Worst gig you ever had.

[Down & Outman]

I still laugh at this one night. Was a battle of the bands back in the 70's. Had a 5 piece band with a lead singer, complete with an organist with a Hammond B3 organ, leslie and the works. Big, heavy bugger!

We get there and we are first to go! The stage, get this, was 10 feet off the ground! With a steep ramp that we had to push our equipment up. Remember, we had that organ to get up there! In addition to all the rest of the amps, my Sunn 2-15 cab included. We barely got set up and the owner was yelling at us for taking too much time to set up and we had to start playing now or get off the stage.

Well the rhythym guitarist just went into Free Ride without tuning up. It was awful. He then yelled at us for sounding like crap and made us get off the stage. An absolute waste of time and effort. We didn't even bother to stay to listen to the other bands. He wasn't getting our drinking money for sure.

I did hear he didn't stay in business for very long though.

[boombloom]

I hid behind my upright bass. The banjo player was heard to exclaim "there isn't a banjo big enough!" That night I learned there is more than one way to swing your partner.

[mellowinman]

I had a good four-piece band. I liked how it sounded. My guitar player, Arthur, wanted to add his friend, Jim, and make it a five piece, with two guitars. It was difficult to bring in another guitar player, as the sound was just about right. We also had drummer issues, and drummer #3, Ace, had just bailed on us, to go work for the Disney Channel. (or so he CLAIMED) We were using drummer #4, Tim, who hadn't had much time to rehearse with us.

I had just had a spinal fusion, and could not lug gear, or bend at the waist. It was hot. Jim had booked us to play a rock and roll festival in Ohio. I was interviewed by a local station. I thought we were going to an actual festival.

After a four hour drive, I arrived at a shoddy looking camp ground, and heard a band playing through a crappy PA, with the trebles too high, and I could tell they were damaging the hearing of the campers and their children, who foolishly paid ten dollar a head for a case of tinnitus that would plague them for the rest of their lives. My wife, who runs our sound, and usually brings her own monitor system, would soon be arriving, and the thought of her hearing this PA was making me edgy. I wanted to simply get in my car and drive home, but I didn't have money for the required gas.

So I asked Jim who was doing sound, and he told me, "I EQ'd that. Before I did, it sounded like mud." He informed me they had no effects, and our vocals would be dry, unless there were onboard effects, as no one had brought an effect unit.

The sun got hotter; the sound got more grating, and I had earplugs in. Finally, it was time to set up, and Jim and Arthur both argued with me about where to set up the keyboard two of us would share, and the guy who was responsible for the stage told me he didn't know what he was doing, and didn't want to be there. His breath reeked of whiskey, and he was stoned. He started telling me a story, and I tried to explain that I had stuff to do. I was mostly wondering if I'd have a microphone, since I was singing lead on most of the material we would be doing. I had to run to the car and get some xlr cables, because they didn't have enough. It was a good thing I brought some.

I got hotter, and my back hurt more and more, and my wife was over at the sound board, trying to get them to use the one board effect they had, and deciding if we would have reverb or delay, but not BOTH, because as I said, they had no effect unit. Jim's wife told me I was anal for wanting to tune my instruments (12 string and bass) with a digital tuner, and that I should play with more heart because, "if you don't have heart, you don't have nothing."

Everyone was starting to really irritate me. I had made ten or more trips to my car for this or that little thing that someone had forgotten to bring, and it was obvious the crew was completely overwhelmed at putting a four piece band on, even though they had just done so three or four times already, and the crowd was getting restless, and starting to demand we start playing.

We tried to sound check, and we had shared monitors. My wife said she couldn't hear herself at all through the monitor, and that I was ripping her head off. For no reason I could think of, both guitars were blasting through our vocal monitors. The sound guy decided to "ring out" the monitors, and the wail of feedback made my ears start ringing.

I informed the crew that if anyone else "rang out" monitors INTO OUR EARS we were going to "ring out" our fists into their faces. THIS, looking back, was the moment when things turned really ugly.

During one of the first songs, I made a motion with my hand to the drummer to pick up the tempo, as he had started way to slow, and I am one of those odd performers who would rather the audience perceive us speed up than spend six minutes playing a song at a dragging tempo. The drummer shook his head "no." I made the motion again, only more dramatically. Again, he shook his head "no." In the middle of the line, I screamed "C'MON!!!" into the mic, and then my wife, who was playing the bass, went ahead and picked up her tempo, and since he had a crush on her, he obliged.

On the third song, my mic went dead. I pointed at it to the sound crew, and they said, in a loud, aggravated voice, "what do you want NOW," and I screamed, probably louder than their entire PA "HOW ABOUT A F----ING MIC!!!!!?????"

Later, that drummer told me the entire sound crew had discussed kicking my ass, which would have been rather unpleasant, since I had just had stitches removed from a nine inch scar in my back, and, as I mentioned, was unable to bend at the waist. I'm not sure if they really discussed that or not, because drummer #4 had a tendency to tell tall tales, and these guys were really stoned, plus, they were all musicians, and KNEW that they had screwed us bad.

We played the show, and the crowd loved us. I don't know HOW they could've loved us, as the sound was crap, and on the songs my wife sang, you could barely hear her vocal at all, but they were head banging, and fist pumping, and I would've pitied the sound guy who started a fight with us, as that crowd were an unsavory lot, and they were definitely on our side.

During the entire show, our extra guitar player stepped on vocals, the first guitar, and generally played the show as if he were a solo artist.

We were paid, and allowed to leave with our lives, which was a miracle, and I somehow managed the drive home.

We are now a four piece again, with drummer #5, who is a gift from God. We never discuss tempo, and as far as I know, he doesn't have a crush on my wife.

And the entire band knows that if anyone books a gig four hours away, for $300.00, to be split, we are just going to kill them.

[Willie Dizon]

Back in the 90's I was in an alternative band that opened up for a very popular band in Norfolk,Va.It was a packed house and that night our drummer decided to have a I-don't--give-a-crap attitude.Needless to say we flopped.He got kicked out after that gig!

[Rattman]

Something similar to the OP's story, buy maybe not as humbling or as memorable...

Another 'Battle of the Bands" fiasco.. Our band was on the bill, we arrived there on time and all that.. we tuned up, started into the first song and it was only then that I realized the bass cab supplied by the Chamber of Commerce or whomever the sponsor was, was totally fried! .... I mean I don't think I could have gotten that much distortion from a pedal.. Every-single-note was: "buzzzz-buzz-buzz-buzzzzzzzz! Sheeesh... so glad to get off that stage get going back home. Tons of fun....

. .

[skychief]

Worst gig EVER was the last one I did a coupla weeks ago. Wasnt the gig, really, it was the load-in/ load out. What a fiasco. There was a steep driveway leading DOWN to the area where we were to play. All the asphalt had been stripped - the owner was having concrete poured the following day.

Anyway, it had rained the nite befor the gig.....you get the picture....the entire driveway was a slick, slippery, muddy mess.

Had my ampeg svt & eden 210 cab strapped on a hand truck. While navigating down the driveway, (kinda letting the rig pull me down) i slipped in the mud, landed flat on my back and lost grip of the hand truck (& my rig) which promptly went careening down the slope.

Fortunately, aside from some mud splatters in the rat-fur of the 210 cab, my rig was spared from the ordeal. But i played the entire gig with my backside covered in mud!!

Didnt have the presence of mind to take some cell-phone pix of the scene, dammit.

[kzr750r1]

We had a gig during a street festival at a local bar on the down town strip. We were given the last slot of the night, much to our dismay. Was about 1.5 hours of original material on tap, we didn't do covers. Upon arriving at the bar we noted there was no PA. There were speakers but no board or amp for them. So back to the practice space to collect the PA gear and return to finish setup.

I was already pissed off at this point. My truck was the only one capable of loading all this gear into. Fine lets get this over with and go home... The singer I despised helped me load the gear.

During one of the last songs our drummer (who was one of the best I have ever played with) split his finger open and was flinging blood all over the place. He worked through one more song, after I looked back to find he was packing it in.

Thinking to myself, cool were out of here, tag and bag time. The bar manager was horrified to see us packing our gear and not just taking a break. Exclaiming well never play his bar again. Replied, "Good to hear, have a good night."

The main reason we got that gig is we were killing it at another regional bar and our crowd would run the bar dry every time we put a show together. He was hoping for more of the same... Not this time bubba. Cheers.

[Ed Fuqua]

First, some background - I went to high school in Augusta GA when Steve Morse was playing in the area, first with a kind of cover band called Dixie Grit and then with the primarily originals band called (at first) the Dixie Dregs (and eventually The Dregs). So all of the garage bands in Augusta at the time were a little weird, everyone was doing really odd instrumental music. The guitar player that I played with in high school went straight to Berklee and, when he got back, his original music was getting weirder and we had pulled in some Mahavishnu (with instrumentation of alto, guitar, keyboards, bass and drums), RTF etc. Just a bad, pretentious fusion band.
Anyhoo, because the keyboard player was in the union, we all decided to join up and, to throw us a bone, the union pointed a gig at us. It was at some sort of agricultural fair (not really a state fair even) in Vidalia GA because they were looking for, as they had every year, a "jazz band". The union cat conveniently forgot to mention that the "jazz band" that they had booked for the previous several years was kind of a faux Dixieland group.
So we show up, with the amount of electric gear we're unloading raising a number of eyebrows and get set up. We start a sound check, but then someone rushes over to ask us to stop "because they're announcing the livestock winners" over in the next building. OK, no worries, we'll adjust during the first tune. And apparently the adjudication has completed, cause suddenly everyone is filing into our building and taking their seats in the bleachers. We get the nod from the master of ceremonies and launch into our first tune.
Which is an original that is being played as fast and as loud and as odd-metered as it can possibly be, in our best faux Mahavishnu posturing. And finish, with the 16th note unison run stop on a dime and leave nine cents change ending echoing throughout the quonset hut.
To absolute dead silence. No applause, no booing, no cat calls. No "Freebird" even. Just dead, middle of the cemetery at night, silence.
I think by the end of the second tune, we had cleared the place...

[Thor]

Foghorn that's priceless. I have to figure it was the Vidalia Onion festival. $#!4kicker meets Chick Corea. Perfect.

[theretheyare]

Well not really the worst. but priceless nonetheless: the Zydeco band I was playing in at the time in Europe was scheduled to play a bar in the south of Holland, near the Belgian border. So we find this bar has a huge line of trucks parked along the road side. We go in and we see all these fat guys and ladies in their fifties wearing home made cowboy suits. Came out to be a hard core country&western/line dancing festival, Dutch style. We check out the C&W band scheduled before us and see this whole line dancing thing going on. As we played Zydeco, rather high energy stuff, we wondered what was going to happen when we were up. So we start to play, and yes-the whole bar with very serious faces, start to line dance on our rather manic "Allons a Lafayette". And they keep going, song after song, sweat dripping from their faces, not a word, into this slapstick style line dancing. We at least managed to keep straight faces. After our set noone in the bar said a word to us, good or bad. Utterly bizarre.

[Blah114]

true story.. seriously.. played a private party.. in the middle of nowhere.. people were smoking who knows what.. not just cigarettes/marijuana... a drunk, underaged, teen.. in a wheelchair was running into people and going in circles within his motorized wheelchair. I am not making light of the kid.. it was sad.. it really was.. the fact his parents let him drink is sad.. for one.. at night's end, a huge fight broke out between the kid's dad and a guest beside a bonfire.. the band stopped.. we never got paid because the police got called and the dad was arrested and taken to jail.. guess you had to be there.. that was a horrible night.

[NKUSigEp]

Played Mahogany's in Covington this past summer...just a local dive more accustomed to blues, jazz and some classic rock. There we were belting out some metal to all 4 members of the audience, bartender and owner included. We later witnessed the bartender quit and storm out because the owner owed her some money and she had to buy Oxy for her boyfriend after she got off work. And of course the bar owner wasn't going to pay her because he didn't have any money that night.

[eneye]

I've had gigs where fights broke out, where the band I was in at the time was a total scene. I've played for for an audience of one who was face first passed out at a table in Wheeling West Virginia once but there is a special place in my heart for:

The Stage, Gas Lamp District, San Diego, early 2010. I cut a vacation short because I had this gig in SD with my group. If my memory is correct, I even flew into SD for the gig (instead of LAX).

When we got there it was some sort of lame band showcase deal that the promoter had inflated to look like we might make some money. As I recall, we were doing the promoter a favor by coming on the bill at the last minute, thus the reason for shortening my vacation. I'll never forget after the level of professionalism and cooperation we extended to this place, how big of a douche the owner was. The crowd in the place was tepid at best, we had no time to promote it, but there were enough people there to merit us putting on a good show, so we gave it to them. While on stage I had a piece of broken glass go through my left foot.

When we got of the promoter a few days later we found out we had made $20 for our trouble. Enraged, we told her to keep it and vowed never to play there again. I played more than 200 shows with that painful piece of glass in my foot and I am an active live performer. That piece of glass stayed in my foot for the better part of a YEAR and finally exited my foot about 3/4" from where it entered on December 23rd, 2010. During that year, I would often step on my left foot a certain way and feel a sharp pain come jolting through my nervous system. I would always joke that it was a reminder that no matter how bad things got, at least we'd never play The Stage again.

[Marty Forrer]

I was booked as a sub with a funk/soul band for one gig. The regular bass player gave me all the charts two weeks beforehand, so I shedded and nailed them.
At the gig, the regular singer was away sick, they had a ring in singer who did not one single song I had learnt. The keyboard player was yelling changes at me, but the stage volume was too loud for me to hear..... aaaarrrggghhhh!!!
I sucked.

[eneye]

Originally Posted by Blah114

true story.. seriously.. played a private party.. in the middle of nowhere.. people were smoking who knows what.. not just cigarettes/marijuana... a drunk, underaged, teen.. in a wheelchair was running into people and going in circles within his motorized wheelchair. I am not making light of the kid.. it was sad.. it really was.. the fact his parents let him drink is sad.. for one.. at night's end, a huge fight broke out between the kid's dad and a guest beside a bonfire.. the band stopped.. we never got paid because the police got called and the dad was arrested and taken to jail.. guess you had to be there.. that was a horrible night.

HA you just reminded me of a b-day party we did just south of Tijuana overlooking the beach. We were there playing a b-day party for these kids who were friends of a famous band we know in socal. Sometime after the absynthe, we went on playing this terrace overlooking the ocean. These surfer guys got drunk and violent really quick. The icing on the cake was when they tied the birthday boy to a chair and brought out a stun gun. All of a sudden we keep hearing crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!! We all looked at each other and said, "that's the show" we packed up and got as far away from the lethal weapons as we could...

[Thor]

I must be a truly horrible person as I lol'ed at the story. I guess it comes under 'Truth is Stranger Than Fiction' and
'You Just Can't Make This Crap Up'.

[TreeFitty]

Back in the late 80's, I was in a band called Love Snake. Yes, no joke.

We had a gig at Madame Wongs (not upstairs), and we spent more time talking about gigging than actually gigging. The singer wanted to differentiate ourselves from the competition, so he got a film student buddy of his to do a short film to show while we were setting up. The film that Stuart came up with was called "The Cist That Ruled The World." Basically, Ronald Reagan's removed cist was to take over the world, and in order to do this, the cist needed food. So Stuart decided his fecal matter was just the meal....so Stuart proceeds to show his defication on screen feeding the cist (his ass was on screen, cist was animation).

We had invited our friends and their friends came, so as we were setting up on the stage behind the screen, we could hear the gasps of the audience. Some started booing or saying "that's disgusting." Needless to say, the only folks left were our family and close friends, we cleared the place.

After that, the gig went really bad, the singer forgot his lines, and the sax player had an effects box that made his sax deeper than my bass.

On top of that, my girlfriend was out at another club (Waters Club) scamming on dudes...

When I got home, I threw my bass to the ground saying I'll never play again....but I did.

Whenever with my friends and talk swings to Love Snake, that gig is not so fondly remembered.

[ghiadub]

Bout 1983 my band opened up a show at this really cool theater, there were about 600-800 people there, the show went well.
After, we are hanging backstage drinking free beer (our pay) and my drummer comes up and asked for the keys to the truck. He met some girl and needed to get the blanket he kept in his bass drum so he could use it to bed down with his newly found groupie. Great, here are the keys. So we are hanging out getting the most free beer we can and basically closed the place. We go to get in the truck and it hits us (me, guitar'd, roadie and light guy) that the drummer still has the keys.

This was in the days before cell phones, so we call his house and leave a message with his mom (we were all between 16-17) and then call my Mom to see if she can drive over the spare key. No answer. We are stuck there, with no so much as a jacket, nights were in the low 40s (F) so pretty cold and we could not leave the truck as it has every piece of equipment we all own in there. We have $2.13 between us, so at 2:30am we hike 30 blocks to the am/pm and buy a loaf of bread, some bologna and mayo packets since we are starving and have had exactly nothing to eat all night.
We make it back to the truck, our roadie is all bloody because he had to fight off some punks who were trying to rip us off, he was given a sleeping bag from some homeless who saw the fight go down. So we split the food up, all huddle under the bag until morning.

I wake up to find my light guy setting fire to a stairwell because he was very cold, I start yelling at him that he is going to get us arrested for arson, and the store owner comes out (this all takes place in an alley) and sees the fire and calls the cops. We bail, beg for some change to make a phone call, my mom does answer and makes it there just after the fire dept. arrested my light guy while we all hid around the corner.

[hernameisrio]

I played keys in a band that drove two hours in a snowstorm to do a show in Garwood, NJ for this local burlesque night. Dragging two keyboards on a hand-cart through the snow= not fun. Getting stuck in traffic= worse. Getting hit on by all the wrong people at this sketchy bar in freakin Garwood= awkward. Nobody being able to hear me anyway= used to it. And having to fight not only the club for the $125 we were owed but then having to fight the LEAD SINGER for it because he wanted to put it "towards the band" (yeah right...jerk)= the worst. Yeah...it sucked.

[Downunderwonder]

You should write a novel, best TB story I read in a while:

Originally Posted by mellowinman

I had a good four-piece band. I liked how it sounded. My guitar player, Arthur, wanted to add his friend, Jim, and make it a five piece, with two guitars. It was difficult to bring in another guitar player, as the sound was just about right. We also had drummer issues, and drummer #3, Ace, had just bailed on us, to go work for the Disney Channel. (or so he CLAIMED) We were using drummer #4, Tim, who hadn't had much time to rehearse with us.

I had just had a spinal fusion, and could not lug gear, or bend at the waist. It was hot. Jim had booked us to play a rock and roll festival in Ohio. I was interviewed by a local station. I thought we were going to an actual festival.

After a four hour drive, I arrived at a shoddy looking camp ground, and heard a band playing through a crappy PA, with the trebles too high, and I could tell they were damaging the hearing of the campers and their children, who foolishly paid ten dollar a head for a case of tinnitus that would plague them for the rest of their lives. My wife, who runs our sound, and usually brings her own monitor system, would soon be arriving, and the thought of her hearing this PA was making me edgy. I wanted to simply get in my car and drive home, but I didn't have money for the required gas.

So I asked Jim who was doing sound, and he told me, "I EQ'd that. Before I did, it sounded like mud." He informed me they had no effects, and our vocals would be dry, unless there were onboard effects, as no one had brought an effect unit.

The sun got hotter; the sound got more grating, and I had earplugs in. Finally, it was time to set up, and Jim and Arthur both argued with me about where to set up the keyboard two of us would share, and the guy who was responsible for the stage told me he didn't know what he was doing, and didn't want to be there. His breath reeked of whiskey, and he was stoned. He started telling me a story, and I tried to explain that I had stuff to do. I was mostly wondering if I'd have a microphone, since I was singing lead on most of the material we would be doing. I had to run to the car and get some xlr cables, because they didn't have enough. It was a good thing I brought some.

I got hotter, and my back hurt more and more, and my wife was over at the sound board, trying to get them to use the one board effect they had, and deciding if we would have reverb or delay, but not BOTH, because as I said, they had no effect unit. Jim's wife told me I was anal for wanting to tune my instruments (12 string and bass) with a digital tuner, and that I should play with more heart because, "if you don't have heart, you don't have nothing."

Everyone was starting to really irritate me. I had made ten or more trips to my car for this or that little thing that someone had forgotten to bring, and it was obvious the crew was completely overwhelmed at putting a four piece band on, even though they had just done so three or four times already, and the crowd was getting restless, and starting to demand we start playing.

We tried to sound check, and we had shared monitors. My wife said she couldn't hear herself at all through the monitor, and that I was ripping her head off. For no reason I could think of, both guitars were blasting through our vocal monitors. The sound guy decided to "ring out" the monitors, and the wail of feedback made my ears start ringing.

I informed the crew that if anyone else "rang out" monitors INTO OUR EARS we were going to "ring out" our fists into their faces. THIS, looking back, was the moment when things turned really ugly.

During one of the first songs, I made a motion with my hand to the drummer to pick up the tempo, as he had started way to slow, and I am one of those odd performers who would rather the audience perceive us speed up than spend six minutes playing a song at a dragging tempo. The drummer shook his head "no." I made the motion again, only more dramatically. Again, he shook his head "no." In the middle of the line, I screamed "C'MON!!!" into the mic, and then my wife, who was playing the bass, went ahead and picked up her tempo, and since he had a crush on her, he obliged.

On the third song, my mic went dead. I pointed at it to the sound crew, and they said, in a loud, aggravated voice, "what do you want NOW," and I screamed, probably louder than their entire PA "HOW ABOUT A F----ING MIC!!!!!?????"

Later, that drummer told me the entire sound crew had discussed kicking my ass, which would have been rather unpleasant, since I had just had stitches removed from a nine inch scar in my back, and, as I mentioned, was unable to bend at the waist. I'm not sure if they really discussed that or not, because drummer #4 had a tendency to tell tall tales, and these guys were really stoned, plus, they were all musicians, and KNEW that they had screwed us bad.

We played the show, and the crowd loved us. I don't know HOW they could've loved us, as the sound was crap, and on the songs my wife sang, you could barely hear her vocal at all, but they were head banging, and fist pumping, and I would've pitied the sound guy who started a fight with us, as that crowd were an unsavory lot, and they were definitely on our side.

During the entire show, our extra guitar player stepped on vocals, the first guitar, and generally played the show as if he were a solo artist.

We were paid, and allowed to leave with our lives, which was a miracle, and I somehow managed the drive home.

We are now a four piece again, with drummer #5, who is a gift from God. We never discuss tempo, and as far as I know, he doesn't have a crush on my wife.

And the entire band knows that if anyone books a gig four hours away, for $300.00, to be split, we are just going to kill them.