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Best/ most interesting gig you've ever experienced

#21
I have two gigs that I'd put up there.

1) Opening for FLAW. We packed the house that night (and everyone left before FLAW, go figure)
2) Playing a local venue called The Kompound. This guy lives in the boondocks and converted his garage into a performance area. It's tiny and the sound system sucked, but it was the coolest atmosphere I've ever played. It was reminiscent of a giant house party with 200 people moshing around and no room to move.
 
#22
3 way tie.

1. First European date of the NunSlaughter/Centinex/Into Darkness tour, Bischofswerda, DE September, 2000. This was my first tour and my first time outside the US.

2. Maryland Deathfest with Embalmer, Memorial Day weekend, 2006. 3,000 rabid death metal fans going absolutely BATSH!T for us.

3. The first Afterlight show, opening for Mayhem on their last US tour. You would have thought we were part of the tour package given the response we got.
 
#23
This is a little bit long winded but bear with me!

A few years back, playing in a punk/ska band at the time, we played at a bar in Luton after an England football match. Anyone in the UK should know of Luton's reputation, but for those of you that don't, it was voted England's crappest town a few years back. Really not a very nice place.

Anyway, we turn up, the place is packed with rowdy football (soccer for you Americans :D) fans who've been on the beers all day, maybe 150-200 people or so. Soundcheck has to be done in front of everyone there. We see the other bands soundcheck, then promptly get majorly heckled when each of them finishes. At this point we're all slightly worried, as it seems live music isn't something they are particularly interested in hearing. Then its our turn. Our 2 guitarist/vocalists who are a bit more into the football world than I am, sense the predicament and try to get everyone on our side by singing some Luton football chants while we soundcheck. This gets the whole place singing along. After soundcheck, a rather large skinhead bloke from a table of about 10 other equally large skinhead blokes right in front of the stage (I say stage, it was ground level with a few monitors marking the front of it) walks up to one of the guitarists and introduces himself with this line: "We're football hooligans and I'm the leader of this bunch. What team do you support?". At which point guitarist nervously answers "Arsenal/ Luton". The large blokes face lights up a bit, he turns around and lifts up his shirt to reveal a huge Arsenal tattoo on his back. Turns back around and says to guitarist "don't worry about a thing, you boys are invincible while we're around". Few hours later, we play our set, with these 'football hooligans' dancing around, more football chanting, and the police outside telling the promoter to calm things down, something about inciting a riot. The football chants seemed to get everyone in the place into it.

That was the only time I've ever turned up for a gig and genuinely not wanted to play it out of fear. Turned out to have some of the most fun i've had gigging. Very lucky I suppose to have a couple of guys in the band who were more capable of dealing with things than I was. The football connection saved the day!

Sorry that went on a bit, I tried to sum it up the best I could!
 
#24
It was a 2 hours ride to a business congress. We go to the basement where we set our instruments. We open the show (its a floor stage) and people stands right in front of you, sings the songs, talk with you while playing, some people are doing the line where they put they're arm around the others neck. Beautiful.
 
#25
Years ago my punk band played at a Hell's Angels party. As we were setting up, a huge biker came up to me and said, "I hope you guys don't play punk, I hate punk..."
(The drummer had kicked this same guy out of his pub the night before for carving his name in the bar with a knife, so he kept his head down for the whole show).

We went on with the whole crowd standing as far away from the stage as they could with their arms folded , looking angry. They didn't move for the whole set, except for the aforementioned huge guy, who waddled up to the microphone as I was singing, stood as close as he could to me and held a drumstick above his head like he was going to bash me with it. I looked him straight in the eye (actually, I had to look up to do that) and kept singing. Eventually, he grinned and walked off. After the gig, individual bikers came up and said how much they hd enjoyed the set, but not to let any of the others know they said that.

We drove away so quick that two of the band members fell out of the back of the van as we left. We waited at the end of the street for them!
 
#26
Best gig? Kinda hard to choose, but I would have to go with this one... About 7 years ago, I was playing in a death metal band in California, and we go the chance to play the LA Gates of Metal show. We were playing the 2nd stage, in the bar, a completely unknown band from outside the bay area, and competing with a well-known band from LA on the main stage. We played the first song of our set about halfway through when people started to trickle in, by our 3rd song, the room was packed and half the floor was a mosh pit. I ended up jumping off the stage and actually playing in the pit for the last few songs. It was one of the most memoraqble gig experiences of my life, the first time I saw a real crowd, and what made me decide that playing music and performing live was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

The most interesting, well, there's too many to write out here...
 
#27
opening for Against all authority, great show, and we actually didnt get really drunk before hand and played well! haha

our first bigger venue show at a medium sized bar/club (columbia street west in Ft Wayne) free beer in the basement for the band....bad mistake giving a punk band of alcoholics free beer, halfway through our set a drumstick goes flying past my head, drummer is drumming with one hand, drinking with the other....we somehow managed to pull off a decent show still..........one of the friends of the band was so drunk that he got up on the stage and started to piss all over the dance floor....im was amazed when we were asked to play again 2 months later at that place.
 
#28
I read this thread some last week and couldn't think of a thing to add. Well, last Friday this happened:

It was my first gig with a brand new band and I'm a little nervous about it. I'm sitting at the bar with my wife and I'm sorting lyrics in my folder and this homeless guy, Boo, asks to bum a smoke. He and I talk for a bit while the wifey orders food. I sya my good-byes to Boo and we go to our table.

So it is the first set and it is going wonderful. A tiny, tiny crowd (this club is known for that... plus the local college is out of session) but Boo, my wife, drummer's wife, and his dad are loud and fun! Boo hollers out "Why Don't We Do It In the Road!" which is not on our set list but we do it anyways. Hell, it's 3 chords and 8 words long.

We get to the next song which is a medley of Skintight and Riders On the Storm and I notice that Boo might've dropped something under the table except that he doesn't get back up. My wife and the drummer's dad go to check on him. He thinks they are trying to take his money. The owner is watching and says to call an ambulance. Poor Boo had a stroke! We stopped playing when the EMTs got there. In retrospect we should've stopped when there was a problem but I'm old school in that, "The show must go on."
 
#29
The most interesting (and most fun) gig I've ever done was a couple years back when my band got asked to play at a gospel music showcase at Six Flags. Being a worship-music-influenced rock band I didn't think we'd be out of place, but when we got to the gig we quickly discovered that the six of us in the band were literally the only six white people in the whole place. All the other bands were either urban-gospel or hip-hop type bands (and they all grooved their bootys off), so when we started doing our upbeat rock songs with distorted guitars and heavy drums we definitely shocked everybody!

After a couple tunes though the crowd really got into it, a couple dudes even started breakdancing near the front of the stage! We ended up getting a ton of compliments after we played, which was really nice since we originally thought our style wouldn't exactly fit in very well ;) Just goes to show that good music brings people together though, we even got several invitations to play at the churches that some of the gospel bands were from.

And to top it all off the backline for the gig was insane, I got to play through a top-of-the-line Mesa Boogie stack. Best bass sound I've ever gotten for sure! :bassist:
 
#31
This falls under "most interesting."

About 5 or so years ago I was in a powerpop band that was booked at a place in Topeka, KS. We show up, bar looks sweet, decent number of people. After hanging out for a few minutes we realized our drummer had somehow got us involved in a battle of the bands, and all of the other bands were metal bands. :/ ...uh...ok. Time to go out to the band van and pound a few before we play. We got on stage (I'm tipsy, had 3 beers and at 17 years of age...lol) and played a fantastic set for 2 people. Everyone else, miffed at the fact we werent playing metal, hung out in the corner booths as far away from us as possible. Needless to say we did not win, nor did we place. At least we had fun..
 

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