Worst gig disasters?

[Kareir]

So far, i've been pretty lucky, as i've only played very few preformances..

anyways, last band i was in, we were set to play the guitarists brother's confirmation or something. pretty big thing. anyways, we practised a few times, but i never heard the singer sing. Guitarist and Drummer insisited the Rhythm G./Singer COULD sing, but his mike was broken.

Anyway, on the day we went to preform What I've Done by linkin park, the brother's favorite song. Song starts, piano is perfect, bass comes in nicely (self praise, woo )
singing starts. Predictably, it's frickin' awful. like, MY singing standard >< I left the next day.

What About You Guys?

_Kar.

[Eric Perry]

Having a girl fall into me on stage at a packed club, hyperextending my right leg, dislocating my knee and tearing my MCL, all while I face planted to the ground in the middle of a song.


Good times.

[Ben Esparza]

March 17, 1979 - St. Patrick's Day
Dive biker bar whose name and location will remain nameless to protect the innocent (me)! A fight breaks out in the middle of "Tie Your Mother Down". We keep playing and are kind of enjoying the view as the fight starts becoming a rumble and we're getting energized by the mayhem.

All of a sudden the rumble spreads on to the stage and the lead singer gets decked big time. IT'S ON. I unstrap my late '70's P-Bass (read= very heavy ash) and start swinging aimlessly. All of a sudden I hear that unmistakable "THUNK" of wood versus skull. Now I was 19 years old, 6'3", 220 lbs., and just finished playing a season a football at the junior college I was attending. So...there was a lot of force behind that swing. Plus, when you are my size, EVERYBODY remembers you. That was something I learned at a very young age. I could be minding my own business, but if something happens and people get questioned, they remember me being there.

That being said, upon hearing the "THUNK", I immediately take my bass, run out the back door knocking over people outside smoking pot, run to my car, and haul ass before I could even hear any police sirens. I left my amp, jacket, and anything else that I brought to the gig. I knew that if I stuck around, there would be 30 people saying they remember me being there. When I arrived home I found blood and slight chip of the red trans finish gone.

I called the guys the next day to find out. They said the cops came in force thumping heads and several people were arrested or taken to the hospital. They called me a big pussy for not sticking around and fighting off the guys that were thumping them.

The Yamaha B50 amp that I was playing was unharmed. Don't know what happened to the jacket.

[Joel S.]

Originally Posted by Eric618

Having a girl fall into me on stage at a packed club, hyperextending my right leg, dislocating my knee and tearing my MCL, all while I face planted to the ground in the middle of a song.


Good times.

Holy ef that sounds painful. Worst I've done is smash my head on a main as I was standing up.

I'm almost 6'5" though, so I've hit my head on lots of things, and therefore have a really hard head.

[Eric Perry]

This was about a week afterward. Even my toes and foot were all purple and yellow and gross from blood pooling in my foot.

[Vakmere]

Penalty Box in Wildwood NJ, 1978. Very big stage and back then we all had lots of big gear. We were not the main attraction however long story short, we had a ZepplinTull show and were kickin A.... Last tune over we got a stand O. Did one more, got another standing O, the crowd didnt want us to go. We said screw it, lets do one more. Middle of the tune, the band due up next decided to turn off the power amps and we were on stage volume and no mikes. We got the hint, and left the stage. Audience boo'ed them and we were pissed. I busted into their dressing room followed by the rest of the band except the woosie guitarist and did the Broad Street bullies imitation (yea-we're from Philly). Bing-pow-bang-crack, and eventually was broken up by the ownership. That band didnt fare too well when they finally went on (they did a Rod Stewart show) and we got fired right there and re-hired the next morning. Tull and Zep will pack the crowd in better than Rod so in the end we only tolerated one more night of each other and that was that. Disaster and success story all wraped up in one......

[wagstaff]

Originally Posted by Kareir

So far, i've been pretty lucky, as i've only played very few preformances..

anyways, last band i was in, we were set to play the guitarists brother's confirmation or something. pretty big thing. anyways, we practised a few times, but i never heard the singer sing. Guitarist and Drummer insisited the Rhythm G./Singer COULD sing, but his mike was broken.

Anyway, on the day we went to preform What I've Done by linkin park, the brother's favorite song. Song starts, piano is perfect, bass comes in nicely (self praise, woo )
singing starts. Predictably, it's frickin' awful. like, MY singing standard >< I left the next day.

What About You Guys?

_Kar.

The EXACT same thing happened to me at my first gig with a band called insomnia, same excuse, even though he couldn't play guitar well anyway he was good enough. long story short.

Rehersals: Didn't hear him sing (No mic), he could play the songs on guitar.

Gig: Believes the drummer that our two songs (small gig) where in different tunings, picks up the wrong guitar (only realizing at the end of the 'gig'), sucks badly at singing changes guitar for other song so he was still in the wrong tuning... awfull. O, he also completly messes up the solo (second video)

Heres a clip

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qDo18p...e=channel_page

[azureblue]

That was also a biker hangout. The bikers loved our jazz- we had a bari sax player, and they mostly just sat & listened. and told us how much they liked us, and this was New Orleans' Galloping Gooses.
So we're at it on some Gerry Mulligan one night and bunch of tourists come in, order drinks and start to talk loudly over the band- drunk and oblivious. I mean they were loud enough where we could hear the conversation on stage during the sax solo. This one biker huge and mean looking, walks over to the tourist's table after the tune was over, leans on the tabel and sticks his fac eright in the loudest guy's face and yells, "Shut the *&^% up or I'll tear your head off.

[madrob42]

Originally Posted by wagstaff

The EXACT same thing happened to me at my first gig with a band called insomnia, same excuse, even though he couldn't play guitar well anyway he was good enough. long story short.

Rehersals: Didn't hear him sing (No mic), he could play the songs on guitar.

Gig: Believes the drummer that our two songs (small gig) where in different tunings, picks up the wrong guitar (only realizing at the end of the 'gig'), sucks badly at singing changes guitar for other song so he was still in the wrong tuning... awfull. O, he also completly messes up the solo (second video)

Heres a clip

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qDo18p...e=channel_page

Oh man!...........that's just painfull to watch!

Thanks for sharing!

[shamus63]

Not really "disastrous", but I once played at the home of a biker club in Alemeda (The Ravens), and ate a couple of the "brownies" they had offered me without giving it much thought...

The rest of the band...who had all abstained from brownie intake...said I was playing just fine.

Regardless, I was trippin' pretty hard the whole night!

Lesson learned...don't accept candy from strangers.

[MatticusMania]

Originally Posted by shamus63

Not really "disastrous", but I once played at the home of a biker club in Alemeda (The Ravens), and ate a couple of the "brownies" they had offered me without giving it much thought...

The rest of the band...who had all abstained from brownie intake...said I was playing just fine.

Regardless, I was trippin' pretty hard the whole night!

Lesson learned...don't accept candy from strangers.

I think the real lesson learned there is 'Never accept CANDY from strangers, but BROWNIES are A OK!'

[MatticusMania]

Ok, so here's my story. We were playing in the warehouse district of LA, it was a cool little warehouse turned venue with a strong art theme. The band before us had provided the PA, which was a similar model to our own, only less wattage. Little did we realize that they had 5 speakers hooked up to this little thing. As I was playing and singing I got a few shocks from the mic, so I was keeping my distance and singing a lil louder. Maybe halfway through our set, BOOM, PA trips, totally dead. I finished the rest of the set singing VERY loudly, luckily the band was only composed of bass & drums, so my vocals were able to cut through. Afterwards we probably got more compliments than ANY show we had ever played. It was awesome. Lesson learned: always bring your own PA.

That was actually the second time we played the venue. The first time we played there I happened to have tonsilitis. I wasnt about to let that stop me. Not only that, but i was playing in 2 bands. It was kind of fun spitting up blood from the stage.

[LuckyCondlins]

Originally Posted by shamus63

Not really "disastrous", but I once played at the home of a biker club in Alemeda (The Ravens), and ate a couple of the "brownies" they had offered me without giving it much thought...

The rest of the band...who had all abstained from brownie intake...said I was playing just fine.

Regardless, I was trippin' pretty hard the whole night!

Lesson learned...don't accept candy from strangers.

"Tripping" ?

Are we talking special brownies with things you may find on a pizza topping? Or special brownies with things that look like Oregano.

I have heard of oregano brownies...but not the other!

[T.O.Bass]

Originally Posted by azureblue

That was also a biker hangout. The bikers loved our jazz- we had a bari sax player, and they mostly just sat & listened. and told us how much they liked us, and this was New Orleans' Galloping Gooses.
So we're at it on some Gerry Mulligan one night and bunch of tourists come in, order drinks and start to talk loudly over the band- drunk and oblivious. I mean they were loud enough where we could hear the conversation on stage during the sax solo. This one biker huge and mean looking, walks over to the tourist's table after the tune was over, leans on the tabel and sticks his fac eright in the loudest guy's face and yells, "Shut the *&^% up or I'll tear your head off.

Awsome. I love it when someone has the balls to do that. He was probably sincere, too!

[lowfreqtweak]

While this may not be as crazy as some of the stories in this thread, I call it a disaster because my first live performance ever was ruined by it.

A group of friends invited me to play bass for our high school's talent show, and we all worked really hard preparing for it and had to make it count since the two guitarists were seniors and this was the last time they'd be able to perform for our classmates.

We hit the stage, the lights dim, and we start our song. After the first solo it's just drums and rhythm guitar. As soon as me and the lead guitarist try to come back in, we both notice our amps aren't making any noise. We turn around and see the lights on our pedals and amps are off, so we frantically flip every switch trying to figure out what's going on.

After a minute (though it felt like a year) went by, everyone thought we were done so they close the curtain and we walk off stage. The lead guitarist was so pissed we thought he was going to punch someone.

Turns out what had happened was someone running around behind the back curtain and tripped over our main power chord. The only thing that made it better was that they let us play another song at the end of the show for all our friends. But still, we were all pretty pissed about what had happened.

[lowfreqtweak]

Another funny story I thought of after my last post. This one isn't from my band but thought it was pretty hilarious.

We were playing a show at a local venue in Tempe. Me and my band mates were sitting around in the green room getting pumped for our performance. We step outside just in time to see a Schecter bass fly off the stage and into the crowd, but not before hitting monitors and PA speakers. Apparently the genius had forgotten to unplug his instrument before tossing it, and his Ampeg 8x10 cabinet with a beautiful SVT head sitting on top of it come crashing down on top of the bassist. While he was on the ground, whining about his knee hurting, my band were inspecting the damage done to the bass with the security guard who had retrieved it. We mourned over the bass then laughed about the stupidity of the bassist.

Had his amp fallen over as the result of an accident I would have been more than happy to see if he was ok. But I honestly had no sympathy for the guy, why would you do that to your bass?!

[GearHeadBassMan]

The gig started out with my guitarist's $4000 boutique amp refusing to turn on (post gig- fuse blown due to faulty tube) and he had to run his pedal board through the mains. They were nice enough to not give us any of his guitar on stage so we had to play without rythym guitar or hearing any of his leads.

Then the fuse my rig is on goes out mid song. I'm DI'ed through my pedalboard so i still had sound through mains, but once again, nothing on stage. we're now playing to the lead guitar and drums.

I'm trying to keep the energy up, so I go for a jump off the drum riser during an appropriate point in the song. I land it well, and keep playing. Suddenly I head a buzzing through the monitors. They were trying to put some bass through the pathetic things, but then I realized why. My input plate had broken off in the jump and my bass's guts were falling out and buzzing like mad. Being the rockstar (read: unprofessional) I was i simply dropped the bass and walked off stage (it was a carpeted stage, my bass was fine) and got my backup, mid song. then i walked out, switched the hot wires (the buzz was still going) and finished up.

We finish the song, and ask the soundguy to give us some guitar in the monitors for the next song, where we need to hear it for cues. He just says, "No, you can't, you have one more song.", which was cutting our set short by ten minutes. Our drummer, who was new, panicked and as we skipped ahead to our last song, he forgot the drumline and was frantically motioning to me while we played the opening riff. as I was trying to play the difficult rythmic line (think opening to YYZ) I'm also trying to tell him what the next drum part is, all the while with no stage volume on either my rhythm guitarist or my own line, with a stone scared drummer.

the transition comes and... nothing. we fall apart. We just can't play it. we apologized embarassingly to the crowd, telling them what was going on with our equipment, and got the hell off the stage.

Luckily, we had a chance at redemption later in the night with an acoustic set, which I feel was the best performance we've given. We ended up selling over $300 in merchandise and got signed on by the production company to co-headline a show they were throwing in march. A happy ending to an utter cluster fword of a gig.

[Johnny Mack]

falling into the drumset is NOT part of the show!

[Slax]

Originally Posted by lowfreqtweak

While this may not be as crazy as some of the stories in this thread, I call it a disaster because my first live performance ever was ruined by it.

A group of friends invited me to play bass for our high school's talent show, and we all worked really hard preparing for it and had to make it count since the two guitarists were seniors and this was the last time they'd be able to perform for our classmates.

We hit the stage, the lights dim, and we start our song. After the first solo it's just drums and rhythm guitar. As soon as me and the lead guitarist try to come back in, we both notice our amps aren't making any noise. We turn around and see the lights on our pedals and amps are off, so we frantically flip every switch trying to figure out what's going on.

After a minute (though it felt like a year) went by, everyone thought we were done so they close the curtain and we walk off stage. The lead guitarist was so pissed we thought he was going to punch someone.

Turns out what had happened was someone running around behind the back curtain and tripped over our main power chord. The only thing that made it better was that they let us play another song at the end of the show for all our friends. But still, we were all pretty pissed about what had happened.

I've had this happen many times w/ my old ska band. It seems if it's not a venue set up for bands, those daisy chains of surge protectors are just screaming to be pulled be some douche in the area.

Long story short, I hope to not play in places like that again against my will. lol

[MRuss]

At a battle of the bands in college, the people hosting the battle didnt have they're own PA, so they borrowed one from some other campus body/organization. Well it turned out to be pretty weak and not loud enough for a rock band(a poppy one at that) vocals. they set up maxed, and about halfway through our set it begins to overheat and the vocals start to cut in and out. eventually it just cuts out entirely and were just left playing instrumentally. Not super crazy like a broken knee, but it was ****ing anoying.