Worse places you evere gigged at!

[crow01]

A gig where we played to 4 people (the members of the next band).

The place was some kind of parking garage converted into a bar. When you entered the place stinks like a butchery or something like the fish market.

The bathrooms don't have light switches, but instead those strings that hang from the light themselves, like old times.

One of the bathrooms had a bloody rag on the floor. I guess from a previous fight, who knows?

The bathrooms look like...If you saw the movie Trainspotting, when the guy goes to the bathroom at the beginning. Yeah it looked like that.

The acoustics of the garage...What acoustics?

The place didn't have a sign on the door, so it was almost impossible to find the place. The sign fell off the door, and the owner didn't care to put it back.

Definitely not a place to bring girls. The place was just nasty.

Worse thing was that the drummer wanted to book us there again. I quit after that.

[SoonerMatt]

I agreed to help a friend do a gig at a birthday party.

Unbeknown to me they were all HS sophomores who had raided their parents' liquor cabinet for the first time. I had all sorts of crap spilled on me, my bass, and my wah pedal.

Worst of all we didn't get paid because the parents thought we were the ones who gave them all the alcohol.

[The Owl]

Club 88 in L.A., divey and the place smelled like a cat litter box!

[ThunderLizard]

Played a pick up gig at a roadhouse. Went to the head during break and there was a guy passed out in one of the stalls...with a needle & rig hanging out of his arm.
Went back to the stage and stayed there for the rest of the night.

[BassmanAd]

Either The Adelphi in Hull or the soon-to-be-closed Princess Charlotte in Leicester. My 4-string brothers and sisters in the UK will know what I'm talking about. Two of the worst toilets in the country.

[Fretless1!]

Almost sounds like we played at the same place.

Converted garage? Check. Which means all four walls are concrete and nobody bothered to do any sound treatment in there.

Filthy bathroom with a chain for a lightswitch (which didnt' work)? Check. When the guys decide not to visit the bathroom, it's getting bad.

Bad wiring? Check. Got shocked so much I got scared. Electrical codes finally shut the place down.

Soundman on Ecstacy? Check. He was also very confused about how to mic things. He finally mic'd the singer and the two guitarists (as if they weren't already loud enough). Then he ran out of cables. Yes. 3 cables were all he had.

Oh, the life I lead...

[Edinburgh_Bass]

Many years ago, while still at school, my band played our 2nd public gig at one of the venues in the centre of town (which was a big deal to us at 15/16 years of age). We had loads of our school friends turn up (Scotland is a little more liberal on the drinking laws!), and were so excited.

Another band turned up, and I still have no idea if it was the venue or them that had the wrong details - but either way, they were a punk metal biker band - with crowd. They insisted on taking our slot, and managed to overplay leaving us with the shortest set after the venue agreed to let us play late.

Not a great experience - but a memorable milestone in my gigging career!

[Shroom]

My high school ska band played at a place called Duck Soup. All we knew about it going in was that it was a strip club/bar, so naturally, all being under 18 at the time, we were excited.

Turns out, it was a small bar in a cruddy part of town with a tiny stage connected to sort of a runway that had a stripper pole at the end. No strippers were on duty, but there were TV's that played clips from horror/porn hybrid movies. We ended up having to play last, and the only people we played to were a few sorry looking old drunk folks and the few guys from the other bands that stuck around to watch.

Oh yeah, and some point there was a waitress (bar hag) that made rounds trying to sell us suspicious looking drinks served in test tubes with some white powder sunk at the bottom.

[Bass Pleasures]

Originally Posted by BassmanAd

Either The Adelphi in Hull or the soon-to-be-closed Princess Charlotte in Leicester. My 4-string brothers and sisters in the UK will know what I'm talking about. Two of the worst toilets in the country.

When was this?

I played the the Adelphi in 1991 and I saw another band play The Charlotte in about 1994 and remember both places as being "typical", rather than particularly gruesome.


The old memory could be playing tricks on me, though.

[tom once dead]

I recently did a gig at a "recreational centre" or rolerblade rink, where the stage was only nig enough for a DJ. We were told not to bring amps so change over could be quicker. We arived, there was a Behringer head with an ashton 410 (aussie brand, worse than behringer). and one 60 watt peavy guitar combo, we have two guitarists. Only two mics, we needed 3. The stage was so small there were drums on the right side of stage, then guitar amp then bass amp and about a foot between the bass amp and side of stage. When I was headbanging I could feel my hair hitting one of the guitards headstock.

So one guitard went straight into the desk with his pedal, and he was played through the foldback ONLY. When I came on, the bass amp was off (I Thought the previous bands bass was quiet). Only one foldback was working, the one with the guitar. only one mic was on. When we finished, my friend told me that you could only really hear bass and drums, with a tiny bit of guitar. you could only hear the mic with the guitard who does "backup" er...vocals, and makes really loud screaming noices every now and again.

So for the audience it was a disaster, they heard bass drums and strange loud vocal noises. and we didnt get paid, but we did get a manager. Im not with that band anymore, me and the guitarist (non vocal noises) made a new band (see sig), and we kept the manager.

[the_ruckus]

3 words. Don's Waterin' Hole.

[rodl2005]

right!!!!
1.- A D & D ball(desperate & Dateless-shoulda known) held on a moored & converted Ferry boat. I reckon if the boat was a "capacity 300 ppl" there must've been 500 ppl on board
By the end of the night the floor was inches deep in beer & God know what else!! Luckily all My gear was up on crates, but the sound engineerhad to do a DESPERATE dash to move the PA power amps outta the quagmire...... Whoooeeeyy I got my ass & gear outta there fast after we finished that night.

2.- A gig in a small town south of the city. Franklin Hotel. was at the time owned by an African-American guy-Curtis(I'm in Tasmania- Australia... not MANY African-Americans live in our capital city let alone in the country towns) - he was a nice guy & liked our band-which at the time was a 60's-70's Bubblegum/glam rock band?!?! Anyway, we get there in the late afternoon to set up, & then have the free dinner the publican, Curtis, was supplying for us It was During dinner that Curtis told us of some "trouble" he'd been having with some local 'morons' - Curtis was married to a white girl... & these local Morons apparently didn't like this which only added fuel to the already burning fire of the following issue.
Curtis had only taken over the pub recently & the previous owner apparently bowed to the pressure of these local morons- letting them
stay after closing & drink his liquor, smoke joints in there & basically do whatever they wanted
Curtis- quite rightly- didn't want these practises going on in his establishment & stood up to the morons. Over dinner,, he told us how the other night the morons had turned up outside his pub with a burning cross!!!!!! Threatened him many times. Of course Curtis had been in touch with the police- but they were scared of these morons & were VERY hesitant to aggrivate 'em.
Anyway onto our gig- while we were playing(& totally unbeknownst to us) the morons turned up & let off a stick of explosives under some empty beer barrels out back!!! Then as we played our last set.... they came into the pub!!! MAN these guys looked -straight outta Deliverance- only w/ LONG hair & 'hippy' looks. Apparently they smoke HEAPS of bongs, drink HEAPS of beer/whatever, then come to the pub!! They sat at bar-being OK behaved- (I, of course, kept an eye on them-slyly) until we finished playing- then they came up to us & asked if they could play our guitars etc.... We'd made sure we started to PACK up as soon as we stopped playing- We wanted outta there!!-So we luckily managed to talk our way OUT of them using our gear(phew), but then they said that they were gonna go get THEIR guitars!!!
5 mins later they were back with guitars(sort of) etc.... One asked me if I'd tune his for him????????? Not wanting to provoke these brainless numbskulls, I reluctantly said I'd give it a go for him( I mean how hard/long should it take to tune a guitar-even IF I do a quick dodgy job- but he pulled out a 12 STRING!!!!!
Anyway -luckily WE got outta there relatively unscathed. Curtis was pleased with us & thanked us for actually STAYING & PLAYING- said many bands won't even go there.
Just to show how F***** up the place was(Hopefully-as this was 20 yrs ago- things have changed for the better) in the afternoon-before we'd SEEN any of these nuts- I asked one of the barmen "who ARE these guys-WHAT are they..... Rednecks ???" He replied "yeah- Greenies" ( U should all know what Rednecks are, & As far as I knew then- "GREENIES" were the OPPOSITE- caring for the environment/ppls rights etc... But the barman thought they were one & the same.
I saw Curtis a number of yrs later & he seemed happy, but I didn't get a chance to speak with him about these events!
NASTY!! Standover tactics & racism- No place for it!!!!!!

[mothmonsterman]

9/10 small bars in Detroit

I'll let others fill in the blanks

[excane]

A place named "Obsessions" somewhere in BumbleF*** swamps of Jersey.

Worst P.O.S. I've ever stepped foot in. The owner was a scumbag as well, tried to rip us off.

[Simon Langley]

Go ahead and ask me...

[Kenny Allyn]

Have you seen the movie "Black Snake Moan"

In it there is a scene where Justin Timberlakes character Ronnie gets off a charter bus and you see a bar in the background named MORRIES

... There


... My drummer and I did pickup gigs there all one Summer backing a guy named Blue

[MNAirHead]

set up a semi load of gear for one nerd highschool girl once... took about 20 man hours to set up.. 2o man horus to load out.

An out door "gig" ended up being 90 year old ladies (2) who were anointing their frog pond.

[BassmanAd]

Originally Posted by Bass Pleasures

When was this?

I played the the Adelphi in 1991 and I saw another band play The Charlotte in about 1994 and remember both places as being "typical", rather than particularly gruesome.


The old memory could be playing tricks on me, though.

I've done a few visits in the last 7 or 8 years.

The Adelphi is plain un-hygenic - so much mould on the wall it's safer to sit in the freezing van than it is to use the backstage. It's been a couple of years since I've been but I've heard reports that not much has changed.

The Charlotte is an all-round unpleasant playing experience. I've had vans broken into, you're not looked after particularly well, the in-house sound guy is legendary for being difficult. It's a real shame it's closing especially after the Astoria shut last week, but I won't miss playing there.

I notice you're from Coventry though; is the Colosseum still open? Many a happy gig there hiding behind the PA!

[Bass Pleasures]

The Adelphi must've gone to hell in the intervening years since I played there then. A shame as it's one of the stops on the UK gig circuit for up-and-coming bands.

After I read your post, I looked into The Charlotte closing down and somebody had commented on one report with much the same complaints about the sound guy and the general (un)welcome.


As for "The Colly", it's still going strong, although it goes by the name of "The Kasbah" these days.

It is a great venue, with the two different rooms it's pretty versatile.

You'll get bands playing the small room, then returning a few months later when they've got a name for themselves and packing out the main hall.

I never got to play there, although I did roadie there for mates' bands a few times.

[BassmanAd]

Originally Posted by Bass Pleasures

As for "The Colly", it's still going strong, although it goes by the name of "The Kasbah" these days.

It is a great venue, with the two different rooms it's pretty versatile.

You'll get bands playing the small room, then returning a few months later when they've got a name for themselves and packing out the main hall.

I never got to play there, although I did roadie there for mates' bands a few times.

Yeah it was always a fun venue to play, I remember the PA in the small room was a monster. Way louder than they needed. It was great!