ok, to list some of my good/bad gigs:
the best one was at the tivoli in helsingborg Sweden,
it was a "battle of the bands" type of competition for bands in the southern parts of
sweden, the gig just went awesome in every way, 100+ people in front of the stage
headbanging and cheering and just rocking out. we also got to the semifinals
great, now for a lot worse gig, two days after this gig, we played at a kind of
youth recreation centre. first of, they had benches lined up along the walls, which made most people sit in the back... second, they said that it was very important that we were there at 17:00 sharp to soundcheck. at 18:00 they hadn't even started soundchecking the first band... at 19:00 the first band had soundchecked (they were the main act, a local band which now have a record deal) and they tell us there is no time for us to soundcheck...
so, after the first band (consisting of a couple of kids playing 3 crappy covers) we enter the stage, and have to soundcheck with all the audience watching. so anyways we start playing, and now the big problem starts, our drummer is so ****ing blown-up going to semifinals in the battle of the bands thing, that he exaggerates the hell out of his playing, making fills where he shouldn't, and fills he can't handle, getting the **** out of time, playing to fast, and most of all, dropping his drumsticks and just plain stops playing to look for it, no less than 5 times in about 8 songs, and then has the gut to blame it on the smokemachine making the air moist... (the most annoying time was when we got into a really heavy part and I was doing a jump and intended to land on the 1 and headbang my ass off. problem is there was no 1, coz he stopped playing and moved the 1 to like the 2 or something, boy did I look stupid)
now, we already had some issues with this guy, so we kicked him out two days later and he like "was it because of the crappy gig the other day?" and we like "nooooo srsly, why would you think that?"
fastforward to the semifinals of the competition.
we had some discussions regarding the old drummer, because even if he was a dick, he was singing lead on some of our songs choruses, so we had to take him back as second vocalist for at least this gig.
this resulted in a lot of wires on stage, since no one had wireless, and the worst part was that him and our rapper seemed to have this competition of who really was fronting the band, so they both ran around and jumped and played on the stage, resulting in the bassist getting his cord pulled out just about 5-6 times. we didn't get to finals...
And, just to add a funny thing, the band we opened for at the YRC also was in the competition, and I saw their gig. about 1 minute into the second or first song, they have a break, but after the break it's just silent... reason? well, no one knew, and while technicians tried to fix it, their singer tried to keep up the mood and telling the audience (who was later to vote on which band to go on in the competition) that "hey, it's not our fault, hope your'e not mad hehe, soon we will be rocking your ass off etc. etc."
later on I heard from their friend/roadie that the drummer had hit one of his chinas so hard that the cymbalstand fell on the floor, and the china simply cut off one of the main cords to the stage (or if it just jacked it out, I don't remember), resulting in pretty much all sound dying. so much for "not our fault" haha
sorry for the long post btw
Keeps 'em guessing, ya know?
