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Your Worst Gig Ever


Bluewine

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4 hours ago, Baxlin said:

one vocal group had us rehearsing their opening song in a couple of different keys.  They decided on which to play, then just before going on one of them tells us to change the key.  Then actually on stage their leader changes his mind, but this didn’t get through to the brass section.......

So you rehearsed it in a couple of keys and performed it in a couple of keys. Perfect. Another job well done!

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Some years ago we played a dodgy pub in Exeter. Only the landlord a handful of regulars.  A couple of which were doing coke in the toilets and one had a really young child with him all night.  I felt very uncomfortable and luckily it was our last gig there. 

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another 'memorable' gig I just remembered, back in 1981 when we'd just started playing (I use the term loosely) we had a benefit gig for some unemployment rally, I think they were recreating the Jarrow Hunger March, anyway, our singer decided to stir things up by saying "We're glad Bobby Sands is dead" or something like that, unaware that there were some Irish Republicans in the crowd, we were quickly shown the back door as we came off stage and I can still see the drummer running up the road with all his (small) kit stuffed into the bass drum. I wasn't far behind and the singer had long gone

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In the 1990s my band in South Wales did a good few gigs in the valleys. 

Our first ever gig, in a pub in the Swansea Valley, the landlord kicked us out after our soundcheck because the half a dozen or so punters were apparently expecting a female cabaret singer.  

We didn't get paid and our van got caught up in a big clash between football fans on the way home.    

My next band did a gig in a really rough club in the Rhondda Valley. 

We were a mix of britpop originals and some classic rock/pop covers, but a big mound of a guy sidles up to tell us it's death metal night there and furthermore most of them have taken an E (not a combination I'd have though but never mind).

The gig was awful, they weren't interested, and we were glad to get our alive. 

Same band played a gig in Soho where we'd driven in a hired van from South Wales. Turns out it's a transvestite bar and we've been billed as a jazz combo. 

We go on after a Shirley Bassey impersonator. No one likes us. Our van gets a parking ticket. We only get paid £50 of the promised £100, which didn't event cover the cost of the parking fine, let alone the van hire or the petrol. 

Edited by bassbiscuits
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10 hours ago, Rich said:

Sunday night gig at a pub in Highbridge, Somerset. I can still remember the exact wording of the text I sent to Mrs Rich after we'd finished:

"I just counted seven punters and then realised I'd included the landlord and the bar staff. AND my wireless has packed up too. What a sh*t night."

That sounds like all my gigs!

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Played a really weird bar in Teignmouth, actually the basement room of a dodgy hotel, the landlady is a real eccentric, used to be a high ranking barrister in London, now a bit of an aggressive p1sshead. Only people who listen to us are her, the barman with no teeth and her "boyfriend", a real chancer who sat with a large albino lizard on his head (really). She got arrested the following week for trying to set a former (disgruntled) employees house on fire, the Hotel is now closed.

https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/teignmouth-hotelier-dubbed-female-basil-862735#

Edited by skidder652003
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12 hours ago, Steve Browning said:

1978. I'm playing a my college band. A cross between Dr Feelgood and The Clash.

My car has  been totalled in a crash but a friend can lend me his Mini van. It's cold (and very snowy), the car heater doesn't work. As I get to the gig the back fills up with smoke and the engine overheats. We push the car about 400 yards to the gig and play to people who couldn't have carted less.

We're keen and confident so we had agreed to play for a whip-round. 65p. 16p each. I am reduced to trying to shovel snow into the radiator to try and get some water into the system to drive home. I fail.

Entertaining as ever, Steve. Great story. 

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This ones not actually mine but the guitarist i play with..

Late 70s or early 80s and the band were a kinda hippy prog affair all very peace and love and right on [think Neil from the young ones x 5]

they are booked to play a pub in Beds [ i think Luton ] ,unknown to them they share a name with a hardcore racist skinhead band [i think 

it was something to do with Swedish mythology]

well before they even got to play a note the disappointed racists decided to kill all hippy's ,guitarist says they were petrified and trying to hide behind the gear at the back of the stage the bass player had already taken a slap, at this point seemingly from out of nowhere entered a load of enraged rastas who proceeded to beat the crap out of the now retreating skinheads :D ...

it turns out a local soundsystem were having a get together next door and came to the rescue ...

although it could of been the worst gig it turned out to be the best in many ways 😁   

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Back in the 90s the rock band that I was in played a gig in Birmingham, on a Sunday night, to the bar staff for the first half of the set, then to one drunken middle-aged lady for the rest of the set. Our singer had a fairly husky voice, so in between songs said drunken lady hollered "Rod Stewart, give us another song".

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Booked to play at a multi band event at Brighton Marina as part of a bike rally type event with a long ago blues band, booked by the singer who has  a Harley and fancies himself as Barnaby Wilde. He apparently knows the organisers and assures us it will be great. The event runs late (How unusual.Yawn.) We're told we're next. And then next again. And again. And then "We've run out of time, sorry." Guitarist has driven down from London for this.  We don't play. We don't get paid.  We have stood in a windy car park for hours minding our gear for absolutely feck all.  Singer clearly knows no one of any importance at all (Quelle Surprise).  It starts to rain. One of the most dismal experiences I've ever had.

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Got to the final of a battle of the bands thing once and we all drove to Birmingham for the gig. 

Turns out the band (who go on to win, no surprise at all) are the mates of the pub hosting the gig. So they get to go on at peak time to a good crowd, and the soundman giving a sh*t. 

We don't go on until long after -  some 'technical problems' from the venue apparently which delay our set even further.  

By the time we play, it's going on for 11pm, and there's a handful of people left standing among the detritus of the previous bands beer bottles etc. 

We don't win.  

Edited by bassbiscuits
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I was phoned by a "promoter" who was putting on a US country singer at a local venue. The venue is 500 a seater , some fairly big names play there , our band is a tongue in cheek country trio with a strong element of humour, the artist in question is a serious female singer songwriter but on balance we decide to go for it. All three of us have day jobs at the same place ten minutes away so not exactly a big deal logistically.
The promoter then goes quiet on us , the listings appear and no mention of support act. I send him a couple of texts and get no reply, I start to think this is pure fantasy or he's had second thoughts....time passes... he calls me out of the blue to explain that the original artist had to pull out but someone else equally huge is playing that night and we are still the support....time passes...with a week to go I text him to ask about set length, sound check etc.....nothing.....two days to go....
A phone call asking if we'd been sent any tickets to sell (we get a cut , I know it's a crap deal but it wasn't a tricky gig to do and it was good exposure) ...no we hadn't.
He blames xy and z for this and says the gig is still on....on the day of the gig we set off after work but on the way he calls me..."They don't want a support act but you can go on after, she will big you up" 
I meet the others in the car park , basically after the main act finishes we get to set up and be just about ready to play to an empty room half an our after the punters leave. We say thanks but no thanks and go home.
He's offered us another gig in November that is shaping up in the same way....

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This is not particularly bad compared with some of the tales above, but I recall it as the worst, even compared with the jazz gigs where drunken audience members would accost the band and demand a go on our instruments, whilst we were playing.

Anyway, some time ago I was roped in to play a single gig with what was essentially a scratch band on the grounds that they needed another guitarist for a local pub gig that was already booked, and as a jazz man who could play the guitar, surely playing along with a rock band shouldn't be too hard for me?

The material was a bit dodgy (e.g. Cliff Richard's "Move It" with the lyrics changed to be about devil worship), the singer & musicians a mix of styles (metal, reggae, rockabilly, jazz) with no effort made to blend with each other, and everything badly played due to insufficient rehearsal. At various points the BL made announcements such as "we're now going to play such-and-such a song, but I've forgotten the chords so the other guitarist will have to play it" and "we've run out of material so we'll have to play such-and-such a song again".

A certain segment of the audience were keen on heckling us throughout, particularly the singer who they considered to be a "f*****g p**f". Eventually the drummer, via the singer's mic, threatened to come down from the stage and fill them in unless they stopped, as it was putting him off.

We did at least get paid around £5 each from door fees.

Edited by knirirr
Fixed a typo.
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An old band of mine once played a week or so of dates around the south of England, finishing up with a few shows in Devon.

This was back in 2005 and long before mobile internet was a thing.

We arrived at the final venue somewhere in Devon (I don’t remember where), set up, soundchecked and went round to the bar to get a drink.

In the bar were a few TVs which were to be our only source of news. The date was July 7th 2005 and we sat down to learn of the bombings that had happened in London that morning.

The mood was somber and the town was empty but we needed the night’s fee to get us back to the midlands so we decided to play the set.

I don’t think a single person watched us play.

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I used to play in a soul/disco band with brass etc and it was a reasonable sound. Our guitarist and sort of promoter and general gig-getter is harmless but a shameful liar when it comes to getting gigs and would feed venues all kinds of nonsense unbeknownst to the rest of us.

He booked us out as a “top northern soul band” at a venue and they had promoted the whole night as a Northern Soul event so it wasn’t a good start.

There were maybe 25 people in a very big bar/venue and you could hear everyone moaning between songs that we were playing Chic and sister sledge etc as well as the obvious Commitments type soul songs and the organiser wasn’t happy either.

To add to the horror, we had a new-ish drummer who was in his 60’s and taught drums. Rehearsals had gone well but when it came to the gig he didn’t know the tempo or  rhythm for any of the songs. Before each song I had to remind him and seeing as I was on joint lead vocals it wasn’t conducive to swift song changes. To my utter embarrassment on several occasions I had to stop him after the whole band had started because he was playing way too fast or basically rock beats under disco. On one occasion I had sang him the start of the song, he said he remembered and played it completely the wrong beat. I stopped him again and played the beat and tempo out to him, on my leg and he said “I’ve got it” and then played the exact same WRONG beat he had just been doing. I tried him once more as it was normally our best tune and he still fudged it so we moved on.

I just wanted there to be a sniper in the back of the room to just put me out of misery right there and then.

Edited by NJE
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I would like to nominate this afternoon's "festival! My second gig with this rock band, we arrived to find it was an outdoor gig rather than indoor as discussed, the stage was small and completely uncovered, the PA was basic to say the least. 

The lead guitarist rang in sick with a stomach bug and couldn't play so we had to radically alter the set, which meant playing the majority of songs I had never played before with the band and in a couple of cases never even heard before! 

As soon as we started playing we found out that the power draw was too much for the generator they had which meant every 20 seconds or so the PA shut down and restarted which meant I couldn't hear any vocal cues that I desperately needed and just to top it off one of the songs I had learnt from the CD they now play out of D rather than E as per the recording, this was basically a bass / acoustic guitar /vocal duet with no drums to cover anything, the drop from E to D meant everything I had learnt suddenly moved elsewhere on the neck, I nailed it towards the end of the song but there were definitely sections where I couldn't find exactly where I needed to be.

The only upsides to today were it didn't rain and there were only about 10 people there! 

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I forgot about a time we played at the Night and Day Cafe in Manchester. The same venue I fell out with at the other gig.

This was a previous show where we’d been bumped into the “headline” slot (also the graveyard shift gig as it was about 11.30pm)

Anyhow, it was a little quiet and as we finished the first or second song, a big geezer was at the door refusing to pay entry.

eventually he’d worked his way in with two ‘ten to two-ers’ Who were drunken messes hanging off him.

He picked up a large table and plonked it 2ft from the stage. The girls brought over three chairs and they heckled and jeered throughout the set. Clapping so loud for each song it was borderline sarcastic...

at the end he told us we “woz saaarnd ladz” and bought us a beer and offered us some coke. We declined as he was erm, the kind of person you didn’t want to associate with.

Hell.

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