What Was Your Worst Gig and Why?

boogieman

impmann said:

A few spring to mind...

I was in a punk band and we were booked to play at an outdoor beer festival - brilliant! Except, unbeknown to us, when the landlord's daughter heard that a band was booked, she decided to invite her mate to hold her daughter's christening party at the pub that afternoon. No, I don't understand that logic either.
So we turn up and there's lots of folks in posh frocks and small children running around. We set up and tbh, we never needed a soundcheck (our sound guy had it all sussed by halfway through the first song, so it was easier), so when we launched into the first song - God Save the Queen - this was the first that the crowd had heard of us.
This was the point that the children started running away, crying to mummy about the nasty, loud, snarly people on the stage. Overweight, balding men in badly fitting suits started eyeing the stage incredulously. And the landlord's daughter ran screaming to the front of the stage demanding that we stop at once. We didn't... we kept going and cleared the place.
Great gig.

Many many moons ago my originals band was booked to play at the Standard in Walthamstow (still there?). We rolled up, set up and watched the clock tick away until the 9.30 start time... there wasn't a soul in the pub apart from one bored member of staff. We played a few songs and then got asked to leave by the landlord. That went well.

In about 1994 I treated myself to a Les Paul Custom. It weighed about the same as one of the two AC30s I was gigging, so I also treated myself to a new leather strap. About three songs into the second set, the brand new Gibson tore through the brand new Gibson strap I'd bought with it and I watched it bounce off its headstock  and into the front row of the crowd. Amazingly, apart from a couple of scratches and a broken pickup surround it survived...

The Standard went a long time ago. Shame, it wasn't a bad venue

Clarky

ah… a memory comes flooding back…
the DC Band being booked at a jazz festival..
I don't think I've ever been so hated by an audience..
and yet.. I felt thoroughly proud of myself for a job well done

Telejester

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.  

I played at conventions for some of the scariest looking bikers who turned out to be some of the nicest and politest people ive met, never judge books by covers.

menamestom

A local festival. We were outside in a marquee, not the kind you would get at a proper festival, but a reasonably substantial one you would have in your back garden.   It was a nice summers day, but just before we were about to play it rained really hard, for about 2 minutes then stopped.  The marquee had massive pools on the roof, people had run for cover, we protected the instruments then cleared the water.  People who had run for cover gradually came out again and the sun came out. 

All good.  We were just about to start again, as a black cloud headed our way.  Nearly ready, then rain like I have never seen it before.  Like a typhoon, it came down so hard it hurt.  The water bounced back up from the ground. The crowd, which were at various stalls etc and waiting to see us just ran, this time they didn't look to get cover, they just ran and never came back - probably 500 - 600 people gone in 2 minutes.   Our Marquee blew over and gallons of water went everywhere.  I grabbed my Nord Electro, flung it in it's case, we grabbed what we could and ran - gig abandoned without a note, and a potentially decent happy summer crown soaked and gone.

Octafish

Clarky said:

ah… a memory comes flooding back…
the DC Band being booked at a jazz festival..
I don't think I've ever been so hated by an audience..
and yet.. I felt thoroughly proud of myself for a job well done

My mates jazz band (and I mean real tiresome instrumental guitar lead jazz noodling) were inexplicably booked to play our local rock festival, I don't think I've ever seen a band so hated by an audience. Still set it up nicely for us (we were on next) the crowd were practically eating out of our hands  

Emp_Fab

Nowhere near as good as most of the stories here but I'll add my limited stories to the collection...

When I first started gigging I suffered with stage fright a lot and I was in a duo playing a local bar.  I used to be into speed (the drug) once but my Mrs was unaware and it gave me energy and confidence, so when my musical partner offered me a line before the gig, I figured it might help with the nerves.

It didn't help.  At all.  It sent me into a panicky spiral and I completely and wholly forgot everything - the set list, the songs, the words, the chords, the keys and how to play a guitar.  However, I didn't realise this until we started and I slowly transformed into Marty McFly when his photo is disappearing (and him with it) during Earth Angel in BTTF.

Picture my mate playing away and singing, accompanied by this guy;




That wasn't the end of it though, as a few awful songs later, my "mate" decides to apologise and announce the reason for my appalling playing over the mic "because he did a line of marching powder in the loo before we came on" to the whole audience which included my wife and her sister.


FFW a bit and we've just bought our first PA and we land a NYE gig.  Never having used our own PA before, we set it up with the speakers behind us, and off we go....  My mate is playing a jumbo acoustic with a shitty soundhole pickup.  Need I say more?  The first half of our set consisted mostly of ear-splitting feedback and swearing.  During the interval, I'm frantically trying to EQ-out the feedback with nothing more than the 'Bass' and 'Treble' knobs on our cheapo PA and the three band EQ on his 20p pickup.  After much squealing, booming and more swearing, I somehow manage to sort it.  At which point, my "mate" (who has the technical skills of a gorilla with a rock and can't even wire a plug) angrily spits at me "about fucking time too" - as if it was my fault!!!

I promptly tell him to "fix it yourself you twat" and turn all the EQ knobs up full and walk to the bar for a pint, leaving him with the PA squealing away again.  When we started playing there must have been over 100 people in the pub.  When we finished, there was three.  Don't ask me how but we still got paid!


Another time he convinced me to do an "open mic" night at a presige jazz club (we were doing jazz-ish stuff).  This place had a bit of a reputation for good musicians so I was wary to say the least as, although he thought we were the reincarnation of the Hot Club de France and he was Django, I knew we were little more than a couple of amateurs who could play well enough to provide background music to a pub full of pissheads who weren't really listening but were certain to be laughed out of this joint.  Several people warned me off, politely pointing out that we weren't really good enough but I agreed to go on one condition; that I would make my final decision as to whether to play or not on the night dependent on the quality of the other acts.  If some were a bit 'rough and ready', I'd do it, but I didn't want us to be the worst act of the night and a laughing stock.  So, we turn up and the place is absolutely rammed solid - there are loads of acts, a whole room has been dedicated for instrument storage, there's a quality PA, a pro sound guy and someone recording it all multitrack.  There are some seriously good musicians on, there's horn sections, clarinets, Gretsches and Bigsbys everywhere.  The place is a fog of Gauloises and cigar smoke, large glasses of Pinot Noir, m7b5#11th chords and weird suits.  Niiiiice.

I'm in awe of the musicians and see some truly phenomenal guitarists.  Then I remember we're supposed to be going up there too.  In a millisecond I know we are massively out of our league and will be like a drunk on a stylophone in an opera house.  I turn to my mate and say "Never mind, at least we get to see these guys eh !".  At which point it becomes obvious that he still thinks we're going up !  His ego has refused to let him see that not only would we be the worst act of the night, we would be the worst act that has played there - ever.  I say "You're not serious, surely ?!!" at which point his 'creosoted harpie' (to steal a phrase !) told me that if I didn't play, I could make my own way home (she'd given me a lift there).  I told them both to fuck off, got my guitar and walked.

What happened next I would have paid good money to witness, but alas, I only heard about it second-hand.  Apparently, he bumped into a German guy who tried jamming with us on drums a couple of times in the past until we asked him to stop as he was just awful.  Anyway, spurred on by his ego and his harpie, he gets up there with the German 'drummer' and another mate on a Precision bass.  They launch into Brubeck's 'Take Five' and very quickly it becomes apparent that the drummer can only play in 4:4 and the bassist doesn't really know it at all.  By all accounts, it resembled something like this;



When I eventually asked him about it months later, he just replied "I don't want to talk about it".  


Last story;  By now I'm in a seven-piece band doing a mix of motown, soul & funk numbers with two sax players.  We're pretty good though I say it myself and we get hired for a 50th birthday gig.  We turn up, set up and have a couple of beers in the community centre which is decorated with all sorts; banners, balloons, tables full of buffet grub etc.  Turns out it's a surprise party for a local woman.   We're due to start once she turns up.  However, by 9pm there are only a minute handful of people there - no more than half a dozen in this big hall.  Next thing, the birthday girl appears, blindfolded and being led in by a friend.

Someone starts the CD player with some crappy generic version of "Happy Birthday to you...." and they whip off her blindfold - where she is now standing in a huge empty hall festooned with banners and there are more of us on the stage than of her friends who have bothered to turn up !  We felt so sorry for her !  

We do our first half and it's just bizarre - we're playing to half a dozen people in a huge hall.  The sax players by now are a bit pissed and nobody is taking it seriously anymore so they start fucking about on stage and drinking and smoking during the songs.
We wait while the crowd of six make hardly a scratch in the buffet before descending on it like a flock of vultures and even though we each scoff several paper plates full, we've barely cleared one table out of three that were stacked with grub.  After an hour's interval of eating the woman's buffet and drinking more beer, we decide we'd better make an effort and do the second half of the set, but everyone is pissed by now so cue more fucking about on stage, and eventually we pack in early.  I was really annoyed with the guys who were messing around - it was still a paid gig and still this woman's party.  Anyway... poor cow.  That was a party to forget.  Oh - I also stepped in the biggest dog turd I've ever seen in my life on the way in.

slacker

I did my first gig in 1982. I was so nervous all I could hear was my heart. I went a funny colour  too, turned out I had German measles.proposed to my wife and still married,

Many gigs since not all bad some some worth mentioning.

Did a first gig on bass with a band I'd joined knobhead singer made plenty of mistakes but summarised by an entourage of roadies who gaffa taped the guitar lead to the floor.we were behind curtains on stage and another ejit was on smoke machine and told to pour it on until we started playing and open the curtains. So after 5 mins of frantic scrabbling on a darkened stage everyone was coughing.

Second gig the drummer fell apart and couldn't play in time. Bye.

Did a charity gig to one person who went home  in the interval.

Did a prison gig to young offenders who kept turning off the extension to the amps. Someone had a fit riot ensued.prison Warner shouted everyone sit down and shut up. Everyone did including the band. Warder shouted no you carry on.thing is after that point the worst gig turned into one of the best not sure if it was Motown or the shouty warder who did it.

One final one my band was asked to fill in a charity concert, two bands booked and one dropped out.so I explained to the promoter that it was experimental noise rock all good.. So I told friends family etc. The other band was supposed to headline I knew them and knew they were quality. When we got there the other band insisted on going on first. So as people come in except for the ten people I brought the average age is about 105. Turns out they all bought tickets for the male voice choir who cancelled.promoter has disappeared. First band do their set and walk straight off the stage into their cars.

So I have a quandary tone it down or not. Bollocks, first track fuzz  factory with the gain on full the wtf setting if you were on hcfx. I explain my predicament and continue the set with my rent a crowd cheering and stony silence from the coffin dodgers.

Emp_Fab

More of a worst song than gig, we once played a charity gig in a packed pub.  Muse's 'Plug in Baby' was one of our numbers.  As you know, the guitar riff starts the song alone.  I started it at the right spot on the fretboard, just on the wrong string, and having memorised the fingering pattern religiously, was unable to comprehend wtf was going on with this noise I was making.  As Eric Morecambe once said "I'm playing all the right notes - just not necessarily in the right order".

I couldn't stop... it was like a runaway train, I kept on playing this horrific discordant "Egyptian scale" noise to puzzled looks from the audience and horror from the faces of the band who had absolutely no idea when to all come in as they couldn't recognise it.  Eventually, the drummer worked it out and the band kicked in, giving me the breathing space to check what I had done wrong!  I tried to hide behind a pillar for the rest of that number!

Hoof

Telejester said:

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.  

I played at conventions for some of the scariest looking bikers who turned out to be some of the nicest and politest people ive met, never judge books by covers.

Same here. Totally true about it being difficult to leave the stage though! We got confronted in the dressing room because we hadn't played Ace Of Spades by Motorhead. We'd actually done two Motorhead songs that night, Bomber and Iron Fist but Ace of Spades was apparently an unwritten rule. 

vasselmeyer

I don't think I've ever done a really terrible gig, but the weirdest one was when we did a mate a favour and played to a captive (literally) audience in the local authority secure mental health unit where he worked. 

There was a fairly odd audience, most of whom you could tell were not quite right but there was one amazing-looking woman; at least an 8 or 9. She was up at the front dancing away in a very sexy way. None of the guys in the band could keep their eyes off her, thinking she was one of the staff. 

At the end, our mate helped us load out and one of the guys in the band asked who she was and whether he could get introduced. He was warned off right away. It turns out she was a top of the line bunny boiler who got fixated on blokes and had tried to murder at least two guys she had attached herself to. 

We didn't do a follow-up gig. 

Bucket

Last night's bass gig has to be up there. Drove for three hours each way, to play typical function set material I generally didn't like. I got back home at 3:30am this morning, as it was starting to get light outside.

And I fucked up a hell of a lot. On one song the supplied backing track was in a different key to the one we'd been rehearsing to, and we only realised halfway through. And on another song, I got over halfway through before realising we'd changed the key from C to Bb - we hadn't actually rehearsed it, only discussed it briefly and I hadn't made the connection - and I couldn't really hear the backing track, or indeed the guitarist, in order to correct myself. It was an absolute fucking howler, and I am still so, so embarrassed about it. And I had to play "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas, which is the worst thing.

monquixote

A few choice memories: 

Booked to play a festival. When we arrived it turned out it was a "Christian" festival. Cue everyone being incredibly uptight and passive aggressive. Our slot kept getting moved later and later and we were very understanding about it. We got on 45 minutes late from even the slot we were moved to and 15 minutes into our set a middle aged women had a bat shit screaming fit at the sound man and basically turned us off because it was now 1 minute over her allotted time (we were about 4 and a half hours late by now). He shrugged and we walked off. 
The next act...
A group of 8 year old girls doing an interpretive dance about Jesus.

A guy showed up to a pub gig absolutely bombed off his box on who knows what and spent most of the gig getting right in the singers face doing stupid dancing and heckling between every single song. Singer snapped when the guy came right up to the mic and started trying to stare him out during "Are you gonna be my girl" and came up with the amusing idea of singing "Are you gonna be my bitch" at the bloke who then went ape shit and tried to pull our PA down (which was massive) it then promptly fell on him. I snapped at this point jumped off the stage and told him at some considerable volume and with some creative language my opinions of him, his behaviour and some ideas I had about his family tree. Looked around and noticed the whole pub had stopped and everyone was looking at the red faced fury monster. Luckily at this point the landlord turned up and threw the bloke out.

Another gig at a wedding full of rockers we played a Sex Pistols number and the place went mental, but then cleared. We were thinking "ok they don't like Sex Pistols", but when we finished the gig the barman told us that during the moshing the best man had punched the brides dad and both families had gone outside and had a massive dustup in the car park. The barman said he knew this was going to happen because they had just drunk the bar out of Jaeger and apparently when this happens barmen usually get under the bar with a tin hat on.

There are many more, but that will do for now.