Your Worst Live Concert or Rec'ding Session.

[Prophet_81]

Hey, this really doesn't compare to any of the stories I've read, but I just gotta tell it.

This happened this year in, like, May. It was a talent show kind of event at the high school from which I just graduated. They had dress rehearsal for the last two days; one day of work lost for rehearsal. In rehearsal everyone(the sound crew composed of peers) seems to be stumbling and fumbling but getting things done.

I know how they treat these shows and I was concerned that in the rush of getting our five piece band(we were just a group of friends trying to help out the chick singer) onstage, they might not get my acoustic run to the board properly.

Well, the next night, my concerns could not have been more accurate...

I look at the guy in the dark, and I'm, like, "You got it hooked up?" He's fumbling around and says, "Let's just use this line..."

I'm trying to be patient when finally the lights come up. And of course you know, it's an acoustic guitar intro. I wait three seconds hoping it will help them get organized and begin to strum... Of course, the guitar is not coming out of the speakers(in an auditorium, mind you). My experience(which I'd had plenty) tells me not to stop; just drive through it. It's unprofessional to start over.

No sooner had I thought that then had the violin player begun to put this sweet country melody into the mic over my intro at an ear-piercing volume all over the auditorium. My guitar is still down...

Everyone comes in on cue and Emily starts singing. HER MIC ISN'T WORKING AS WELL!!! Her switch between mics gives the audience a giggle and my guitar finally comes over the speaker upon the first chorus.

I'm telling you, I'd never been in a performance that bad. And it wasn't even our fault. We ended fine. We had a lot of friends and family watching. I don't feel very embarrassed about the whole thing. I just wish that they had more experienced people doing sound.

 

[Hard2Hear]

My worst gig never really happened at all. We were getting pumped to play a big town festival where we told all of our friends to come and see us play. Our drummer ended up having to go out of town on an emergency. This is Friday night...the gig is Sunday.
Luckily, I am great friends with a guy who has been playing jazz drums for 20+ years and knows our music. I give him a call and he says no problem...but I really owe him one to drive an hour and a half from the city, but that's ok with me.
Well, Sunday morning I get a call from the promoter of the event telling me the planning committee had messed up and we were being bumped from the show. I am none too happy but I figure I'll call the guys and break the news. I call our fill in drummer and can't get him. Try the pager, no luck...cell phone is off. Now it's about 11:30 and we were supposed to play at noon.
At about 12:15 I get a call. "Hey Mike, it's Bobby. Where are you?"
"Well, I've been trying to get ahold of you... where are you at?" I ask.
"Well right now I am on this drum riser in the middle of town, but there are all of these big fat country guys around me and it doesn't look too good"
I tried to explain to him the events that had occurred, and he was really cool. He just said "I'm getting out of here while I'm still alive!"
I still owe him a BIG one!

 

[Cosmo]

Ahh... the evil capo. I played at an outdoor festival in front of several thousand people one time. A friend offered to work as guitar tech. I had a second guitar with a capo and when I picked it up and hit the first chord I discovered the bozo had put the capo on and THEN tuned to standard tuning. It was horrifying. I tried to transpose on the fly with pretty disaterous results and was reduced to Jerry Garcia noodling just to try to fill up space and convince people I knew what I was doing. Moral: don't take friends up on offers to tune guitars... let them help carry gear.

 

[2lim]

Okay about a year ago now...... my friends and i are playing at a party and have been telling everyone we knwo to come and see us play because it is our first "gig" now the first in a long chain of events is that our guitarist shows up an hour and a half late, but we could live with that if we pulled off the "killer" performance that we wanted to. So we start off with a cover of welcome to paradise by green day(we were a cover band back then) but halfway through our guitarist starts losing his place and when we get to the bass solo he has no idea what is going on. We later discovered he was on acid for the first time in his life. So we decide to pack it in after a few songs and go get high, so myself and the drummer go toke uup in the person's backyard. We had some seriously good shit so we were pretty much out of it. Next thing that goes wrong is our guitarist comes and tells us he is ready to play and he is feeling better, we tell him that we cannot play so he goes up on his own and says he willplay without us. We go up because we didn't want to seem like jerks. next thing that goes wrong is our drummer can't keep a beat because he is stoned, i am having trouble hearing anything and our guitarist loses his voice so i have to sing. I f anyone has heard me sing they probably don't want to hear me again. This is the worst "gig" i have ever played.