Your Worst Gig Ever

[Silvia Bluejay]

Believe it or not, I was at both of these gigs at The White Bear. I've been the band's only audience before, but this time was the most memorable. The evening with the travellers was downright scary, although they were nice to me, and tried to make me slightly more at ease, seeing I was sitting in a corner, silent and motionless, after packing and hiding my camera gear... 😮

Edited September 17, 2018 by Silvia Bluejay

[Cat Burrito]

The Date; March 1995. The scene; The Flying Machine in Brockworth (now derelict).

Scuzzy Glam / Sleaze merchants SkinTrade arrive, resplendent in lace up leather trousers with long black hair and eyeliner to discover the locals are all skinheads! To say the reception was frosty would be something of an understatement. A bar stool came flying through the air and hit the stage towards the end. We had enough punk rock spirit to do a very unwanted encore and left with an escort of irate skinheads who'd also offered there own unique interpretation of a "carry to the car" service with our gear after the show.

[uk_lefty]

These are fantastic! Mine cannot match up, I've only ever been threatened with violence while DJ'ing! 

Worst gig would be with my first band. Played the cellar bar of a rock pub, nobody knew we were down there. Singer and drummer made no effort to get anyone in so we were relying on my ten or less mates to turn up.... They did about half way in to the set. I got a bit too tipsy, being eighteen and having the glory of our first proper gig as a band, not just on the bill with others, and re-enacted lots of rock-god moments from the likes of Jim Morrison and Flea while playing Hendrix and Sabbath covers. Front man, and barmaid, not impressed, I was a shirtless tool. I borrowed some lighting from the rock disco, a whirly thing that sat on the floor, had the plug propped on an extension lead to press down with my foot during the intro of the first song when the drum and bass kicks in... Whirly thing took hold of my bass lead and pulled it out! I retrieved the lead, tried to keep playing all while kicking the metal out of this borrowed lighting thing.... Rock DJ mam arrived at the end of the gig horrified that a rock band was entertaining HIS audience. Horrified more when the audience now of fifteen reduced to his usual five when my mates left with me. At least I pulled a girl from college that night.

Worst gig recently was end of last month. Last year we played for a motor racing club at a famous British motor racing circuit. We went down a storm and lots of people got carried away. It was unpaid and lots of travel but we got invited to do their awards function so all good. I recently learned that we were invited back this year but had to start and finish earlier and there was a warning about behaviour. It seems some of the amateur racing drivers got too carried away after our first gig up there and one of which had pulled out of a race after puking in his helmet during the first race of the Sunday. We played in the new bar, a huge metal shed, that had terrible acoustics and a sheepish audience under orders to behave. There was also big TV screens everywhere showing some formula ford or other obscure racing nonsense. Got paid the same as we do for a local pub gig despite four hours or driving. It was so flat we didn't even bother playing our biggest and best songs. Gutting, it was my first outing with a new bass too.

[uk_lefty]

If we aren't including bass playing then there's the acoustic gig I did on an August bank holiday aged 19.... I used to book the acts at a pub I worked in during a summer holiday from uni. The boss kept asking me to do a night because he knew me through my band. Someone dropped out so I did August bank holiday. Singing and playing acoustic for the first time live ever. I had my guitarist/ singer from the band with me for a few numbers. He packed up and left once his bit was done. We were late going on because I didn't feel nervous but my bowel did. Knowing the pub toilets I used the loo in the flats above so everyone thought I'd done a runner when actually I was doing the opposite (sitting very still).

I played, got some great reaction to some originals, some so so reaction to some others... Then some drunks decided to sit right in my face, read my set list and shout "he's playing *song name* next! Bet it's this song next!" As well as "play some Elvis, kid!" And my favourite, "he's a stinky poo singer but can play guitar" which was actually my dad!!!! He didn't shout it as a heckle but said it to the landlord in one of those prime moments where you think you're being discreet but all other noises cease in a moment of planetary alignment to embarrass the offender. Also, singing an original about a girl from work who she and I were stringing each other along in front of my dad was interesting.... The chorus of "you were such a b!tch" repeated was ok, it was the closing line of "even now you're offering s3x, but I won't take cos you're my psycho ex" while making eye contact with my dad was excruciating. 

Edited September 17, 2018 by uk_lefty

[knirirr]

2 hours ago, andytoad said:

Interruptions seem common, someone usually walks up to the singer of guitarist mid song to ask them something, not at all considering the band are mid number.

 

This used to be quite common when piping as well. Usually people would approach whilst I was playing and bellow "CAN YOU DO FLOWER OF SCOTLAND?" into my ear.

[Dom in Dorset]

18 minutes ago, knirirr said:

This used to be quite common when piping as well. Usually people would approach whilst I was playing and bellow "CAN YOU DO FLOWER OF SCOTLAND?" into my ear.

It's even worse if you play bellows blown pipes , small pipes etc, people seem to think that if you aren't using your mouth to blow you must be able to hold a conversation while playing.

[yorks5stringer]

I remember playing a gig in Bingley, West Yorkshire with Mirrorball or Idle Hands, must be 20 plus years ago. The pub was fairly rough ( on the r/h side as you went towards the new fire station) and we were sharing a room with the pool table which had a trolley underneath in order to move it. One particularly drunk guy lay on  his back on the trolley and pushed it out  to try and 'upskirt' our singer who was up on the stage and  wearing a dress ......

That's also reminded me we also played the old fire station in Bingley quite a few times and I do remember on one occasion quite a fight developing between two women....

[DaveFry]

Just remembered playing my Rhodes solo at a birthday party in a marquee when a group of uninvited surfers appeared and let all the ropes down so it collapsed into the centre . I had to crawl out . Afterwards people would remark how my singing had really brought the house down !

[Rich]

I've posted this before but I think it bears sharing again...

Many years ago when I lived in Swindon, my blues-rock trio (Hendrix, Gary Moore, ZZ Top etc) had a booking at the Plessey Social Club... when we walked through the door, we lowered the average age in the room by about 40 years. As we set up, I could feel the glares from the light-&-bitter brigade burning holes in the back of my head. We had backline and a vocal PA only, nothing DI'd or miked up -- Steve the drummer was first to get set up, he sat down and picked up a stick and hit his snare drum ONCE... and I heard a croaky old voice from out in the shadows say, "ooh, it's a bit loud..."  
Predictably the first set was horrendous, every song met with almost total silence apart from a few “turn it down”s from some of the coffin-dodgers and one or two claps. One of them even walked right up to me mid-song, stuck his fingers in his ears and bellowed “It's TOO LOUD”.
End of the first set couldn’t have come soon enough for me. When it did, the club MC asked if he could borrow one of our mics to do the bingo. Ye gods.
Eventually we couldn’t put the second set off any longer and trudged to the stage. I was just putting my bass on when a woman approached me. I thought, if she tells me to turn it down I’m just going to pack up and sod off home. But she said cheerfully, “OK lads, all the old farts have buggered off, they only come for the bingo... you can turn it back up now”. So we did 

Needless to say, the second set was a lot better and we never set foot in there again

[BigRedX]

This one has also been told before.

First a bit of background...

Thos of you who know Nottingham will know that Nottingham University campus and its halls of residence are located a fair distance out of the city centre, and back in the early 80s getting back to the campus after a night in town was neither cheap or easy. Consequently both the Student Union and the individual halls had some form of entertainment on every weekend - often there would be 2 or 3 gigs going on in various locations across the campus. There were also plenty of opportunities for decent local bands to get supports to often to some fairly well known acts.

My friend's band had managed to tap into this circuit and could be found performing about once a month to enthusiastic audiences and getting paid £100 as well. Not bad for a band playing post-punk electronica originals.

I decided that I would like a bit of this for my band, and we lined up our "audition" gig in the Student Union bar. That went very well no doubt helped by the presence of a video crew who had come specifically to film us which in those days was a very big deal indeed. In due course we were offered a gig at one of the hall parties.

The band had taken a couple of months off to work on some new songs and sort out a cohesive band image, and this university gig would be our first in the new and improved format. 

The first sign that things were not going to go smoothly was discovering that due to the number of gigs being held on campus that weekend the technical committee wouldn't be able to provide us with a university PA system, we would have to use our own (and because like all originals band we didn't own one would have to be hired in out of our gig payment). Secondly we discovered that rather than opening for someone the audience was likely to have heard of, we were going to be the only live music on at this particular hall party.

We were also required to set up and soundcheck in the middle of the afternoon, so that everything would be ready by the time the event started. Soundcheck went OK although the hired PA wasn't as big as we had hoped for, as a miscommunication between the band and hire company meant they hadn't realised that we were an electronic band with no backline and relied completely on the PA for our amplification. Having completed the soundcheck we the plan was to go back to one of the band member's houses to chill out for an hour or two and then go and play. However as we were about to leave, two friends of one of the band turned up and dragged their mate off to the bar for a drink or two.

By the time the rest of us returned, all three of them were compressively p!ssed on cheap student beer. In hindsight what we should have done is bought them all another couple of drinks and let them pass out safely in the bar while we played the gig one member down. What actually happened was that our inebriated member, played random notes on his synth and then spend the next few bars celebrating this technical prowess by leaping about and shouting. Half way through the gig, he had to go and have a p!ss which he announced loudly before departing from the stage. He was most put out on his return to discover we had started the next song without him. There exists a single photograph from that gig, of the rest of us hunched over our instruments hoping that the ground will open up to swallow us all, while he is leaping in the air arms and legs akimbo.

Meanwhile his two equally drunk friends spent the entire gig shouting for us to play our cover of Nancy Sinatra's "Summer Wine" which we had intended to do as an encore (should we get one) and being generally intimidating and obnoxious, gradually driving what little audience had come to see us away to the other room where there was a disco. One of them ended the evening by poking his finger through one of the speaker cones in the PA (which we were subsequently billed for).

Needless to say the University never asked us back to do any more gigs there.

[Monkey Steve]

plenty of empty-sh gigs, which aren't much fun, but at least there's nobody watching if you play badly, which is far more of a concern for me.

Although there are a couple of close contenders this one is head and shoulders the winner as the worst of the worst

First gig with a new originals band, based in London.  We're ready to gig, but who is going to put us on when we don't have any following?  A couple of our band members are from well known-ish bands in extreme metal,  but this is far more classic/hard rock and they don't want us exploiting their meagre fame, plus none of their mates' bands are going to put us on as support because we're a very bad fit.  An old band of mine used to play a pub out in Essex on a regular basis and on the first Saturday of the month the landlord's son was given the night to promote as his own punk/metal/rock/whatever-as-long-as-it's-got-a-loud-guitar night.  Ideal - he'll have a crowd for us, no pressure as nobody out there would know us, a great low key start, we'll owe the pub a favour if we take off, and it's a great venue if a bit of a trek but we'll be happy to come back at a later date.

Only one of us actually had a drivers licence and he didn't own a car, but we'd scraped together lifts and borrowed a car, and were actually providing a lot of the backline, so most of us arrive fairly early, and set up, knowing that we are third on out of a four band night.  OK sized crowd, and everybody we know in Essex has come along.

The singer arrives looking a bit, er, tired and emotional.  You OK Dave?  Yes, just haven't eaten all day, I'll be fine.

Dave then has a few pints (rather than any food) to add to the bottle of wine he'd necked in the car on the way up.  he almost certainly hadn't eaten that day, as long as you don't count the massive pile of coke he'd undoubtedly have had before setting off (he denied it, but it became such a feature of his later behaviour that we now know he'd have been on it earlier that day).

It's not really a "soundcheck" sort of a place - with four bands playing and the pub being open all day, it's more an expanded line check before launching into your first song.  The singer is sat at the end of the bar, next to where we are set up.  the noise he's making for the line check isn't encouraging.  We start, and he doesn't appear to remember any of the lyrics or melodies of the first song, and rather than getting up to join the band is instead still sat on the bar stool, making a noise like a dying moose.  This continues.

The band is playing great, but by song three we just want to end the set.  The singer is now standing up, although not very steady on his feet.  The moose is still dying, and any attempt to sing into the backing mics by me and one of the guitarists is drowned out by this awful bellowing.  He is speaking into the mic between songs, but not making any sense.

On to song five of a six song set, a couple of us are asking "why are we bothering?" but we decide to give it one more try.  Thirty seconds into the song and the singer loses his footing, tumbles back head first into the drum kit, and mercifully puts and end to proceedings.  The rest of the band downs tools and starts packing away, leaves the singer floundering in the drums, and I address the crowd: "can somebody pick Dave out of the drum kit please".  The 60-something landlady obliges.

We then have to sit around until the end of the night because the band on after us is using our backline.  We actually got a lot of sympathetic comments from the crowd - "you were great musically..."  It doesn't help at all, and i can barely look any of my mates in the face I'm so embarrassed.  The landlord wants to give us petrol money and I refuse to take it.

Before we depart, the singer sobers up a bit.  He thinks it went OK, not brilliantly because it was our first gig and we can't expect to be note perfect first time on stage, but OK, these things happen at gigs, that's the magic of rock n roll!  However, he doesn't understand why our lead guitarist is so very angry with him, he's never seen him angry before, and he's really, really angry and he's not looking forward to the drive home with him.

As a postscript, the singer was unbelievably good at our next few gigs - he knew he'd let us down and that he had a lot of making up to do.  Then he repeated his dying moose impression at the Water Rats and that was the end of him in the band.

Edited September 17, 2018 by Monkey Steve

[DJpullchord]

Magic mushrooms. 

 

Long gig.

[Happy Jack]

5 minutes ago, DJpullchord said:

Magic mushrooms. 

 

Long gig.

Actually it was about 15 minutes ...

[bassbiscuits]

5 hours ago, Rich said:

I've posted this before but I think it bears sharing again...

Many years ago when I lived in Swindon, my blues-rock trio (Hendrix, Gary Moore, ZZ Top etc) had a booking at the Plessey Social Club... when we walked through the door, we lowered the average age in the room by about 40 years. As we set up, I could feel the glares from the light-&-bitter brigade burning holes in the back of my head. We had backline and a vocal PA only, nothing DI'd or miked up -- Steve the drummer was first to get set up, he sat down and picked up a stick and hit his snare drum ONCE... and I heard a croaky old voice from out in the shadows say, "ooh, it's a bit loud..."  
Predictably the first set was horrendous, every song met with almost total silence apart from a few “turn it down”s from some of the coffin-dodgers and one or two claps. One of them even walked right up to me mid-song, stuck his fingers in his ears and bellowed “It's TOO LOUD”.
End of the first set couldn’t have come soon enough for me. When it did, the club MC asked if he could borrow one of our mics to do the bingo. Ye gods.
Eventually we couldn’t put the second set off any longer and trudged to the stage. I was just putting my bass on when a woman approached me. I thought, if she tells me to turn it down I’m just going to pack up and sod off home. But she said cheerfully, “OK lads, all the old farts have buggered off, they only come for the bingo... you can turn it back up now”. So we did 

Needless to say, the second set was a lot better and we never set foot in there again

I got in a similar situation with a local pub here. It was a solo acoustic/singing gig, which i got after doing an hour of rousing 'greatest hits' for their little summer festival in beer garden.

The landlord liked it and booked me for some paid gigs.

How different they were.

Each gig was when people were still eating their Sunday lunch, so I toned it right down, played quietly etc - but a old bloke in cycling lycra insisted on sitting right in front of me moaning constantly about the volume. It got to the point I was playing at more or less unamplified, and he still complained about the volume (while sitting right in front of the stage).

Luckily some punters with their kids came up to dance and said thanks, but they were hugely outnumbered by the garrulous old men talking loudly among themselves, completely ignoring me, except to complain every few songs.

I didn't get asked back, and didn't ask for any more gigs. An afternoon I'll never get back.

[mcnach]

On 15/09/2018 at 02:07, AndyTravis said:

So, In reply to this topic now it’s correctly named...

Gear dropped off by a taxi a half a mile away from gig, walking up Market Street in Manchester with said gear.

played the gig - late on because last band had run over, set cut short.

no sound check because we were only the support act 

sound engineer announced that we’d have to finish early over the monitors half way through a tune.

bounced an instrument of the stage, walked off.

 

that sound engineer was a D1ck

 

i told her that when I sacked her as my next bands tour engineer 2 years later. (The first day she turned up I knew it was futile)

 

bad attitude, bad sound - bad person.

 

glad I got to tell her to feck off

 

that must have been sooo satisfying!

[mcnach]

On 17/09/2018 at 08:16, Happy Jack said:

THREATS

Unbelievably, the White Bear invited us back. Huh? Well, it was £250 and we needed more gigs so we accepted the gig. Bad mistake.

The only punters were a large extended family of pikeys. I'm sure there are some really nice, friendly Travellers out there. Well these were the other sort.

Most of them were adult but they had a kid with them, maybe 12 or 13. They started pestering us to let the lad get up and sing. With some trepidation we turned them down, but agreed to let him sing (unaccompanied) through the PA at the break.

Hearing a 13-year-old pikey kid singing Coming Down Sunday Morning is an experience.

We started the second set and within a few minutes they were again demanding that we let the boy take over as our lead singer for the night. Given the volume level this was not a conversation - more a matter of mouthed words and curt headshakes.

Halfway through Let's Dance the pikey leader strode up on stage, got me in a bear hug (while I continued trying to play) and bellowed in my ear:

"Youse had best come round to my way of thinking or the boots will come off!"

So we did. We turned into a karaoke band for the rest of the evening, and the pikeys actually seemed to appreciate our efforts.

It was only later that it occurred to us all that "the boots will come off" is about as meaningless a threat as any of us had ever heard.

It remains a catchphrase in the the band to this day.

 

Maybe he had notoriously very bad smelly feet?

[MacDaddy]

the one where unbeknownst to the band at the time, the vocalist had done literally nothing the previous few days except smoke a large bag of weed, which resulted in some sort of mental breakdown during the gig, and his Mother taking him off stage and straight to a mental health facility.

[MacDaddy]

Then there was the one where the band were locked in the pub afterwards as there were pitched battles and fights occurring outside.

This was the one which featured an air of suppressed violence all night, and at best a light smattering of applause, but a punter saying 'you were great! You didn't get bottled or nothing!'.

[skankdelvar]

4 minutes ago, MacDaddy said:

the one where unbeknownst to the band at the time, the vocalist had done literally nothing the previous few days except smoke a large bag of weed, which resulted in some sort of mental breakdown during the gig, and his Mother taking him off stage and straight to a mental health facility.

That's a bit of a worry, that sort of thing...

[MacDaddy]

2 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

That's a bit of a worry, that sort of thing...

yeah. He wasn't sectioned, so could make / receive phone calls during his treatment / recovery.

So we all kept in touch during the weeks he was in, and totally ripped the pish.

Which I like to think helped.

[Unknown_User]

I can't think of any real catastrophes, but there was the one where we played to what was by our standards a big venue.  A club with a proper stage rather than just a pub.  We'd seen a bit of a band's set there on a Saturday in December when we were playing a smaller venue over the road and it was heaving.  200+ there and great.  Cut to a Friday night in January and it's empty apart from the barmaid's grandad who shouts up his opinions to us in between songs and tells me in the interval that he used to play piano but can't any more because of his lungs.  Halfway through the first set a couple of lads turn up and keep nipping to the bogs every ten minutes, I assume to powder their noses, and on the way back each time leap to the front of the stage and scream "YEEESSSS!!!" at us while double fist pumping. 

Similarly, another one where everyone had turned up for the disco afterwards and the place was crammed while we were playing, but with everyone totally silent and sat down, with an entirely empty floor stretching out in front of us.  We finish and straight away the disco pipes up and the floor is immediately full of happy dancing people.  Ooof.

Then there was the one where we turned up at this rough pub to find out they were showing the boxing.  It was full of angry boxing heads who all looked at us like we were idiots for turning up when the boxing was on.  We get through it and with five songs to go with mostly being ignored, other than a few hard glares, we're told the ring walk was starting and we have to stop until the fight's finished.  It's ok though; Joshua defending his title against a sub called in at very short notice before the fight.  Should be over quickly and we can finish up and leave.  It goes 12 rounds obviously while we sit there like idiots wondering when it's going to end.  Finally we get back on stage for the last five numbers as the pub empties.  Although a couple of women did turn up for the last songs and had a dance, but one of them kept coming on stage (which was built for one and had a full four piece crammed onto it - I was half leaning over the drums) to shout in my ear and demand songs we didn't know in the middle of the songs we were playing.

[Max Normal]

Packed pub, New years eve 1999 11:30pm. We have played 2 sets and are having a half hour break for a rest and a pint before we go on to do our rocked up version of Auld Lang Syne and some up tempo numbers for the new year when an extremely drunken bloke falls onto the mixing desk severing three essential cables at the plugs where they enter the desk.

Luckily we have a toolkit. I spend the next 25 minutes in a packed dark sweaty pub desparately trying to strip and resolder the leads. We make it with about 2 minutes to spare.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Max Normal

[The59Sound]

Have a few stories, mainly in my originals days.

I remember a venue saying they would supply the backline for us 'so just bring your guitars'. Got to the venue and... nothing! Landlady asked us to make a 40 mile round trip to 'fetch our drum kit'. Announced we were going one way only and promptly left. 

One of my first bands, in front of roughly 150 people, guitarist started the set without checking in first. I was still plugging in and tuning up yet he had already started the song... asked after the gig why the bass wasn't in the first song.

Same band, played a different venue and we were received well. Got shouts from the crowd for an encore. Singer announced I don't feel like it and walked off the stage.

Ah, a good one - had a lesbian couple make out to one of our songs during the set. 

Best story is for various reasons, a venue at the last minute said our band could not play the gig anymore. When I say last minute we had arrived with the gear to load in. Not a clever move on their part - we were providing backline for a 5 band bill and 2 of the other bands were friendly with ours. Once they found out we weren't playing, they pulled out and the 3 of us arranged a gig, that night at a venue less than 100m away from the original venue. So no backline and only 2 bands remaining on the bill. The promoter was not a happy bunny! 

[Max Normal]

Just after Princess Di got killed, we are playing in a pub in Folkestone (never a good idea). It was a ZZ-Top number from what i recall.  Two brothers are right at the front and they start arguing about her death. One of them doesn't give a stinky poo, the other was obviously a fan. Suddenly one of them punches both front teeth out of the other one and the teeth landed at our feet.  The now toothless brother gets on his hands and knees looking for them (it was a loud carpet, it was dark and we had a lighting rig so it wasn't so easy). Guitarist sidles up, nudges me and says "just keep playing". We did.

[Low End Bee]

10 or so years ago. Singer/guitarist gets us booked to do a pub gig even though we're an originals band. Fair enough we have enough stuff for two sets and it's sort of unchallenging classic rock americana territory and we have a PA so we accept. Turns out it's the local bikers and dealing pub.

I'm partially hidden behind a pillar for the whole night on a 'stage' that's raised about six inches of the floor. There's open dealing and using in the loos. The clientele are half off their faces and half looking very stabby. Meanwhile singer/ guitarist is oblivious due to having a couple of Morrocan Woodbines pre-gig around the back with a random and throwing down pints. A worse for the wear woman pulls up a barstool about 2 feet from where I'm stuck playing and shouts "Play some Eagles. Do you know any Eagles?" repeatedly for the last 20 minutes of the first set. As the break is announced She shouts it again. I respond "I don't know any eagles but my aunty's got a budgie'

We have a pint on stage as it's too intimidating to mix out front apart from singer who is out back getting his smoke on again. An enormous bloke with with hands like shovels full of sovereign rings in a black polo neck sporting a large gold chain and looking like Big Vern from Viz approaches and tells me "Don't take the p*** out of my wife (she of the Eagles fandom) I'll be watching you". He proceeds to stare at me as he's stood behind his wife on the bar stool without ever having a facial expression change for the whole of set 2. Singer guitarist is slowly losing cohesion and fluffing words and playing even sloppier than usual. Stands up on his amp near the end arms outstretched and proclaims himself to be the messiah of rock n roll. Falls off toppling amp and sits out next song where guitar two fills in and sings. Gets back for a wobbly last song although he's now very out of tune vocally and guitar wise. We ask the pub if we can pick the PA up in the morning so we don't disturb his trade. In reality so we can get away as quickly as possible. He agrees and we manage to leg it unscscathed when a scuffle breaks out at the other end of the pub which also luckily distracts Big Vern.

I'm driving and dropping all but the drummer home. Singer pipes up saying what a fantastic gig it was. We ignore him as it must be some good weed.

Next day we at least manage to pick up the PA and get paid without too much trouble.

On the Monday we have a rehearsal and S/G tells us he rang the landlord and we now have a monthly residency.....When we all looked shocked and politely decline it leads to the end of the band. Well the band with him in it anyway.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Low End Bee
Speeling