I think you are the winner.

Fortunately, I don't have stories that even come close to some of the stuff posted in here. These are the only things that come to mind:
1 - Our singer/rhythm guitard got WASTED at a gig (this happens somewhat often, but this is the only time it was a problem). He INSISTED that we play a brand new song, the problem was that we only practiced it once and didn't know it all the way through. After a lot of arguing onstage, he started playing the guitar riff. Our drummer got up and walked off the stage, I followed him. The rest of the band just stood there until he gave up a minute or 2 into it and announced that he "Had to go kick the drummer's ass and we'll be back after a short break". We didn't play any more that night.

2 - A huge fight broke out while were playing, resulting in 2 mic-stands getting knocked over and a song getting stopped early. Not a huge deal, the fighters got kicked out and we replayed the song.

3 - I was using my guitar player's bass amp (go figure) and for reasons that are still unknown, the amp just completely lost power. Couldn't turn it on, couldn't get any sound, nothing. I had to play through a crappy house PA system and couldn't hear the bass for the rest of the set.

this isn't bad by any means but i got egged a month or so ago! i was outside loading in my gear & BAM! I'm hit! i didn't know what happened at first & i thought someone clipped me with their car until i noticed ALL OF MY GEAR WAS COVERED IN EGG! i was steaming

We had one of our song's names misconstrued as "bent d*ck"...:scowl:

Another story was at our band's farewell show for our friends, held in a hunting club/bar. We had booked 3 other bands, all we could find, to play with us, 2 screamo's and one ska rock. Well the ska band, who we really love and are friends with, dropped out and we were left with our proggy instrumental selves and emo scream nastyness. Predictably, the bar patrons(along with most everyone else) HATE the scream bands and everyone leaves, including most of our friends. Our band does exceptionally well, however, redeming the night somewhat. To top it off, most of the screamo bandmates are eletist jerks who were cold to us and our friends, and even left without paying thier part of the rent fee, $100 (we had to rent out the bar's stage for the evening, we couldt find any venue to play at). It was really a sad ending to our band, although we had fun playing.

We had one of our song's names misconstrued as "bent d*ck"...:scowl:

Another story was at our band's farewell show for our friends, held in a hunting club/bar. We had booked 3 other bands, all we could find, to play with us, 2 screamo's and one ska rock. Well the ska band, who we really love and are friends with, dropped out and we were left with our proggy instrumental selves and emo scream nastyness. Predictably, the bar patrons(along with most everyone else) HATE the scream bands and everyone leaves, including most of our friends. Our band does exceptionally well, however, redeming the night somewhat. To top it off, most of the screamo bandmates are eletist jerks who were cold to us and our friends, and even left without paying thier part of the rent fee, $100 (we had to rent out the bar's stage for the evening, we couldt find any venue to play at). It was really a sad ending to our band, although we had fun playing.

those emo dicks! :p

so we are playing this show opening for a couple of rather popular bands, national touring acts (project 86 and the classic crime). so we are up there playing our hearts out and half way through the set BLAMMO!!! lead guitars tube amp blows up. the guy has only half the tubes in a mesa that he should have and hes been telling me for weeks that "they are glowing like they are gonna explode". so now im frustrated and continue playing while he finds another amp. so he just grabs my rhythm players guitar and uses his stuff to finish out the set. only problem? yeah my rhythm player uses a baritone guitar, one of which the lead guy has never used. does he figure it out? sort of but we flop the rest of the set. sad times.........that could have been a really good show for us.

The day before a gig, one of our guitarists called me and told me that he would be too ill to play the show. As I am the only other guy (apart from the other guitarist) in the band who can play guitar, I was on 6-string duty for the night. I asked I guy who I thought was my friend to play bass as we were just playing covers. Anyhow, the gig went well until the end, when the bastard who was covering for me on bass decided that it would be funny to smash my £600 Fender Jazz (bad idea letting him play it, I know) into pieces in front of the audience as a showstopper. I was ****ing livid. When we got backstage, I punched him. I'm not usually a violent person and I'm not proud of it, but I probably would have kept beating him until he was brain damaged, but the singer and drummer stepped in. Needless to say, I made him pay for a new bass and I haven't spoken to him since. I almost cried when I saw my ruined bass lying in splinters on the stage.

The day before a gig, one of our guitarists called me and told me that he would be too ill to play the show. As I am the only other guy (apart from the other guitarist) in the band who can play guitar, I was on 6-string duty for the night. I asked I guy who I thought was my friend to play bass as we were just playing covers. Anyhow, the gig went well until the end, when the bastard who was covering for me on bass decided that it would be funny to smash my £600 Fender Jazz (bad idea letting him play it, I know) into pieces in front of the audience as a showstopper. I was ****ing livid. When we got backstage, I punched him. I'm not usually a violent person and I'm not proud of it, but I probably would have kept beating him until he was brain damaged, but the singer and drummer stepped in. Needless to say, I made him pay for a new bass and I haven't spoken to him since. I almost cried when I saw my ruined bass lying in splinters on the stage.

if that was me il shove the remains of the bass up his ass

Had a jerk of a band leader blather on about our band name for ten minutes. During a 40 minute set.

Afterwords, my cab was knocked off stage. It exploded.

Also, the strap button on my bass fell out.

This is all the same show, BTW.Just because you're a lucky guy doesn't mean you should brag about it! :D

Playing in Jersey (showish type band)

I did the "sing to the girl".. went out in the audience.. it ended up being a fluffy rocker dude.

Next day.. sing to the girl.. she 8.5 months pregnant.

Never knew either ones until they were standing to applauseAAAAAAACKWAAAAARD!:help:

OMG! I just can't stop laughing!!...my sides hurt! My eyes are watering! And the worst part is that I'm not sure if I'm laughing WITH you or...

We just finished a show back in college. We actually played a pretty decent show, sounded good, mistake free, good crowd interaction, it was about as perfect as you could imagine.

But wait, there's more!

We decided to hang out after, like any self respecting 21 year old would. We had a celebratory drink, then went to find something to go home with. I had my sights set on this little blonde, so I make my approach casual; asked them if they were enjoying themselves. My girl's eyes got big with realization and says "You were just up there playing, right?"

My ego beginning to swell, "Yep."

Thinking I had this one bagged, I never saw it coming. "The guitarist is so cute, could you introduce me?"

I blinked, utterly dumbfounded, all I managed was a sigh and said simply "Chad's gay." I walked off and got hammered.

Talk about *that* feeling going oh so terribly wrong.

My First Show.
My Guitarist Just Jumped Into The Song.
I Was Suppose To Do A Bass Sweep To Start It off.
I DIDNT HAVE MY MOMENT TO SHINE :(

Gig on a main square of a town here in Germany. Main stage. About 1000 people in front of the stage. I do a slap song. Everything works. Until first the singer comes to me in the middle of the song in an instrumental part and asks:

S: "Are you doing alright?"
Me: "Yeah sure..."
S: "If we need to stop, tell me."
Me: "No heck why should we stop..."

Ok... we play on. Then the guitarist comes to me and says:
G: "Are you ALRIGHT???"
Me: "Yeah... what the he........"

...and look down and see that for some reason my thumb started to bleed from slapping and I was very well distributing blood all over my instrument. :scowl: :eek: :help:

So. Before the next song started, I wiped blood from my bass but was smart enough to smear the blood all over my amp knobs before I was finished.

It was a glorifying moment. :bassist:

Gig on a main square of a town here in Germany. Main stage. About 1000 people in front of the stage. I do a slap song. Everything works. Until first the singer comes to me in the middle of the song in an instrumental part and asks:

S: "Are you doing alright?"
Me: "Yeah sure..."
S: "If we need to stop, tell me."
Me: "No heck why should we stop..."

Ok... we play on. Then the guitarist comes to me and says:
G: "Are you ALRIGHT???"
Me: "Yeah... what the he........"

...and look down and see that for some reason my thumb started to bleed from slapping and I was very well distributing blood all over my instrument. :scowl: :eek: :help:

So. Before the next song started, I wiped blood from my bass but was smart enough to smear the blood all over my amp knobs before I was finished.

It was a glorifying moment. :bassist:

No matter what kind of music you were playing... that is METAL!!!!!

Gig on a main square of a town here in Germany. Main stage. About 1000 people in front of the stage. I do a slap song. Everything works. Until first the singer comes to me in the middle of the song in an instrumental part and asks:

S: "Are you doing alright?"
Me: "Yeah sure..."
S: "If we need to stop, tell me."
Me: "No heck why should we stop..."

Ok... we play on. Then the guitarist comes to me and says:
G: "Are you ALRIGHT???"
Me: "Yeah... what the he........"

...and look down and see that for some reason my thumb started to bleed from slapping and I was very well distributing blood all over my instrument. :scowl: :eek: :help:

So. Before the next song started, I wiped blood from my bass but was smart enough to smear the blood all over my amp knobs before I was finished.

It was a glorifying moment. :bassist:


This reminds me of a small show I played in a high school band. Me (5'8", 130 pounds then) and the drummer (6'2" 180ish) decide to start a mosh pit of about 6 people duringa really awful band. I recall seeing a whirl of orange (his coat it turns out) and a miniature fireworks show as I hit the floor. Busted my nose right before we were going on. I went outside and packe dmy nose with snow and we got up to play. Then, like it was fated to be it started bleeding again right during the intro to our second song, Firestorm by Earth Crisis. Blood was pouring down my face, onto the bass, mic stand etc. I had to tilt my head back and continually spit blood out into my cup of water. Taking this cue I commence to whipping my head around in time with the music and splattering anyone nearby. Between the headbanging, lack of water and the pain when my adrenaline wore off, I almost passed out during Sober, and had to leave right after. Still a shining moment for me.

Oh yeah, and blood soaked marlboros won't stay lit. After discovernig this we wrote a song about it.

I was going to town on my vintage Conrad at the local bar one night, doing lots of hard and heavy thumb strokes. One of my strokes missed the E, and instead hit the pickup. I broke the pup's plastic housing, popped the horn-side strap button off, and when it hit the ground, two of the plastic tuning keys shattered.

I glued the pup's housing back together, put a 'lil cardboard in the strap button hole (works like a charm), and replaced the two broken tuners. The picture here was taken at the bass's retirement show; it doesn't leave my house anymore.

I Was playing in a jam band at the time.

one of our best gigs up until the incident.

we were well into a 30 minute jam, people dancing, everyone loving it, when I broke my d string. Then the drummer broke the skin on his snare. then the keyboard cut out. then the guitar player broke one of his strings.

One of the tapers that was there taping us caught it all on tape and remarked after wards "that was one of the sickest jams I have ever seen, end in a total plane crash".

we had to finish out the rest of the set, no jams as we were all brought down, with things the way they were.

ugh. you can here it happen on the recording... rocking to crashing. and then a second half of the set with very little energy and lots of messups.

Okay, I'll play...

In Oct. '08, I underwent a lithotripsy (kidney stone) that went terribly awry. I developed a blockage, had an emergency nephrostomy (tapped me like a maple tree), and sent me home with a whole new set of plumbing and "high maintenance" dressings. You medical-types out there know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, the show must go on so I played a gig the following weekend. Nothing terrible happened but I did have to change dressings between the 2nd and 3rd sets. Not much privacy at a Moose Lodge, so Kathy (friend and nurse) managed to pull if off in the back parking lot on the tailgate of my pickup truck....shirt off, ABD pads, waterproof tape, the works.

You really know who your friends are!

Riis

We just finished a show back in college. We actually played a pretty decent show, sounded good, mistake free, good crowd interaction, it was about as perfect as you could imagine.

But wait, there's more!

We decided to hang out after, like any self respecting 21 year old would. We had a celebratory drink, then went to find something to go home with. I had my sights set on this little blonde, so I make my approach casual; asked them if they were enjoying themselves. My girl's eyes got big with realization and says "You were just up there playing, right?"

My ego beginning to swell, "Yep."

Thinking I had this one bagged, I never saw it coming. "The guitarist is so cute, could you introduce me?"

I blinked, utterly dumbfounded, all I managed was a sigh and said simply "Chad's gay." I walked off and got hammered.

Talk about *that* feeling going oh so terribly wrong.

Does your buddy know you **** blocked him ?

I've fallen off stage a few times, but no real injuries.

The worst-planned gig I ever played was at a university in NW PA sometime in the mid-70s. We were supposed to play a formal student dance at the activity center, starting at 10 pm. Apparently, the planners didn't know (or care) that Harry Chapin was scheduled to perform at the school's auditorium that same evening, starting at 7:30 pm. But they decided to go ahead with the dance anyway, figuring the concert would be over about 9:30-ish. Wrong. The Chapin concert didn't even get started until after 9 pm, because of problems with the sound system. And where do you think the students were?

We ended up playing our dance sets to two couples -- and a table full of Harry's roadies! We did get our full pay for the evening, though, which was not insubstantial for the time and effort.

Yeah buzz, I shared that one during our next practice. Everybody got a good laugh out of it.

Yeah buzz, I shared that one during our next practice. Everybody got a good laugh out of it.

that's cool, at least he didn't get PO'd @ you.

I was at most of my daughter's band's shows as a roadie, A/V archivist, etc. Their original drummer, any time he was asked about his influences, would always say "Animal from the Muppet Show". I remember a high-energy show where he shattered a drumstick during the last song. He had no spares left at that point, and so finished the song with one stick and one hand. I looked over to see that the snare and toms were very pink, and little droplets sprayed occasionally from the hat. He had to go to the hospital for 1 or maybe 2 broken fingers (he was never clear on it) afterward.

He used to crouch on the throne and leap over the kit occasionally during shows, but I don't think he ever hurt himself as badly as he did during that one incident.

We were performing out of town (about 200 miles away) and our front-man/singer decided he's had it with the soundman and subsequently us (very long story). He quit in the middle of the set and hung out in the parking lot for the remainder of the gig (funny, that he actually sat on the soundman's tailgate for the rest of the night). We had to finish up without him (about an hour long set). Afteward, we had an interview with a local blogger type and of course the question came up ... "so what happened to the singer". Needless to say, we didn't want to comment on that one.

Although we tried to work it out, we couldn't reconcile differences with the guy and the next time we wound up at that venue, the soundman comes chargin' over ... "hey, where's that F'IN singer?" ... we about dropped laughing. Sorry dude, he already quit!

Good times indeed!

No matter what kind of music you were playing... that is METAL!!!!!+1

When I was maybe 13 or 14 years old, my cousin was in a "New York Hardcore" band playing bass. I loved them (they were actually pretty good)... I went to all of their rehearsals, learned all of their songs (but since I was under 18 they wouldn't allow me to join as an official member, since that would prevent them from getting gigs at bars).

When my cousin came down with mono, I filled in for him while he was sick. We played a BOTB (:rollno:) at one of the rival high schools to the ones that we all went to.

We're on stage, and things are going well, when the singer and drummer starts shouting into the mic how much the school we were playing at "sucked" :scowl:. After a little back-and-forth w. the audience, mostly heckling from the audience, our drummer and singer jump into the audience and start beating some guy... riot ensues.

We were promptly disqualified... at the time I thought it was pretty cool , or "punk rock" (I was young and even stupider)... in hindsight it was pretty childish and lame. Luckily, no one got seriously hurt.

P.S. All members from this band ^ are banned from the city of Hoboken, NJ. ;)

I played a thing here called Skidfest (i actually created a thread about the drunk guy at the same event), and the day before my old band came down from NYC. We hadn't played in a couple of months, because they moved and I stayed. So we practiced during the day then went straight to the gig. I hadn't been playing much since they left, maybe a couple times a week. I was "musically depressed", I guess, hah. Well by the end of practice I had hot spots that rose a centimeter off of both of my plucking fingers. I get to the gig, try taping them, its too cumbersome due to the size of the blisters. So, putting my plucking abilities ahead of my well-being, I bit off the blisters. This, of course, left me with very raw and sensitive skin. I tape my fingers again, and it comes off halfway through every song. Eventually, I am bleeding all over my bass and strings. I continue to play the set without tape, realizing it kept coming off and snagging on strings. Most metal (and painful!) gig of my life.. and we played funk.

Despite this site being around for over a decade, with the multitude of members, and exponentially more posts throughout that time frame, I am willing to bet my entire rig (and a kidney) that no one person has EVER typed the phrase "severed gopher heads" before. Ever.

Google agrees with you:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us&q=%22Severed+gopher+heads%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

In no particular order:

1. not realising until we got to the chorus that i was singing the wrong song

2. getting stones thrown at us after the local radio station's cheap loudspeakers burned out half way through the first song in an outdoor gig... and all it ocurred to me to say was "there'll be no refunds, you know?"

3. trying to look cool after falling and busting my kneecap on the edge of the stage

4. playing to a waitress, a bloke reading his newspaper and a dog

5. a vicar in the crowd who didn't like the lyrics to one of my songs and made sure i knew his opinion (the song was a foul-mouthed sexually explicit wierd-al-yankovic-esque christmas carol parody and it was requested four times throughout the night)

In a fit of excitement, I began swinging my arm around wildly, and pulled a muscle. Hurt like hell, could barely play after that. It's become a legend with my band.

In a fit of excitement, I began swinging my arm around wildly, and pulled a muscle. Hurt like hell, could barely play after that. It's become a legend with my band.

HAHA, so you just start swinging your arm around for some reason and BANG! you pull a muscle?
That is hilarious, reminds me of something I would do

I jumped off the extended stage platform at and outdoor stage---into a hole in the ground... and ripped miniscus in my knee... played the rest of the night in a chair -- sweating & almost blacking out... then got carted off to the ER after the show... awesome.

There was a cowboys game on the day we played. The guitar player and drummer are rabid fans. I show up 1/2 an hour before the show to find the drummer and lead singer at the bar drinking and watching the game. The guitar player shows up and can barely walk. While setting up and I realize the drummer and singer are tipsy. We have a list of songs that we are going to pick from, but no song order. We start the show and the guitarist was playing the wrong song (not one of ours) poorly. Halfway through the song, the drummer starts playing the same song the guitarist was playing. In between songs, the guitarist and drummer start playing Metalica and Van Halen and checking their phones for text updates on the game and their fantasy football. The singer asks in between songs what song we're going to play next into the microphone. The drummer asks the guitarist if he can play that song. He says no. A few song titles later, they agree on a song. That was the entire first set.

Playing in a fairly upscale bar where most of the customers are young, upwardly mobile professionals. The "stage" is only about a foot high so there is little separation between the band and the crowd. The place is fairly packed. A guy no one in the band had ever seen before comes at one of the lead guitar players with a knife. Our body guard intercepts him and removes him from the bar after a bit of a scuffle. Luckily no firearms were brandished

HAHA, so you just start swinging your arm around for some reason and BANG! you pull a muscle?
That is hilarious, reminds me of something I would do

As I recall, the song we were doing at the time had a rodeo reference...

I had two embarrassing moments at one of my gigs. and one stupid moment.

The one embarrassing moment I had was at a gig with my brother's band at a sports bar. we we're playing a cover of stillborn by black label society. at first, things were going pretty good. and then right when we we're going to the chorus part, I was hearing a loud buzzing noise. I didn't know where that buzzing noise came from until my brother played the guitar solo. the noise came from my rig. I didn't know what to do there, so I went on with the song. after we played the song, I was trying to figure out why my rig was making that noise. and then I found out that one of my cables malfunctioned. luckly, I have a spare cable. so I hooked-up that cable and told the audience "Sorry about the delay, folks. we we're experiencing some technical difficulties but now everything is under control and we'll keep on rocking for you guys". the show went on and everything is all good.

The other embarrassing moment I had was a gig I did with the other band I played in. at this gig, the lead singer was a little wasted. at first everything was normal. and then 10 minutes before we finish our set, the lead singer stripped down to his underpants and walked in front of the audience. when he did that i turned around and I was like "good gods!" and I was still playing the song. the drummer was asking me "what's wrong?" and I said that the lead singer stripped down to his underpants. after we finished our set, the lead singer pulled his pants up. now that's an embarrassing moment there.

Okay, here's the stupid moment and one of my gigs. I was doing a show at a bar outside of chicago. I was performing with a temporary band that my brother formed. there was gonna be a third act in this gig, but unfortunatly the third act couldn't make it. luckly, the guy who promoted this gig is a drummer and asked me and my brother to do a freestyle act. we played a few songs, things were going good. and here comes the stupid moment, the owner of the bar joined us on stage and said he was going to sing. but all he does was yell "Yeah!". he was all like "I'm gonna sing...Yeah!". that's definitely a stupid moment there. after that, the guys from the second act(who I'm friends with) joined us on stage and played a few songs. despite that stupid moment, this was an interesting gig.

Sometimes my guitarist/singer EASILY gets distracted and screws up. One song we were playing was in 6/8 time, and in the MIDDLE OF THE SONG, during a bridge, he somehow got off and changed to 4/4..... me and the drummer had one heck of a time to get it back haha.

He has gotten over that stage..... lol.

Had a girl get up on stage to sing a song and she pee'd her pants during a stellar rendition of Mustang Sally. Her and her friends ran out of the club before the cymbals had even stopped ringing.

3. trying to look cool after falling and busting my kneecap on the edge of the stage


AH! I recognise this one...

I was actually just getting myself onstage for soundcheck - about 1 and a half feet high with no steps..I step up, manage to get on but start wobbling (no alcohol) then suddenly CRACK!! Foot slips off and my knee CRACKS the edge of the stage making a helluva noise...I was lucky - my knee when standing on the floor was JUST over the edge of the stage, would've busted if the stage had been any higher! That hurt...but we did a good gig and there was no damage

eek, i would have quit that band soooo fast after that!

Nah it was cool - the place wasnt open to the public yet...

Got a pretty serious bloody nose while playing on stage in front of 1500 people... It did not stop for 30 minutes.

Right after that, I blasted apart the drum monitor with my MXR Blowtorch, and then my cab fried, destroying the amplifier.

I was left covered in blood, with a broken rig, and the only bass you could hear was the direct feedcoming from the pedal board...

What a night

I was playing a gig at a bar in Antigonish, Nova Scotia the lead singers home town so all his friends show up to the show. One of his buddies is just loaded and in the middle of a song walks right to the front of the stage wips his d**k out and start jerkin it right in front of a bunch of girls and us of course. It was super awkward and by far the strangest/funniest things that has happened at one of my gigs.

My first gig (pickup gig as well mind you) I have 1 intro, with a little bass solo thing I improvised...I play it, nothing, I play it again, nothing...

I look at the guitarist and realize that because the stage was so oddly shaped and small and my cab was basically angled directly at the crowd (I could barely hear myself) he couldn't hear me at all and was waiting for me to play the intro :rollno: I go... "I did 3 times! Just count it off and play!"

Also auditioning once and when I went to tune my A string and the tuning head just fell out of my headstock (it had snapped in half on the inside)....Luckly I was playing my 5 so with my trusty alankey and a wrench the drummer had I managed to move the tuning head from the B to the A re-string it and play it like an awkward 4 string.

The worst...

1) guitarist broke a string, then instead of having his back up ready, and grabbing it...
he decides to re-string his main ax.

then we decide to jam, while he's doing this, rather than just play another song without him. we're not very good at jamming together because we just didn't do it much - and proceed to suck big time.

guitarist gets back into the set, but he strung the guitar with the wrong gauge string - and it busts right away, during the next song. He then gets out the back up... and its NOT TUNED!

after the gig, the singer (guitarist and main songwriter) disappeared for awhile.


2) Another band,
we played a "pay to play" battle of the bands (a bad idea to begin with), and our drummer starts and plays the wrong song, he could never recover, or figure out what song we were playing. the guitarist and I just keep playing like nothing is wrong. needless to say, we didn't win.

The band broke up shortly thereafter. (but the gig was just the final straw).


3) that time when my friends, helping us load in, drop my 85 lb Hartke 410, on my right foot. I almost played the gig from a chair. there were also another couple of gigs where I threw out my back. one I seriously should've gone to the hospital about.

4) One time we drive to Monterey from SF (about 2 hours, but then factor in our gear loading time, etc), we get to the club where we think we're supposed to play, and get paid - and the club owner says "no, you're not playing tonight"... we may have rented a van, too...

5) but the worst has to be... my first gig with this band... and some busty woman comes down in front of us, dancing - and she's topless!! I'm thinking, "this is great - this is our first gig! what's next?" and you say - how is that the worst? the worst thing about it was that it never happened again!

I was playing a gig at a bar in Antigonish, Nova Scotia the lead singers home town so all his friends show up to the show. One of his buddies is just loaded and in the middle of a song walks right to the front of the stage wips his d**k out and start jerkin it right in front of a bunch of girls and us of course. It was super awkward and by far the strangest/funniest things that has happened at one of my gigs.


have you ever heard about when Rage Against The Machine was to play at the Eagles stadium in Phily? and they came out naked, except for I think duct tape, and the letters PMRC across their chests. And they didn't play, they just stood there for 15 minutes or whatever. When they first talked about doing it, Tim, the bass player, says, okay, I'll do it, but I'm gonna beat off in front of the crowd. so I think he probably did for awhile when they first went out.

Or so says Tom Morello...

Ok... something sticks in my mind... It creeped me out, and gave me a higher respect for women...

Ok... about 2002, I played a Halloween gig where I dressed up like a Hawaiian Island girl... grass skirt, coconut bra with my big belly sticking out, even painted my fingers and toenails red. It went over GREAT. I got lots of compliments, a few phone numbers, and talked to more girls after the show then I ever have before.

Skip ahead a year later. I was in another band in another state, in a small town, playing a Halloween gig at a dive bar. Since last year went so well, I decided to do a repeat of the previous year.

Well, the town and the bar were more hick-ish then I suspected. I think alcohol makes the homoerotic side come out of rednecks, who've repressed it for way too long. I got grabbed and fondled repetitively. Some guy even tried grabbing my coconut boobs mid-song! Repetitively!

I felt violated. Really, I did. :rollno:

At least I got a taste of what TONS of women go through from creepy, lecherous guys on a regular basis. UG.

Once in a while the most horrible thing you can think of happens. Something so bad it stops the show, and/or leaves you embarrassed, and possibly ends the band.

Start with mine...

My old band gets into a small BOTB at a nightclub in Providence. We decide to do mostly covers since our originals were works in progress. We go through Smells Like Teen Spirit, Brainstew, and Self Esteem. (I know, horrible choices, but we had to pick simple stuff that we could master in a week of practice...). Our last song was Santeria. We do amazing, the crowd was singing along and I felt on top of the world. Until.. the singer forgets the lyrics to the last verse. He stops, the guitarist is caught off guard and stops playing, and the drummer follows suit. I stop last...we look at each other, and pack up and leave.

The band never got together again.

Thats poor dude, no one should stop after a mistake...?

I was in a professional wedding band for 3 years, we would often forget lyrics, chords, or other bits in songs...it happens, but if you forget, you carry on...improvise.

My best mate actually had a gig a week ago, solo acoustic thing, playing 100% his own stuff, the last song he forgot the chords to the bridge, he looks up, smiles, laughs and says "o well, we'll skip that bit then...this bits better anyway" and jumps straight into the high energy outro, rather than make him look a fool, it endeared him to the crowd and worked a treat.


and to answer you're question:
I burnt my hand badly on a spot light that was attached to a speaker stand, when I was spinning round during a very high energy song, I also knocked my bass out of tune on the speaker and hadn't noticed that song as I wasn't using that string.
The next song was almost solely on that string...started off sounding very bad, I quickly transposed it onto another string and carried on, the gig was one of our best...not many weddings have crowd surfers.

Just thought of another one,

I hit my singer in the head with my headstock, knocking my g string out of tune. She was okay, but I never realized it, or checked my tuning. later, listening to the tape of the show, it was just hilarious!

Had a jerk of a band leader blather on about our band name for ten minutes. During a 40 minute set.

Afterwords, my cab was knocked off stage. It exploded.

Also, the strap button on my bass fell out.

This is all the same show, BTW.



Looks like it really wasn't your day, having your equipment smashed in 40 min :ninja:

Uh.....turning around in the middle of "Born to Be Wild" to see a full-on naked dude brandishing a cowbell right behind me.

(Not that I have anything against naked dudes, I just like naked chicks better.)

On a gig years ago my oafish singer, drunk as a skunk, pluverised my Korg pedalboard as he stubbled around on the stage. I was wireless at the time, and didn't realize what had happened at first, thought it was the amp or the bass. I think that's the worst that has ever happened, though I recall a gig where I had the flu that was interesting. I felt terrible, thought I was going to puke several times, but I actually played very well that night. And, while I had a fever when the gig started, it was gone by the time I was done.

Something that's REALLY nasty is when you strap not only falls off but RIPSat the button

When I was playing @ a bar gig one time, some little dive. I got hit on, incessantly by some woman who was old enough to be my mother (I'm 22, so figure early to mid 50s), and her daughter. Now, the daughter was passable, but moms, not so much. It was so damned bad that I actually had to tell the two of them that I was gay before they'd leave me alone, because they were, you can't make this up, a package deal.

I wanted to forget that night so bad, but unfortunately my originals band's singer was there and reminded everyone I know about it later on in the week.

Two gigs where a guy got stabbed to death.
One gig where the drummers best friend got beat to death in the parking lot.

not to be a dick but do u live in like camton or something?

so last week I played a gig right bad thing is this girl iv been seeing since march came and guess who else showed up this girl iv been hooking up with for the past couple of weeks so I got nervous and tried not paying attention to the girl iv been hooking up with and then it was all good. Then on stage the girl I was not going out with threw a thong on stage (I have pics of the thong to prove it!!!) and then my girlfriend went up to her asked her and got **** out of her then when I got out my first bass I got (a squire jazz) I finished tuning it so we could play hammered smashed face by cannibal corpse (this gets ironic to!) my girlfriend ran up on stage punched me so hard in the face I had a good black eye I feel and broke one of the tuning pegs off it (I broke the D string) ...She found out I was cheating on her.... so my guitarist got her off me and she got kicked out we finished the set in the end we sat in a dinner (we live in NJ every story ends in a dinner) I got made fun of so hard that who week...anyway where still together she says next time I do that I might get more than a black eye I might get bass shoved up my ass all the way to the 12the fret... so lesson learned? That is to be continued Ha-ha

So last week I played a gig, the bad thing being the girl I've been seeing since March came and guess who else showed up? The girl I've been hooking up with for the past couple of weeks! So I got nervous and tried not paying attention to the girl I've been hooking up with and I thought it was all good. Later on, the girl I was not going out with threw a thong on stage (I have pics of the thong to prove it!!!), so my girlfriend went up to her asked her and got **** out of her. When I got out my first bass, a Squire Jazz, I tuned it so we could play "Hammered Smashed Face" by Cannibal Corpse (this gets ironic to!). My girlfriend ran up on stage, punched me so hard in the face I had a good black eye and broke one of the tuning pegs off my bass, (I broke the D string)... Obviously she'd found out I was cheating on her, so my guitarist got her off me and she was kicked out. We finished the set and later on went to a diner (we live in NJ every story ends in a diner). I got made fun of so hard that whole week by my girlfriend, but anyways we're still together, she just says next time I do that I might get more than a black eye. Instead I may get my bass shoved up my ass all the way to the 12 fret, so lesson learned?! That is to be continued haha... Fix'd, and pretty good story you got there.

When I was playing @ a bar gig one time, some little dive. I got hit on, incessantly by some woman who was old enough to be my mother (I'm 22, so figure early to mid 50s), and her daughter. Now, the daughter was passable, but moms, not so much. It was so damned bad that I actually had to tell the two of them that I was gay before they'd leave me alone, because they were, you can't make this up, a package deal.

I wanted to forget that night so bad, but unfortunately my originals band's singer was there and reminded everyone I know about it later on in the week.

So, you were found attractive by two women that possibly represent a wide age range to which most women fall into, thereby indirectly making you desirable to all women????

Son, if a couple of chicks hitting on you that you don't particularly find attractive is the worst thing that's ever happened to you at a gig, YOU ARE LUCKY AS HELL!

By 22 years old (or so, the memory's a bit fuzzy), the followinge following bad things happening to me at gigs:


The drummer in one band decided it would be a great gimmick to bring a bunch of Twinkies and Ding Dongs to give away during the show at a backyard party. The ensuing food fight damaged the rental PA system we got, and we were charged hundreds of dollars for it. At the time when we were all broke college kids, it was a HUGE blow.
Multiple parties getting broken up by the police either while we were still setting up our equipment, or shortly thereafter.
A party that ended up with a near riot when the strippers and their bouncer snuck out the back door. They didn't feel safe with the rowdy crowd (and rightly so), and they bolted for their car without going back out for the 2nd round of bawdy entertainment. We had set up and were going to start playing after the strippers, but there were some super angry drunk dudes that made us uncomfortable enough just to pack our stuff up and bolt, too.
Being stiffed by the bar management for not drawing big enough crowd, or because he just felt like pocketing our pay instead of paying us - it was common for some promoters and management to prey on us young folks, and some form of this regularly happens even today.
The guitarist and the singer got into a fistfight during a set at a backyard party at the singer's house. The guitarist then urinated in his swimming pool, and put his cigarettes out on the singer's new carpet, after which another fistfight broke out.
I had a 20+ year old vintage Ampeg SVT head from the 70s. At a crappy dive bar, some idiot spilled is beer all over it and into the back of the amp. It stopped working immediately, and cost $300 in tubes to fix (I think, not sure about the cost).
Hit on at one of the gigs.... by a guy. You think you'd be flattered, but no, not really.


Sloasdaylight, come on back to this thread after you have a real disaster at one of your gigs... You'll have 'em too, if you play long enough!

When I was playing @ a bar gig one time, some little dive. I got hit on, incessantly by some woman who was old enough to be my mother (I'm 22, so figure early to mid 50s), and her daughter. Now, the daughter was passable, but moms, not so much. It was so damned bad that I actually had to tell the two of them that I was gay before they'd leave me alone, because they were, you can't make this up, a package deal.

I wanted to forget that night so bad, but unfortunately my originals band's singer was there and reminded everyone I know about it later on in the week.

You turned down the chance for not only two women, BUT a daughter and mom COMBO?! They better of been some real dogs or else you REALLY messed up that one!!




















:p

Ah yes, someday, you will learn young one....
At 22, I too did not know the true meaning of a COMBO.


At 32, and especially now at 36, I woulda' been ALL
over that....... [just gotta get the wife's permission first].

:hiding:

-----------------------------------------------------
Quote:
Originally Posted by sloasdaylight View Post
When I was playing @ a bar gig one time, some little dive. I got hit on, incessantly by some woman who was old enough to be my mother (I'm 22, so figure early to mid 50s), and her daughter. Now, the daughter was passable, but moms, not so much. It was so damned bad that I actually had to tell the two of them that I was gay before they'd leave me alone, because they were, you can't make this up, a package deal.

I wanted to forget that night so bad, but unfortunately my originals band's singer was there and reminded everyone I know about it later on in the week.

-----------------------------------------------
You turned down the chance for not only two women, BUT a daughter and mom COMBO?! They better of been some real dogs or else you REALLY messed up that one!!

Back when I lived in Chicago, played a gig at a local bar in the middle of winter, our drummer caught a bad case of the flu, he wanted to cancel but we convinced him otherwise, we're in the middle of our 3rd set and I look over at him and he looks BAD, ask if he's "ok" he says "yeah" and we start playing, we go into " Workin' for a livin" ( this was along time ago) and about 8 bars in he starts throwin' up and I mean ALOT!! but he keeps playin' and every time he hits a cymbal or drum, barf is fyin' everywhere now no-one except me notices not even the crowd dancin' in front, his drums are covered, and with every beat barf is bouncin everywhere, after we finish he uses the exit door behind the stage to get some air, meanwhile the place is stinkin up from him, we all go to our cars and get whatevever colonge we have and dump it on stage, we all clean his drums off as best we can and he comes back and finishes the set and our next set, 20 yrs later we still laugh over it, we changed our set list from " Workin for a livin" to "Barfin' for a livin"....oh the memories.

hahahahahaha for the win!

I showed up and found out I'd been replaced.

I think we have a winner.

Years ago my guitarist friend plays a high school dance. The band sets up then goes out for a spaghetti dinner. First song is Elton Johns Crocodile Rock. He sings "I remember when rock was"...... He then proceeds to throw up spaghetti all over his mic in front of a gym full of kids.

broke 3 strings on my les paul during the first song of a set
broke another string a couple of songs later(the bridge had become filed down and sharp)

bass players input jack stopped working when we tried to play the first tune....the club owner had a soldering iron, so i took it into a back room and fixed it. =).

played to one dude in a coffee shop, who was sitting at the bar and didn't give a crap. dedicated every song to him.

played a show with some friends at a decent all ages venue. usually the crowd and pay here are quite good. we garaunteed the friends band 100 bucks plus 25% of the door. There was an awful thunderstorm that evening(this was in Louisiana), and pretty much no one showed except a couple of close friends. we made less than 100 off the door, but still had to pay the other band their 100 bucks. losing money like that SUCKS.

drummer playing very poorly.

drummer continually saying "waffle house...1..2..3.." into his mic because he thinks it's funny(it was funny, though but highly unprofessional to do that through the whole set)

2nd show with this band. Our first show had gone well, and several people that saw the first one showed up for this one. Anyways, the venue is small and has a PA. I arranged with the owner that we would be able to use the PA, and he assured us it was no problem. Well, he forgot and lent the PA to another band to play out of town and we had to play with no PA support. It was fine for instruments as we had loud tube amps, but there was no vox at all. We played our set fully instrumental.

got paid with pizza(wasn't actually that upset. it was darned good pizza).

played a show feeling poorly/dizzy white faced queezy...etc. had the guys load up my gear while i hung to a toilet. on the way home from the show had to pull over 3 times to puke in peoples yards. hahahaha....good times.

A couple years ago I'd suffered a wicked little bout of the flu I got from my wife. I got a Tamiflu prescription and I felt well enough by the time a two nighter club gig rolled around. Well set up went fine, and when we did our sound check, I found out that the little finger of my left hand, my fretting hand, would not respond to my brain telling it to fret a note. I could barely get it to bend normally! The rest of my fingers worked fine, and I had to compensate my technique for that weekend. Scared the crap out of me, as my hand was functioning normally throughout the day prior to the sound check.

My doctor said that he thought the flu bug may have done some nerve damage. I spent the next eight weeks forcing myself everyday to do hand grip exercises, and I did scale drills on guitar, trying to get my little finger to respond to what I wanted it to do. The first three weeks was an exercise in fear and frustration. Eventually patience and hard work, along with some frightened prayers paid off. The nerve healed or rewired, and I have my hand back. That was my worst gig experience. It made putting up with drunken idiots, gear failure, etc, all seem to be small beans in comparison.

A couple years ago I'd suffered a wicked little bout of the flu I got from my wife. I got a Tamiflu prescription and I felt well enough by the time a two nighter club gig rolled around. Well set up went fine, and when we did our sound check, I found out that the little finger of my left hand, my fretting hand, would not respond to my brain telling it to fret a note. I could barely get it to bend normally! The rest of my fingers worked fine, and I had to compensate my technique for that weekend. Scared the crap out of me, as my hand was functioning normally throughout the day prior to the sound check.

My doctor said that he thought the flu bug may have done some nerve damage. I spent the next eight weeks forcing myself everyday to do hand grip exercises, and I did scale drills on guitar, trying to get my little finger to respond to what I wanted it to do. The first three weeks was an exercise in fear and frustration. Eventually patience and hard work, along with some frightened prayers paid off. The nerve healed or rewired, and I have my hand back. That was my worst gig experience. It made putting up with drunken idiots, gear failure, etc, all seem to be small beans in comparison.

I think we have a winner...

Jeez, I can't think of much else scarier than losing the feeling/muscle response in your fingers!

Played in a show with my band that a lot of other bands around our scene organized and played. This show was in the middle of August in Boston. It was 90+ degrees with about the same percentage in humidity. I gotta lug an SVT and two cabs up a narrow flight of stairs. Upstairs. As in higher elevation in a building that considered it's stock of PBR as it's air conditioning...

Show is about 3 hours away and I'm soaked. Fortunately, I had enough foresight to bring a couple of shirts and some stuff to make sure I'm sub human enough to play. I set up my gear, then ran into the little boys room to make myself all prettied up...

Men's Room in this place was probably a synonym for the 7th or 8th level of Hell. No lights, except for the upside down flashlight tucked behind the sink. I turned it on and immediately saw things running from the light that I really wished I hadn't. Yow...

I changed a t shirt, then acclimated myself at the bar to the establishment's 12oz PBR AC.

Show time...I did mention that this was organized by peers/friends around our circuit, right? We're the first ones on since we were the pups of the scene. We start playing and my drummer, maybe from nerves, starts playing everything insanely fast. We've morphed into a speed core band, just like that.

But wait, order now and you'll also get...

Drummer brought one pair of sticks. One. Un. Uno. Ich. I'll give you three guesses if you can figure out what happened next in this sweatbox in 90+ degrees and 90+ humidity. If you guessed that one of the sticks flew out of his hand, you guessed right...in the midst of a song, of course. I start hearing some really weird sounds coming from his snare - he's whacking the snare with one hand and trying to retrieve the dropped stick which landed under his snare.

He finally gets it and proceeds to play the rest of the set even faster, which, quite frankly, suited me just fine. We finished out 30 minute set list in about 18 minutes, and we bugged out so fast I think my head spun. Our next practice, drummer left the band. If he hadn't, we were about to ask him to go.

Had to make do with a shocking mix onstage, but then I guess everybody has. This place is a jazz bar with the drum kit in the back left corner, facing the back right corner. The bass amp was some old worn out Fender thing, and it was at 90 degrees to the drummer. The guitarist had to use a smaller Orange amp that was well hidden half below the stage, and angles to get the best feedback and unwanted noise. He was eq-ed so shrill it was horrible, but I could barely hear him.

The singer was too nervous to get his act together well, so he fluffed most of his synth, sax and vocal stuff a little bit. I could only hear my wallowing bass mix (the bar soundman told me not to adjust a thing cos he had to 'compensate out front') so it was a sonic mess. I knew my parts well for the music, but it was not worth the effort in the end and I think I ended up playing Phil Lesh style leftfield bass just to try and get off the lower register half the time.

So, you were found attractive by two women that possibly represent a wide age range to which most women fall into, thereby indirectly making you desirable to all women????

Son, if a couple of chicks hitting on you that you don't particularly find attractive is the worst thing that's ever happened to you at a gig, YOU ARE LUCKY AS HELL!

By 22 years old (or so, the memory's a bit fuzzy), the following following bad things happening to me at gigs:


The drummer in one band decided it would be a great gimmick to bring a bunch of Twinkies and Ding Dongs to give away during the show at a backyard party. The ensuing food fight damaged the rental PA system we got, and we were charged hundreds of dollars for it. At the time when we were all broke college kids, it was a HUGE blow.
Multiple parties getting broken up by the police either while we were still setting up our equipment, or shortly thereafter.
A party that ended up with a near riot when the strippers and their bouncer snuck out the back door. They didn't feel safe with the rowdy crowd (and rightly so), and they bolted for their car without going back out for the 2nd round of bawdy entertainment. We had set up and were going to start playing after the strippers, but there were some super angry drunk dudes that made us uncomfortable enough just to pack our stuff up and bolt, too.
Being stiffed by the bar management for not drawing big enough crowd, or because he just felt like pocketing our pay instead of paying us - it was common for some promoters and management to prey on us young folks, and some form of this regularly happens even today.
The guitarist and the singer got into a fistfight during a set at a backyard party at the singer's house. The guitarist then urinated in his swimming pool, and put his cigarettes out on the singer's new carpet, after which another fistfight broke out.
I had a 20+ year old vintage Ampeg SVT head from the 70s. At a crappy dive bar, some idiot spilled is beer all over it and into the back of the amp. It stopped working immediately, and cost $300 in tubes to fix (I think, not sure about the cost).
Hit on at one of the gigs.... by a guy. You think you'd be flattered, but no, not really.


Sloasdaylight, come on back to this thread after you have a real disaster at one of your gigs... You'll have 'em too, if you play long enough!

You turned down the chance for not only two women, BUT a daughter and mom COMBO?! They better of been some real dogs or else you REALLY messed up that one!!

:p

Ah yes, someday, you will learn young one....
At 22, I too did not know the true meaning of a COMBO.


At 32, and especially now at 36, I woulda' been ALL
over that....... [just gotta get the wife's permission first].

:hiding:


You turned down the chance for not only two women, BUT a daughter and mom COMBO?! They better of been some real dogs or else you REALLY messed up that one!!



Ok, maybe it wasn't the absolute worst thing that's happened to me at a gig, but I figured it would be the funniest, everything else I filed away as just a part of the business I guess. Regarding my original post however, let me go more in depth as far as the players involved.

Myself: I've been told I'm a fairly handsome young man with gorgeous flowing brown locks and a rugged mountain man look about him. I look roughly like this, though my hair is a little darker:
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~jfs48/images/BradPitt2.jpg

The Mother: A 50s something barfly who looks like a 50s something barfly who resides at truck stops and dive bars permanently. Had an peculiar aroma. Looked something similar to this (this is actually scarily accurate):
http://www.commentbuddy.com/comments/Ugly-Women/seekcodes_227_5909.jpg

The daughter: A 20 something young thing that looks like she likes getting ridden hard and put up wet. Somewhat trashy with a tramp stamp and a little on the ponchy side, basically wholly unremarkable.

My mental state: Buzzed, on my way to trashed cause we're about to finish our last set (taking a break when First Contact was initiated). I was finally pretty well gone by the time I told them I was gay just to get them to leave me alone. Trust me, I rarely break out the "I'm gay" line, only in extreme circumstances, cause if that backfires and you're in the wrong place you can be pretty well screwed (no pun intended, and don't ask about that story).

Regarding truly awful things that have happened, I've had a stage mix that was so bad the after we got done playing and packing up, we were all having a smoke outside the place and asking ourselves how we all made it through it, and the general consensus was basically "I couldn't hear anything, so I had to count out every measure."

I've been dicked out of money before by guys who promised us a cut of the door.

My Original band's first gig cleared out the bar we were playing in; luckily it was late already so we didn't get banned from the joint.

So yea, the barfly story probably isn't the most horrible thing ever to happen to me, but it's probably the most entertaining for others to hear about, since it still provides my band a rather humourous anecdote to tell everyone they can.

http://www.commentbuddy.com/comments/Ugly-Women/seekcodes_227_5909.jpg

The daughter: A 20 something young thing that looks like she likes getting ridden hard and put up wet. Somewhat trashy with a tramp stamp and a little on the ponchy side, basically wholly unremarkable.

EURGH! Jesus...you got a pic for the 2nd one? Can't be half as bad as the mum (SHUDDER!!!)

I don't sadly enough, but if you did a google image search on white trash chick/girl/etc you could probably find a rough approximation.
Edit: Like I said, it was not a pretty scene and a generally bad situation in general.

there's two:

the big hipster/scenester Halloween party in this trashy apartment in Lawrenceville (hip Pittsburgh neighborhood). there must have been almost 100 people packed into this place. so my band at the time gets on stage, tunes up, gets ready to go into the first song, and...the resident of the apartment gets up and threatens to stab whoever took his girlfriend's purse. people kind of chuckled at first, and his angry shout became an apoplectic shriek, how he was GOING TO SLICE THE THROAT OF WHOEVER TOOK IT! then he goes "f*** you," throws down the mic, and jumps off the makeshift stage.

we start playing, and all 100 people start filing out the door. the singer/guitarist of the band, for whatever, quit the band by not showing up to our next show.


the second one is when i was on guitar, hopping on stage with my friend's band. i made the goofy decision to play the show with a beat-up Strat copy that i'd gotten for free and fixed up. it ended up crapping out on me during the set. as we were closing with a Who cover, i decided i'd just go for it, and smash the thing. the other guitarist decides he's going to join in the fun, and drops his Gibson Les Paul on the stage. now, i'm up there beating the snot out of this POS Strat copy, and it just won't break. but he drops his LP once, and it snaps at the headstock. he picks it back up, brings it down with two more blows, and breaks it in half. goes to the mic and sulks "show's over." no one applauds. people are going "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?"

i never did get that Strat copy to break. the whole episode changed my feelings (as a diehard Who fan) about smashing gear.

I don't sadly enough, but if you did a google image search on white trash chick/girl/etc you could probably find a rough approximation.
Edit: Like I said, it was not a pretty scene and a generally bad situation in general.

In the dark its all the same...

In the dark its all the same...

Yea I know.

You know what else is all the same in the dark? Herpes.

decided that it would be funny to smash my £600 Fender Jazz (bad idea letting him play it, I know) into pieces in front of the audience as a showstopper. I was ****ing livid.

You guys not talking anymore? Him not breathing would have a more suitable outcome. Whether it was a £600 fender or a £70 korean plank, it's still your pride and joy and for him to respect. :scowl:

Well, for me: walked into the initial "sound check"; drummer was drunk, singer and guitarists were intent on following his lead and discovered the "gigging PA system" we'd been told was at the place turned out to be a pair of budget stereo speakers wired up to an active mixing desk.

Fine, just put some of the vocals through a spare combo amp and keep on eye on the feedback. Then some twazzok in the crowd twiddled with the dials on the desk mid-gig and we had incurable screaming feedback for the rest of the night. Laughed it off, but didn't stay with the band much longer :hmm:

Oh, and to add insult to injury: turned around after the gig to get an eyefull of the lass I was seeing at the time crawling all over her ex.

Hurgh.

I was playing a gig at a bar in Antigonish, Nova Scotia the lead singers home town so all his friends show up to the show. One of his buddies is just loaded and in the middle of a song walks right to the front of the stage wips his d**k out and start jerkin it right in front of a bunch of girls and us of course. It was super awkward and by far the strangest/funniest things that has happened at one of my gigs.


I lived there for a few years, good times.

We were booked for a large Halloween party thrown at a local hotel. Gig went great! The guy that booked us was really happy and booked us for New Years Eve. During the period from Oct. 31 to end of December he forgot what kind of band we were. Come to find out, he billed us as a 50's and 60's group for this event. It was a very long and very difficult night. He was pacing around, bitching at us on break, and sending lists of songs he thought we should play to the stage. We played classic rock, but not that classic. We did the absolute best we could but the night totally sucked for everyone. Us, the management, and the older crowd wanting to hear "Chapel of Love" instead of "Hurts so good."

Yea I know.

You know what else is all the same in the dark? Herpes.

They make creams for that...


just joshin ya ;)

Once in a while the most horrible thing you can think of happens. Something so bad it stops the show, and/or leaves you embarrassed, and possibly ends the band.


On tour in Belgium some 20+ years ago, bad grounding in the stage wiring resulted in the mics having live voltage in them - couple that with a ton of sweat, one of guitarists touched his mouth to the mic and got zapped big-time. He was literally out-cold laying on the stage steaming, they brought him back-stage and a couple minutes later he came-to, sat out for a few tunes and then was back on stage... But man, talk about scary..... Flying back to the states with a coffin in tow was definitely not on the agenda.

-PE

Its not as bad as some of these stories on here but embarrasing still to think about these. I have a few.

One time I was playing a battle of the bands and and I recently got my new Acoustic amp and cab. Horrible idea if you want to play metal. It kept clipping cutting out my bass so in the middle of a very bass oriented song so I had to turn down basically to nothing (very hard attack with a pick) the sound guy kept looking at me telling me to turn up and I just shrugged and signaled I cant. Then later that show frustrated I go near my drummer and a few seconds later his cymbal falls I try to help him get it but to no avail so I say screw it and leave it and get it after the song.

Another time with the same band a different drummer at the same show we do a kicka** first song. Then it slowly goes downhill from there. Next song weak but okay. Then we do a half a**ed version of Symphony of Destruction which was terrible (sucky drummer) As if this show couldn't get any worse during our next song my guitarist has a brainfart and SKIPS an entire verse section and skips straight into the bridge section (which he does the wrong amount of times) I look at him with a what the f**k look signal a backhand motion towards him because at that point I had enough. And it gets worse during our last song which was supposed to be high energy fast thrashy song out drummer is pounding on the double bass pedal at a different tempo of the song and hes doing snare hits half time and at one point he just stops with the snare hits all together (didn't drop sticks) and just does nothing but pound on the double bass pedal for the remainder of the song. And during all this I drop my pick at the beginning of the song so because I'm so ticked at that point I beat on my bass the entire song and hiding my embarrassment in my hair and by the end of the song I'm panting from the bass playing and in anger because I was just disgusted by our s**t performance.

alright so heres mine

it was about a year back when i was in a punk band that had had an interesting raggae feel

i was not a good match for these guys but i was gamer friends iwth the drummer and we jammed on occasion but these guys used to play all the punk venues thats got 10 crack heads and a prison shank somewhere

now i remember we were playing in la and halfway through the set this gutter punk jumps up and starts hitting the singer over the head with a full beer bottle, chaos ensues till one of the other gutter punks in the audience does soemthing i'll remember for the rest of my life, he attaches a leash to this guy and pulls him like a dog saying "no!" appearently the dog collar on this dude was not for fashion o.O

we played the rest of the set and it went just fine, singer wasn't hurt too bad

At a bar gig years ago, one of the waitresses took something of a shine to me. We were playing on a Wednesday night and it was criminally slow (we took a month of Wednesday night gigs at this place simply because Wednesday was our normal practice night), so my new waitress friend decided to liven things up a bit by raising her shirt and flashing me repeatedly.

The problem? Between the stage lights and a bad case of nearsightedness, I never saw a single incident. I only knew because the other guys told me.

At a bar gig years ago, one of the waitresses took something of a shine to me. We were playing on a Wednesday night and it was criminally slow (we took a month of Wednesday night gigs at this place simply because Wednesday was our normal practice night), so my new waitress friend decided to liven things up a bit by raising her shirt and flashing me repeatedly.

The problem? Between the stage lights and a bad case of nearsightedness, I never saw a single incident. I only knew because the other guys told me.

Ah, if I had a dollar for every boob flashing I missed...... Now granted, I'm gay, so in the thrill sense it doesn't matter, but then I think of the money.... :crying:

I'm not sure if it's the worst thing, but it was bad enough.

I live in Fresno, but still play in my San Diego based band, RareForm, two or three times a year. About six years ago, we played a gig at a wedding reception, held at a house in Pacific Beach. The patio / Stage we played on was a decent size, and it looked like all would be well. Not even before we finished the first song, a brother-in-law of the bride stumbled drunkenly up to the stage and yelled at us to turn it down. We play covers from the 60's through the present, don't play hard metal, so we don't play blasting loud to begin with, but we turned down. No problem.... until we get to the end of the second song, and there he is again, yelling at us. We turn it down more. We get to the middle of the fourth tune, and my guitarist just stops, turns his amp off, and starts packing up. What I didn't see was the glass drunken brother-in-law threw at him. Now, Cliff is one of the most mild mannered guys you cold ever know.... he make me look mannic. Anyway, in the end, it all turned out, as the drunken brother-in-law was the one in charge of telling the neighbors that the reception was going to feature a live band, and apparently he didn't bother to tell them. The cops showed up as we were packing our gear into our cars.

I got mortared once....

Back in 1994 or 1995, can’t recall which, the guitarist in my band tore a ligament in his knee in the middle of his solo during the first song, went down like a rag doll. We had to stop to attend to him. We think what happened was that he jumped off the stage during load in, and the place had a really high stage, and he had weak knees, this was his second time tearing a ligament in his knee. But, the guy was a true professional. He called for a chair, some advil, and a shot of scotch, and played the rest of the gig seated.

I got mortared once....

bloody hell

hope everyone was ok. not to sound like an idiot but i take it this was on active service?

bloody hell

hope everyone was ok. not to sound like an idiot but i take it this was on active service?


Yeah, it was in Balad, Iraq. Nicknamed by those who've been there as "Mortaritaville".

alright so heres mine

it was about a year back when i was in a punk band that had had an interesting raggae feel

i was not a good match for these guys but i was gamer friends iwth the drummer and we jammed on occasion but these guys used to play all the punk venues thats got 10 crack heads and a prison shank somewhere

now i remember we were playing in la and halfway through the set this gutter punk jumps up and starts hitting the singer over the head with a full beer bottle, chaos ensues till one of the other gutter punks in the audience does soemthing i'll remember for the rest of my life, he attaches a leash to this guy and pulls him like a dog saying "no!" appearently the dog collar on this dude was not for fashion o.O

we played the rest of the set and it went just fine, singer wasn't hurt too bad

ROTFL!!! "Bad punk! Baddddd gutterpunk! NO!!! No hitting the singer with the beer bottle!" {{{Rolls up newspaper and smacks gutterpunk on nose...}}}

Cherie :D

ROTFL!!! "Bad punk! Baddddd gutterpunk! NO!!! No hitting the singer with the beer bottle!" {{{Rolls up newspaper and smacks gutterpunk on nose...}}}

Cherie :D

Not really necessary....I just keep a spray bottle nearby.

Riis

[The Mother: A 50s something barfly who looks like a 50s something barfly who resides at truck stops and dive bars permanently. Had an peculiar aroma. Looked something similar to this (this is actually scarily accurate):
http://www.commentbuddy.com/comments/Ugly-Women/seekcodes_227_5909.jpg
[/QUOTE]

GROSS!!!

What is it that makes these ugly, trashy barfly women think that a SUPER-TIGHT, curly, burnt perm is attractive? They all seem have that ugly perm, or the white-trash fe-mullet with a poof at the front, or both. UGLY, UGLY, UGLY!!! I mean, for God's sake lady, you're already not-pretty. Why do you need to go burn your hair, then make a poof of it, and make yourself even uglier? Don't they know that this hair has been a no-no since 1988?

Cherie

Not really necessary....I just keep a spray bottle nearby.

Riis

LOL! Grate up a little Ivory soap in it...its very effective.

Cherie ;) :D :hiding:

[The Mother: A 50s something barfly who looks like a 50s something barfly who resides at truck stops and dive bars permanently. Had an peculiar aroma. Looked something similar to this (this is actually scarily accurate):
http://www.commentbuddy.com/comments/Ugly-Women/seekcodes_227_5909.jpg




PERFECT thing to show your kids that meth is something to be avoided at all costs!

PERFECT thing to show your kids that meth is something to be avoided at all costs!
lol i dont think ima sleep for a while

http://www.commentbuddy.com/comments/Ugly-Women/seekcodes_227_5909.jpg


MOM!?!

I got mortared once....

I laughed so hard.

Not cause you got mortared, that sucks, but that all you had to do was come in here, say 4 words and some carefully placed dots and kick all our other stories in the nuts.

+1

I've once stepped on a cord and pulled all the guts outta my P-Bass. No joke, the entire pickguard. I learnt then to always put the cord through the strap.:D

I laughed so hard.

Not cause you got mortared, that sucks, but that all you had to do was come in here, say 4 words and some carefully placed dots and kick all our other stories in the nuts.

+1


Well, you have to admit - it was pretty bad :D

Had two guitarists get in what was basically a war during a song over who was going to do the solo. My drummer, being the calm, cool, collected guy he is threw his sticks at them and nailed both of them in the head. The drummer and I couldn't stop laughing and the guitarists were so pissed. The guitarists walked out and me and the drummer finished the set with a bass and drum solo playlist. Kicked so mucha ss.

I got mortared once....

Me too. Was at a Willams and Sonoma opening. Hormonal housewives can be dangerous. Here was the offending weapon. :hiding:

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/wsimgs/rk/images/dp/products/200951/0007/img27m.jpg