So a couple weekends ago we played a private gig (post-Christmas party), put on by this company for their employees. We get to the venue, it's a nice big room in a nice hotel, huge stage, we find out there's gonna be an open bar and full dinner buffet... everything's shaping up to be a good night.
The CEO of the company is also the MC for the night and our BL (who had done the similar gig for him last year) says he's kind of an odd duck. OK, we're ready for that. So we go up, play our first set, there's a crowd out there but... no response. Nobody dancing, engaging with the band or each other, anything. This is 9 o'clock and the drinks have been flowing since 6:30 so we're wondering what the heck is going on.
We go on break, the MC gets on the mic, says a few things and then says, "we're gonna bring the band up again and I hope you guys start dancing." And then still on mic, and only half jokingly, he turns to the band and says, "you guys are failing". At which point I'm thinking we've been hired by the biggest D-Bag whoever lived.
We play the rest of the show, only a very small number of dancers all night, people leaving early, etc.. It didn't help we had a lot of troubles with our light show, etc. Just a crappy, no-fun gig all around.
At the end of the night I see our BL talking to the D-Bag CEO for quite awhile and I'm thinking, great, we drove an hour and a half to do this gig and now we're not gonna get paid.
So we're driving home and we start talking about the lame crowd and just the weird vibe overall. Then our drummer says he overheard some chatter on break and apparently the company had fired a bunch of people that day. So that explained that, I guess, though it pretty much set us up to fail. Then I asked our BL what was going on at the end with the CEO and my BL says, "oh he was booking us back for next year."
And yes, we did get paid. Ya just never know with a corporate gig, I guess.
