The worst gig you've ever played?

[thisnameistaken]

[quote name='Grant' post='1226864' date='May 10 2011, 10:39 PM']"Spiny Norman" shall be the name of my new band... [/quote]

Spiny Norman was a hedgehog in a Monty Python sketch. Actually when I was a nipper my band 'Even Jammier' nicked a singer from a band called Spiny Norman. True story.

[TheRev]

[quote name='Norm' post='1226558' date='May 10 2011, 06:34 PM']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.[/quote]

This sounds suspiciously like the Farriers' Arms in Fishponds.....

Edited May 11, 2011 by TheRev

[Dave Vader]

Pretty sure we have a spiny norman on here as well.

[Graham56]

There's been a few.

The time we were booked to play a bar which made a big thing of live sports on widescreen TV. On the evening of a major football match.

When we arrived the place was full of blokes enjoying the football. Unfortunately the stage area was just in front of the big screen so all we could do was dump the gear in the corner and wait until the end of the match.

Which went into 30 mins extra time.

Then a penalty shootout.

The game ended then we set up as fast as we could: PA, drums, bass, guitar, two singers. Then turned around to find that the pub had emptied - the football chappies weren't in the slightest bit interested in a band and had all gone elsewhere. We ended up playing to two drunk women and a guy who was only hanging around in the hope of getting off with one or both of the women.

No dog though.

We still got paid, although the night was a washout. I don't think the guy scored either.


Cheers

Graham

[Graham56]

Then there was the time we got paid not to play.

The pub was nearly empty when we arrived, with about 6 or so heavy 'saff landon' geezers settling down to a night of drunken oblivion. We set up then the owner asked us to wait awhile until more people arrived. They didn't, then the owner went off in his car.

The youg barman then came to us said he'd been told to give us 100 squids but we were to pack up and f*** off without playing. We started to argue but the large heavy drinking blokes began to rumble menacingly.

So, f*** off we duly did.

We wondered if we could turn this into a business model. We could probably do maybe 4 venues a night like this...

Cheers

Graham

[Pete Academy]

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='1227060' date='May 11 2011, 07:23 AM']Spiny Norman was a hedgehog in a Monty Python sketch. Actually when I was a nipper my band 'Even Jammier' nicked a singer from a band called Spiny Norman. True story.[/quote]

I remember him from Monty Python.

[essexbasscat]

[quote name='Low End Bee' post='1224904' date='May 9 2011, 11:19 AM']I played some council backed festival thing with my punk band back in 1980 at Talacre park in Kentish Town.
Lots of people there and we supported 23 Skidoo.
We played in some large garage like building with some shutters that opened on to the park. We were fairly in your face and had two singers who were taunting the boys in blue as it was a fairly edgy SPG and riots era. The power was turned off first. Then the crowd demanded it go back on again. Then the old bill wound the shutters down as we were playing and the two nutter singers propped them open with rapidly buckling mic stands. The shutters eventually came down and we got a bit of a slapping from the cops. They could do that in those days. Meanwhile my girlfriend went AWOL and ended up doing the dirty on me with the top of the bill bands guitarist that night.
All my money was nicked from my jacket backstage and I got caught bunking the fare on the tube on the way home.

Happy days.[/quote]


This one has stuck in my head. It's been a while since my day went around the 'S' bend that kind of raw efficiency

[Truckstop]

The Old Angel in Nottingham, 28th February 2010. Pure Negatives first ever gig!

My band was making waves even though we'd never played a gig. The guitarist was from Labrat and the drummer from Ted Maul so we were always gonna get a bit of attention.
Anyway, we get offered a gig at an alldayer playing main support.
The promoter was taking pills left right and center and all of the bands were allowed to overply by about 15 minutes so we didnt get on until 11.30pm. The bar downstairs had closed at 11 and they had stopped allowing people back in after a smoke from 10.30. We played to the promoter (who didnt even notice we played), our mate from London (who had been drinking since 11.30am) and the sound man (who was busy rolling cigarettes "Hey, I've rolled 5. Only one has just weed in it... the rest have cocaine and ketamine in them too. I ran out. Kinda like russian roulette, eh?").

Nightmare.

We couldnt go home after either. The driver/guitarist had unfortunately ended up with a weed/ketamine/cocaine cigarette and didnt even know what a car was. I had to sleep on the floor using a concrete step as a pillow. Even worse, when I woke up (I used to be teetotal) I was ready to go, but the rest of the band had been up all night taking drugs with the barstaff and were just settling down to sleep. I spent the next 6 hours wandering around Nottingham with no money and no fresh clothes. I felt like a hobo

Truckstop

[gub]

We played a gig in the azores for the us airforce and we got flown out turned up at the base we were playing at and did the gig to the grand total of one barman and his sister ! turned out our agent had not advertised that we were playing that night so we went round the next day handing out flyers and sticking them up all over the place and then played the next night and it was packed . another time i was doing a guest spot and the singer did the build up welcome on stage bit and i ran through the crowd and went into what i thought was the door which led to the stage.... no it turned out to be a little storage room and i then had to come back out and climb on to the stage with a hand from the singer as it was pretty high!

[analog kid]

Had a few dodgy ones

The first and last time i got drunk before going on stage,having triple vision of your Bass neck and trying to guess which was the right one to play whilst swaying about all over the place....never again.

Probably the worst one was when our band had just aquired a new drummer and in his youthful enthusiasm persuaded us for his first gig with us to be at his local youth club,now this was in the middle of a very rough council estate.
This was the back end of 1980 and we got onstage to be greeted by a hall full of what you would call nowadays Chavs!! as a heavy rock band who liked to dress up a bit the omens were not looking good.
We had made it to the 4th song when i turned round to face the drummer and turned back round to see the singer/guitarist disappearing down the hall,whist my back was turned a kid had chucked a rather large cupful of piss at him and he had jumped off stage and gone after him,but i didnt see it,nor did the other guitarist who was shoegazing pretending he wasnt there,nor the drummer who could never see much behind his Neil Peart size drumkit.
They got there way and we got off stage pretty quick and packed our gear down even quicker,now for some reason we did not have our van that night and a mate had dropped the gear off for us in his transit van and was going to pick us up when we had finished ,because the set was severly curtailed we now had a long and nerve wracking wait to be picked up,all our gear was squashed up a dark corner at the back of the hall with us lined round it armed with anything we could find,they were still after our blood they wanted a ska band.
I dont know how we got out of there in one piece.

[deepbass5]

Here Goes

I think it was Feb 80 but could be a year either side. Point is it was bl--dy cold. Got a gig in a circus tent in Milton Keynes shopping centre car park.
It was one of those days where it never got above freezing, when we got there the other band had already set up in the Circus ring, and we were asked to set up in the Lions cage. Ya that’s what we thought.
We wasted 20 min arguing the toss and eventually they decided that was the best place. We could hear the big cats growling and fighting in the truck outside so we were naturally nervous of just having a steel hooped tunnel with a trap door between us. The sick Roman joke did not materialise but the temperature was just dropping away, we could hardly hold our instruments we unprofessionally played in coats with our 'Four Tops' style cat suits and silk blouses underneath. This was an Adult party night with blue comic and stripper. Brandy De Frank the reason I remember her name after all this time was her nipples. Well you would. She appeared on an episode of Minder later, she was a stripper or hooker on that. Never forget a face
The other thing I would rather forget was the Singer now the wife put her hand bag down by the drums and on retrieving it, felled the hi-hat which fell and dug itself into the neck of John East’s 60's Precision like an axe. He was our bass player at the time I was on Trombone. It was a really bad end to a thoroughly miserable night. We shivered all the way home.


Ahhh The 70's

Edited May 16, 2011 by deepbass5

[BigRedX]

[quote name='Truckstop' post='1230243' date='May 13 2011, 06:15 PM']The Old Angel in Nottingham, 28th February 2010. Pure Negatives first ever gig!

My band was making waves even though we'd never played a gig. The guitarist was from Labrat and the drummer from Ted Maul so we were always gonna get a bit of attention.
Anyway, we get offered a gig at an alldayer playing main support.
The promoter was taking pills left right and center and all of the bands were allowed to overply by about 15 minutes so we didnt get on until 11.30pm. The bar downstairs had closed at 11 and they had stopped allowing people back in after a smoke from 10.30. We played to the promoter (who didnt even notice we played), our mate from London (who had been drinking since 11.30am) and the sound man (who was busy rolling cigarettes "Hey, I've rolled 5. Only one has just weed in it... the rest have cocaine and ketamine in them too. I ran out. Kinda like russian roulette, eh?").

Nightmare.

We couldnt go home after either. The driver/guitarist had unfortunately ended up with a weed/ketamine/cocaine cigarette and didnt even know what a car was. I had to sleep on the floor using a concrete step as a pillow. Even worse, when I woke up (I used to be teetotal) I was ready to go, but the rest of the band had been up all night taking drugs with the barstaff and were just settling down to sleep. I spent the next 6 hours wandering around Nottingham with no money and no fresh clothes. I felt like a hobo

Truckstop[/quote]
Sounds like a completely typical Old Angel gig...

[JayPH]

We had this really heavy rock band in the early to mid 90's. We played our own music and people compared us to everything from Pink Floyd to The Fall. it was a really eclectic mix that we did. We had 2 goths singing and we were all stoners and the lead guitarist was into Iron maiden and was a bit of a Greaser.

Anyway, I got talking to this guy who had to find a band for a Football do. One of those gigs were the football team have an end of the season bash. I explained to him that we played our own stuff and werent really suitable but he wouldn't have none of it his mind was made up we were the band he wanted.

I bet you can guess the rest

Anyway, the Gig was about 20 miles from where we were based so we hired this guy and a van to take us. he was a real Greebo and had hair down to his arse.

We arrived at this gig and all the football lads were there with their girlfriends and wives and it was quite intimidating. It was a complete and utter mismatch.

Anyway, we started playing to a wall of complete and utter silence and disbelief. it was a real Vic Reeves Tumble weed moment.

We played about 3 songs and people started to get quite vocal shouting at us and telling us to f*** off. We started to heckle back and the whole thing was getting quite ugly. Our driver had by now had about 8 pints and was squaring up to people. I was giving the v signs and shouting you're not f***ing ready for us you w***ers and people were booing quite loudly by now. Anyway, we started to play another song and i was that pissed off I hit my A string that hard it f***ing snapped. i was not competent enough to play without it so i stopped playing and walked off. The football team manager approached the stage and asked us to leave.

We had to set all our gear down and pack up while the DJ took over. The guy who hired us f***ed off so we were left to argue with the team manager to get paid.

The guy who drove us there was smashed and i swear if the manager hadn't have paid us he would have killed him. The rest of the band went back home with this mad greaser driving pissed off his head and I went for a pint in a club near by. The crazy thing was loads of people came up to me that night and said we were good and that it was just the wrong venue. No f***ing kidding Sherlock.

I don't know who was stupider. Us for agreeing to do a Football do or the shithead who hired us.

I tell you what though, it was an experience I would never change. It's given us many a laugh over the years.

[JayPH]

[quote name='Graham56' post='1229926' date='May 13 2011, 02:01 PM']So, f*** off we duly did.[/quote]
haha. Nice phrase. £100 for not playing sounds good, but you go through all the hassle and nerves it must have been a right kick in the balls.