That "girl" was Vince Neil. And you missed out on a pretty good gig!
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Worst gig you ever had.
- Thread starter Down & Outman
- Start date
That "girl" was Vince Neil. And you missed out on a pretty good gig!
My old band got booked to play a fraternity party held at a local volunteer fire house on a freezing cold, windy January Saturday night. We get in there, get set up, start playing and 10 minutes later, an older woman walks onto the stage and says "You guys are finished for the evening". I said "Excuse me?" She shows me her badge and tells me she's with the Pennsylvania State Police.
Apparently a local that hung out at the fire hall was pissed that 200 college kids were at "his" fire hall and called the police. They decided to send an underage drinking task force. Once the college kids realized the cops were there, they started scrambling like rats on a sinking ship.
On the way home I actually spotted some of the kids trying to walk home - no coats. I pulled over and 3 of them piled into my little Hyundai Excel and I gave them a ride home. Brutal night all around.
Apparently a local that hung out at the fire hall was pissed that 200 college kids were at "his" fire hall and called the police. They decided to send an underage drinking task force. Once the college kids realized the cops were there, they started scrambling like rats on a sinking ship.
On the way home I actually spotted some of the kids trying to walk home - no coats. I pulled over and 3 of them piled into my little Hyundai Excel and I gave them a ride home. Brutal night all around.
Yeah... anymore frat parties are guaranteed cop magnets.
We don't even think about going after that market anymore.
We don't even think about going after that market anymore.
Similar thing just happened to me about a month ago. My cover band played a small bar that we had played at before. We do rock, blues and country and had a good crowd the first time we played there. Well the bar goes away from bands for about a year and pays a dj instead. This fall they want bands back and book us again. I was pretty excited. They have a pretty cool two leveled stage where I set up next to the drummer on the top. They have pretty cool lights and it just makes for an all around fun gig. Well half way through our first set the place starts to get PACKED! I mean maybe three times more people than the last big crowd we played there. However, it's hoards of ghetto rap fans looking to get krunk and shake their booties to songs we don't play. A dj shows up and starts setting up towards the end of the set and I knew something stupid was up. The owner lets us finish the first set then tells us he will pay us half our cut to leave, an hour into the night. I was livid. Crazy how much the place had changed in just a year's time. In fact I think it was the same weekend just one year later. Wow.
Technically I think he would owe you the full night's pay, as he breached his end of the agreement which was to provide his venue to your band exclusively for the full evening. But if that wasn't spelled out in the contract (or there was no contract), that's probably the best you were gonna do. Sucks regardless, but at least you know one place you don't have to pitch for gigs anymore.
Not sure if there was a contract as I don't do the booking, but I don't think there was one. Half my cut is better than no cut!
I've posted these stories before in other threads, but they are worth repeating!
Opening for Bad Religion at a pretty big theater in Detroit. Somebody in the audience is throwing things at us, can't tell what they are. Finally we get a good look at these projectiles and they turn out to be severed gopher heads. This nut job had a whole bag of them. Our guitar player was so outraged that he jumped into the audience and confronted the guy, almost got into a fist fight before the bouncers took the guy out. Other than that, it was a pretty good set.
Small club in Germany. I took some kind of pill, not sure what it was (this was in my younger and more indulgent days). Anyway, about half way through the set I blacked out. To this day, I don't remember anything from half-way through the set until the next morning.
Warfield Theater in SF. Big homecoming show after a long tour -- all of our friends and family are in the audience. We're excited. Drummer counts off the first song, I do a big rock n' roll leap into the air and fall flat on my ass.
Hole in the wall club called the Icepick in some town in Michigan. Walk in, bunch of scary dudes that seem sort of like a cross between skinheads and the hillbillys from Deliverance. Tons of grafitti all over the walls, including a bunch of scary racist crap. We hang around a little and get freaked out, so we decide we are not going to play. We hadn't loaded in yet, so we just try to slip out and make a quick getaway. The scary dudes literally chase us out of town and then show up to the next night's show in a different town. We had to hide out in the dressing room until they left.
I got a million terrible show stories -- those are just a few!
Opening for Bad Religion at a pretty big theater in Detroit. Somebody in the audience is throwing things at us, can't tell what they are. Finally we get a good look at these projectiles and they turn out to be severed gopher heads. This nut job had a whole bag of them. Our guitar player was so outraged that he jumped into the audience and confronted the guy, almost got into a fist fight before the bouncers took the guy out. Other than that, it was a pretty good set.
Small club in Germany. I took some kind of pill, not sure what it was (this was in my younger and more indulgent days). Anyway, about half way through the set I blacked out. To this day, I don't remember anything from half-way through the set until the next morning.
Warfield Theater in SF. Big homecoming show after a long tour -- all of our friends and family are in the audience. We're excited. Drummer counts off the first song, I do a big rock n' roll leap into the air and fall flat on my ass.
Hole in the wall club called the Icepick in some town in Michigan. Walk in, bunch of scary dudes that seem sort of like a cross between skinheads and the hillbillys from Deliverance. Tons of grafitti all over the walls, including a bunch of scary racist crap. We hang around a little and get freaked out, so we decide we are not going to play. We hadn't loaded in yet, so we just try to slip out and make a quick getaway. The scary dudes literally chase us out of town and then show up to the next night's show in a different town. We had to hide out in the dressing room until they left.
I got a million terrible show stories -- those are just a few!
December 2002, Dayton, OH. A friend's band was playing, and got us this gig. There were 3 bands playing, and we were to be the last band. We set up behind the other 2 band's equipment, and just hang back. The first 2 bands were absolutely terrible, and nobody was enjoying them at all. People were sitting off to the side or smoking outside. So we figured we owed it to everyone there to give them a good show. So I told everybody to come on up to the stage, dance and have a good time. And dance they did. We really turned things around for that night, and got a really good response from the crowd.
Then comes the time where we talk about $$. It was sort of a party arranged by these 2 college girls who didn't know **** about money. They apparently had already paid the first 2 bands, and send somebody out to buy more booze, and had no money to pay us. After we drove there, lugged all our equipment up 2 flights of stairs, we got paid nothing.
One of the girls reached in her wallet and sheepishly said "I have eleven dollars.....". I quickly took her $11 and used it to help buy some beer. We went back to our practice space and got drunk while we laughed about the night. I suppose it's not all bad, as we still laugh about those memories 9 years later!
Then comes the time where we talk about $$. It was sort of a party arranged by these 2 college girls who didn't know **** about money. They apparently had already paid the first 2 bands, and send somebody out to buy more booze, and had no money to pay us. After we drove there, lugged all our equipment up 2 flights of stairs, we got paid nothing.
One of the girls reached in her wallet and sheepishly said "I have eleven dollars.....". I quickly took her $11 and used it to help buy some beer. We went back to our practice space and got drunk while we laughed about the night. I suppose it's not all bad, as we still laugh about those memories 9 years later!
I've forgotten many of them, but here are a couple I still remember:
Private NYE party in a just-finished airplane hanger. When I say just-finished, I mean no heat (it was 30 degrees that night - we played wearing parkas) and an unsealed concrete floor. The concrete dust got into every piece of gear we owned, and we carried that dust around for months afterward.
Another out-of-town gig on a night when a storm blew in, complete with freezing rain (we had to stop every five miles to scrape the windshield) that later turned into snow. We get there an hour and a half late and expect the place to be empty. Wrong - it was packed because it was bingo night, and I guess no storm is bad enough to deter hardcore bingo folks. We played and then slid our way home.
Private NYE party in a just-finished airplane hanger. When I say just-finished, I mean no heat (it was 30 degrees that night - we played wearing parkas) and an unsealed concrete floor. The concrete dust got into every piece of gear we owned, and we carried that dust around for months afterward.
Another out-of-town gig on a night when a storm blew in, complete with freezing rain (we had to stop every five miles to scrape the windshield) that later turned into snow. We get there an hour and a half late and expect the place to be empty. Wrong - it was packed because it was bingo night, and I guess no storm is bad enough to deter hardcore bingo folks. We played and then slid our way home.
So my previous band (we broke up about 4 months ago) booked a terrible gig way outside of our fanbase range, and not part of any festival or event, and so only about 15 people show up. They consisted of a few dedicated fans and some random people from off the street. The door charge was $7, which was way too high considering we were the only band playing in this tiny cafe, and many of the people there had no idea who we were.
It took a way to long for us to load in (we all had to come through their tiny front door) but we did get a good sound-check (the only good thing about that night). Our first song was ok, but the next few were screwed up because the guitarist had messed up his pedals, and so he dropped out in various parts, and when he was in it often sounded bad. And our singer (who was the reason we broke up, but that's another story) decided to talk to the crowd for a good 5 minutes between each song, completely destroying any "vibe" we were trying to create.
At the last minute, we had decided (despite my protests) to do a song that I thought we had previously "put on hold" because it only had a bass and drum part (our fantastic guitarist failed to come up with even a basic riff to play for it). So the drummer, the vocalist, and I struggled through it while our guitarist sat back doing nothing on stage. And if course, right in the middle of a verse, by pedal decided to stop working momentarily, leaving vocals and drums as the only instrumentation for a few measures.
The rest of our songs went decent though, and by the end of the gig I was feeling mediocre about it. The night seemed like it was getting better when, after our last set, I got this hot girl's phone number. I was pretty sure she liked me, but was proved wrong when she responded to my texts and calls only twice.
Our drummer also broke a picture that was in the green room, and we never got any of the money.
I was told by two audience members that they "loved our sound" and we were "really good" but they may have been very high and/or very drunk.
It took a way to long for us to load in (we all had to come through their tiny front door) but we did get a good sound-check (the only good thing about that night). Our first song was ok, but the next few were screwed up because the guitarist had messed up his pedals, and so he dropped out in various parts, and when he was in it often sounded bad. And our singer (who was the reason we broke up, but that's another story) decided to talk to the crowd for a good 5 minutes between each song, completely destroying any "vibe" we were trying to create.
At the last minute, we had decided (despite my protests) to do a song that I thought we had previously "put on hold" because it only had a bass and drum part (our fantastic guitarist failed to come up with even a basic riff to play for it). So the drummer, the vocalist, and I struggled through it while our guitarist sat back doing nothing on stage. And if course, right in the middle of a verse, by pedal decided to stop working momentarily, leaving vocals and drums as the only instrumentation for a few measures.
The rest of our songs went decent though, and by the end of the gig I was feeling mediocre about it. The night seemed like it was getting better when, after our last set, I got this hot girl's phone number. I was pretty sure she liked me, but was proved wrong when she responded to my texts and calls only twice.
Our drummer also broke a picture that was in the green room, and we never got any of the money.
I was told by two audience members that they "loved our sound" and we were "really good" but they may have been very high and/or very drunk.
I used to play in a band that did rocked up celtic music for ceildhs and stuff. Doesn't sound very cool but our usual gigs were for things like big parties of all sorts, birthdays, holidays, degree ceremonies, nursing colleges and medical schools, colleges and weddings. Usually they were a lot of fun with lots of raucous but good natured audience participation. And we used to do a lot of weddings. Whenever we did a wedding, we always insisted that the happy couple came and checked out the band before booking us, because we were not for everyone, especially if you were looking for a genteel wedding reception, we even put people who wanted to book the band for their wedding on the guest list for other gigs so they could see what they were getting.
So we get booked for a wedding, it's already a bit weird because we're booked for 1 pm (never usually did anything much before 7pm, usually later). So we show up at the venue and it's actually at the church...not the church hall...actually inside the church, albeit a modern 1970's church rather than a 13th century one. As we're setting up we realise that the wedding hasn't started yet and the guests are arriving and to our horror it dawns on us that they've booked the band early so that we're all in place before the wedding starts....and we have to sit through the wedding!
It turns out that the church is the venue for the whole thing, as soon as the wedding is over, tables are rolled out, food of the bland brown rice variety turns up and we realise that we're going to have to sit through the entire wedding breakfast and speeches....we also realise that there is no beer, no wine or champagne and all the toasts are with fruit juice or mineral water.
We finally start to play, our band leader has already suggested we play at half our normal volume. During the first number, nobody gets up to dance, after the first number we get asked to turn down...so we do. Our front man in this band is usually brilliant, gregarious, riotously funny and also knew how to call a few dances if people didn't stir themselves onto the dancefloor....he was working hard...nothing.
Four tunes in and at a point where we normally have people throwing themselves around the dancefloor...nothing...and we've been asked to turn the volume down between each number.
We got asked to turn down so many times that eventually, I could honestly hear my unamplified bass better than anything coming from my amp, the guitarist had switched from his Strat to acoustic, so instead of energetic fiddle scorching out fast jigs and reels underpinned with power chords and a driving rhythm section, we had the PA virtually turned off and everything reduced to acoustic fiddle and guitar...the drummer had long given up on the kit and was just half heartedly patting a Bodhran.
Nobody danced...we had to play for the whole 4 hours we normally did, to a row of people who had just pulled up their chairs concert style in front of the band...I think at one point somebody in the audience got sssshhhhuuuusshhhed for clapping along....
I still shudder at the thought of what a joyless life the happy couple must've been about to embark on
So we get booked for a wedding, it's already a bit weird because we're booked for 1 pm (never usually did anything much before 7pm, usually later). So we show up at the venue and it's actually at the church...not the church hall...actually inside the church, albeit a modern 1970's church rather than a 13th century one. As we're setting up we realise that the wedding hasn't started yet and the guests are arriving and to our horror it dawns on us that they've booked the band early so that we're all in place before the wedding starts....and we have to sit through the wedding!
It turns out that the church is the venue for the whole thing, as soon as the wedding is over, tables are rolled out, food of the bland brown rice variety turns up and we realise that we're going to have to sit through the entire wedding breakfast and speeches....we also realise that there is no beer, no wine or champagne and all the toasts are with fruit juice or mineral water.
We finally start to play, our band leader has already suggested we play at half our normal volume. During the first number, nobody gets up to dance, after the first number we get asked to turn down...so we do. Our front man in this band is usually brilliant, gregarious, riotously funny and also knew how to call a few dances if people didn't stir themselves onto the dancefloor....he was working hard...nothing.
Four tunes in and at a point where we normally have people throwing themselves around the dancefloor...nothing...and we've been asked to turn the volume down between each number.
We got asked to turn down so many times that eventually, I could honestly hear my unamplified bass better than anything coming from my amp, the guitarist had switched from his Strat to acoustic, so instead of energetic fiddle scorching out fast jigs and reels underpinned with power chords and a driving rhythm section, we had the PA virtually turned off and everything reduced to acoustic fiddle and guitar...the drummer had long given up on the kit and was just half heartedly patting a Bodhran.
Nobody danced...we had to play for the whole 4 hours we normally did, to a row of people who had just pulled up their chairs concert style in front of the band...I think at one point somebody in the audience got sssshhhhuuuusshhhed for clapping along....
I still shudder at the thought of what a joyless life the happy couple must've been about to embark on
In over 30 years of playing there have been too many to mention all but one does stand out above the many others.
Some years back while playing in a wedding/party casuals band we got booked to play a very upper crust wedding with reception held in the cluhouse of a very exlusive country club housing development near Denver. We're talking million dollar plus homes here and a $15 mil clubhouse. Great gig huh?
When we arrive we find a corner of the common room all cleared out for our use and bring in the equipment and setup. This is fully an hour before the bridal party is scheduled to arrive. Just as we've finished tuning and doing a sound check the "Wedding Planner," Cruella DeVille, arrives and comes up to us in a huff and tells us we can't set up there. That's the place reserved for the wedding cake, the gifts and photos of the bridal party.
Given the layout of the room, dining tables, buffet line and the location of the dance floor there IS no other place for us to set up and we politely tell her this. Makes no difference to her that we're the entertainment for the next four hours, to her we are the hired help and she will tell us where we can set up which is when she points to the second floor balcony a good 15-20 feet above the first floor. This isn't a joke but the rest of the night was.
This balcony was roughly 12 feet wide and just about 5 or 6 feet deep, accessible only by a narrow winding circular staircase and nothing more than a second floor landing between the two 12x12 offices of the real estate development company who worked out them. We had to spend the next hour tearing down and carrying our gear to the second floor of this place to set up all over again.
I've played some small stages in my day but a 5 piece band is not gonna fit into a 12x6 foot space. Since the horn player and I did most of the vocals we took the balcony (landing) which was open to the room below. Our keyboard player and drummer set up in one of the business offices which fortunately had windows that could be opened to let the sound out. Our guitarist took the other office and put his amp on a chair in front of the open window.
I've recorded with players in different rooms before but I'd never done a live gig that way and haven't since. We did our best to keep a line of sight between ourselves through the open doorways but since the PA speakers occupied the landing with the horn player and I, and there was zero room for our monitors, nobody but he and I could hear the vocals well. Starts and stops and the other usual communication between us was interesting to say the least. An intercom would have been nice. We played and the dancers danced with the music floating 20 feet over their heads. As a joke we lowered a wicker basket we found in one of the offices on a mic cable to collect any requests. Now comes an even more insulting move on the part of Cruella.
Our booking agreement calls for us to be fed along with the other guests so when we take our first break we go down to sample this fantastic tenderloin the servers are carving for the guests. As we take plates and get in line Cruella comes rushing up to inform the servers that the band will not be allowed any of the tenderloin. That they are short and the guests must be fed as many helpings as they care to have so we can't possibly have any. What was left to us was some sort of rice concoction, a salad with greens of an unknown origin and a vegetarian stew of the nouvelle cusine variety that appeared to have been made from the roots and bark of the clubhouse landscaping. Needless to say we passed, and starved for the next four hours.
We didn't get beat up, or have beer spilled on us and we didn't have any of our gear stolen or any of the other indignities bands have suffered over the years and we did get paid rather well but I have never in my life enjoyed a gig less or been treated so poorly as we were that night by Cruella and her crew.
Some years back while playing in a wedding/party casuals band we got booked to play a very upper crust wedding with reception held in the cluhouse of a very exlusive country club housing development near Denver. We're talking million dollar plus homes here and a $15 mil clubhouse. Great gig huh?
When we arrive we find a corner of the common room all cleared out for our use and bring in the equipment and setup. This is fully an hour before the bridal party is scheduled to arrive. Just as we've finished tuning and doing a sound check the "Wedding Planner," Cruella DeVille, arrives and comes up to us in a huff and tells us we can't set up there. That's the place reserved for the wedding cake, the gifts and photos of the bridal party.
Given the layout of the room, dining tables, buffet line and the location of the dance floor there IS no other place for us to set up and we politely tell her this. Makes no difference to her that we're the entertainment for the next four hours, to her we are the hired help and she will tell us where we can set up which is when she points to the second floor balcony a good 15-20 feet above the first floor. This isn't a joke but the rest of the night was.
This balcony was roughly 12 feet wide and just about 5 or 6 feet deep, accessible only by a narrow winding circular staircase and nothing more than a second floor landing between the two 12x12 offices of the real estate development company who worked out them. We had to spend the next hour tearing down and carrying our gear to the second floor of this place to set up all over again.
I've played some small stages in my day but a 5 piece band is not gonna fit into a 12x6 foot space. Since the horn player and I did most of the vocals we took the balcony (landing) which was open to the room below. Our keyboard player and drummer set up in one of the business offices which fortunately had windows that could be opened to let the sound out. Our guitarist took the other office and put his amp on a chair in front of the open window.
I've recorded with players in different rooms before but I'd never done a live gig that way and haven't since. We did our best to keep a line of sight between ourselves through the open doorways but since the PA speakers occupied the landing with the horn player and I, and there was zero room for our monitors, nobody but he and I could hear the vocals well. Starts and stops and the other usual communication between us was interesting to say the least. An intercom would have been nice. We played and the dancers danced with the music floating 20 feet over their heads. As a joke we lowered a wicker basket we found in one of the offices on a mic cable to collect any requests. Now comes an even more insulting move on the part of Cruella.
Our booking agreement calls for us to be fed along with the other guests so when we take our first break we go down to sample this fantastic tenderloin the servers are carving for the guests. As we take plates and get in line Cruella comes rushing up to inform the servers that the band will not be allowed any of the tenderloin. That they are short and the guests must be fed as many helpings as they care to have so we can't possibly have any. What was left to us was some sort of rice concoction, a salad with greens of an unknown origin and a vegetarian stew of the nouvelle cusine variety that appeared to have been made from the roots and bark of the clubhouse landscaping. Needless to say we passed, and starved for the next four hours.
We didn't get beat up, or have beer spilled on us and we didn't have any of our gear stolen or any of the other indignities bands have suffered over the years and we did get paid rather well but I have never in my life enjoyed a gig less or been treated so poorly as we were that night by Cruella and her crew.
Was it a Baptist church? This side of the pond, at least, they say the Baptists don't like their teenagers having sex because it might be the slippery slope that leads to dancing...
When we are approached by people to play their wedding, we tell them, it is one price if we deal with you (e.g. bride and groom) and 15% more if we have to deal with your wedding planner. We've never seriously gone through with this, because it always spawns a good three way conversation between family, band, and wedding planner that results in a favorable understanding long before the gig ever happens. Wedding planners can be very difficult, they have a big job (pleasing a woman and her family on the day that HAS to be the most perfect of thier life is NOT easy) but you have to get things sorted out with them early, both in terms of arrangements and in terms of their attitude. I tell the wedding planner, it is your job to make the bride and groom happy. Part of their happiness is they want to book us. We will not play unless WE are made happy. Thus, Ms. Wedding Planner, your job is now to make US happy too, savvy? Arrogant perhaps, but when you are not dependent on wedding paydays to meet the mortgage you can afford to be!
One year my wedding/cover band got a New Year's Eve gig at a gi-normous casino. We were one of about 4 bands playing at the same time in different places on the huge main floor.
We were the lucky act that was picked to play w-a-y high up on a hastily erected riser that towered above the gambling floor, on contractor's scaffolding. I swear, it must have been close to 50 feet up. The only access was -- get this: the mother of all ladders! We barely got our singer to climb up there.
But what was bad for us was even worse for our poor roadies: They had to hoist all our gear up there, piece by piece -- up the ladder!! :^D Luckily we were wired into the house PA, but they still had to get all our amps and drums up there. Insane.
For our trouble, we got to add our music to the general, blended din of the evening. And no one knew where we were situated -- none of the patrons thought to look way up to the rafters to find the source of the music! We could have played an iPod, and no one would have been the wiser. :^D Lol!
Never again!
We were the lucky act that was picked to play w-a-y high up on a hastily erected riser that towered above the gambling floor, on contractor's scaffolding. I swear, it must have been close to 50 feet up. The only access was -- get this: the mother of all ladders! We barely got our singer to climb up there.
But what was bad for us was even worse for our poor roadies: They had to hoist all our gear up there, piece by piece -- up the ladder!! :^D Luckily we were wired into the house PA, but they still had to get all our amps and drums up there. Insane.
For our trouble, we got to add our music to the general, blended din of the evening. And no one knew where we were situated -- none of the patrons thought to look way up to the rafters to find the source of the music! We could have played an iPod, and no one would have been the wiser. :^D Lol!
Never again!
It's the week leading up to your CD launch party, and your female lead singer/guitarist breaks up with her boyfriend, has her car stolen, and pretty much has a nervous breakdown an hour before going on stage.
Don't think the details really need to be explained on that one.
Don't think the details really need to be explained on that one.
