Oh
My
God
I´ve been reading horror stories about bad gigs here, I never actually thought something like that would happen to me, until now.
Here´s the deal: Our gig was a part af a cult movie festival here in Iceland. 4-5 bands playing in a bar called Vegamot here in Reykjavik. We were supposed to have about 1/2hour each to do our stuff and local record executives and radio personnel were supposed to be invited.
Since there were 4-5 bands we somehow had to think of a way to share our gear. It turned out that my band had most of the good stuff so we brought our Yorkville 512 pro mixer, our two Yorkville Pulse153 monitors, the drumset and my bass amplifier. Two gee-tar amps were brought in by two other bands.
To begin with we weren´t to happy with the location of the gig, since Vegamot is more of a pub with dj´s and not so much with live music. We suggested another venue, but it was turned down since the guys who were responsible for this event thought that Vegamot was such a "cult" place that the gig just had to be there.
Ok, fair enough. The gig was scheduled at 10pm, we were allowed into the pub at 7:30pm and then we had to set up the whole system. Since this is of course very time consuming, only one band was able to run through a one song sound check.
At the near beginning of the show, it turned out that the fifth band which was supposed to play one or two songs, split up. Ok, more time for the others right? Band one started to play and they went through their whole set. They sounded very good and everything went well for them. During the latter part of their set, the manager of the pub complained about them being too loud, the beersale had dropped and he wanted to have lower volume. Band nr.1 ended their stuff with style, good stuff.
Band nr.2 get´s up on stage, they immediatly have some gee-tar amp problems, and eventually they had to play with only one gee-tar (was a 2gee-tar, 1bass and drums band). They sounded pretty good, but weren´t happy with having to play with only one gee-tar.
Band nr.3, us. Before I continue, I might add that our guitarist´s effect unit (Boss ME-30) got spilled on with some fluid, probably water, but we´re not sure. When we started to set up, it became clear that something was wrong. We couldn´t get anything but clear guitar sound through the amp (the amp that had bothered band nr.2), no distortion effects or nothing came through. Many things were tried but didn´t work. So in the end we decided to play our set with clean guitar through
Our playlist was about seven songs, and then we were approached by the guys who were holding this event, telling ust that the bar owner wanted us to shorten our gig, so we reluctantely agreed to cut it down to four songs.
We played song nr.1, all went fine, played song nr.2 all went fine, then the bar owner signals with his hand cutting across is throat, that the gig is over. We were furious but he had already turned up the house pa and the gig was over with. We only got to play two songs, the fourth band couldn´t play anything and everyone was very, very pissed of with the bar owner. We can´t blame the guys responsible for this event since they didn´t know how the bar owner would react.
To summarize: We had practised for 3-4 weeks for this gig, we had hauled all our gear there, for nothing! No record executives or radio personnel showed up, and our set was cut after two songs, and the fourth band wasn´t allowed to play.
And finally, this was an unpaid gig, it was supposed to put the spotlight on us, but it failed miserably.
The suckiest gig on earth!
Here is a pic from this suck-ar$e gig, me on the left.
Now that gig sucketh... 
