What was your worst gig ever?

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OpenD

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I've had some pretty bad gigs...like last year, we sang an outdoor benefit where we couldn't see the audience for the fog that rolled in. Then there was the time that we borrowed some equipment... our Bass singer kept getting shocked by his microphone! I also remember the one where I would run off stage in between numbers to go puke (hard to do that and not get your nice SoGospel suit dirty).

What are some of your bad gig stories?
 
This isnt really that bad, but a couple of years ago when i was in a band with my brother and a couple of friends, My brothers bass just stopped working right at the end of our LAST song.

And it was a big like run-down finish too, It ended up sounding like crap but , EH, Im over it.

y
 
Worst gig eh........

The battle of the bands where the rival band gave us a few beers..... Then a few more....... And then a few more. I thought it went pretty well until we saw the video. Well, I thought it wasn't THAT bad.

They said they were our friends!
 
I was the lead singer in the rock n' roll band...
We invited to play at outdoor event.

"Okay, we'll take it..."

The stage was so tinny, and it's trapped between two high wall. Bad acoustic. So I couldn't hear any notes played clear on stage. No matter how loud the monitor sound, I can't get the key. Whoooonnnggg.... whooooonnggg.... was all I hear. Gees, I sang out of tune. I mean, relly bad enough to make the audience laught out loud. My bass player grab a mic and tried to help me. He hated me so much that time, but when he started to sing... he realized he was also pretty bad out of tune... :o We stop on the second song. And the band next to us refused to play... The show continued by nude strip dance... then I felt alot much better.

Lesson learned :
1. NEVER gig on tinny stage trapped between two wall with bad acoustic without check sound.
2. If you insisted to play, then make sure there's nude strip dance after you.

;)
Jaymz
 
Ah....so many dandies. There was the time about twenty years ago we were playing at a place called Morris Mills in Missouri to about 300 bikers. We were doing a tune by Wishbone Ash called Blowin Free. There's a break in the middle of the tune where it comes to a full stop, a quik four count and it takes off hard. We hit the stop, the drummer starts the four count and just out of phase with him, one of our drunken roadies starts his own four count. Half the band follows the drummer, the other half follows drunk roadie. It was a train wreck.
Then there was a 4th of July gig where the day before a brown recluse spider bite me in the palm of my left hand. I couldn't wave by-by let alone play a guitar.
I have MANY, MANY more.
 
How's this...

... what a f**kin' horror story...
the very last gig we played, me & the lead guitar player went down the day before to set up the PA, had everything diagrammed out so that I coulnd't f**k it up. We had everything but the bass & drums set up, & even had our own little soundcheck for ALL the vocals, plus our guitars. Well, the night of the gig, here comes the bass player, & starts going all over the shit to see if I screwed anything up, since it's usually his job to set up sound. Couldn't find a thing wrong, but by the time it's all over with, everything is ALL f**ked up, he actually tears one of the balanced inputs on one of the power amps out of its socket, & then has the balls to say that MY gear (that's right, I own it all!) which is only about 4 years old, if that, is junky shit that's too old & outdated to play out with! While this is going on, the lead guitarist gets into a minor vocal scuffle with the drummer over some smart-assed remark the drummer made about the only reason any of us were there was as a favor to the lead guitar player, who managed to get us the gig to begin with. I was under the impression that we were all there to play, enjoy ourselves, & have fun, make a little coin on the side, guess I was wrong. By the time we finally got to play, I was so pissed off that I struggled through 10 songs that I can usually play in my sleep, & then packed up my shit & left. The next day, I called 'em all & told 'em that it was better to call it quits & still be able to speak to one another than for somebody to say or do something that couldn't be taken back. I was about a 1/4 inch away from puching the bass player in the mouth that night, & I'm generally a super laid-back dude... So much for the love of music, 2 years of my life WASTED with a couple of f**kin' jackasses. That was in January, & I haven't played a whole hell of alot since then. Easy come, easy go, I guess... Well, you asked! :D:D:D
 
... And there's this one...

... my first band in high school, we were decent enough. We played out at a pasture party one summer, & I was there early enough that I managed to consume enough "jungle juice" to float the Ronald Reagan. Needless to say, puking into my mic 1/2 way through the first song was NOT the high point of the evening...
Again, you asked! :D:D:D
... Notice I didn't use the "F" word this time! Proud of me?
 
Ok, I was playing in this hippie band...kind of a Greatful Dead tribute band. We were an enviromental kind of band(they were, I couldnt care less), and so we get booked to play earth day crap, and recycleing centers. Thats right, a recycleing center. In a redneck small texas town.

THe small town newspaper comes out to interview us. We make the front page "Rock and Recycle", sounds like a great deal. The day of the show aproaches. We show up, they have a couple of flat bed semi trailers setup for a stage, in an open field right next to the recycle center. Our usual entorage shows up, and nobody else. An empty field. We start playing...what the hell, we'll just play for our friends and hope someone heres it and shows up. We see a pickup pull into the field and an old farmer pulls up with his old farmer wife. They drop the tail gate, set down, and open up a cooler. Farmer Brown bellows out "Play take this job and shove it!". We play tangeled up in blue instead. He gets in his truck and drives off. Shit. There goes the audience. Then theres some excitement off to left stage. Someone has noticed off in the distance, through the heat shimmers, a black trans camero parked under a scragly Mesquite tree. Puffs of suspicious looking smoke coming out of the open(or stolen) T Tops. The Gtr player graps the mic and yells out "You in the Trans Camero...Want and enviromental flyer?" The Trans Camero roars to life, and speeds across the dry and cracked earth, blue-white smoke drifting behind it, and pulls up to the stage. Someone hands the passenger an informative information filled tome of information about why you should put foreing objects in your toliet tank to save water, and like a faded memory they drive off towards their tree to ponder the wisdom of using a glass bottle filled with sand to displace water in your crapper tank.

We finish up, and in the next days paper there is an article about how great a show it was. Apparently, the photog took pictures crouched down behind the girlfriends in front of the stage so that it looked like there was a crowd...hell, it looked like woodstock. Course those of us on the outside of the stage didnt get into the photo because he had to get like three feet from the stage.
 
Runners-up:
1) backing up C&W hasbeen Rex Allen Jr. at a county fair in WV, with no charts - woulda been fine if I was just on keys, but I was the bass player too. Couldn't follow, had to lead. Aaaaagh!;

2) big show: "Country, the Next Generation" somewhere in PA (we called it: "the no-talent offspring of the rich and famous"), with Marty Haggard (really pretty damn good), Cissy Lynn (we think she was the shake-n-bake girl, you know: "and AH helped"), and Michael "Shitty" Twitty. We backed up Twitty - only EIGHTEEN people showed up. We all still played, but boy, I felt stoopid;

3) bass player walked out right before a gig, I had to play left-hand bass, and didn't know how (WAY early in my career). Owners sent us home after the first set. I got fired a few weeks later. Funny - keyboard bass is now one of my strong suits...;

but the winner is:

Our big break - we were opening act for Billy Crash Craddock and Ronnie Harrison at a charity gig in Winchester VA. Clincher was, we had to provide the PA and run sound. Hired a fiddle player for the gig, too. Bandleader knew a local guy with some big PA equipment, cut a deal with him. Also hired a sound man.

So the guy with the PA shows up with the stuff, and we set up and sound check, get it sounding pretty good. Then we go to sound check Craddock and Harrison's bands - by this time, the guy with the PA has sent the sound man up to run the follow spot. When we protested, he said he'd walk with his stuff if we didn't let him run things. The idiot didn't keep track of anything. none of the settings, the routing, nothing. Our leader decided we'd just live with it.

WE sounded great. Nobody else did. Craddock started ragging on us real early, we tried to fix stuff, but nobody knew where anything was. bad mixes, bad EQ, feedback problems, singers couldn't hear themselves. Craddock finally left the stage, told the crowd he'd do his second set if we got our shit together.

Harrison had a bit more professional demeanor, but it was the same issues. Sounded like absolute shit. Sound guy kept saying it sounded fine (idiot).

Our second set sounded fine, but Craddock's and Harrison's were even worse. This time Craddock walked out. Harrison cut his set short. The guy who booked it lost his ass (from giving refunds to the disgruntled patrons - rookie!), he skipped town owing everyone money.

We wound up putting in 18 hours that day, not a nickel to show for it, and really messed up our reputation. I never saw the fucker with the PA again, and I quit the band a few months later, after the leader stiffed the sidemen on a private party ("that's $2,000 for me, $50 for you." Prick.)

Daf
 
About 10 years ago we were playing an outdoor party. big crowd lots of beer, we were the 3rd band to play. We get up and do a couple of songs. I tell the bass player what song is next, he looks at me and says "I don't know if I remember how to play it" I said we've played this song a 1000 times you gotta know it. He says "well I did a hit of acid about 20 min. ago and I can't remember how" I tell him he's a dumb ass and who the hell would give it to him. Then he points to the drummer and says "I got it from him" Every song including ballads had some wild double kick drums going on.
Another time we played a weekend gig. At the end of the second night I go to get paid, the bar owner gives me $50.00. I tell him he's a little short, then he shows me the bar tab from the first night. The singer was buying rounds for the house on a band tab. (hey they really seemed to enjoy us that first night)
 
Here's the remedy for a jackass band member...

... Kick 'im in the balls, stab 'im in the back, & punch 'im in the teeth. Works every time...
Oh yeah, & fire the dick!
 
Hmmm...I notice a recurring theme. Bass players. mebbe somebody should start a thread about bass players in the appropriate forum.

Oh yeah, beer. Any forum is appropriate for a beer discussion...

Groovejive I sang a gig in Monticello (yeah, that one) that, while it wasn't bad, was wierd. We were doing a charity tour at different churches around the state. We get to the church in Monticello (Christian Church just off the town square). We walk in, start setting up and everyone is looking at us like what the heck are you guys doing. It seems they FORGOT we were coming! They weren't real sure they wanted to give up their Sunday night service for us. Well we let the guy who managed the other act work it out while we did a sound check. We used our closer song which had a dramatic recitation in it leading up to the big finish. I decided to be a smart alec and change the recitation (I reasoned I should save the "real" one). So I told a shortend version of Little Red Riding Hood in which the wolf gets the Lord at the end. The minister loved it, let us go on, and we raised some good cash for the charity...:D

Our soundman is a member of our group, if he don't twist the knobs...we won't sing, period.
 
Hey Open D...

... Yeah, I know some folks over in Wayne county, & they're ALL a little weird over there. Our bass player wasn't a bad guy, in fact, he was one of the most polite f**kers you ever met, he was just anal retentive about everything. He's still one of my best friends, but we just can't play music together. As for the beer discussions, the only discussion there needs to be is when, where, & how much should I bring... Let me know, & don't no-show! Seriously tho', I'd like to see more bands in this area, but for some reason, as big as the Lake Cumberland area is, there just isn't any real music scene here. There's a couple of clubs here in Somerset (the site of other, unmentionably bad gigs!), but you either have to play country, which I'm cool with but I'm a blues-rock kind of guy, or else you have to play the techno dance crap that all the younger kids are into. There's nowhere for us guys that like classic rock to play for any kind of an audience, we always have to head to Richmond or Lexington. It's a hassle, but then again, I sure as hell ain't into it for the $$$, 'cos there ain't none to be had...
Groove.
 
What a great thread! I'm probably only gonna be able to scratch the surface here, but lessee...


Played with food poisoning once.. boy that sucked! There was the time that we were playing an Elks club doing Irish music for a paddy's day gig (yeah, I used to do a lot of Irish gigs in the 80's) and the crowd wanted "oldies". We do some Who, and they come back to the stage and say "NOOOOO... WE WANT OLDIES". So we do some 50's stuff like Del Shannon. They come back to the stage and say that they want to jitterbug. I ask them if they really think that I can pull Glen Miller & his Big Band out of my ass? We did the Rodeo Song instead and emptied the place:D There was another time (still doing Irish Music) on Cape Cod when a bar decided to change the type of music they were doing. The bar had been a country music bar for years, and the owner hires us to do Irish music, but doesn't bother to pass this information on to his clientel. Needless to say, we ended that show about five songs into the first set with the Rodeo Song (gotta love that song.. so many uses:D ). One gig I did up in Ski Country. It was wicked cold up there (go figure) and the plumbing in the Inn where the bar was llocated had burst. There was an access to the burst pipe through a trap door in the stage. We'd be playing along, and then the plumber's head would pop out of the stage.

Oh man.. so many, so many. I will definitely get back to this thread. I've had enough stuff happen to me on the road that I could probably make a movie that would rival Spinal Tap between weird shit, funny shit, unbeievable shit, and then there's all the equipment fuck-ups.. AHHHHH LOVE IT!!!
 
EVERY gig that I did when I was in a Bob Cuban band (a local legend in his own mind here in St. Louis "Hey Hey He's A Cheater") doing all dinner cruses, high dollar weddings, corporate parties, all in a tuxedo). It seems like damn near every job, I'd be on a break and someone would come up and ask "can we get some more butter at our table?". Bend over lady, I got some butter for ya.
 
That's funny shit... !

Hey FMMAHOGANYRUSH-
The "rodeo song", is that the one that goes:
"Well, it's forty below an' I don't give a fuck
got a heater in my truck & I'm off to the rodeo,
alamand a left alamand a right
c'mon ya fuckin' dummy get yer right step right
get off the stage ya goddamn dude, ya know
ya pissed me off, ya fuckin' jerk, ya get on my nerves"?
I don't know if I got all the words spelled right, hell I don't even know if it's the same song, but it's been over 20 years since I last heard it, & you're right, it IS the song of 1000 uses! That's funnier than shit, tho'.
Track Rat: Pass the Parkay, dude... That's hilarious, somebody needs to start collecting these, & then when they get enough, post them in book form on the site as a downloadable so that everyone can laugh. These kinds of stories are always the funniest... :D:D:D
 
Re: That's funny shit... !

GROOVEJIVEY said:
Hey FMMAHOGANYRUSH-
The "rodeo song", is that the one that goes:
"Well, it's forty below an' I don't give a fuck
got a heater in my truck & I'm off to the rodeo...
Click to expand...

Yup.. that's the one! I got LOADS of stories... ...I just need some time to remember them (usually the funny stories were accompanied by a large consumption of alcohol, etc..). I played a Toro Lawn Tractor Salesman convention once. A bunch of guy's hanging around talking about the new models, boy, that gig was a hoot! The very first paying gig I ever did was at a bar called (well, I think it was at least) "The Pier" in Boston. It was a St. Paddy's day gig and it was a rather large bar. We were nervous and excited of course. We drank ourselves silly. Shots and Long Island Iced Tea's if I recall... ...lots of 'em. Anyway, at th end of the night we went to get paid, but didn't realize the bar was keeping a tab on the drinks. We settled up owing the bar $25. One time while playing at "The Black Rose" in Boston, this guy we called "the King of State Street" came up knocking on the window behind us (He was actually a hotdog vendor who parked outside of the bar... ...and we had a feeling hewas selling more than hot dogs from the cart:eek: ) and he say's "Hey, when you guy's go on break, come outside and take a ride in my limo". Well, we figured he wanted us to come out and hang at his hot dog cart during the break, but what the hell, nothing like a good dog, so out we went. He walked us around the corner to a limo. He hired a limo for some reason, and we cruised Boston for a half an hour. Never did figure out what that was all about....
 
Man I too have had quiet a few that I thought were pretty bad. There was this one show where the rythem guitarist did not show (that was when we decided to become a three piece band) and we ended up playing Sweet Child of Mine for what felt like 30 Mins. It was pretty bad especially with all the blank stares that we were getting from the Audience.
 
About 10 years ago. The most heartbreaking gig of my life. I was filling in for a friend of mines band playing bass while thier bass player was in Spain. They really sucked bad but I figured what the hell, they were friends and I wasn't doing anything better.

So anyway, we get a call from this other band who tell us that thier singer just quit, and they were supposed to play an opener with this other band in a bar in Oshkosh. Could we go and play a quick show? they ask. They really felt bad, and they didn't want to screw over the bar owner. We say "sure". As we are packing up our gear to leave the singer that "quit" stops by, and I ask him if he would be interested in getting together now that he is notdoing anything. He looks very nervous and confused when I say this, but he says "we'll see". It occurs to me that he does not know what the hell I am talking about, but I shrug it off and go on.

So anyway, we load up and head for the gig. As we are pulling up we get our first glimpse at the giant sign that says "TONIGHT: KANSAS".

The band that these idiots are supposed to open for is frigging Kansas, and to top it off they have no idea who the hell we are, and the bar owner has no idea that the other band is pulling out, but I am cool with that., because there is no way that I want to play anything with Kansas in the same bar as me. However, after a quick phone call the bar owner now insists that we play. This was a very big place for bands, and the other guys do not want to ruin thier chances of playing there in the future, so we soldier on.

So I had the great misfortune of having to play rag-tag versions of "Come as you are", "Man in a Box", and (most embarrassing of all) "Tom Sawyer" with Phil Ehart and Steve Walsh standing about 6 feet from me looking very unhappy, and very unimpressed, and me praying for god to strike me dead.

To top it off, the other band (singer included) shows up just as we are finishing our last tune ( a very bad version of "Middle Man"). Not only did these guys totally chicken out and lie about it, they show up and have the balls to ask us to split the cash for the gig with them because they had to rent equipment ( prior to chickening out apparently). We refuse of course, and the guitar player for the band has the BALLS, yes I say BALLS to say this:

" You guys have a lot to learn about business".

That was right before our drummer ( who was a huge Kansas fan 'til this night) pops him one. I talked to that drummer about 3 months ago and to this day niether of us can listen to Kansas without feeling very embarrassed. My face is getting red as I type this.
 
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