What Was Your Worst Gig and Why?

Axe_meister

Uni gig.
The gig was organized by us as part of the "Blues and Soul Society", but we didn't have too many numbers to play, so we invite the Muscians Society band to play as a joint billing.
Alas they owned the PA system which we'd hired, plus the engineer (who happened to be the drummer in the other band), before you knew it there where posters all over uni, saying they where playing with us as support.
So we go on first, the entire onstange mix was redone to suit them so we could not hear each other.
The singer than got into a strop because we didn't play the kind of Soul she wanted (we were doing James Brown style numbers and blues brothers type stuff), so she decided she was going to Rap (So I did a damped string wah backing for her at the drop of a hat). By the end of gig we where all totally pissed off with the other band and our singer, so I ended up smashing a guitar in rage, and putting the headstock through the speaker of my Amp (that the other band wanted to borrow as it was the best amp on campus, a JCM 800 combo).
I then sacked the band and hit the sound engineer/Drummer.

ESBlonde

It would be hard to think of a single worst gig, after 4 decades a kaleidascope of catastrophies runs through my minds eye. Suffice to say these days I'm pretty good at sifting gigs for pitfalls and pricing accordingly, still get the occasional expensive wedding where the bride/best man/maid of honor etc embarresses themselves or starts a scrap. I have to say when I provided production at bickers events I never felt safer, they really do look after thier own and are wonderful to work with despite the (out of date) image. Bad access with a wet cast iron fire escape at the Great White horse hotel, then long narros corridors with odd steps, Dickens can keep it. Did a gig at a community centre on a notorius housing estate where the band on stage out numberred the audience and still the audience had a fight! A rough pub where a phsyco stood at the other end of mic mic boom and starred at me all night! Drive through freezing fog in an unheated van to a gig where no one turned up because of the weather, played a while and handed over to the disco for the arduous drive home complete with vehicle fire. Annual summer ball for a nuclear energy facility, as we left the tent we passed blood spattered walls, broken bodies and 5 police cars with several amulances all in a small seaside village!

simonk

I'm starting  to think I've been very lucky in all my years of gigging...

Lewy

Royal Ascot after party for a bunch of coked up wide boy c***s. Multiple stage invasions, threats of violence, drinks spilled all over gear by shrieking creosoted harpies...just the worst.

boogieman

ESBlonde said:

It would be hard to think of a single worst gig, after 4 decades a kaleidascope of catastrophies runs through my minds eye. Suffice to say these days I'm pretty good at sifting gigs for pitfalls and pricing accordingly, still get the occasional expensive wedding where the bride/best man/maid of honor etc embarresses themselves or starts a scrap. I have to say when I provided production at bickers events I never felt safer, they really do look after thier own and are wonderful to work with despite the (out of date) image. Bad access with a wet cast iron fire escape at the Great White horse hotel, then long narros corridors with odd steps, Dickens can keep it. Did a gig at a community centre on a notorius housing estate where the band on stage out numberred the audience and still the audience had a fight! A rough pub where a phsyco stood at the other end of mic mic boom and starred at me all night! Drive through freezing fog in an unheated van to a gig where no one turned up because of the weather, played a while and handed over to the disco for the arduous drive home complete with vehicle fire. Annual summer ball for a nuclear energy facility, as we left the tent we passed blood spattered walls, broken bodies and 5 police cars with several amulances all in a small seaside village!

My mate from the Hamsters always liked doing biker events, and like you said they were usually a decent bunch and an appreciative audience. His main complaint was a) they'd want endless encores and it was hard to get off stage and b) they'd usually hire in the cheapest and crappiest PA system.  

professorben

Axe_meister said:

Uni gig.
The gig was organized by us as part of the "Blues and Soul Society", but we didn't have too many numbers to play, so we invite the Muscians Society band to play as a joint billing.
Alas they owned the PA system which we'd hired, plus the engineer (who happened to be the drummer in the other band), before you knew it there where posters all over uni, saying they where playing with us as support.
So we go on first, the entire onstange mix was redone to suit them so we could not hear each other.
The singer than got into a strop because we didn't play the kind of Soul she wanted (we were doing James Brown style numbers and blues brothers type stuff), so she decided she was going to Rap (So I did a damped string wah backing for her at the drop of a hat). By the end of gig we where all totally pissed off with the other band and our singer, so I ended up smashing a guitar in rage, and putting the headstock through the speaker of my Amp (that the other band wanted to borrow as it was the best amp on campus, a JCM 800 combo).
I then sacked the band and hit the sound engineer/Drummer.

Can I book you for my kids 2nd birthday?

57Deluxe

boogieman said:

My mate from the Hamsters....

Ah!  - The smell of WD40 under the hot lights...!

Alnico

Lewy said:

Royal Ascot after party for a bunch of coked up wide boy c***s. Multiple stage invasions, threats of violence, drinks spilled all over gear by shrieking creosoted harpies...just the worst.

I'm going to remember the phrase "Creosoted Harpies" until the day I die.
Thanks man.
That made my day.

ESBlonde

boogieman said:

ESBlonde said:

It would be hard to think of a single worst gig, after 4 decades a kaleidascope of catastrophies runs through my minds eye. Suffice to say these days I'm pretty good at sifting gigs for pitfalls and pricing accordingly, still get the occasional expensive wedding where the bride/best man/maid of honor etc embarresses themselves or starts a scrap. I have to say when I provided production at bickers events I never felt safer, they really do look after thier own and are wonderful to work with despite the (out of date) image. Bad access with a wet cast iron fire escape at the Great White horse hotel, then long narros corridors with odd steps, Dickens can keep it. Did a gig at a community centre on a notorius housing estate where the band on stage out numberred the audience and still the audience had a fight! A rough pub where a phsyco stood at the other end of mic mic boom and starred at me all night! Drive through freezing fog in an unheated van to a gig where no one turned up because of the weather, played a while and handed over to the disco for the arduous drive home complete with vehicle fire. Annual summer ball for a nuclear energy facility, as we left the tent we passed blood spattered walls, broken bodies and 5 police cars with several amulances all in a small seaside village!

My mate from the Hamsters always liked doing biker events, and like you said they were usually a decent bunch and an appreciative audience. His main complaint was a) they'd want endless encores and it was hard to get off stage and b) they'd usually hire in the cheapest and crappiest PA system.  

Ha Ha, yes I did one biker event for 16 years, a 3 day event with some very diverse 'acts' so anything half baked would have been a failure. But they did only use a trailer and a couple of scaffold towers with a tarp as the stage! I've provided for the Hampsters too at the manor (amoung others) without any issues.

Axe_meister

The Hamsters where an excellent band. Looks like they've all fully retired, can find any info in what the members are doing now,

TTBZ

Mine are pretty tame compared to some of these! My worst one was probably when I got roped into filling in with the band I left because I already hated playing with them. It was a private party in a village hall in the arse end of nowhere on a freezing winters night after a big snow fall, on un-gritted roads. Almost crashed a few times on the way there, had a thoroughly unenjoyable gig with numb hands from the cold for most of it, boring crowd. That one always sticks in my mind as a reminder that the reality of gigging really is shit.

bluechargeboy

The usual stuff: forgot to tune back up from drop D for an entire song...fresh stitches on my scalp bled all down my face...spilled a pint in my multi-FX...several PA blowings-up...(not all at the same gig)

The worst and most inexcusable one of all: The one where we cocked up the twin lead in "Boys are back in town". Somewhat obvious, even to small children and animals. Dear God.

It's all a lot easier to deal with when alcohol is not involved, I have noticed.

MattBanshee

Headlined a pretty busy pub gig (originals, heavy alt rock), the support band were absolutely shit-hot. We go on and I proceed to have about as many technical problems as is possible in an hour's set. Pedalboard went down twice (turned out to be two patch cables and a broken Line 6 Echo Park, all at once) and then a guitar cable went too. Finished the set having to stand next to the amp and manually switch between distortion and clean with the toggle switch.

lysander

Mine was around 2000, being a student head deep in pretty tough exams and having not played the guitar for weeks, got invited to play at some street music festival by ex band mates with no rehearsal, no song list, half a singer ( who knew half the lyrics ) and we just ended up playing random bits of songs when we didn't even know how many verses to play before stopping.
Don't know what the f*** I was thinking.
Later on I got taught by a guitar teacher that one should not knowingly under represent their playing ability if they can avoid it - valuable lesson that one.

kennedydream1980

We turned up to a wedding to play, the specific request from the bride and groom was they wanted up to date modern music / heavy rock. 

We opened the show with knights of cydonia by muse, we could see a commotion happening on one side of the room. Next thing we know is the bride breaks free from the group she's in and is stood in the middle of the dance floor in floods of tears motioning with her hands for the band to stop, we didn't we carried on straight into our 2nd tune, The Pretender by the Foo Fighters. 

By this point she's hysterical, several people tried to get her off the dance floor without success. 

Funny thing is the whole time all this was going on the dance floor is full around her, with people enjoying the music.

We get into our 3rd song and she is now Angry, shouting profanities at us, she storms off the dance floor like a spoilt little child and proceeds to sit in a corner sulking for the whole night.

We finish the gig and she and her new husband (who is so drunk he can't speak) come back stage and basically tell us they won't be paying us. 

The bass player and singer in the band then begin to argue with them for a good hour about getting paid, it's only when her mother gets involved that any kind of sense is made of the situation.

Apparantly this woman was well known to be difficult and spoilt etc, this is why no one else in the room bat an eyelid when it was all going on. Anyway the Mother paid us and we eventually went on our way!!

The joys of weddings!! :-)

Clarky

stimpsonslostson said:

Clarky said:

my first gig ever..
couldn't play well enough
didn't know the song well enough
rabbit in the headlights stuff

That's EVERY gig for me. The good ones are the ones where no one else notices or,more accurately, comments. 

I don't know how many gigs I've played..
but I know I've never played a 100% perfect gig
and even now I make the occasional major one..

my last gig in Italy [a few weeks back] I had monitoring difficulties..
DC is playing his solo during 21st Century Schizoid Man
I couldn't hear the keys so I had no references as to where I was..
so I thought fuck it, start my solo…
so I dived in, cut DC off and threw down my solo..
the only folks that knew about this error was us..
I apologised to DC and the band after and explained what happened.. they were all cool about it..
shit happens..

at one of the Netherlands gigs I called up the wrong patch for the song I was playing..
and momentarily sounded like a dick..
this lil' screw up took me by surprise and I fkd my part up for about a bar or two before I settled back in..
no one mentioned it after the gig.. not the band.. not the crowd..
again… shit happens..

when I play live, you get everything I can give..
I play right on the ragged edge at times.. I never hold back and play in the comfy zone..
ok so doing this can lead to being a little mistakey here and there… but it is never without passion..
the only thing that matters to me is playing with your whole heart..

so… give everything… even if it's wrong.. lol..

boogieman

57Deluxe said:

boogieman said:

My mate from the Hamsters....

Ah!  - The smell of WD40 under the hot lights...!

Ah, not him (although I do know him). It's the bassist. 

boogieman

Axe_meister said:

The Hamsters where an excellent band. Looks like they've all fully retired, can find any info in what the members are doing now,

Slim is fully retired. I thought he'd knock it on the head for a while and be back with another band or line up but it seems 25 years on the road has completely knackered him. Last time I spoke to him he said he had taken up gardening !!! Such a waste, he's a great guitarist and a bloody good singer too. 

Otis is fully retired too. I think he lives in Cyprus nowadays. He had a heart condition and had to have a defibrillator fitted. He was starting to struggle with all the gigging anyway. 

Zsa Zsa has put out a solo album (Andy Billups: Afton Down). It's very different from the Hamsters stuff, much more MOR/folky rock. He's just announced he's doing some gigs with a Free tribute band called Tons of Sobs, he's on bass: sounds interesting. 

Jalapeno

Was a good gig, private party, with lots of Columbian Nose powder going off in the loos. Friendly disco man, all chilled. We get to end of the first set and drummer unexpectedly announces "Just going to pick up my sons" (40 mins each way!) - lots of annoyance and off he goes, only then half an hour later some clown spills a pint into DJ's PA ...<big bang, blue smoke>  no tunes, major downer ....

Said drummer returns after an hour and a bit, with profound apologies and off we go again, but mood well and truly killed by then.

Lestratcaster

I don't think I've ever had a "worst" gig but I've played many dives with bands who think they're the next Oasis! Poor sound, small stages and stuff like that. Done a few covers ones with punters requesting stuff we didn't know. Been lucky I suppose that I haven't had a really really bad one, a few backline issues there and then but that's about it!