The worst gig you've ever played?

[icastle]

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='1226005' date='May 10 2011, 11:40 AM']One of my first gigs when I was 16 or 17 someone organising the gig had hired some fancy lights and a little pedal-operate smoke machine and stuff, and I was put in charge of operating the smoke machine during our set. I had it plugged into the same socket as my bass amp, and the first time I trod on it a ****LOAD of smoke came out and I must've hooked the power cable with my foot, so when I moved away from the smoke machine I unplugged it - and my bass amp! I quickly ducked behind the amp to plug it back in but in all the smoke I couldn't see a f***ing thing. =D Took me ages to find the wall socket.[/quote]

Not gig related, but in one of my previous lives, I used to repair Le Maitre smoke machines.
They used a pressurised canister of water\glycerin that went through a push button valve before hitting the thermal chamber.

I switched the unit on and waited for it to heat up then pressed the button...

I quickly realised that the fault was that the valve kept sticking 'open' and the canister seal (an O ring) had folded, jamming the canister into position.

As the service centre was now full of smoke, I quickly unplugged the machine and took it out into the back yard where the smoke was spotted by a passer by... who called the fire brigade.

The situation quickly escalated.

The main police station was only two streets away and the police closed the road off.
'Just in case' an ambulance appeared.

Luckily, we were nowhere near the coast or I'd have had lifeboats as well...

[thisnameistaken]

Hahaha!

Yeah I think this smoke machine operated in a similar way. Before we'd plugged it in my mate was messing with it and managed to use it to squirt green slime all over the back of a drummer from another band while he was setting up. Thankfully he hadn't noticed so me and my mate just slunk away quietly...

Good fun those things though. Another time I completely filled the room with smoke at the end of our set just because I thought everyone would get a kick out of it. Delayed the next band by about 15 minutes waiting for the smoke to clear and the audience to come back.

[tauzero]

Veering off-topic, I once volunteered to do some lighting for another band who were friends of mine, while someone else set up some pyros for them. There was a 6' length of angle iron on feet which was the trough for the flash powder - the pyro man filled this brim-full, then it got knocked over so he filled it up again. I was at the corner of the stage, just in the auditorium (such as it was), widdling the light controller, and partway through the set, the pyro man triggered the pyros. There was a "whoomph" and a great sheet of flame as two huge doses of flash powder went up (the sparks had ignited the stuff on the floor) and the room was literally filled with smoke. The bassist was standing almost close enough for me to touch and all I could see of him was a ghostly Precision headstock about two feet away from me. Fantastic.

[Bassmonkey]

We played a pub gig one time. A bit off our usual tracks. After about 40 mins the last two punters left. We soldiered on to a completely empty pub for a couple more songs and no more customers materialised. We agreed that we would stop then yet still got full pay. Never again

[icastle]

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='1226332' date='May 10 2011, 03:43 PM']Before we'd plugged it in my mate was messing with it and managed to use it to squirt green slime all over the back of a drummer from another band while he was setting up. Thankfully he hadn't noticed so me and my mate just slunk away quietly... [/quote]

...that drummer was Dan Ackroyd and he used that as the basis for Ghostbusters...

... you have a lot to answer for mate...

[TheRev]

Hmm, the last gig (I walked after it..) with my old originals band at the Louisanna in Bristol, sometime in 2009.

It was a sort of acoustic/folky/grunge influenced type thing. The singer/guitarist was used to playing with himself so his timing & listening skills weren't the best. I'd added a drummer 6 months before the gig to try to bring the guitarist into line but his sense of rhythm wasn't much better - I found out later that he'd never actually played in a band before. I'd booked the gig in the first place to try to give the guitarist some direction & focus instead of rambling about during rehearsals and thinking that everything we did was amazing.
It didn't work.

The songs involved a lot of open and altered tunings which the guitarist did without the aid of a tuner, just tuning the guitar to istelf. I was using a fretless either dropped a semitone or tuned in fiths with a slide and basically spent the longest 40 minutes of my life desperately trying to adjust to the guitarists tuning and hold the drummer's timing together. Before the third song (bass to be tuned in fiths), the singer said we'd 'need a minute for Dave to retune his bass' out of the darkness came 'I wouldn't bother mate, it won't help you'.
After that I just wanted to give up and die. Apparently we managed to recover a bit with the last two songs but for me the damage was done.
I haven't spoken to the singer since.

[kevin_lindsay]

[quote name='Norris' post='1226115' date='May 10 2011, 01:07 PM']We were booked to play at a wedding. So we got there, set up, sound checked and waited for the guests to arrive.

And waited...

And waited...

Around about 10 o'clock in the evening, we finally played... to the bride, groom and two other people that had turned up.
(No, not even the parents of the couple!)[/quote]

Oh man, that's a complete nightmare. Playing to an empty room, and cringing with embarrassment for the newly married couple. Oh dear!

[BigRedX]

In the 30 or so years I've been gigging I've only had 4 that were seriously bad.

The worst by a long shot was early in 1984. Was playing in synth band that used backing tapes for the rhythm parts. We'd taken 6 months off to record a demo write some new songs and make some new and improved backing tapes for the set. We'd also managed to organise song fairly serious gigs including a University hall party which in those days paid good money and if you went down well got your band onto the list for supporting name bands when they played in the main University venue.

Turned up nice and early to soundcheck only to find that instead of the usual (and very nice sounding) Tech Soc PA we had a less good one from one of the local PA hire companies. Soundcheck went reasonably well, as we were getting ready to go somewhere to eat a group of friends of one of the synth payers turned up and he decided to stay behind with them. We returned to discover that they had made full use of the University subsidised bar and he was so drunk he could barely stand.

In retrospect we should have got him another drink and when he passed out played without him. Instead we tried to get him sober enough to go on stage. The gig was a disaster! He would play one note (probably wrong and with the wrong sound) and then spend the next 10 seconds celebrating the fact. His equally drunk friends scared all the students from the room where we playing and then one of them fell over into the PA and somehow managed to poke is finger through one of the bass driver cones. The already poor sound went downhill from then on and the whole gig finally came to halt when our drunk synth player had to leave the stage mid-song to go for a piss - having announced the fact first. His friends still wouldn't let us leave until we'd played an encore that no-one (including the band) wanted to hear. The PA hire company billed the University for the damage to the speaker which they in turn deducted from our fee. Needless to say we never managed to get another gig there again.

[bassninja]

We heard the [i]boom boom[/i] of the sub in the drummer's car coming before he swept round the corner into the carpark of the gig in a shower of gravel. I looked up to see the mute expression of horror on our mandolin player's face as he saw his prized, handbuilt instrument shatter to matchwood under Drumbo's front wheel while reaching in to the back of his car for his backline that, apparently, is never loud enough...

Still, at least it was insured. But our drummer still can't talk about it fifteen years later.

[Norm]

First ever gig in the late 70's with a rock band doing originals, we wanted to do an out of town gig for confidence booster so got this bloke who had heard us rehearsing & wanted to be our manager to add us as openers on a gig he was promoting in Barnstaple. Got him to pay us up front (not that naive, eh?) travelled down & played a storming 30 min set to our guitarists wife & the sound eng! The front bar was fairly busy but the gig room was out the back through double doors. Got congratulated by the locals at the bar on our set!?!? Well done lads, sounds great etc. Not many more people went in for the local headliners & the promoter/our prospective manager got progressively more pissed & obnoxious. He followed us to the chippy & reached over the counter pressed all the buttons on the till locking it up, we left him there in a row with chipless punters but he caught up with us in the pub car park & drunkenly told us we could be huge with his guidance, a speech cutoff in its prime by him spewing his guts up all over his shoes!

Last gig of my old covers band (that convinced us to start doing originals) was a sunday lunchtime late summer 2009, outdoors in a beer garden with a small covered stage, first set went down ok with a reasonable size crowd. Second set with a bigger crowd was met with almost silent indifference until last but one song, during (i kid you not) "I predict a riot" which sparked a dog fight between 2 staffie bull terrier types, which spiralled into a confrontation between respective owners & a barney which almost all of the beer garden joined in! Fortunately it was just chesty stand off row stuff with not many punches thrown (or connected) but we 3 just looked at each other, nodded and just quietly packed the kit down. Nobody paid any attention to us just carried on the arguments. Got paid though.
T'was Bristol & maybe the reason for the silence during the second set was they were dogging each other up.
"You doggin I up?" quaint Bristolian expression, the equivalent of You looking at my Pint/Bird/sister/mum etc.

Cheers,
Norm.

[the_skezz]

Never had a really bad gig that we actually played - though one time my old band went to play the River Rooms in Stourbridge on an open mic night. Some yobs had put solvent in the lock, so we were waiting around for the staff to try and get in for about forty-five minutes. They had the idea of heating the lock up and pushing the key through the glue whilst it was unstable - of course, they then tried to unlock it whilst it was heated, causing it to snap off in the lock In the end we had to go back the next week.

Worst gig I've actually played was probably at the Subside Bar in Birmingham on a Monday night - none of the staff had a clue what was going on, we were expecting to have someone tell us where to set up and sort us out - what we got was someone handing us and the headline band a box of leads (after a two-hour wait!) and leaving us to it. After all that we were pretty fed up and unable to put much energy into it - especially since our audience was about five friends and the bar staff Sound was pretty bad too, couldn't hear myself at all - my E string was out of tune for the first four songs and I didn't realise

[Protium]

Played a few shockers, but then that was half the fun

We once played to a barmaid and a dog when the singer advertised the wrong date and everyone turned up the day after

Also, "the one where the sound guy got battered" is an interesting story

Edited May 10, 2011 by Protium

[Pete Academy]

Some years ago I was doing a private party in a marquee with a funk/soul covers band. We were due to go on at 9.30pm, but it was delayed until 11.30pm. During those two hours I drank copious amounts of a free and extremely potent cocktail called 'Spiny Norman'. By the time we were ready to go on, I was totally hammered. I had to be carried to the stage. I put on my bass and almost fell through the marquee wall. The band kicked in, and I joined them about four bars later, and in totally the wrong key. This continued throughout the set.

After the gig a woman came up and congratulated us on a great performance.

[icastle]

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1226666' date='May 10 2011, 08:07 PM']After the gig a woman came up and congratulated us on a great performance. [/quote]

[Blademan_98]

Hey, she was at my last gig

She wasn't so nice about my playing

[icastle]

[quote name='Blademan_98' post='1226681' date='May 10 2011, 08:21 PM']Hey, she was at my last gig

She wasn't so nice about my playing [/quote]

[Spike Vincent]

So,so many.....

New band,first gig,our drummer shared a flat with a DJ at a prestigious local nightclub,and blagged a gig at what we were led to believe was a student night.Set up,waited patiently,got a big build up from the DJ,hordes of squealing girlies at our feet,lunged into the first number ( think Discharge..) to see the audience recoil in horror and the DJ cut us off after 2 numbers. No money but a free bar tab all night.Oh how we drank.

Played a biker festival,turned up at the field in the middle of nowhere to be greeted by 2 guys with shotguns on the gate (really!) Got very muddy,set up,played the opening number to be greeted by absolute silence by several thousand patch holding bikers.Cue all 3 of us crapping our pants,then the promotor runs up on stage and says" Don't worry,they like you,if they didn't they'd soon let you know". No money,a crate of cider,a crate of lager and a big bag of white powder that wasn't washing powder.Oh how we drank.

Played our one and only London gig,got lost on the way,this being during my recovery from a spinal injury,so rattling round in the back of a freezing cold Transit for hours wasn't a good start. When we finally got there,the headlining band asked if we would mind headlining.Drummer enthusiastically agrees,despite the obvious warning bells going off around him. Guess what? Headliners play,vanish and take their audience with them,we end up playing to half a dozen drunk blokes who weren't particularly interested in the finer points of Punk,and the mens toilet was actually at the back of the "playing area" resulting in a procession of drunk blokes barging past the guitarist/vocalist to go wee wee.I vaguely recall a large German woman ( possibly born a man) trying to sexually assault me. Then the headliners invited us to the party they'd deserted the gig for.Oh how we drank.

[Grassie]

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1226666' date='May 10 2011, 08:07 PM']Some years ago I was doing a private party in a marquee with a funk/soul covers band. We were due to go on at 9.30pm, but it was delayed until 11.30pm. During those two hours I drank copious amounts of a free and extremely potent cocktail called 'Spiny Norman'. By the time we were ready to go on, I was totally hammered. I had to be carried to the stage. I put on my bass and almost fell through the marquee wall. The band kicked in, and I joined them about four bars later, and in totally the wrong key. This continued throughout the set.

After the gig a woman came up and congratulated us on a great performance. [/quote]


"Spiny Norman" shall be the name of my new band...

[harvey1-8]

The only time I've thought 'get me out of here' was when the singer in a function band I was deping for forgot the words to a song and then went round asking audience members if they knew the words. I couldn't believe it.

[Spike Vincent]

Then there was the time when we were supported a band called Shockhead,who's claim to fame was their keybored player was apparently in Hawkwind once. Suffice it to say they were Hippies.Backstage,their bassist offers me a go on a large hand rolled cigarette.Now,I'm partial to a smoke now and again,but after 2 tokes I am completely trashed.I have no idea what it was to this day (I'm hoping it was Skunk..) Spent the entire set standing stock still thinking Oh sh*t Oh sh*t Oh sh*t Oh sh*t Oh sh*t Huh? Oh we've finished.Didn't play one bum note,but I certainly didn't enjoy it.Oh how I wished I'd drank.

[dc2009]

We did have the one battle of the bands style gig, which was great fun, and a great crowd. Everything went fine, apart from me being about 15 16 and having braces, and a semi-broken mic that gave me an electric shock through my mouth whenever I went near it....

[risingson]

[quote name='Protium' post='1226577' date='May 10 2011, 06:46 PM']We once played to a barmaid and a dog when the singer advertised the wrong date and everyone turned up the day after[/quote]

There seem to be an overwhelming amount of anecdotes that just involve bands playing music to dogs and their owners!

Edited May 10, 2011 by risingson

[icastle]

[quote name='risingson' post='1226949' date='May 10 2011, 11:45 PM']There seem to be an overwhelming amount of anecdotes that just involve bands playing music to dogs and their owners![/quote]

The RSPCA have been called...

[BT!]

One of my bands played a benefit for the community centre where we practise.

We were the oldest band playing by at least 4/5 years. Im 21 in a week.......

That was a little awkward

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

We did a set at a local pub's all-day charity gig. Opened with our usual first song - the band's 'up on cripple creek'. not the best choice as the gig was raising funds to buy some chap an electric wheelchair.