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What Was Your Worst Gig Room

#21
Memorial Hall in Philadelphia,PA.

A big high domed hall that is the only thing still standing from the US Centennial Exposition of the late 1800's. For a while it was the trendy place to hold your fundraiser/private party.It's a cool building & can hold a lot of people,but the sound rates as the alltime worst.Nothing can be done to make it sound good. Pro audio firms recoil in horror at the mention of it.Time delay stacks,sound barriers,processing,every audio trick in the book & some that aren't has been tried . All you can do is watch your volume,compress the hell out of the PA, & maybe the 50-100 people closest to the band can enjoy the music.I used to have to play this place 4 to 6 times a year.Glass,marble & a high dome. Even making an announcement is a night mare! You have to leave a 2-3 second gap between words to be understood.

It's fallen out of favor for those functions. It's now a children's museum.
There are still notes I've played floating around that dome!
 
#22
I remember one room under a dining facility.Nice people facing the lake but the stage was the size of a postage stamp.They since burned down,it went under several names but was on the Stevenson Dam,And once outside no electric no stage we had to get generators and I think that was the worst,it was in a cornfield in Southbury thank God for being young and mind altered
 
#26
Outside bar gig in late October, in Chicago suburbs. 40 degress, light rain, windy, at night, bad sound. My hands were FROZEN. We were under a tent, but but there was a little water on the stage and moisture everywhere. We were chunking through our unknown originals while people patiently waited for the headline act - a Journey tribute band with a big following. To top it off, I lost my wedding ring that night (no joke).

Sometimes you gotta laugh ... or drink ...
 
#27
Low Key said:
Outside bar gig in late October, in Chicago suburbs. 40 degress, light rain, windy, at night, bad sound. My hands were FROZEN. We were under a tent, but but there was a little water on the stage and moisture everywhere. We were chunking through our unknown originals while people patiently waited for the headline act - a Journey tribute band with a big following. To top it off, I lost my wedding ring that night (no joke).



I lost my wedding ring at a gig as well. Wife wasn't overly hard on me about it.
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#28
Played the "Tomorrow Land Stage" at Disneyland, Anaheim that was on a lift. When it was down there was a door in and concrete walls all around in an oval shape. You had to start playing before they would operate the lift.
We ended up watching the drummers snare drum to synchronize the beat on the twenty second ride up otherwise, the echoes were confusing as hell.
 
#29
StyleOverShow said:
Played the "Tomorrow Land Stage" at Disneyland, Anaheim that was on a lift. When it was down there was a door in and concrete walls all around in an oval shape. You had to start playing before they would operate the lift.
We ended up watching the drummers snare drum to synchronize the beat on the twenty second ride up otherwise, the echoes were confusing as hell.
Click to expand...

Never played on that stage but I always thought it was cool since I was little kid.
 
#32
The Pit, the real name, was up 3 flights of stairs in downtown Cleveland. Parked the van in a crack alley next to the venue, had to crawl through the back, drag stacks up stairs (life flash when pushing the marshall stack...) The pit has no stage, is made of tires and cheese, and may have had a lightbulb. Worst gig ever...
 
#33
agreatheight said:
I didn't play the gig myself, but I once saw a band in an emptied in-ground pool in someone's back yard. Fun show, awful sound.
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I forgot- my band played a bunch of shows at the now defunct "The Turf Skatepark."

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The first 2 shows we played in the bowls. That was crazy- I had my amp right on the edge of the bowl, and my instrument cable going down into the bowl where I was.

I don't even pretend to remember how it sounded. But looking back at it, it was supremely stupid and dangerous the way we had it set up. I EASILY could have pulled the amp in.

The rest of the shows we played outside right outside the garage doors from the bowls- and that was cool.
 
#34
I played at this tiny, really old 10 lane bowling alley once (still had the manual scoring and overhead projector deal). I was in a psychobilly band at the time. Our drummer booked the gig, and we thought it would be cool for a band of our genre to play at this little bowling alley. He also booked a hardcore band to open (mistake one).

We played on a piece of plywood laid out on the lanes, through a garbage PA I rented that didn't have chords long enough to seperate things from feeding back. So...the levels were impossible to get right.

On top of the fact that we sounded bad, no one showed up, and we made no money......the guy must have thought we were a traditional rockabilly band, 'cause he started asking for Elvis tunes. That, or my dummy drummer lied and told the dude that to get us a gig there. Occassionally one of the 50y/o bar patrons would peak into the lane area and just sort of shake thier head while I'm sure I was doing my best Lux Interior impression.

Epic Fail.
 
#35
Too many to list but one memorable gig was at the round barn blues fest in Kirksville, MO. The bands play in a round barn. Yep, it's round. you can stand on one side and speak quietly to a person on the other. Kinda neat until someone hits a snare drum. Three pings for every strike. A slow blues song sounds like the Lord Of The Dance.
 
#36
We played this battle of the bands and we ended up gettin to the finals. It was held at this Dave and Busters type place in Lousiville Kentucky which I can't remember the name of but the room they had the finals in was basically all cinder block with nothing to dampen the sound. THE LOUDEST and bounciest room I've ever played in. They had bragged that a bunch of national acts had played there. Pantera bein one of them. But I was standin right next to the drummer and I could barely hear him. Plus we'd brought a singer with us and she hadn't really performed with us that much and she couldn't hear anything so she might have well not even been there. Oh, the band that won was from Ohio so they just had their crowd drive down and cheer for them. They said it was gonna go more by the judging but in the middle of the show they changed judges. Hmmm...
 
#38
Worst room we played was back in March 2007 when we were first starting out and basically took anything. We booked a show through the "Rock Club of Philadelphia" originally supposed to play at a large multipurpose room in Center City Philly on University of Pennsylvania's campus. However the "rock club" got kicked out due to a previous show and moved to this large art studio/warehouse on the outskirts of town (in a not so nice neighborhood).

We got there, and it turns out "The Rock Club of Philadelphia" was literally this family of hippies and a few of their friends.....we had a few people come out and turn around when they saw the neighborhood. So here we are playing to about 10 people in this GIGANTIC warehouse. Yeah, the sound was god awful
 
#39
A bowling alley in small-town Minnesota. They had built a brand new addition for bands. Hard tile floor. No stage. Smooth-finished concrete walls. Smooth-finished concrete ceiling. The room was a perfect square, maybe 36 feet by 36 feet, or maybe a little bigger. We were instructed to set up in the corner facing towards the opposite corner - so at a 45 degree angle. No matter how we moved and turned the FOH speakers, stage monitors and our individual amps we could not control the feedback. All I heard was rolling waves of muddy kick drum/bass guitar drone punctuated by occasional high-frequency feedback screeches and a never-ending cymbal shimmer.

And then the (fill-in) drummer got real drunk and played everything real slow, until I finally took over just kept pounding quarter notes to provide the correct tempo regardless of what the drums were playing. We had to play the entire 60-minute last set without the drummer - he was too drunk to sit on his throne.

Yeah, that last part is not related to the room, but it just added to the overall WORST GIG EVER experience I had with that band.
 
#40
My worst room was when I was in 11th grade, playing in All-Eastern Jazz Band, at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore MD, 1997. I was borrowing my Father's 1961 PBass and an Ampeg B-15N Portaflex. The conductor was one of those "Real big bands are horn-showcases & only use upright players who don't need amps" guys, so I was only allowed to have the volume at 2/10 (On a 25-35W amp with a passive bass!!!), with no amplification in the house, such as a line out or DI box. To top it off, I was located on a riser BEHIND the drummer, standing between to my amp & the trumpet section. I could not hear a single note I played all night, nor could I hear the other instruments such as the piano or guitar, so I had a SUPER hard time knowing where I was - essentially reading the charts & watching the dots on the fretboard. We were playing "So What", and it featured a bass solo - nice. I couldn't hear when the rest of the group switched to the B section, and was off by at least 4 measures. No one in the audience heard a note I played (or that there was a bass solo at all!!!). I had blisters by the end of the night from playing too hard. Eh, something nice for the resume.

I attribute this to the room rather than the gig - overall, it was a great event - the sound situation in the room was terrible.
 

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