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The Phantom gig.

M

manwiththedogs

Nov 2, 2004
114
1
Detroit MI
#1
This past Saturdays gig was supposed to be at one of our keyboard players neighborhood bars, he claimed to have known the owner, and booked the gig (he says) three weeks in advance. Anyway, we show up at 6:00pm and start loading in equipment, right away, you could tell something was wrong. There were maybe 10 people in the place plus the bartender, one girl asks "What are you guys doing?" Jim (the keyboard player) says "Were gonna be playing here tonight, why?" She answers "Because MY band is the house band here! they dont book any other bands here!" :confused: Everyone stops what they are doing right away and all eyes turn to Jim, I walk up to the bartender and ask who is booked here this weekend, she looks at me like I`m an idiot (I suppose at that moment I was...lol) and points to a calender. Meanwhile, Jim is walking around like he owns the place and telling anyone who will listen what great friends he and the owner are. Sure enough only ONE band was listed throughout the months of November and December and guess what, it aint us :rollno: Jim freaks out, starts yelling that we were booked there, and demands to speak to the owner, who, of course, isnt there. Anyway, the bartender gets the guy on the phone and explains whats going on, he (the owner) tells her, and me, that he has never heard of our band, has no idea who this Jim guy is, and doesnt appreaciate us tying up his place of business with this crap. Jim has no explanation for all this other than to say he`s embarressed by the whole thing and to laugh it off. I myself dont know what to think. He`s never shown any sign of being this flaky before, so maybe it was just an honest mistake? What do you guys think? Any advice in dealing with this would be greatly appreciated.
 
#2
manwiththedogs said:
This past Saturdays gig was supposed to be at one of our keyboard players neighborhood bars, he claimed to have known the owner, and booked the gig (he says) three weeks in advance. Anyway, we show up at 6:00pm and start loading in equipment, right away, you could tell something was wrong. There were maybe 10 people in the place plus the bartender, one girl asks "What are you guys doing?" Jim (the keyboard player) says "Were gonna be playing here tonight, why?" She answers "Because MY band is the house band here! they dont book any other bands here!" :confused: Everyone stops what they are doing right away and all eyes turn to Jim, I walk up to the bartender and ask who is booked here this weekend, she looks at me like I`m an idiot (I suppose at that moment I was...lol) and points to a calender. Meanwhile, Jim is walking around like he owns the place and telling anyone who will listen what great friends he and the owner are. Sure enough only ONE band was listed throughout the months of November and December and guess what, it aint us :rollno: Jim freaks out, starts yelling that we were booked there, and demands to speak to the owner, who, of course, isnt there. Anyway, the bartender gets the guy on the phone and explains whats going on, he (the owner) tells her, and me, that he has never heard of our band, has no idea who this Jim guy is, and doesnt appreaciate us tying up his place of business with this crap. Jim has no explanation for all this other than to say he`s embarressed by the whole thing and to laugh it off. I myself dont know what to think. He`s never shown any sign of being this flaky before, so maybe it was just an honest mistake? What do you guys think? Any advice in dealing with this would be greatly appreciated.
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That's crazy! What bar?
 
#8
I dunno...maybe it was just a communication problem, but it sounds like Jim never really got the gig confirmed. Maybe the owner said something like "yeah, I could maybe have you guys play in three weeks" and Jim took it to mean that the deal was done. This is why even a basic one page contract confirming the time/day/pay is always a good idea.

Personally, I have very low tolerance with people who mess up band business like that. We had a lead guitarist for a short while who was an idiot trying to get a gig at a prominent local tavern (saying we did songs we don't know by bands that the owner was asking about, giving him an unedited demo tape he recorded on a cheap RCA boombox without our permission, etc...wasn't the main reason we kicked him out, but one of the main additional factors for sure...)

The other thing is...now your band's rep is basically ruined there...you'll probably never get a real gig there, and who knows if that bar owner talks to other people, etc?
 
#9
If it's a one time thing I wouldn't worry about it too much. He probably embarassed himself enough that it won't happen again.

I showed up at a bar 5 hours from here on Saturday to about the same reception... bar staff and owner both didn't know we were playing as the promotions company hadn't kept them properly informed. We still played, but I'm not sure how happy the staff / bar was to get three bands show up instead of the one they were expecting.
 
#11
This happened to my band a few weeks ago. Myself and one of our guitar players got to the venue, unloaded our stuff in the lobby and waited for the person who organized the whole thing, while talking to the sound guy and another band we knew. The woman who organized it showed up an hour after we got there only to tell us, without explination, that we weren't going to be able to play that night. To this day we don't know why, because she told so many people so many different things. Heck, when my parents showed up to catch our set, and saw that we weren't playing she asked someone where we were, who told them to talk to this woman and she said that we were late! It was all a bunch of crap.
 
#12
I think it's safe to say you won't be doing any of her shows again! :rolleyes:

Our band had a similar situation like yours a few weeks ago. A friend of our guitarist/lead singer wanted us to play a Halloween party show on October 30th. No pay involved, but she promised that she would give us a professional photo shoot at a local college lab (she is a photography student). So we said, "ok", since we could use some promo shots. Now we've had a couple issues with shows this person has done in the past, but we checked the details. It was supposed to be at a drive-in movie theater that they would be renting for the night, where we would play and then a couple horror movies would be shown. All right...little cold to be outside that late in October, in Wisconsin, but if that's what they want to do, OK.

THen the show gets moved to a place about 45 minutes away, a high school gym. Fine with us. However, she never gets around to schedule the photo shoot (wants us to do it on a week night...um, with all of us working, not gonna happen). Then it gets out that the photo shoot is actually just for a class project of hers, and she offers to have it be for just our guitarist/singer. Oh, and he would be shirtless, for some reason. :p Fortunately he turns her down. Then about two weeks before the show, she tells us she wants us to do some song by Concrete Blonde that none of us have ever heard of (we do mainly mainstream covers, classic rock, etc). We say no to that.

Then, the final icing on the cake...she gives us a list of "instructions" (basically demands more or less), that she wants of us. It included getting to the gig about 4 hours before we'd be playing, playing for about twice as long as originally agreed upon, and then playing a final song at midnight for the end of the show. So basically we'd drive 45 minutes, get there around 4 PM or so, and play our final song at midnight. Um, for a free gig? No thanks. Oh, and she hadn't even given us directions, seven days before the scheduled show. Our lead singer finally just told her "we're not going to do the gig, since we can't meet your demands."

Sorry for the long post...but shows you sometimes it's good to know when a crappy gig is on the horizon, and bow out early rather than put up with the hassle.
 
#14
My old band had a small part in a christmas assembly for my old high school. Our drummer still went there, so he signed us up. On the day for auditions, I dont think he even showed up, so we just played what we had and they supposedly set us a spot in the show and we would play all together in the rehersal.
That came, the day before the show, and we sat for 4 hours while they went through every other thing but us, then they said to come back the next morning and they would go through our stuff.
So the next day, we set up and get the "who are you?" from the teacher organizing the show. We convinced them that we were actually supposed to be there, so they had to tack us on the end (very good thing) We and played our version of the trans siberian orchestra version of carole of the bells and she looked at us like we were crazy, it was soo heavy and the principle said the other classes were complaining about the noise :)
The good news is the show was the best I've ever played in. Two groups of about 800 people all liking our heavy christmas music, plus cause we were last we got fireworks and everything at the end.
I always get nervous about gigs, especially when they dont even know were playing, but they can turn out pretty good.
 
#15
shadow wraith said:
We and played our version of the trans siberian orchestra version of carole of the bells and she looked at us like we were crazy, it was soo heavy and the principle said the other classes were complaining about the noise :)
Click to expand...

We did a version of that at a club show 2 years ago, and we still requests to do it again. It should go over huge.
 
#16
When I was at university (University of York, early 90's), it was organised into a number of colleges. I'd arranged for the guys in the covers band from home to drive up to do a couple of gigs. Friday evening was a series of talent shows in the different colleges and I'd booked the band into the one in my college...

So far, so good, except the the social committee in my college weren't doing so well that particular night and the event was cancelled at the last moment. Feeling somewhat annoyed, I ran across the bridge to a neighbouring college and persuaded them to let us come on at the end of the evening to do a few songs.

Mind you, this particular cock-up worked out rather well - we did a few songs and they liked it, so we did a few more. An hour or two later, we'd exhausted our repetoire and resorted to replaying things! Mind you, a lot of the audience was so drunk they didn't seem to notice... nobody even batted an eyelid when we had a "guest singer" get up to mumble his way through 'Prime Mover' by Zodiac Mindwarp (which we had absolutely no idea how to play!).

That's the nearest I've come to a situation in which things could have turned out to be completely empty... although I've done one or two gigs that turned out to be more matters of enduring them than enjoying them!

Wulf
 

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