Ever had a headliner undermine your show?

[JAUQO III-X]

Years ago a friend of mine was doing a Jimi Hendrix impersonation show in Vegas at the same time the Elvis impersonator was doing his show, different part of the venue but people started complaining that the Hendrix show was taking customers from the Elvis show and my friends Hendrix show was terminated and they asked him to do a Chuck Berry review instead, in full Chuck Berry impersonation of course.

 

[Camaro]

@JAUQO III-X

Wouldn't have worked, Chuck Berry > Elvis, still.

 

[rolandm]

Unlike other folks, I do name names. We had a local opening slot for The Tubes (headliner) and Enuff Znuff (middle). Originally it was supposed to be us opening for The Tubes, but EZ showed up for the gig. Apparently their management said, "Go play the gig" even though no contract had been signed. They were told there would be back line support on this show, and they'd opened for The Tubes the night before at the House of Blues, so who knows what the real story actually was. Horning a gig, or management issue? Either way, our 45 got cut to 25.

So, we show up, and load in and are side stage while The Tubes are sound checking. Touring producer is being a total dick, but the sound guy, who's friends with the band, is being cool. Once the Tubes are done, we get set up and the local sound starts mic'ing cabs and running lines to drums. Tour manager for the Tubes comes in and says, "No mics on the drums. Kick drum and snare only."

So, with that bit of joy over, the sound guy snuck a couple extra mics onto our drummer's kit because there was no way he was having his system sound like crap in one of the larger venues he played. Point of pride. So we get done with our check and then EZ shows up. Promoter comes up to me and asks if they can use our gear, as they've only brought guitars. The promoter is a friend and I can see he's in a tough spot. I ask the band, and then tell the promoter, "They break it, they bought it."

We play our set, it goes off great, our fans loved it, and the FOH and MON guys really did an ace job for us. In fact, we sounded better than EZ, according to a lot of people.

End of EZ's set, our drummer goes up to tear down his kit and finds a HUGE crack in his 24" Zildjian ride. And he's very pissed, as you can imagine, and being a good-old country boy, he decides he's gonna go find EZ's drummer, stomp a mud hole in his backside and walk it dry. By that time, EZ had left building.

So, what's a band to do who's been screwed by the headliner and the middle band? We swiped their booze from the dressing room and split.

 

[groovyBoom]

Set up a cool gig with a fairly prominent act downtown, and my band knew we'd be pulling a good crowd... even as an opener. We were a kind of indie-rock and blues band, and the headliner was a more straight-ahead blues band with a B3 organ.

Me being the gear nerd that I am--while the headliner was setting up their gear (and the drummer was OBSESSIVELY tuning his vintage/expensive Gretch bop kit...)-- I eyeballed their whole setup. Vintage Ampeg 8x10, Gretch kit, Gibson semi-hollow guitars, Marshall vintage half-stack... and the Hammond B3 with TWO Leslie cabs. Very impressive.

Then we wanted to figure out backline arrangements while the soundman was setting up mics and lines to the headliner's gear. We asked if anyone wanted us to use the headliner's gear, and they all declined. No biggie. I would've probably been the same way if I had all that stuff.

We had all our own backline gear, and once the headliner did a soundcheck, we asked the headliner if we could move our stuff on the stage.

"Sure! We're all set up!"

Then we asked if they were gonna move all their gear (or at least the Leslies off to the corners of the stage or something)

"Nope. You guys have plenty of room in front of our gear."

I really wanted to know this guy's idea of 'Plenty of room', because all we had was about a 9ft wide by 4ft deep section on the front-middle of the stage, between the leslie cabs and in front of their backline. Begrudgingly, we set up our 3 piece arrangement of a single 4x10 bass rig, Fender Hot Rod DLX guitar combo and small pedalboard, and a 3 piece drum kit with a hat, crash and ride. No room in front of the kick, and both the guitarist and I felt like we were playing in phone booths for our entire set.

But we blew the roof off of the place. Brought in a solid 100 people and had them rockin' right along with us. We pulled out our gear without another word to the headliner, and hung around to watch them play.

Solid performance, but only staff and our group were really there. Sucked for them, but oh well... Undermining attempt or no, we still won out on that deal! Soundguy was cool and invited us back-- but not the headliner.

 

[Skeeter1]

Yes been cut in mid song before our response is always the same. "We're scheduled to play from xx time to xx time. It's your dime, as long as we get paid were cool. If we are done for the evening we would like to settle up with you NOW. We prefer cash."

It helps that our brain dead drummer is a pretty good lawyer.

 

[ultra60]

For all the bad, there's always a good one... My band opened for Tommy Keene in the mid 80's. They went a little over on their sound check, and there was not much room on the small stage. After the sound check, the drummer struck his own kit, so our guy had room to set up. I can't recall if their first major label album had come out at the time. But I remember how cool his drummer was, and have always tried to be as cool to others, whenever possible.

 

[kedo]

Wanna get back at a sound company for making you sound horrible? Here is how you do it.

Find the main snake from the FOH to the stage. Someplace where you wont be seen working, drive a stick pin into the snake, and cut the little head off of it flush with the outside of the snake. Do this in three or four places a few feet apart. The pin will make cross contact inside the snake with all of the wires running inside shorting out random channels. Ruins the snake. Cutting the heads off makes the pins impossible to find.

This has been a public service announcement...

BnB

very mature

 

[sparkyfender2]

Subscribed. Great stories.



It's not mayer, it's (J) mellencamp. Out of curiosity I googled fallign from grace john m... Then figured it out.

I will name the bar. The Perry Street Tavern.

Yep. If the incident had been experienced by me personally, I would have named the name. Since it wasn't..... No.

I did play a throw together gig with his old keyboard player, one time quite a few years ago.

Google Eric Rosser, but a couple of you may remember him without doing that. Nope, I was not a friend, and I knew nothing of his criminal non-musical interests that came out later.

He was a nice and polite guy, but like I said....... Who knew?

 

[sparkyfender2]

Oh yeah, life goes on. Even after the thrill of gigging is gone.

LOL! That is funny.

 

[Boom762]

We were playing an opening slot and we're getting a good response when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the singer for the headliner unplugging cables from the P.A. speakers. I made eye contact and he gave me a guilty little grin and plugged them back in.

At the end of the gig he claimed he saw one cab unplugged and was just checking the rest for us, yeah right!

If someone pulled my power while im playing in front of me I would have walked over to them and hit them eith my bass or just kicked them out of the way.

 

[edpal]

If someone pulled my power while im playing in front of me I would have walked over to them and hit them eith my bass or just kicked them out of the way.

^ This.

 

[Kmonk]

I once had a headliner try to get us off the stage but it backfired on him. We were playing "Bike Week" in Myrtle Beach at a large outdoor venue which held about 10,000 people. The owner was running around with a wireless mic and would occasionally give us a cue that he was going to speak in between songs. He kept asking us to play another song even though our time was up. AT one point, the headliner's security guy walked up on stage, stood right in front of me and said "Jimmy needs the stage". I told him that the owner asked us to keep playing and they could take the stage as soon as we were given the signal to end our set. We played another song and the owner asked us to do one more. The security walked on stage again, stood in from me and again said, "Jimmy needs the stage". At that point, I said "Jimmy needs to talk to Jay (the owner) because he keeps telling us to play more songs. This went on for a few more songs until we finished.

 

[Spectrum]

For all the bad, there's always a good one... My band opened for Tommy Keene in the mid 80's. They went a little over on their sound check, and there was not much room on the small stage. After the sound check, the drummer struck his own kit, so our guy had room to set up. I can't recall if their first major label album had come out at the time. But I remember how cool his drummer was, and have always tried to be as cool to others, whenever possible.

Yes, we got schooled one night by a band of really cool guys a few years ago.

We were supposed to headline at a small club in DC, but at the last minute we got bumped to opener status by some pro touring band from out of town who got canceled from the 9:30 Club for some reason. No biggie.

We played our set and had a few technical issues, but it wasn't too bad. When we were done we helped the headliner move their drum kit onto the stage while we moved our stuff out. They proceeded to blow us out of the water, but it wasn't because we were sabotaged or because they were being douches, it was because they were just that freaking good.

It was a lesson to us about what we needed to do as a band to put on a better show. Some of it has since sunk in.

 

[Jim Campbell]

Wanna get back at a sound company for making you sound horrible? Here is how you do it.

Find the main snake from the FOH to the stage. Someplace where you wont be seen working, drive a stick pin into the snake, and cut the little head off of it flush with the outside of the snake. Do this in three or four places a few feet apart. The pin will make cross contact inside the snake with all of the wires running inside shorting out random channels. Ruins the snake. Cutting the heads off makes the pins impossible to find.

This has been a public service announcement...

BnB

very mature

and maybe a felony.....if someone gets injured....

 

[Corvette19]

I am part of a 3 piece rock and roll band and we were opening for an internationally big band in a small club in Spartanburg, SC last year. Our set was phenomenal and everyone in the crowd was very responsive; moshing and the etc. We had a 30 min opening slot and sometime less than 20 min in the set we saw what I would assume is their manager was behind my guitar players cabinet stack signaling us to wrap it up. We proceeded to play Overkill by Motorhead and everyone went nuts! We got encored; everyone was screaming for us to play another, but alas, manager guy was standing behind the cabinet ready to start unplugging stuff, so we complied. On a positive note, we opened up for Wayland last night and the singer gave us a shoutout and said we were a F#%&^%$ awesome rock and roll band, and the guys were incredibly cool with us.

 

[rolandm]

I am part of a 3 piece rock and roll band and we were opening for an internationally big band in a small club in Spartanburg, SC last year. Our set was phenomenal and everyone in the crowd was very responsive; moshing and the etc. We had a 30 min opening slot and sometime less than 20 min in the set we saw what I would assume is their manager was behind my guitar players cabinet stack signaling us to wrap it up. We proceeded to play Overkill by Motorhead and everyone went nuts! We got encored; everyone was screaming for us to play another, but alas, manager guy was standing behind the cabinet ready to start unplugging stuff, so we complied. On a positive note, we opened up for Wayland last night and the singer gave us a shoutout and said we were a F#%&^%$ awesome rock and roll band, and the guys were incredibly cool with us.

The guys in Wayland are way cool. Especially their singer.

 

[trevcda]

I opened for Drivin' and Cryin' in the early 90's in a 750 seater with a large stage. Pinned us right up to the lip of the stage. Whenever I went in front of the drums to get to the other side of the stage, there was a real danger that I would fall into the front row.

Another time we opened for Eddie Money to a sold out house in 90's. The production company was a local production company that we used a lot, so we honestly got the full system and unlimited lights. Unfortunately, Uncle Eddie's guys were on monitors and I forgot to "buy" them. Mics and keys were non-existent one minute and over powering the stage the next. The scariest part was during a slow song I had written that featured heavily sequenced piano and keyboard parts. Someone pulled the plug on the stringer the keyboards were on at a part of the song that was pretty vocals and keys. By the time I got to the keyboard rig it was back on, but rebooted. I threw off my bass and jumped on the keys, trying to play a piano part I hadn't played all the way through since we recorded it in the studio. That was the scariest and longest five minutes of my life! Eddie, his family and his band were great people very complimentary. Our crew got to hang out afterwards, while we raced off to our bar gig. His monitor guys, however reminded me of these two, no joke:

"Wow, that's good Nyborg, man!"

 

[Session1969]

Our band just did a show at a rather large local venue, mojoes in Joliet IL, last month. We were very excited to get this particular gig. Anyway, there was a few bands playing that night and we were third to go on, the headliner fifth and last. We were told early on we would get a 40 to 45 min set. Well, a day before the show, the headliner, which was there to help promote the record company that signed the headliner, stated that only were going to play a 25 min set. The promoter, which was the record company that the headliner was signed to and the company who put the show together, messages us and tells us our set is going to be 25 min long. "We can't have any of the opening bands play longer than the headliner, it's just not right". I was so livid. As were my band mates. We were stil happy to play the show/venue but the air had been taken out of our sails to say the least. We had brought out a good percentage of the crowd and it was a bit lame to only play a few songs and be done. It was still fun but we wouldve like to get a change to get more of our material out there that night considering the circumstances.

At least you were given notice ahead of time to adjust your set. I can't even remember how many sets have been cut short because of sound guys being behind in time for multi band showcases.

 

[bluesdogblues]

Years ago, I'm in a band that was ready to open for a "Big Name band".
Somehow for some reasons, the Big Name had to play (and left the venue) much earlier than scheduled.
Audience expected them obviously.
Strange things happened:..They (the Big Name Band) played earlier, gave their great performance as usual, encore, then left... and then...my band played after them

We played good. Got many good responses from people.
But it was a strange feeling for me at that time, that we were playing in front of audience who had just seen the Headliners sing their hits few minutes before us at the same stage.

 

[rolandm]

A new format for an after party?