Bad gig experiences...

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  • jpfampsjpfamps Frets: 2723
    JayGee said:
    I’m currently flipping a mental coin between The Bowling Alley Where Nobody Ever Came and The Wedding Where Nobody Wanted Us, but I think the wedding wins.

    The first of those was a gig with a Punk/New Wave covers band at a bowling alley in Harlow. Literally an empty room (other than three people on the lane furthest away from the bar area where we were playing. Bizarrely we got another couple of dates there where the same thing happened (apparently the manager and staff really liked us, and had an entertainment budget they couldn’t think of anything better to do with) before somebody (I’m still not sure whether it was them or us) decided it just wasn’t worth the effort.

    As for the second one, that was the current rock covers band, Solar 9. We don’t normally do weddings or similar functions, the only exceptions being when it’s a “friend of the band” who knows exactly what we do and what they’ll be getting but on this occasion we got an approach from an agency who’d previously booked us a few decent gigs and events offering (by our standards) a shed-load of money and adamant that we were exactly what his client was looking for to liven up their evening reception. We rolled up at the agreed venue and the agreed time to find that nobody seemed to be expecting us and that a DJ had already commandeered most of the stage, nevertheless after a bit of head scratching we got set up and kicked off set 1 of our contractual obligation to an empty hall while everybody buggered off for drinks and nibbles, only to re-appear when the (excruciatingly loud) DJ kicked off again. Set 2 went pretty much the same way, and seeing how the wind was blowing we did the shortest possible set in a desultory manner, packed up (to the accompaniment of complete silence, ear-bleeding DJ aside), and left without (as far as I know) speaking to anybody.

    To this day I don’t know whether we were reluctantly foisted on an unwilling family by one person saying “Oooh yeah! You should totally have a loud rock covers band, it’ll be great...” and then not turning up, or it we were the punch-line of an (expensive) joke on somebody’s part, but it was excruciating, and even about three times our normal pub-gig fee didn’t make up for it... 

    DJs are sods for taking up all the space; I've had a few interesting experiences.....
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  • mudslide73mudslide73 Frets: 3049
    A few weeks ago we had a pissed bloke on stage who fell backwards onto the drums mid song. He ended up buying us all a pint so it wasn't too bad.

    Saturday night had the usual pissed up smokers in the doorway.. only lightened by the landlord (thinking he was alone) letting off a superhuman fart that echoed around the car park like an explosion. The look on his face when he saw me was priceless. Good gig though.
    "A city star won’t shine too far"


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  • sw67sw67 Frets: 228
    Played once to a crowd of three - one left and the other two started fighting outside. The bar staff were outside leaving the band the only ones left in the pub. Not a great night 
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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    Played the Shed in Leicester one Sunday in early 2007.

    It was an audition to play Glastonbudget festival. There were, IIRC, six bands on the bill.

    We fought least hard not to be last, so that's where we ended up on the lineup which was decided entirely by the medium of bands staring sullenly at each other and declaring when they had to be up the following morning.

    We ended up going on at 12:30am on what was by this time Monday morning. Everyone was gone. The other bands had packed up and left after their respective sets. The audience had never existed in any meaningful sense; certainly anyone any other band had brought with them had long since vanished. The Judge, who's job it was to decide who would "win" on this lineup and go on to play the festival, had left just before midnight.

    We played our set to the sound guy, who left the room after the first song to presumably go and get some sleep, and a lady who was cleaning the venue - a totally empty room, therefore, other than someone mopping the dancefloor in front of the stage and sweeping the bar clean. We finished, packed up and went home.

    I got back to my house in Rugby at about 2:30am and just sat there on the drive for 10 minutes, staring at the sky, wondering why the fuck I'd bothered with all that and putting off the moment I'd have to load my drums into the garage. Yes, I was the drummer, so intersperse this story with lots of heavy lifting. I *nearly* gave up on playing gigs that night, and I was pretty groggy at work after 3 hours' sleep.

    Funny thing is, two years later in my next band we auditioned and the festival organiser actually ran up on stage and announced we were the best band he'd seen. We ended up playing the thing 3 times, and I can tell you now...

    It was a total waste of time. :s

    I think this story is a neat metaphor for gigging in an originals band, to be fair.
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  • Dave_VaderDave_Vader Frets: 358
    I am feverishly taking notes, changing names and plagiarising your lives for another book
    Thanks
    :)

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  • Phil_aka_PipPhil_aka_Pip Frets: 9794
    During the late 1980s the band I was in got booked for a party. Venue was known to us all, the cellar bar in the local arts centre. We turned up, set up and started to play. Apparently the "party people" didn't want a live band they wanted background muzak so they all left and went into the bar at the back. We treated it like a paid rehearsal (not that we stopped and restarted songs but the fact that nobody was listening wasn't allowed to bother us). Then some kids came up and asked if we knew any Dead Kennedys numbers. I said Who? Then one of them wanted us to hand over our instruments so they could play them. Can't remember whether we stayed to play another set. Can't imagine why we were booked either, it's not as if the people in charge didn't know who we were or what kind of gig we did.
    "Working" software has only unobserved bugs. (Parroty Error: Pieces of Nine! Pieces of Nine!)
    Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
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  • AlexCAlexC Frets: 2396
    In my 20s I was lead guitar in a racaous, fairly jokey ‘alternative’ covers band. I had a thing going on where I’d change hats for every song... anyway. We played Oxford 6th form college student bar. All going well, but we were a bit cramped on the stage due to the very serious covers band - all in their 50s - having set up and leaving their lovely, collectible instruments on stands. We used to jump around a lot. And lo - our bass player stepped backwards, knocked the other band’s saxophone to the ground and, it turns out,  broke the reed.
    The other band were furious with us. Especially as the students preferred our mayhem to their note perfect renditions of Mustang Sally, Brown Eyed Girl, etc. 
    Our bass player - who was Spanish - was so upset he left the band that night.
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  • Panama_Jack666Panama_Jack666 Frets: 2988
    I am feverishly taking notes, changing names and plagiarising your lives for another book
    Thanks
    :)

    Someone on here has a great bad gig story... I seem to recall someone didn't like the UB40 song they were playing so pulled a gun on the band and told them to stop. 

    Whoever it is, make yourself known and correct/validate the story pleaseeeee! It's my favourite! 
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  • stickyfiddlestickyfiddle Frets: 26743
    I think my worst was the "festival" (in fact a rave with bands on first). We were due to headline, such as it was. The stage was the back of a truck too small to even fit all our gear. Organisers were basically incompetent, and mostly absent.

    Everything ran about 4 hours late. We'd been due on at 10pm, so when it got to midnight and we were introduced to the band going on after us ASKING TO SWITCH BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO GO HOME BEFORE 3AM (!) we were quite happy to give them our slot. At which point we put our shit back in our cars and fucked off home. 

    I don't think the organisers even realised we didn't play. 

    Quite special, that one...
    The Assumptions - UAE party band for all your rock & soul desires
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  • FezFez Frets: 499
    We played at a venue in Crawley which was the half way point on a Help for Heroes Sleigh push. Some military people involved so it will be organised with precision yes? NO. They did the raffle before we went on starting at 11pm and took over an hour so it was past midnight when we went on.
    Don't touch that dial.
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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    Oh, there was that one out the back of a terrible pub in Digbeth where we realised as we were due to start playing that it was a gig for a militant communist organisation. They were all there in combats, mostly for the free soup. The sound guy was literally deaf; our entire set was buoyed up by pillows of bassy feedback washing in and out. It rained, and we had to put our amps in certain positions to avoid the streams of water coming through the canopy above.

    There was an aggressive dog that wanted to kill us.

    Half a dozen friends came to see us, but the pub took their money and sent them upstairs to where a different band were playing, so they thought they were at the wrong venue and went home.

    Afterwards, the pub turned all the lights off so we had to cart our gear in pitch darkness down a dogshit filled alley at the side.
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  • mr-macmr-mac Frets: 200
    Coulda been worse @Cirrus coulda found out too late you were playing for Conservatives 
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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10356
    I lost my trousers on the way to a gig once ..... I was in the building trade and most of my clothes were covered in paint \ gripfill \ mastic etc apart from 2 pairs of jeans I kept pristine for gigs. Coming home one Friday night from London I race indoors and sit in the bath eating my dinner while the bass player warms the van up outside. It's 6 o'clock, I live in Portsmouth and we need to be at the Worthing gig by 6:30. So I get out the bath and disaster ! ..... both good pairs of jeans are washed but neither are dry!! 
    Times not on our side so I think fuck it I'll get in the van in my boxers  and hang em out the window to dry on the way to the gig. This was actually working out pretty well until I thought it was safe to jam em in the window so I could roll a fag. Unfortunately the window let me down and doing 70mph up the A27 Chichester bypass my jeans vanished from the window into the night !

    I ended up doing the gig in a pair of the sound guys old jeans which had been abandoned in the van because he had been sick on them .... they were several sizes too big and smelt like a bag of arsehole :)
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • AlexCAlexC Frets: 2396
    edited May 2018
    @Danny1969 “I lost my trousers on the way to a gig once...” Is your name Robin Askwith, per chance? Confessions Of Rock Band! 
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  • Panama_Jack666Panama_Jack666 Frets: 2988
    Danny1969 said:
    I lost my trousers on the way to a gig once ..... I was in the building trade and most of my clothes were covered in paint \ gripfill \ mastic etc apart from 2 pairs of jeans I kept pristine for gigs. Coming home one Friday night from London I race indoors and sit in the bath eating my dinner while the bass player warms the van up outside. It's 6 o'clock, I live in Portsmouth and we need to be at the Worthing gig by 6:30. So I get out the bath and disaster ! ..... both good pairs of jeans are washed but neither are dry!! 
    Times not on our side so I think fuck it I'll get in the van in my boxers  and hang em out the window to dry on the way to the gig. This was actually working out pretty well until I thought it was safe to jam em in the window so I could roll a fag. Unfortunately the window let me down and doing 70mph up the A27 Chichester bypass my jeans vanished from the window into the night !

    I ended up doing the gig in a pair of the sound guys old jeans which had been abandoned in the van because he had been sick on them .... they were several sizes too big and smelt like a bag of arsehole :)
    Amazing!
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  • mudslide73mudslide73 Frets: 3049
    Our singer had a trouser malfunction and had to use a bungee to hold them up. They kept boinging up and down. He managed to fit a couple of Jagger "My trousers keep falling down" quips in.

    I lost the power to my pedalboard halfway through Hard to Handle due to the bass player kicking my adaptors off the side of the stage. I was on my hands and knees de bugging the problem when my pint got knocked over and my legs got soaked in lager. I stank of yeast and beer.

    At the same venue (outdoors) we had some pissed lads stood on the beer garden wall jump down and dent our drummer's car bonnet on the other side. It had to be a 6ft drop. We didn't realise it had happened until we packed the cars up.

    Our drummer left his van parked blocking a taxi rank and had to run out to move it mid gig. Luckily this only took 5 mins but the police were not impressed. 




    "A city star won’t shine too far"


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  • HHwarnerHHwarner Frets: 137
    we did a gig in pontadawe and there was dog shit on the stage! 
    Iv had cat shit on stage, Dragged my cab wheels through it and an amp flight case.
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  • Paul_CPaul_C Frets: 7670

    Regarding the driving to a gig stories, I once agreed to take a mate's band from Northampton to The Clarendon (Hammersmith Broadway) for a gig, as I worked for Kenning Car Hire at the time and I managed to borrow a minibus for the night.

    I had to pick it up from a local garage who did lots of repairs for us because the last person to hire it (probably Motorway Maintenance) had wrecked the clutch. I was told to tell my boss "it's working, but only just, if it breaks again it'll need a whole new clutch".

    Having loaded the band and gear into the bus we set off, and the clutch packed up before we'd even left town. . . but as the bus was still driveable I decided it would be a laugh to carry on (I was 19 ;) ) so we did. The motorway was fine (changing gear was a matter of revving the engine a little and holding the gear lever until it dropped into gear, so wasn't too bad).

    The hardest bit of the journey was getting round the North Circular in rush hour - every set of lights on red was approached slowly in the hope they'd change by the time we got there. We only had to stop once, which, after stalling, involved putting it in first and starting it in gear to get moving again.

    Having got the van unloaded it was dumped down the side of the pub until after the gig (which still pains me as I stayed with my mates instead of watching The Ramones upstairs). Once they'd finished I had to jump in the bus and get someone to stop the traffic while I reversed out on the starter motor.

    We got back out of London without drama and the only other problem was that it started raining on the M1 and a couple of times the wipers and lights cut out completely (I kept going), fortunately not for long ;)

    We made it back and I left the bus outside the garage, so it could have a new clutch fitted.
    "I'll probably be in the bins at Newport Pagnell services."  fretmeister
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  • BridgehouseBridgehouse Frets: 24578
    As a youthful student at uni, an older mate of mine in our band used to pick up odd bits of work from other guys he knew. 

    He popped over one night and asked me what I was up to on Saturday night. “Not much” I said - “Good, then we are running a karaoke gig 75 miles away”

    Saturday came, and we headed over to run the karaoke night in the dodgiest pub I’ve been in for some time. 

    I ended up singing “ooh aaah just a little bit” as a warm up to the two people who showed up.

    Just as we were getting bored, about 50 people seemed to show up out of nowhere - they didn’t want to sing, they came to see the local hero. He turned up 10 mins later dressed as Elvis and looking like Les Dawson in drag. He did a dozen Elvis numbers and then we headed home... sheesh!
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  • bigjonbigjon Frets: 680
    Panama_Jack666 said:
    Someone on here has a great bad gig story... I seem to recall someone didn't like the UB40 song they were playing so pulled a gun on the band and told them to stop. 

    Whoever it is, make yourself known and correct/validate the story pleaseeeee! It's my favourite! 
    That was @viz IIRC
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