Your Bands Best Spinal Tap Moment

[Paul S]

The nearest I got to anything like this was a few years ago with the Bon Jovi tribute band I was in.  We accepted a gig in Skegness, best part of a 4 hr drive away, mainly because it paid well.  The main employer locally was putting on a big family day with fairground rides, food and all day entertainment in the middle of a field right by the sea.  We were due to play 90 minutes to round off the night.  We got there to be greeted with gusty winds and horizontal rain - possibly just a couple of hundred people rather than the thousand-odd that were expected.  The tent with the stage was being buffeted around and the set up beset with technical issues. 

 

First up was a local Little Mix tribute, who started 45 mins late.  Next up was a local covers band who, from the hostility radiating from them, clearly considered they should have been headlining the event and were obstructive the entire time.  Rather than cut short their set, as asked by the organisers, they ploughed through their full set plus a couple of encores, including a lengthy drum solo - playing for over an hour.  The drummer had one of the biggest kits I have seen for a pub band - double kick, 4 floor toms and a huge array of rack-mounted clear acrylic toms ranging from something the size of a tin of beans to snare-sized.  All of which were laid out across the stage at break down time whilst he carefully, and incredibly slowly, packed each one away.

 

That left us to play for 20 minutes.  The organisers couldn't apologise enough, thanking us for not making a fuss.  Then 4hrs home.  We got paid but it wasn't a great experience. 

[Count Bassy]

On 06/02/2025 at 21:50, bassbiscuits said:

To be fair my sense of direction is awful so I can’t say too much.
 

I was driving home from Wales last month when I noticed the surroundings were no longer familiar and realised I’d missed the entire M42 and driven through Birmingham. 

I once drove from Pontefract to Oxford, somehow managing to take in Worcester on the way. In my defence, this was around 1977, so pre sat Nav, and I didn't have a map!

[KingBollock]

12 minutes ago, Count Bassy said:

I once drove from Pontefract to Oxford, somehow managing to take in Worcester on the way. In my defence, this was around 1977, so pre sat Nav, and I didn't have a map!

Some friends of ours, my wife, and I were heading Skegness for a couple of days. My mate said that, as he’d lived there and visited regularly, that he knew the way and would supply directions…

 

We started off in Nuneaton and got as far as Leicester, about 17 miles. Then, somehow, we ended up in Wolvey, which was about 2 miles from where we started.

 

We followed the sat nav a couple years ago while heading home to south-west Wales from north Norfolk. For some reason it sent us via London. The trip took over 8 hours.

[chriswareham]

Fairly similar experience to Paul S above, with the added bonus of the singer actually pointing out how Spinal Tap it all was.

 

Asked at short notice by a promoter we'd done plenty of gigs for to support to a band playing in Camden. We arrived in time to find to find neither opening or headlining act had arrived. Nor had the sound engineer. The latter eventually appeared looking totally hungover, and he proceeded to explain that someone had stolen all the DI boxes the night before while he was too drunk to notice. Not good as we had a drum machine and several synths.

 

No soundcheck for us, as the headline band finally appeared and had a major strop at being initially told they'd also have no soundcheck. As a result the venue opened late, and the opening act went straight on. Despite being told to cut their set from 45 to 30 minutes they played their full set and then leisurely packed up.

 

So we go on stage without even a linecheck, set cut from 45 to 30 minutes. I press the start pedal for our drum machine and... no drums in the monitor plus a distorted mess from the front of house speakers. I proceeded to play by watching the blinking light on the drum machine to try and stay in time. That meant I missed the promoter frantically trying to get my attention.

 

Turns out he wanted us to stop after 15 agonising minutes. The headline act wanted their full hour, which would have taken the venue over it's curfew. He ended up getting the soundman to cut us off mid song.

 

I jumped off the stage, and walked through the audience only to find the door to the dressing rooms locked and I didn't know the code. So I kicked it down and proceeded to reduce the dressing room furniture to matchwood. The security guy was called by the panicking promoter, only to be told my reaction was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances (turns out the security guy had seen us several times before and realised something wasn't right with the sound).

[TimR]

We once played the early Sunday afternoon slot at a local free street festival.

 

A pop/rock covers band, sandwiched between 2 children's entertainers. A fairly big audience of mainly children and their mums. Plenty of songs had to have censored lyrics. 

[Norris]

5 hours ago, Paul S said:

We got paid

And they were probably never asked back again

 

"I just hate it... it really, it does disturb me, but I'll rise above it; I'm a professional."

[King Tut]

I played my first ever gig in Milton Keynes City Centre. A lady approached our bandleader and asked if she could manage us. He agreed and a couple weeks later we were all off to Camden for an audition for Sky Star Search. We to a slot and next thing we were on telly, show hosted by Keith Chegwin with Barbara Windsor and Simon Potter (Who?) as the judges. The spinal tap moment was getting voted runners up being beaten by a sax playing comedian in a wheelchair!

 

It all went downhill from there!!

[KingPrawn]

We had another one with the band that did the 'black country tour thing'. We were asked to play at a festival in Leicestershire. The organiser asked if we would play at a local venue a few months before as a promo thing. No PA needed just us and backline. What a shi$ show. The promoter was like Joe Exotic from Tiger King. Complete tool. The support band were a group of local Uni Students who dressed in homemade space suits and sang one long song called 'Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy. Jeremy etc etc. They were wonderfully weird. We got ready to set up and the PA blew up during the sound check. It was a piece of shit Carlsbro thing from the mid 80's. Joey Exotic is nowhere to be seen. We backed up and drove home. Guess what we never did his festival

[Dood]

I used to play in a band called, “Don’t Call Me Surely”. Of course we loved ‘Airplane!’ and all things Leslie Nielsen. We used to play “Bitch School” and “Majesty Of Rock” in our set, so I suppose that was Spinal Tap enough.

 

 

Though our drummer died. Well, I say died, he pulled out of our first gig with just a couple of days warning, which at the time was enough to want to pummel him to death 😂

Edited Saturday at 20:10 by Dood

[WalMan]

Tales mainly from the rest of the band in their previous incarnation back in the 70’s and 80’s running a big stage show in pubs influenced by The Tubes and Alice Cooper:

 

Guitarist ended up in A&E having got too close to a flash pot (the neck of his guitar bore the mark of his hand in the lacquer for years after). Nurse says “there’s some weird people out there tonight “  - referring to the dancers and lead vox still in stage gear and covered in stage blood - “yes they’re with me”

 

Part of the stage show included a chainsaw with the chain removed. “Stay away from me tonight” says lead vox and comes on with the saw with chains on and saws a table in half 😱. He still has nightmares about that and what could have happened.

 

Tha prog band I was in used flash pots and I remember the gig where they were due to go off and guitarist was a bit close.  Mush gesturing and calling to try to get him to move to no avail and in the end the roadie fired them anyway. Guitarist was so ‘relaxed’ he barely noticed and didn’t flinch. 🤣

 

My tale pre mobiles. Went up to Denmark Street to record demos for a record company. Should have cancelled the club gig in the evening or found a dep, but you know… it’ll be fine. Got to the studio in the morning and worked up the songs just bass and drums as it was a deal for our vocalist. Got sorted and started recording the three songs but not finished and I had to leave to drive to the south coast for the gig. Got there and found the rest of the band had broken down and not made it. So rang the studio and drove back to London to finish the tracks in the middle of the night. I really had a useless idea of priorities and tried to fit in without letting down anyone - only to screw things up for everyone except me 🤦‍♂️

[Bluewine]

I guess I can't leave out the NYE 2023 gig when my girlfriend drank too much and flashed our bandleader's 70 year old father.

 

Daryl

[KingBollock]

This isn’t a band story, but WalMan reminded me of it…

 

It was new year and I was working with a mobile disco. It was a very large and impressive setup, and included pyros. For some reason the boss put the button for the pyros under a table behind some light boxes. 
 

I spent the last half an hour of the year asking one particular bloke to move back because he was too close to one of the pots.

 

Come midnight, I’m on the floor, under the table with the button and I can’t see a thing… I only went and set the bloke’s jumper on fire!

[TimR]

Actually we nearly did kill a drummer. He was also the singer, one practice he was complaining of a tingling sensation every time his lips touched the mic. 

 

I took the PA home and found someone had removed the earth wire from the 13amp mains plug.  (Used to be done to cure ground loops with keyboards)

[tauzero]

I've just remembered with the tales of people pulling out with not a lot of notice - I was in a trio which expanded to a 4-piece with a slide guitarist coming in. We were doing two gigs a week apart, and one rehearsal in between. So we did the first gig, then went to rehearse, and the BL mentioned a couple of minor things to the drummer, not by any means in an offensive of hurtful way. The drummer took umbrage at this and simply packed up and disappeared, leaving us a little bemused. As it happened, the slide guitarist could also play drums so he took over for the gig (impressively, he had no drum rehearsal for it but acquitted himself well) and subsequent gigs too, plus some of the recording of the CD that was partway through being done.

[Steve Browning]

On 06/02/2025 at 18:26, chris_b said:

 

We had a guitarist do that, except no message. One day he was here, next day he wasn't. Didn't answer any calls or other forms of communication. It was a good band but without him it just folded! A waste of a good band.

Same here. If anyone knows Jim Zimmer please let me know. 

 

And before anyone says, yes he could have been framed for something. 

[Leonard Smalls]

We used to have a roadie called Paul who had a hand-painted black transit van that had a top speed of about 50mph...

We were playing in Exeter, iirc, and drove back to London slowly. All of us were a bit knacked (and possibly lubricated - there'd been a couple of cases of beer for us!) so the band all fell asleep on top of the amps'n'cabs in the back.

I woke up quite a while later to discover we were in the middle of nowhere, no motorway anywhere in site, just very dark countryside.

Turns out that Paul, who looked a bit like Camberwell Carrot man in Withnail and I (and usually had something similar in his mouth) had this thing where he'd follow the line on the left of the road. With us all asleep he'd done that and now we were on a single track lane somewhere in Oxfordshire.

From then on we made sure someone was always awake to keep him on the correct road!

[Steve Browning]

Ah, the band van. 

 

I played in a soul band (with Jim Zimmer, as it happens). We had a 6 wheel Transit that had belonged to a motocross team. It had a Zephyr engine (3 ltr V6) and auto box.

 

I was the driver and had driven around Portsmouth picking up the rest of the band. The gig was about 25 miles away. 

 

Great gig but as we left the pub car park, the gearbox gave out. Only reverse was working. 

 

A voice from the back suggests I reverse back to town and drop everyone off! They were serious. 

[mowf]

We had an old Merc bus as our band transport. On the way to one gig the wipers packed up, so my job was to sit in the footwell with a pair of mole grips on the back of the wiper spindle, manually clearing the screen. 
We stopped to pick up a couple of bedraggled hitch hikers. The door opened, they took in the scene of me sitting on the floor with a pair of mole grips, and changed their minds about wanting a lift. In the rain. 

Edited Sunday at 09:32 by mowf

[casapete]

1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

Ah, the band van. 

 

I played in a soul band (with Jim Zimmer, as it happens). We had a 6 wheel Transit that had belonged to a motocross team. It had a Zephyr engine (3 ltr V6) and auto box.

 

I was the driver and had driven around Portsmouth picking up the rest of the band. The gig was about 25 miles away. 

 

Great gig but as we left the pub car park, the gearbox gave out. Only reverse was working. 

 

A voice from the back suggests I reverse back to town and drop everyone off! They were serious. 

We had a similar Transit back in the late 70’s, only ours was an ex-ambulance.

Our guitarist bought it at an auction and it was still kitted out with some medical items inside,

much to our hilarity. The blue lights and most of the exterior local health authority decals had been

removed, but it still looked like an ambulance. Went quite fast when it was going, which wasn’t very

often. We got used to breaking down on the motorway, and regularly had bets as to what the problem

was this time whilst waiting for the AA to arrive. It drank petrol at an alarming rate too.

 

1 hour ago, mowf said:

We had an old Merc bus as our band transport. On the way to one gig the wipers packed up, so my job was to sit in the footwell with a pair of mole grips on the back of the wiper spindle, manually clearing the screen. 
We stopped to pick up a couple of bedraggled hitch hikers. The door opened, they took in the scene of me sitting on the floor with a pair of mole grips, and changed their minds about wanting a lift. In the rain. 

IIRC didn’t early Land Rovers have manual windscreen wipers too? May have dreamt that though. 

[SPHDS]

15 hours ago, Dood said:

 

Though our drummer died. Well, I say died, he pulled out of our first gig with just a couple of days warning, which at the time was enough to want to pummel him to death 😂

We had similar.....also our first gig.....

Our guitarist (my co-founder/deputy) got us a gig at the August Bank Holiday do in his village (Bream, Gloucestershire), the drummer assumed it was Brean, (nr W-S-M, Somerset), despite knowing that guitarist lived in The Forest of Dean.....
Come about a week before the gig......Drummer finally realises his error and stomps off in a strop 'because he wanted to take the family to the seaside'
Soon after the singer went quiet, then quit.....oddly enough we then hear that the Drummer's old band had reformed, with a new singer.....!
 

[bassbiscuits]

Back around 1999 a sort of Brit pop / indie band I was in (weren’t we all?) did a gig in London at a place in Soho. 
 

We arrived to find we were billed as a jazz band, and our set was in between two drag act singers, so we didn’t exactly fit in musically or sartorially. 
 

When it came to be paid, the “promoter” told us there’d been a mistake and the fee was only half what we’d agreed (not even enough to cover the petrol money). To add insult, the van we’d hired had got a parking ticket while we are at the gig. 

On the plus side, no hang on. There wasn’t one.

 

[Leonard Smalls]

First time we played the old Powerhaus in Islington we did our soundcheck, discovered we were all starving so headed round the corner to an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet.

In order to get out moneysworth we took them at their word and ate more than we thought possible.

Which turned out to be foolish as none of us could move and had to have chairs on stage. This might have been OK if we were a jazz band, but we were a high-energy punk-funk band, complete with two painters who painted us with fluorescent paint as we tried to play and not to gag... And we got grief for the painty chairs - we had to scrub 'em! Still, we played there again and at all the other mean Fiddler venues...

[Piers_Williamson]

We played for years with Hugh McKenna, who had been the keyboards player in SAHB for ages (we still miss him today.....he died just before the start of Covid).  He described a support gig they did in the States, where, just before going on stage he had been offered a particularly potent spliff (he said 'he was a particularly greedy pig in those days').  Anyway said spliff had a bit too powerful a hallucinogenic effect.  They were kicking off their set with 'Give my regards tot he Chef' (see vid of 'normal' performance below).  For some reason, instead of the atmospheric build-up line, Hugh decided to play 'three blind mice' instead of his normal introduction, much to the incomprehension of the rest of the band.

 

[TimR]

My first gig. In the 80s.

 

The singer didn't even show up. We tried ringing his house several times. No answer.

 

Turns out his mum had made him go to his gran's birthday party. 

 

Rock and roll baby. 

[AndyTravis]

1 minute ago, TimR said:

My first gig. In the 80s.

 

The singer didn't even show up. We tried ringing his house several times. No answer.

 

Turns out his mum had made him go to his gran's birthday party. 

 

Rock and roll baby. 

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