played my high school homecoming dance back in the 60's, the year after Bob Segar had played it. Had an older pair of Lanlubber bell bottoms a friend had tapered second skin tight in one of her classes especially for the event. Well we were playing Why Don't We Do It in the Road by The Beatles (poorly probably LOL) and as the solo I was playing was ending I did a rolling somersault and kicked my legs apart to jump up.....riiiiiiiiip went the crotch seam and my junk fell out. The girl that did the 'tailoring' ran up and wrapped her sweater around my waist and we finished the song. The teacher that had hired us was right in front of me when it happened, doing a Picard face palm and looking through his fingers as I had jumped up. I was almost thrown out of school for that incident. Did get a few dates out of it afterwards.
Actual quote from a bartender, “This is great, we get to go home at closing time. Usually this place is packed until 2 am.” Gee, good thing we suck, huh?
My best horror stories are from my twenties. I played a local college and the drummers mate brought a smoke machine. He was so stoned he flooded the stage with smoke to such a point that no one could see us. I couldn’t see my pedalboard. So I stopped playing, put my guitar down and then chased him around the stage. There is footage somewhere of me fighting him to turn it off. Another one was the disagreement over fees when we played a rough English bikers bar. They refused to pay the agreed fee. I noticed the room we played was full of very expensive period windows. As all our gear was flightcased. I threatened to throw the backline out of the windows if they didn’t pay us. We were given our fee in full and told to get the f*** out. I’ve never been so scared in my life. Proud I stood my ground though.
Nightmare gig abbreviated: Acoustic duo doing well and I announce just before a break that we have a website and play many local venues(none were named) if folks are interested in seeing us soon. A lady (very drunk) comes up and starts fussing about mentioning our website and Facebook page. I try to politely get her to go away and finally the guitarist says "hey lady, SHEW!) To which she surprisingly responds (You're FiRED!) Loud enough for the whole place to notice and I said "Who the hell are you?" (We only met her husband...the 1/2 owner) People in the crowd paid us to finish the night at their house and a bunch of people from the gig went. I have some mean friends that made the owners pay our full fee while we were packing up gear. It was good to get fired from that place. Anywhere the owners get wasted is bad news. Lots of those loser places around Cincinnati. Lol
We’ve all played those gigs to no one. One that’s funny to me happened a few months ago. A woman was drunk and asked us to play a song from the band Clutch. We told her we didn’t know any Clutch. So she went and found a rock, wrote “Clutch” on the rock with a sharpie and held it in my face for the next few songs in a threatening manner. Pretty sweet.
Was messing around before a show in Hollywood...I was in an alley and I had decided to climb up an old fire escape to the top of a 2 story building. I used a different fire escape to get down...and it was broken. I fell for an eternity and I had the time to decide I would land on my feet and take the hit there. I was wearing an old pair of vans. When I hit; I broke both my feet. I played the show in a chair and I recall the singer was pissed at me. After the show and the hospital; I took full advantage of all the hospitality from all the ladies coming by apartment to bring me food and fun. I would have never realized all those girls liked me, if I hadn't been stupid on a rooftop before the show.
I have one nightmare, and one funny story, so this will be long. In 1985 my band the Prevaricators was opening for the Cherry Bombs that was the band of ex Clash drummer Terry. We soundchecked, left the amps, and drums at CBGBs and went to our friends art co-op in Williamsburg. We parked not 100 feet from his building, under the bridge, and had someone check the van after 5 minutes. EVERYTHING, including the stereo was gone, and we rented instruments to play our worst gig ever! Now the funny! In the days before Grunge hit big, I was in a band called Hangman.. We started in 88, or 89, and were way ahead of our time, selling out shows regionally 2 to 3 times a week. I was very much of the Townshend school of attitude, and would lose my mind near the meat at the end of the set. During a 3 part song, "Ring around the Warheads Stuka, Ring reprise, I would sometimes start banging my guitar against the stage, wall, band members, and had replaced the neck twice. We started, got through Stuka, and in the reprise I banged it against a brick wall, and the headstock snapped in half, which made me even crazier, so I dropkicked it into a PACKED audience. A young lady I knew would have had a broken face had she not put up her arm, which did break! She thought, "It was cool", when I apologized days later, but the funny part was 1 1/2 of our best songs left, and I toss the guitar, which ended up behind the 20 ft deep stage riser, and when I pulled it out, I realized that the Floyd Rose equipped guitar was still in tune!! I screamed in anger that I didn't finish the set, then we all laughed for hours. Two days later it was repaired, and we we're opening two shows for the Chili Peppers right between Mother's Milk, and Blood Sugar Sex Magic. 1 show was outside at VCU, with around 3000 folks, and one that night at a club called The Metro. We were close to a deal with A&M when the drummer, who was a painting and printmaking major quit because a contract would cut his true love of painting down. The second biggest disappointment of my life. Sorry, but I needed to give the full stories. Thanks for what you do. And Jonathan, could you catch Baxter in his sleep, and cut his Robert Smith Doo? Hahaha Peace & Love Keith in RVA
Drummer bailed on gig on the day of. We decided to do an "acoustic" set but we all had electrics. No sound guy, I had to do sound for our band via a 4x4 Behringer mixer. Dive bar where patrons are smoking so much weed it's hard to see. Launch into first song, sounds absolutely like shit. We never sounded worse before or after. I'm like "well, at least no one i know is here to see this shitshow." After finishing the first song, all my coworkers walk in. Had to play for another 30 minutes. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this occasionally lol
I was playing bass at a show in Anchorage, Alaska, when the Ampeg SVT stack behind me started shooting flames out from the back of the head. A club employee ran up with a towel to try to put it out, and the towel caught on fire as well. He tossed the towel away and it landed on the drummer, who started beating it with his sticks. BION-a few minutes later, after finding a new bass amp, the show started again.
@@balibuoy1625 They can be… if that is what you were planning on performing, but if it just sounds like your amp/ guitar is just cutting in and out because you think you’re working a wah pedal then… not so much. 🎸
We played a party that had a pig roast and when we got there at noon to set up we see them spitting a pig over a pile of logs. I says to the host that pig looks mighty pink how long did you cook it yesterday. He says it only takes two hours to cook it. So I tell my bandmates don’t touch the pork. So as we’re playing in this wide lawn sweeping down to the river i’ll never forget the sight of 60-people doubled over puking their guts out. I says, you know this is better than a standing ovation…
Not a nightmare as much as completely falling on deaf ears. (Not literally) We played a jazz gig, for a 50th class reunion, for a Christian school. Well, guess who really didn't listen to jazz and in fact thought it to be the devil's music...just EVERYONE IN THAT ROOM.
Played a poorly organized festival in north-central Washington. The stage was built out of overturned apple crates and plywood, with 4×4 posts rigged up haphazardly, all out in the middle of a cow pasture. Our band had an early morning slot. About halfway through our set, the dew began to settle across the field, which ended up affecting my effects pedals, one by one. Quick thinking, I unplugged and plugged in cables on the fly to keep the show going, finally ending up going straight into the amp for the last song. Only in retrospect did I figure out what happened. Once the pedals dried out, they worked just fine.
Was in a stonesy type band 30ish years ago. Got booked for a 50th birthday party. Great, as audience the right age to muck in. Turns out it was a 50th wedding anniversary, everyone there was 80+. Never seen so many confused old people in my life
Great topic! . While loading in at a gig, the road case that held my Roland GP-8 and a solid state Pearce amp that I relied on for all my presets for the entire set took a tumble and nothing worked! Since then I’ve simplified- wah pedal, TS-9, low watt Vox and a cable. Learned my lesson- Keep it simple stupid!
Worst Gig ever. Our cover bands/acts get hired for a lot of Private Parties. Some young 20-something Party planner with the company wanted a "nostalgic" 90's themed holiday party. Everything was on par to be awesome. We were ready to rock. We get there to setup the stage and everything and find out this is like a funeral Insurance company. At downbeat we see there's 4 people out of 100 that are younger than 50 - and we sank like a brick. We played our normal hearts out - and had nothing but crickets. No one cared. The singer put his beer on my Orange Rockerverb about 15 songs in and spilled it. - Amp fried. (well-fuse..really). The only applause we got was when we said we couldn't play anymore, and we just put on an iPod for the rest of the night for them to dance. Woof.
We were playing the finals of a battle of the bands, probably my tenth gig in my life, and the bass rig goes down. I was told to play a guitar solo to entertain the crowd, and they booed and screamed “get off the stage”. It sucked. Playing an outdoor show on the river in 100 degree heat with a lot of bugs. One flew in my ear early in the set and I tried to get it out until we were done. Had to use tweezers. That really sucked.
An acquaintance of mine came to our show. She's normally really quiet and friendly. She was TANKED. Hassling my family, hanging on people and screaming, running up on stage and hitting the cymbals. The sound guy had to yell at her multiple times. They wouldn't kick her out though. I was the only one who kind of knew her and I asked to have her kicked because she was fucking up everybody's performances.
My worst? The gig that never was. My drummer took a booking for a gig at Birmingham civic hall - great. Birmingham wasn't far from where we were then based and the civic a good place. It wasn't until we turned up for the gig that we realised he'd taken a booking in Birmingham Alabama, not Birmingham UK.
I was at a Foo Fighters show in October of 2015 after he broke his leg, and from a freaking throne that moved backwards and forwards he rocked the hell out of it!! There were quite a few times when he was so into the jam that he would start to try to stand up until immediately regretting his decision. It was one of the best shows I've ever seen and made me respect the hell out of Dave Grohl. They also played a 2 1/2 + hours as well. Top 5 shows in my book.
Fortunately I haven’t had too many bad experiences yet. Just the occasional one offs where everyone is in there own world and not really into or the lead singer wants absolute perfection and every note played like it is on the record. The closest thing to a bad gig I have is this one place I play once a month that is a really expensive steakhouse. Nobody actually shows up but I do get paid and meals are free. So all in all, getting paid to eat NY strip and playing guitar is not a bad thing at all.
An ad for a 'wedding expo' caught attention from our guitarist's mom. Without going into long-winded detail something felt off... I finally relented, we paid the fee and showed up. If my gut hadn't already been there our arrival would have made things clear, but 'mom' didn't look concerned so I kept my mouth shut. Had to ask the 'expo presenters' for a flat surface for my kit. I received a 3'x3' piece of plywood to place between the ground and... part of my kit. Before the confusion had fully set in there was a buzz behind me. The wedding cake designer/baker/decorator and the photographer were informing my band mates that we had all been duped into providing music, food, photos, drinks and a monetary gift (entry fee from each vendor) for Mr. Presenter's parents' anniversary party... We packed up and left.
Here's our disaster gig. We were playing a charity gig just north of Allentown PA. At the time we were practicing at the guitar player's house. There was a girl he was dating who would occasionally be at the house. The practice before the show, there's a different girl there. So we think, oh he got a new girlfriend. Whatever. So me (bass player), drummer and singer arrive before he arrived. The previous girlfriend is at the venue asking if we have talked to him yet as she was trying to call him and he wasn't answering the phone. Now we figure out, he's working both of these girls. We see him pull into the parking lot and he has a passenger (we didn't know it was the new girlfriend at the time, but we assumed). He apparently sees the old girlfriend and doesn't even park the car. Just pulls out. Our singer, who is basically in charge and has a firey personality of her own calls him. I didn't hear the whole conversation, but I did her say "you committed to this show, so you better get your ass back here and play. I don't give a shit what is going on between you and these women, but you have a show to play." So he comes back and the old girlfriend starts screaming at him as he is setting up gear. Starts screaming at the new girlfriend. We start our set and at the stop of every song, she's screaming some comment about that cheating son of a bitch. Oh, and the guitarist paid someone to do a professional video of us. I never did get to see that video. That would have been awesome! Side note. One of my clients said he has been to your shop and said it was awesome. He had no idea you had the channel. Keep up the good work.
Love your show guys. So I was doing this DJ gig at an outdoor festival. The set was going great and the crowd was getting bigger and bigger. Two-thirds of the way through I looked down at my mixer and started really concentrating on a mix. when I look back up a few minutes later the field was empty. I was confused, thought I'd laid an egg. The crowd gradually returned and the set ended well. When I came out of the booth I asked my friend what happened part of the way through. Some dude at had too much to drink and try to do that fire breathing trick, but he spilled some of the fuel down his chest and lit his ass on fire. He had to stop drop and roll and send everybody running. He was okay but his pride was a little hurt.
Crushed my fret hand thumb at my day job with a gig that night in Atlanta. playing bass. Literally broke my thumb in 2 places, and crushed it in a manner where my nail turned black within an hour of the accident. I didn't report the incident at work, as I had to go to the gig. I took a handful of vicodans I got from a dude at work, with a handful to take later if I needed them, ""and I did need them.""" The funny part was later on at the gig, my poor thumb had swollen to about 3 times its normal size and it looked like that old 70s meme where the cartoon guy was hitchhiking with a giant thumb, and the caption was ""Keep on Truckin!!"" Luckily the vicodan had helped ease the excruciating pain to where i stumbled through the gig but everyone in the band, and a few of the crowd, took notice of my big assed thumb, and everyone in the band loved it, as they all roasted me throughout the gig! Good times!
Jonathan, as a member of the LEO community and guitar playin community thank you for playing a fundraiser for the cause. As for my story.... 2010 played an album release show for my old band that was broadcasted on our local rock radio station.... sound check was done in in drop d to correspond with most of our songs... but our first song was meant to be standard.... we forgot to tune up... but that wasn’t the worst part. We finished the set and cleared the stage and I got a message that my grandmother has passed. Worst show memory ever.
I played a marathon (the race) in Central Florida a few years ago. It was 28 degrees and I had no cold weather clothes, so I and the band were freezing and my fingers wouldn’t move. The guitar kept cutting in and out from the condensation and I got zapped when I stepped up to the mike to sing backup. Also, they had the stage facing the finish line, but they had us out playing for the two hours around the start of the race. By the time the first racers started crossing the finish line, we were done and packed up. My old singer says his only memory of the gig was singing “Feel Like Makin Love” to a bunch of 8-10 year olds who were the only ones who came over by the stage. Good times.
Not sure if it is a "nightmare" but peeps should find the Van Halen vid where Edward is out of tune for Jump (either wrong guitar or, some say, a midi-sync problem)... (edit: in Greensboro, NC, no less!!) also, any recent concert footage of Vince Neil (i.e. nightmare for band members)
There are too many to recount and I couldn't choose one in particular.... Favourites include: When our drummer accidentally suckerpunched the drummer from the headline act right before she went onstage and she had to play with blood streaming from both nostrils; The time our lead singer was so drunk he asked for a bigger mic stand because the one he was given wouldn't hold him up; Me disappearing through a hole in the stage mid-set; Snapping the headstock off my LP for the third time.....
Every day nightmare? We had a pretty popular band, and were hired to play for a happy hour. We were playing a salad set, where they had us turned down so low that we could hear silverware clinking over what we were trying to play! They loved us, but the piped in jukebox was louder than we were!
Had a gig one day at the finish line of a race. It was 94 degrees when we started at 11am. We were on a flatbed semi trailer with no cover from the sun. The gig was in an area where there are a lot of radio towers, so radio frequencies were blasting through our amps along with our guitars. Oh.....and there was a hornets nest right behind where we were set up, so we had angry hornets flying around us for the entire gig. Definitely my worst gig ever.
One of my first gigs was at an outdoor restaurant space, with myself, a pianist / singer, and a beat buddy pedal. The pianist forgot the power cable for his PA, so he had to run to a hardware store to get one. Meanwhile, for thirty minutes, I was playing alone with the beat buddy sounding horrendous through my guitar amp. I tried to sing without a microphone, but I’m not a great singer and couldn’t get loud enough… The audience ended up tipping me quite a bit, because they could tell I was trying very hard.
Worst was my old band Casual Funk Trio jamming out with a ska band. The other band encouraged fans to get onto the stage with the band and dance and we rolled with it too because it seemed like fun times all around, but someone knocked over a cymbal stand and the edge of that cymbal just cut the mic cable in half and it was the only cable we didn't have a back up of.
I am in the band that went on right after Jonathon’s band. I saw the drummer pass out. I felt horrible for him! It was so humid and hot it makes you sweat buckets!
My 2 worst were falling off stage. First one I fell off the stage onto the metal rail guard. My pedalboard slipped when I went to engage my boost and I went straight off the front of stage sandwiching my bass between me and the rail. Broke the neck in half. Had the wind knocked out of me and was sore for a few days. Second time I was having issues with my monitor doing a high pitched squel so I kicked it a few times. Monitor went off front of stage and in an attempt to regain my balance I started stumbling backwards. Fell down the side stairs pulling my pedalboard and amp head off my cab. Broke 2 ribs and got a black eye. Was able to finish out the set though with help from my bandmates who scrambled to get my rig back up and running.
My nightmare gig wasn't actually mine. I went to a show with Argent, Blue Oyster Cult and The Jeff Beck Group. I love Jeff Beck and was really excited to see them again. Beck kept us waiting almost an hour and the comes onstage with a totally different band obviously hadn't rehearsed and the lead singer was horrible. He got booed a lot so he got pissed off and walked off after a few songs. Friggin disaster.
Another funny story of going to a show was when I went to a Sisters Of Mercy concert in the 1990s. The concert was in Birmingham, UK and I had to get a train & coach to get there. The morning of the show I came down with the flu but it was a bright, sunny day & I decided to go. I spent 2 hours getting there and when the band came on they decided to cover Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb. So I'm standing there; surrounded by 10,000 goths, the air filled with smoke & patchouli, my nose streaming, my eyes streaming...Out walks the singer in a giant cloud of dry ice & growls, "Hello, is there anybody in there?....." I really could've thought of a few answers to that.
Ok, this is a stretch because it's about theatre but, that's a gig. I was doing lighting for a student production of Hamlet; at the start of the climactic duel scene the two leads clashed swords and Laertes's sword disintegrated leaving him holding nothing but the hilt. They stared at each other until Hamlet shouted something about 'Treachery!' and stabbed him. We later worked out Hamlet died without a scratch, when asked the actor playing him concluded he 'died of embarrassment'. It wasn't a lucky production; one night at the tragic conclusion when everyone's dead, the whole cast (apart from Fortinbras) got the giggles until all the 'dead' bodies were shaking with laughter. On a genuine guitar note; I was wrote the music for a Production of Peer Gynt at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. One scene involved a song, I struck up a chord on the newly strung guitar and it was completely out of tune. I just walked off the stage.
Playing a high school dance at an auditorium stage that was set up for a play the next night. They wouldn’t let us plug in going through the set for the play. We had to plug in at the front of the stage. Some A-hole kept unplugging us during the set. He thought it was funny. We didn’t
I can't remember all the details, but in the 70s, the band KANSAS had a tour with a LIGHTNING MACHINE that was added for the song LIGHTNING'S HAND. From what I understand, there were a couple of towers onstage and an electric wave would cross from one tower to the other during the song. Violinist Robby Steinhardt personally told me about the mishap, and that a jolt onstage from the arc nearly knocked him out! I believe they retired the machine that night. If I can find the interview clip I will post it. The band got a good laugh, Robby, not so much...
Had a gig in Omaha, NE that was four and a half hours away. Our bass player was having stomach pains but pressed on. We played the show. I took him back to the hotel to sleep it off. The next morning we woke up to him white as a ghost. Took him to an Urgent Care, they ambulance him to the hospital. Found out his appendix burst. Needless to say we had to leave him they for a week or two before he could come home.
Decades ago I saw Iron Butterfly at the Baltimore Civic Center. During the drum solo in In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida the drummer slowed down to a crawl & fell off his drum throne. A couple of roadies came out and and literally dragged him backstage. The keyboard player ran on stage and started the keyboard solo. A little while later the drummer came back, sat at his drums and resumed his solo where he left off.
Funniest disaster I ever saw at a gig was my first gig! October 1981 I went to see Saxon. The band came on, with lights, dry ice & flash bombs, Wow! then the PA died. 10 seconds into the 1st song. credit to the band & the roadies, they fixed the problem, came back 30 minutes later & did the full show. Brilliant!
I have a great one. I was going to Penn State University in Harrisburg back in 1986 and we had Atlantic recording artist Kix, who were signed to Atlantic major recording heavy metal band performing for our Spring Fling. Only problem was, not many of the kids there showed up for the show. After the first set, the roadies and management demanded the rest of their money and they didn’t go out and play the rest of the show. I asked the student government president why he paid them. I said they were going to kick his ass. I told him I would have taken an ass whipping before I paid them. Their ego was exponentially bigger than their audience.
First gig with a band I was in. First song of the set. Completely forgot all the lyrics, (singer obviously). The band hung tight thought and played thru the whole song. Luckily we were doing original stuff and only a couple of friends had actually heard the songs. What makes it so bad is we had been practicing 1-3 days a week for a year and I just went blank. I did make up for it a bit later when in the middle of another song the mic went out, but I never stopped singing. So I guess that one was a 50/50
Once played a pub gig deep in the Welsh valleys. Only 3 people turned up and suddenly towards the end those 3 people all started fighting each other. We were playing a cover of Radiohead’s Creep at the time. It was very surreal to say the least!
I had a band called Redbeard’s Revenge once. We played very raunchy garage metal. For some reason, a festival called SOAK (think mini burning man) contacted us via MySpace and asked us to play their festival. We would get free admission, that’s all. So…long story short, we couldn’t find the lights for the stage, there was no sound person, and we forgot all of our own songs…cause…festival party favors. I think we played for like 15 minutes. Later, during the burn, we were standing in a crowd and I overheard a conversation about our ‘performance’ and it went: ‘oh how was it?’ ‘…..disruptive at best’ We changed our MySpace tag line to: Redbeard’s Revenge: Disruptive, at best. 😂
Final one I have to mention. This is a little embarrassing. It was the last week of school before Christmas 1982 and on the Monday a friend of mine had let me sleep over so I could go to a Michael Shenker concert with everyone else. I returned the complement on the Friday. We got back from school, no homework for the holidays, and decided to try our luck at the local shop, to see if we could get some alcohol. we got 6 cans of cider & 6 cans of Guinness (not bad for two 14 year olds!) anyway we smuggled the drinks into the car & my mother drove us to the show (which was in North Wales) to watch Whitesnake. As we arrived and smuggled two carrier bags of drink out of the car, it started snowing. The queue started at the door, went all the way round a children's playground and back to the door to get in. Then we realized they wouldn't let us in the venue with cans. It was getting cold so we decided to start drinking. Half way round the playground the snow was over my ankles, by the time we got to the door all the cans were drunk and the snow was round my knees. I think we were the only two smiling people going in there that night. Until I got inside. I'd only been to the place once before (which I'd forgotten) and only when I got in there I found it was a converted ice rink. I say converted, they'd put a big carpet over the ice with a stage at one end. I've never seen a more lively audience. Yes, Whitesnake were great but most people were leaping about trying to keep warm. At the end of the show I staggered out, drunk & knackered, to find myself wading through pools of water at the sides where the ice had melted. stepping outside of the doors was like stepping into the Artic. I don't know whether my mom could smell the drink on us, or just assumed it was from others inside the venue, but I never drank before a gig again!
I *love* the Nirvana performance on ToTP where Cobain basically ruins live playing on ToTP for the rest of forever by making up lyrics on the spot and later saying he wanted to sound like Morrissey. My band avoided all the bar scene, which is where a lot of the badness happens (especially for a girl group), but we covered for a pre-wedding party one night. We were a Sweet cover band who also did surf gigs, and a punk guy crashes the party demanding to hear Holiday in Cambodia. Totally not our thing, but to shut the guy up, we played it…as a surf instrumental, with the rhythm player playing lead and the lead playing the vocal line. (Also a relative latecomer to QotSA.)
I couldn't help but notice that each of the nightmares described in this video originated in behaviors that ranged from merely questionable to idiotic.
My band in college drove 3 hours to a bar gig. As we were unloading, the drummer's high school girlfriend announced that she had to go home to meet curfew...We never even made it into the bar. The band broke up shortly after.
Worst gig ever, I was playing keyboards on someone elses rig with a computer and some backing (drums and extra synth lines running) attached to the computer and we didnt have time for me to learn the new midi controller I was using. We were opening for the front mans favorite all time band in a sold out theater… Third song I go to do an effect sweep and that knob was incorrectly mapped to a super intense filter that faded all of the backing track out, but that made no sense so we reset, started again, it happened again… we swapped the computer and the set list was different so we ended up playing the second song again again but I refused to touch anything but the white and black keys for the rest of the set… I have never wanted a gig to be over more in my life! The band we were opening for was amazing though and were super kind to me about it, but I was so horrified in the moment. Its almost funny now… :)
Our top 40 band played a high school prom in a gymnasium and right in the middle of my Terry Kath solo on 25 or 6 to 4 the drummer's crash cymbal fell over, cut my coil cord in half and buried itself a half inch into the wood floor. Wait...that might have been the best gig, not the worst. We all had a good laugh while I hunted up a replacement patch cable.
I saw that Foo Fighters tour when Dave was still in the Guitar Throne....I thought "Oh No...this is not what I was hoping to see!" I was expecting a half-a$$ Foo show....but Dave being Dave, didn't hold back....he was more active in that throne than 90% of guys who are fully mobile. I became a fan for life.
I had a buddy in a touring band go the a club in Jersey. They told him to watch out for the sprinkler above the right of the stage if they are jumping around. In the heat of the show he swings his guitar... the head of the guitar knocks the sprinkler head off and all hell breaks loose. The fire alarm goes off and water starts flooding the stage. Everyone had to evacuate and the night was canceled. They actually were invited back to this club a year later and played for free lol.
I had one where two of the 4 of us (bass player and drummer) went to get a “forgotten” piece of the drum kit 5 minutes till go time. An hour later we called up two others in the crowd (we knew) to play the first set, with the others guys instruments. It was not good when those two came back as that first set was wrapping up 😳✌️
In high school we had several personal go thru our band. We got a prom gig in a nearby state and we came up with the name Hot Beans. Well into the gig, we were jamin pretty heavy and i broke a G string, and i looked to my left at the keys guy, and he was dancing around and there was a can of pork and beans he had brought and set on the keyboard. He had it in his hand and was dancing around all excited, and he threw it at the wall, and the stage was about 4 ft up, so where it hit was about 10 to 12 ft up and it bounced off the wall and landed on some poor girls toe and broke her toe.
I can never own a Fender Jaguar. Borrowed one once for a gig, hit the wrong switch just before my main solo, went complete John Cage 4’11” for sixteen bars. Then, proceeded to waste 5 minutes trying to figure out which patch cable was dead before I realised it was the guitar 😳
i got some nightmares for ya... Big venue in Detroit, get there and the PA doesnt work, took all day for out P/M and FOH to fix it. DC: had the mid show intermission, come back and someone wiped out the whole show on the monitor board, all our jazz cats use wedges...that was fun for the 1st couple songs heh 1st tour: lost the stupid power supply to the digitech RSD1000 in san fransisco. I had runners runnin all day looking for one. called the digitech rep, tried like 5 diff adapters, finally found a generic multi tip multi voltage power supply about an hr before soundcheck and didnt get fired ha. almost took the whole show down in Sacramento since all the guitarists sounds for the show were in there.
At a jam session/open mike, just as the bar was to close a tremendous thunderstorm broke out & water started pouring in under the doors. Luckily my amp was on the raised stage & all got out unscathed, wading through almost knee high water.
I was 20 years old, playing tenor saxophone and lead vocals in a swing revival band. (We had formed as a ska band, but ska went away, and neo-swing popped big, so we just rode the wave.) The horn lines were easy and singing is not very demanding (or at least, it wasn't for 20-year-old me) so I just got absolutely SHITTY at shows. So one night, we were playing at the bar of a Holiday Inn on the highway outside of town (SUPER classy), and I ended up drunkenly dropping my saxophone. It bent a couple of the keys, which, if you don't know, is a time-consuming repair job that cannot be handled during a gig. I finished the gig with the horn hanging around my neck, kinda like how Bret Michaels used to sling one of those shitty acoustic-thinline guitars over his back in videos, but never actually played it. It was rough.
There are a few but the one that jumps to the front for me right now was when my band was playing a dancehall / dinner venue in a small town called Whitney, Texas. Some gal got too drunk too fast and was asked to leave. Well, she did and then she called the TABC (the Texas Bar Police) and said they were over serving and well, the joint got raided during our second set. We had to keep playing while the cops were handing out sobriety tests and arresting folks both in the venue and parking lot. I remember calling the end of the set to hopefully let things chill out and this big ol bubba cop who really liked his job asked if we would keep playing "them old outlaw songs about drinking and getting stoned" while they finished up their raid as music playing usually kept folks in a more relaxed state.... Another that comes to mind is not so much of a nightmare as it is a laugh. We were playing a show at a Bandido establishment outside of Houston back in 97 or 98 where they parked their bikes on the dance floor, now this was back in my rock n roll days and we were playing Sin City and they were jamming so hard that they felt teh need to firre up their bikes and kinda throttle along with the song.... well... the pipes were pointed at us on the stage.... after we finished the song we had to break for almost an hour to recover from being deaf and choking on motorcycle exhaust.... Ahh the good ol days....
I played at an elks club in riverton wyoming in 1995 when I was 14. We did oldies. Clapton, ccr, santana, stuff like that. The crowd of about 300 instantly lined up in front of the stage. They all, one after another, asked us if we knew any country. We did not. By the time we were just a couple song into our first set of 4, they had all but one, left the hall for the bar room, and to add insult to injury, they cranked the jukebox and shut the doors to drown us out. That one guy stayed for the first couple sets and eventually left. We played the whole gig and got paid. Also I dropped my piano and broke a G key before we ever even got set up. We played a gig for one person, and even he eventually abandoned us. I was traumatized, I never really gigged again. A couple here and there, but ever since then I haven't been interested in pleasing a crowd. Besides, how could I play live in my current band, when I'm the singer, the guitarist, the bassist, the drummer, the keyboard player, AND the sound guy?
I saw The Giraffes in NYC a couple of years ago. They were indeed awesome. Not as awesome as flame to the floor awesome. But still, put on a great show. I think they are still around
I was on the stage crew of a mid-sized venue in the late 70's. One night we had a big name band come in and they blew out the stage power during the sound check. We had to scramble for 2 hours trying to get power restored with a restless audience waiting. The band was pretty mellowed out though.
Worst Gig: the Sound guy doesn't have any cables to run our sound, he was stoned and he spent the entire time hitting on our lead singer. We went on 40 minutes late and all the people who came out to see us play left 20 minutes earlier.
I opened for a band called Mushroom Head in the early 2000’s. We played our set and when we finished the audience was silent, staring at us with their arms crossed. The sound guy told us to get the F@$& off the stage, and so we did…
Okay ~ Perhaps, Worst-Moment + Best (fortunate) Save!, but related (an idea for a another episode?). Let's take trip in the Waaay-back machine...to '87 or so. Playing a punk-rock/Frat party in a park pavilion in LaCrosse, WI. I was playin' the lead on the surf-punk classic Pipeline + due to a wet-t-shirt contest just prior to our 2nd set (Yes, this was a thing back then!), the polished + slick concrete slab on which we were playing on became a great body-surfing surface (yes imagine that!). Well, a large fella named Rambo (my bandmate's buddy) took the legs from underneath me slidin' across the floor mid-song - with my hittin' the pavement right on the strat's whammy bar (brrrr'nnngong)....Meanwhile drums + bass are still goin' Budddaaa, Buddaaa, Budddaaa, Buddaaa ~ not miss'n a beat. Rambo helped me up and we finished the song ( a bit out of tune) + a set in stride...
Old buddy of mine was backstage with the stones and smoked some rock star green and apparently it may have creeped up a bit too much and ended up falling off the stairs with mick laughing his ass off. End story 😂
I pissed myself on stage while on mushrooms once. I didn't notice, but pretty sure everyone else did. Not a disaster, but it did take our band (all of us were shrooming btw) about 15 minutes to figure how to turn on our amps, and plug our cables in.
I’ve been electrocuted, had lacerations that required several stitches, close encounters with large amounts of open flame… One time in Arizona, a whole broke through the stage and I nearly broke my leg. But the best one ever was when the venue we were playing had some type of sexy lady contest and a gaggle of half nude dames nearly knocked all of my gear over. Good times and good memories… Wouldn’t change a thing.🤠
8pm start time in a small club, we're just about to start, and the entire place goes dark at 7:59 pm, someone goes to the breaker box and turns the electricity back on.
I feel lucky. Bad gigs for me has been going on last to play for tables and chairs when the bar was packed a hour ago. All things considered I guess I'm doing okay.
I believe it was the late 80s. I was talked into going to a Night Ranger venue in Tampa. I think they only had one hit. It was called Motering. You know, what's your price for life. I hated that song because the radio was playing it non stop. Well l sit thru the concert then they started to play it and the power blew.lol. But they continue to play, no electricity. Then they disappeared into the night like a ranger.lol. It was horrified.
When I was a kid and in a rock band we opened for a local band that was popular. I was the drummer. We were told we had to use the band's PA, amps, and drums. We get there and I find out the drummer is left-handed! FAIL! I was basically a metronome at that point not much in the way of fills.
I was playing a 2000 people venue, headliners for a festival. Our record company were there to record our set for a live release. I was only playing for the 2nd half of the set. Wasn’t feeling great, turned out I had bronchitis but didn’t know it … drank quite a lot of strong codeine based cough meds and then just a single Jack Daniels. Cue my big walk on and the song breaks down for my guitar part … I played like a god, well, until i looked at the rest of the band at the end of the song … I was so out of it I had played everything exactly 1/2 a bar behind the song. No live album … oops.
played my high school homecoming dance back in the 60's, the year after Bob Segar had played it. Had an older pair of Lanlubber bell bottoms a friend had tapered second skin tight in one of her classes especially for the event. Well we were playing Why Don't We Do It in the Road by The Beatles (poorly probably LOL) and as the solo I was playing was ending I did a rolling somersault and kicked my legs apart to jump up.....riiiiiiiiip went the crotch seam and my junk fell out. The girl that did the 'tailoring' ran up and wrapped her sweater around my waist and we finished the song. The teacher that had hired us was right in front of me when it happened, doing a Picard face palm and looking through his fingers as I had jumped up. I was almost thrown out of school for that incident. Did get a few dates out of it afterwards.
Actual quote from a bartender, “This is great, we get to go home at closing time. Usually this place is packed until 2 am.” Gee, good thing we suck, huh?
My best horror stories are from my twenties. I played a local college and the drummers mate brought a smoke machine. He was so stoned he flooded the stage with smoke to such a point that no one could see us. I couldn’t see my pedalboard. So I stopped playing, put my guitar down and then chased him around the stage. There is footage somewhere of me fighting him to turn it off.
Another one was the disagreement over fees when we played a rough English bikers bar. They refused to pay the agreed fee. I noticed the room we played was full of very expensive period windows. As all our gear was flightcased. I threatened to throw the backline out of the windows if they didn’t pay us. We were given our fee in full and told to get the f*** out. I’ve never been so scared in my life. Proud I stood my ground though.
Nightmare gig abbreviated:
Acoustic duo doing well and I announce just before a break that we have a website and play many local venues(none were named) if folks are interested in seeing us soon. A lady (very drunk) comes up and starts fussing about mentioning our website and Facebook page. I try to politely get her to go away and finally the guitarist says "hey lady, SHEW!) To which she surprisingly responds (You're FiRED!) Loud enough for the whole place to notice and I said "Who the hell are you?" (We only met her husband...the 1/2 owner) People in the crowd paid us to finish the night at their house and a bunch of people from the gig went. I have some mean friends that made the owners pay our full fee while we were packing up gear. It was good to get fired from that place. Anywhere the owners get wasted is bad news. Lots of those loser places around Cincinnati. Lol
We’ve all played those gigs to no one. One that’s funny to me happened a few months ago. A woman was drunk and asked us to play a song from the band Clutch. We told her we didn’t know any Clutch. So she went and found a rock, wrote “Clutch” on the rock with a sharpie and held it in my face for the next few songs in a threatening manner. Pretty sweet.
Was messing around before a show in Hollywood...I was in an alley and I had decided to climb up an old fire escape to the top of a 2 story building. I used a different fire escape to get down...and it was broken. I fell for an eternity and I had the time to decide I would land on my feet and take the hit there. I was wearing an old pair of vans. When I hit; I broke both my feet. I played the show in a chair and I recall the singer was pissed at me. After the show and the hospital; I took full advantage of all the hospitality from all the ladies coming by apartment to bring me food and fun. I would have never realized all those girls liked me, if I hadn't been stupid on a rooftop before the show.
I can't wait for the podcast. I would love to hear you guys be able to delve into uncensored topics like this.
I have one nightmare, and one funny story, so this will be long. In 1985 my band the Prevaricators was opening for the Cherry Bombs that was the band of ex Clash drummer Terry. We soundchecked, left the amps, and drums at CBGBs and went to our friends art co-op in Williamsburg. We parked not 100 feet from his building, under the bridge, and had someone check the van after 5 minutes. EVERYTHING, including the stereo was gone, and we rented instruments to play our worst gig ever!
Now the funny!
In the days before Grunge hit big, I was in a band called Hangman.. We started in 88, or 89, and were way ahead of our time, selling out shows regionally 2 to 3 times a week. I was very much of the Townshend school of attitude, and would lose my mind near the meat at the end of the set. During a 3 part song, "Ring around the Warheads Stuka, Ring reprise, I would sometimes start banging my guitar against the stage, wall, band members, and had replaced the neck twice. We started, got through Stuka, and in the reprise I banged it against a brick wall, and the headstock snapped in half, which made me even crazier, so I dropkicked it into a PACKED audience. A young lady I knew would have had a broken face had she not put up her arm, which did break! She thought, "It was cool", when I apologized days later, but the funny part was 1 1/2 of our best songs left, and I toss the guitar, which ended up behind the 20 ft deep stage riser, and when I pulled it out, I realized that the Floyd Rose equipped guitar was still in tune!! I screamed in anger that I didn't finish the set, then we all laughed for hours. Two days later it was repaired, and we we're opening two shows for the Chili Peppers right between Mother's Milk, and Blood Sugar Sex Magic. 1 show was outside at VCU, with around 3000 folks, and one that night at a club called The Metro. We were close to a deal with A&M when the drummer, who was a painting and printmaking major quit because a contract would cut his true love of painting down. The second biggest disappointment of my life.
Sorry, but I needed to give the full stories. Thanks for what you do. And Jonathan, could you catch Baxter in his sleep, and cut his Robert Smith Doo? Hahaha
Peace & Love Keith in RVA
Drummer bailed on gig on the day of. We decided to do an "acoustic" set but we all had electrics. No sound guy, I had to do sound for our band via a 4x4 Behringer mixer. Dive bar where patrons are smoking so much weed it's hard to see. Launch into first song, sounds absolutely like shit. We never sounded worse before or after. I'm like "well, at least no one i know is here to see this shitshow." After finishing the first song, all my coworkers walk in. Had to play for another 30 minutes. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this occasionally lol
I was playing bass at a show in Anchorage, Alaska, when the Ampeg SVT stack behind me started shooting flames out from the back of the head. A club employee ran up with a towel to try to put it out, and the towel caught on fire as well. He tossed the towel away and it landed on the drummer, who started beating it with his sticks. BION-a few minutes later, after finding a new bass amp, the show started again.
A guy vomited on my guitar. Only had one guitar. Played the vomit guitar...
Mixed up my volume pedal with my wah pedal playing at a buddy’s barn party once. No applause after that solo! 🎸
volume swells are far cooler than wah
@@balibuoy1625 They can be… if that is what you were planning on performing, but if it just sounds like your amp/ guitar is just cutting in and out because you think you’re working a wah pedal then… not so much. 🎸
We played a party that had a pig roast and when we got there at noon to set up we see them spitting a pig over a pile of logs. I says to the host that pig looks mighty pink how long did you cook it yesterday. He says it only takes two hours to cook it. So I tell my bandmates don’t touch the pork. So as we’re playing in this wide lawn sweeping down to the river i’ll never forget the sight of 60-people doubled over puking their guts out. I says, you know this is better than a standing ovation…
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Just saw this! Love it. You guys are too kind. That was funny - even put my pictures in the video ahahahahaha...
Not a nightmare as much as completely falling on deaf ears. (Not literally)
We played a jazz gig, for a 50th class reunion, for a Christian school.
Well, guess who really didn't listen to jazz and in fact thought it to be the devil's music...just EVERYONE IN THAT ROOM.
Played a poorly organized festival in north-central Washington. The stage was built out of overturned apple crates and plywood, with 4×4 posts rigged up haphazardly, all out in the middle of a cow pasture.
Our band had an early morning slot. About halfway through our set, the dew began to settle across the field, which ended up affecting my effects pedals, one by one. Quick thinking, I unplugged and plugged in cables on the fly to keep the show going, finally ending up going straight into the amp for the last song.
Only in retrospect did I figure out what happened. Once the pedals dried out, they worked just fine.
Was in a stonesy type band 30ish years ago. Got booked for a 50th birthday party. Great, as audience the right age to muck in. Turns out it was a 50th wedding anniversary, everyone there was 80+. Never seen so many confused old people in my life
Great topic! . While loading in at a gig, the road case that held my Roland GP-8 and a solid state Pearce amp that I relied on for all my presets for the entire set took a tumble and nothing worked! Since then I’ve simplified- wah pedal, TS-9, low watt Vox and a cable. Learned my lesson- Keep it simple stupid!
Worst Gig ever. Our cover bands/acts get hired for a lot of Private Parties. Some young 20-something Party planner with the company wanted a "nostalgic" 90's themed holiday party. Everything was on par to be awesome. We were ready to rock. We get there to setup the stage and everything and find out this is like a funeral Insurance company. At downbeat we see there's 4 people out of 100 that are younger than 50 - and we sank like a brick. We played our normal hearts out - and had nothing but crickets. No one cared. The singer put his beer on my Orange Rockerverb about 15 songs in and spilled it. - Amp fried. (well-fuse..really). The only applause we got was when we said we couldn't play anymore, and we just put on an iPod for the rest of the night for them to dance. Woof.
We were playing the finals of a battle of the bands, probably my tenth gig in my life, and the bass rig goes down. I was told to play a guitar solo to entertain the crowd, and they booed and screamed “get off the stage”. It sucked.
Playing an outdoor show on the river in 100 degree heat with a lot of bugs. One flew in my ear early in the set and I tried to get it out until we were done. Had to use tweezers. That really sucked.
An acquaintance of mine came to our show. She's normally really quiet and friendly. She was TANKED. Hassling my family, hanging on people and screaming, running up on stage and hitting the cymbals. The sound guy had to yell at her multiple times.
They wouldn't kick her out though. I was the only one who kind of knew her and I asked to have her kicked because she was fucking up everybody's performances.
My worst? The gig that never was. My drummer took a booking for a gig at Birmingham civic hall - great. Birmingham wasn't far from where we were then based and the civic a good place. It wasn't until we turned up for the gig that we realised he'd taken a booking in Birmingham Alabama, not Birmingham UK.
drummers ey haha
I was at a Foo Fighters show in October of 2015 after he broke his leg, and from a freaking throne that moved backwards and forwards he rocked the hell out of it!! There were quite a few times when he was so into the jam that he would start to try to stand up until immediately regretting his decision. It was one of the best shows I've ever seen and made me respect the hell out of Dave Grohl. They also played a 2 1/2 + hours as well. Top 5 shows in my book.
Fortunately I haven’t had too many bad experiences yet. Just the occasional one offs where everyone is in there own world and not really into or the lead singer wants absolute perfection and every note played like it is on the record. The closest thing to a bad gig I have is this one place I play once a month that is a really expensive steakhouse. Nobody actually shows up but I do get paid and meals are free. So all in all, getting paid to eat NY strip and playing guitar is not a bad thing at all.
An ad for a 'wedding expo' caught attention from our guitarist's mom. Without going into long-winded detail something felt off... I finally relented, we paid the fee and showed up. If my gut hadn't already been there our arrival would have made things clear, but 'mom' didn't look concerned so I kept my mouth shut. Had to ask the 'expo presenters' for a flat surface for my kit. I received a 3'x3' piece of plywood to place between the ground and... part of my kit. Before the confusion had fully set in there was a buzz behind me. The wedding cake designer/baker/decorator and the photographer were informing my band mates that we had all been duped into providing music, food, photos, drinks and a monetary gift (entry fee from each vendor) for Mr. Presenter's parents' anniversary party... We packed up and left.
Here's our disaster gig. We were playing a charity gig just north of Allentown PA. At the time we were practicing at the guitar player's house. There was a girl he was dating who would occasionally be at the house. The practice before the show, there's a different girl there. So we think, oh he got a new girlfriend. Whatever. So me (bass player), drummer and singer arrive before he arrived. The previous girlfriend is at the venue asking if we have talked to him yet as she was trying to call him and he wasn't answering the phone. Now we figure out, he's working both of these girls. We see him pull into the parking lot and he has a passenger (we didn't know it was the new girlfriend at the time, but we assumed). He apparently sees the old girlfriend and doesn't even park the car. Just pulls out. Our singer, who is basically in charge and has a firey personality of her own calls him. I didn't hear the whole conversation, but I did her say "you committed to this show, so you better get your ass back here and play. I don't give a shit what is going on between you and these women, but you have a show to play." So he comes back and the old girlfriend starts screaming at him as he is setting up gear. Starts screaming at the new girlfriend. We start our set and at the stop of every song, she's screaming some comment about that cheating son of a bitch. Oh, and the guitarist paid someone to do a professional video of us. I never did get to see that video. That would have been awesome!
Side note. One of my clients said he has been to your shop and said it was awesome. He had no idea you had the channel. Keep up the good work.
Love your show guys.
So I was doing this DJ gig at an outdoor festival. The set was going great and the crowd was getting bigger and bigger. Two-thirds of the way through I looked down at my mixer and started really concentrating on a mix. when I look back up a few minutes later the field was empty. I was confused, thought I'd laid an egg. The crowd gradually returned and the set ended well.
When I came out of the booth I asked my friend what happened part of the way through. Some dude at had too much to drink and try to do that fire breathing trick, but he spilled some of the fuel down his chest and lit his ass on fire. He had to stop drop and roll and send everybody running. He was okay but his pride was a little hurt.
Crushed my fret hand thumb at my day job with a gig that night in Atlanta. playing bass. Literally broke my thumb in 2 places, and crushed it in a manner where my nail turned black within an hour of the accident. I didn't report the incident at work, as I had to go to the gig. I took a handful of vicodans I got from a dude at work, with a handful to take later if I needed them, ""and I did need them.""" The funny part was later on at the gig, my poor thumb had swollen to about 3 times its normal size and it looked like that old 70s meme where the cartoon guy was hitchhiking with a giant thumb, and the caption was ""Keep on Truckin!!"" Luckily the vicodan had helped ease the excruciating pain to where i stumbled through the gig but everyone in the band, and a few of the crowd, took notice of my big assed thumb, and everyone in the band loved it, as they all roasted me throughout the gig! Good times!
Jonathan, as a member of the LEO community and guitar playin community thank you for playing a fundraiser for the cause. As for my story.... 2010 played an album release show for my old band that was broadcasted on our local rock radio station.... sound check was done in in drop d to correspond with most of our songs... but our first song was meant to be standard.... we forgot to tune up... but that wasn’t the worst part. We finished the set and cleared the stage and I got a message that my grandmother has passed. Worst show memory ever.
Baxter: "I'm an idiot. I can't do anything..."
Jonathan: "That's true."
I played a marathon (the race) in Central Florida a few years ago. It was 28 degrees and I had no cold weather clothes, so I and the band were freezing and my fingers wouldn’t move. The guitar kept cutting in and out from the condensation and I got zapped when I stepped up to the mike to sing backup. Also, they had the stage facing the finish line, but they had us out playing for the two hours around the start of the race. By the time the first racers started crossing the finish line, we were done and packed up. My old singer says his only memory of the gig was singing “Feel Like Makin Love” to a bunch of 8-10 year olds who were the only ones who came over by the stage. Good times.
Not sure if it is a "nightmare" but peeps should find the Van Halen vid where Edward is out of tune for Jump (either wrong guitar or, some say, a midi-sync problem)... (edit: in Greensboro, NC, no less!!)
also, any recent concert footage of Vince Neil (i.e. nightmare for band members)
Guitar player, hands in pockets, leaning his eye socket against the mic for balance, 3 beer in.
There are too many to recount and I couldn't choose one in particular....
Favourites include:
When our drummer accidentally suckerpunched the drummer from the headline act right before she went onstage and she had to play with blood streaming from both nostrils;
The time our lead singer was so drunk he asked for a bigger mic stand because the one he was given wouldn't hold him up;
Me disappearing through a hole in the stage mid-set;
Snapping the headstock off my LP for the third time.....
Sometimes Baxter talks about guitars. :)
Every day nightmare? We had a pretty popular band, and were hired to play for a happy hour. We were playing a salad set, where they had us turned down so low that we could hear silverware clinking over what we were trying to play! They loved us, but the piped in jukebox was louder than we were!
Damn, how can you sleep on Queens and the first Foo records?
Check out Them Crooked Vultures.
Can’t forget Probot. Probably the best of Dave’s side projects. Still plat it once a week or so.
I go arse over elbow when tripping over the monitor, knock over my pint, stand up and looks like I've peed myself
Saw peaches in Manchester UK and she could rock a pretty big place with a soundblaster and a mic! you gotta respect that
Had a gig one day at the finish line of a race. It was 94 degrees when we started at 11am. We were on a flatbed semi trailer with no cover from the sun. The gig was in an area where there are a lot of radio towers, so radio frequencies were blasting through our amps along with our guitars. Oh.....and there was a hornets nest right behind where we were set up, so we had angry hornets flying around us for the entire gig. Definitely my worst gig ever.
One of my first gigs was at an outdoor restaurant space, with myself, a pianist / singer, and a beat buddy pedal. The pianist forgot the power cable for his PA, so he had to run to a hardware store to get one. Meanwhile, for thirty minutes, I was playing alone with the beat buddy sounding horrendous through my guitar amp. I tried to sing without a microphone, but I’m not a great singer and couldn’t get loud enough…
The audience ended up tipping me quite a bit, because they could tell I was trying very hard.
Playing a Valentines day gig and a dude dancing by himself fell into and out of the emergency door exit causing the fire alarm to go off .
Worst was my old band Casual Funk Trio jamming out with a ska band. The other band encouraged fans to get onto the stage with the band and dance and we rolled with it too because it seemed like fun times all around, but someone knocked over a cymbal stand and the edge of that cymbal just cut the mic cable in half and it was the only cable we didn't have a back up of.
I am in the band that went on right after Jonathon’s band. I saw the drummer pass out. I felt horrible for him! It was so humid and hot it makes you sweat buckets!
My 2 worst were falling off stage. First one I fell off the stage onto the metal rail guard. My pedalboard slipped when I went to engage my boost and I went straight off the front of stage sandwiching my bass between me and the rail. Broke the neck in half. Had the wind knocked out of me and was sore for a few days.
Second time I was having issues with my monitor doing a high pitched squel so I kicked it a few times. Monitor went off front of stage and in an attempt to regain my balance I started stumbling backwards. Fell down the side stairs pulling my pedalboard and amp head off my cab. Broke 2 ribs and got a black eye. Was able to finish out the set though with help from my bandmates who scrambled to get my rig back up and running.
My nightmare gig wasn't actually mine. I went to a show with Argent, Blue Oyster Cult and The Jeff Beck Group. I love Jeff Beck and was really excited to see them again. Beck kept us waiting almost an hour and the comes onstage with a totally different band obviously hadn't rehearsed and the lead singer was horrible. He got booed a lot so he got pissed off and walked off after a few songs. Friggin disaster.
Looks like you’re getting closer to the big 30k!
Another funny story of going to a show was when I went to a Sisters Of Mercy concert in the 1990s. The concert was in Birmingham, UK and I had to get a train & coach to get there. The morning of the show I came down with the flu but it was a bright, sunny day & I decided to go. I spent 2 hours getting there and when the band came on they decided to cover Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb. So I'm standing there; surrounded by 10,000 goths, the air filled with smoke & patchouli, my nose streaming, my eyes streaming...Out walks the singer in a giant cloud of dry ice & growls, "Hello, is there anybody in there?....." I really could've thought of a few answers to that.
I can't think of too many phrases funnier than "the bassist had pee pants."
Where can I find the podcast y'all keep talking about?
Ok, this is a stretch because it's about theatre but, that's a gig. I was doing lighting for a student production of Hamlet; at the start of the climactic duel scene the two leads clashed swords and Laertes's sword disintegrated leaving him holding nothing but the hilt. They stared at each other until Hamlet shouted something about 'Treachery!' and stabbed him. We later worked out Hamlet died without a scratch, when asked the actor playing him concluded he 'died of embarrassment'.
It wasn't a lucky production; one night at the tragic conclusion when everyone's dead, the whole cast (apart from Fortinbras) got the giggles until all the 'dead' bodies were shaking with laughter.
On a genuine guitar note; I was wrote the music for a Production of Peer Gynt at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. One scene involved a song, I struck up a chord on the newly strung guitar and it was completely out of tune. I just walked off the stage.
Playing a high school dance at an auditorium stage that was set up for a play the next night. They wouldn’t let us plug in going through the set for the play. We had to plug in at the front of the stage. Some A-hole kept unplugging us during the set. He thought it was funny. We didn’t
I can't remember all the details, but in the 70s, the band KANSAS had a tour with a LIGHTNING MACHINE that was added for the song LIGHTNING'S HAND. From what I understand, there were a couple of towers onstage and an electric wave would cross from one tower to the other during the song. Violinist Robby Steinhardt personally told me about the mishap, and that a jolt onstage from the arc nearly knocked him out! I believe they retired the machine that night. If I can find the interview clip I will post it. The band got a good laugh, Robby, not so much...
Had a gig in Omaha, NE that was four and a half hours away. Our bass player was having stomach pains but pressed on. We played the show. I took him back to the hotel to sleep it off. The next morning we woke up to him white as a ghost. Took him to an Urgent Care, they ambulance him to the hospital. Found out his appendix burst. Needless to say we had to leave him they for a week or two before he could come home.
Where can we find the podcast? What's it called?
Decades ago I saw Iron Butterfly at the Baltimore Civic Center. During the drum solo in In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida the drummer slowed down to a crawl & fell off his drum throne. A couple of roadies came out and and literally dragged him backstage. The keyboard player ran on stage and started the keyboard solo. A little while later the drummer came back, sat at his drums and resumed his solo where he left off.
Funniest disaster I ever saw at a gig was my first gig! October 1981 I went to see Saxon. The band came on, with lights, dry ice & flash bombs, Wow! then the PA died. 10 seconds into the 1st song. credit to the band & the roadies, they fixed the problem, came back 30 minutes later & did the full show. Brilliant!
I have a great one. I was going to Penn State University in Harrisburg back in 1986 and we had Atlantic recording artist Kix, who were signed to Atlantic major recording heavy metal band performing for our Spring Fling. Only problem was, not many of the kids there showed up for the show. After the first set, the roadies and management demanded the rest of their money and they didn’t go out and play the rest of the show. I asked the student government president why he paid them. I said they were going to kick his ass. I told him I would have taken an ass whipping before I paid them. Their ego was exponentially bigger than their audience.
First gig with a band I was in. First song of the set. Completely forgot all the lyrics, (singer obviously). The band hung tight thought and played thru the whole song. Luckily we were doing original stuff and only a couple of friends had actually heard the songs. What makes it so bad is we had been practicing 1-3 days a week for a year and I just went blank. I did make up for it a bit later when in the middle of another song the mic went out, but I never stopped singing. So I guess that one was a 50/50
Once played a pub gig deep in the Welsh valleys. Only 3 people turned up and suddenly towards the end those 3 people all started fighting each other. We were playing a cover of Radiohead’s Creep at the time. It was very surreal to say the least!
I had a band called Redbeard’s Revenge once. We played very raunchy garage metal. For some reason, a festival called SOAK (think mini burning man) contacted us via MySpace and asked us to play their festival. We would get free admission, that’s all. So…long story short, we couldn’t find the lights for the stage, there was no sound person, and we forgot all of our own songs…cause…festival party favors. I think we played for like 15 minutes. Later, during the burn, we were standing in a crowd and I overheard a conversation about our ‘performance’ and it went: ‘oh how was it?’
‘…..disruptive at best’
We changed our MySpace tag line to: Redbeard’s Revenge: Disruptive, at best.
😂
Final one I have to mention. This is a little embarrassing. It was the last week of school before Christmas 1982 and on the Monday a friend of mine had let me sleep over so I could go to a Michael Shenker concert with everyone else. I returned the complement on the Friday. We got back from school, no homework for the holidays, and decided to try our luck at the local shop, to see if we could get some alcohol. we got 6 cans of cider & 6 cans of Guinness (not bad for two 14 year olds!) anyway we smuggled the drinks into the car & my mother drove us to the show (which was in North Wales) to watch Whitesnake. As we arrived and smuggled two carrier bags of drink out of the car, it started snowing. The queue started at the door, went all the way round a children's playground and back to the door to get in. Then we realized they wouldn't let us in the venue with cans. It was getting cold so we decided to start drinking. Half way round the playground the snow was over my ankles, by the time we got to the door all the cans were drunk and the snow was round my knees. I think we were the only two smiling people going in there that night. Until I got inside. I'd only been to the place once before (which I'd forgotten) and only when I got in there I found it was a converted ice rink. I say converted, they'd put a big carpet over the ice with a stage at one end. I've never seen a more lively audience. Yes, Whitesnake were great but most people were leaping about trying to keep warm. At the end of the show I staggered out, drunk & knackered, to find myself wading through pools of water at the sides where the ice had melted. stepping outside of the doors was like stepping into the Artic. I don't know whether my mom could smell the drink on us, or just assumed it was from others inside the venue, but I never drank before a gig again!
I *love* the Nirvana performance on ToTP where Cobain basically ruins live playing on ToTP for the rest of forever by making up lyrics on the spot and later saying he wanted to sound like Morrissey. My band avoided all the bar scene, which is where a lot of the badness happens (especially for a girl group), but we covered for a pre-wedding party one night. We were a Sweet cover band who also did surf gigs, and a punk guy crashes the party demanding to hear Holiday in Cambodia. Totally not our thing, but to shut the guy up, we played it…as a surf instrumental, with the rhythm player playing lead and the lead playing the vocal line. (Also a relative latecomer to QotSA.)
I couldn't help but notice that each of the nightmares described in this video originated in behaviors that ranged from merely questionable to idiotic.
My band in college drove 3 hours to a bar gig. As we were unloading, the drummer's high school girlfriend announced that she had to go home to meet curfew...We never even made it into the bar. The band broke up shortly after.
Worst gig ever, I was playing keyboards on someone elses rig with a computer and some backing (drums and extra synth lines running) attached to the computer and we didnt have time for me to learn the new midi controller I was using. We were opening for the front mans favorite all time band in a sold out theater… Third song I go to do an effect sweep and that knob was incorrectly mapped to a super intense filter that faded all of the backing track out, but that made no sense so we reset, started again, it happened again… we swapped the computer and the set list was different so we ended up playing the second song again again but I refused to touch anything but the white and black keys for the rest of the set… I have never wanted a gig to be over more in my life! The band we were opening for was amazing though and were super kind to me about it, but I was so horrified in the moment. Its almost funny now… :)
Our top 40 band played a high school prom in a gymnasium and right in the middle of my Terry Kath solo on 25 or 6 to 4 the drummer's crash cymbal fell over, cut my coil cord in half and buried itself a half inch into the wood floor. Wait...that might have been the best gig, not the worst. We all had a good laugh while I hunted up a replacement patch cable.
I love the whiskey and fire story. That's awesome!!
I saw that Foo Fighters tour when Dave was still in the Guitar Throne....I thought "Oh No...this is not what I was hoping to see!" I was expecting a half-a$$ Foo show....but Dave being Dave, didn't hold back....he was more active in that throne than 90% of guys who are fully mobile. I became a fan for life.
I had a buddy in a touring band go the a club in Jersey. They told him to watch out for the sprinkler above the right of the stage if they are jumping around. In the heat of the show he swings his guitar... the head of the guitar knocks the sprinkler head off and all hell breaks loose. The fire alarm goes off and water starts flooding the stage. Everyone had to evacuate and the night was canceled. They actually were invited back to this club a year later and played for free lol.
Playing guitar on a small stage, I stepped back & fell over my amp backwards during a song.
I had one where two of the 4 of us (bass player and drummer) went to get a “forgotten” piece of the drum kit 5 minutes till go time. An hour later we called up two others in the crowd (we knew) to play the first set, with the others guys instruments. It was not good when those two came back as that first set was wrapping up 😳✌️
In high school we had several personal go thru our band. We got a prom gig in a nearby state and we came up with the name Hot Beans. Well into the gig, we were jamin pretty heavy and i broke a G string, and i looked to my left at the keys guy, and he was dancing around and there was a can of pork and beans he had brought and set on the keyboard. He had it in his hand and was dancing around all excited, and he threw it at the wall, and the stage was about 4 ft up, so where it hit was about 10 to 12 ft up and it bounced off the wall and landed on some poor girls toe and broke her toe.
I can never own a Fender Jaguar. Borrowed one once for a gig, hit the wrong switch just before my main solo, went complete John Cage 4’11” for sixteen bars. Then, proceeded to waste 5 minutes trying to figure out which patch cable was dead before I realised it was the guitar 😳
i got some nightmares for ya...
Big venue in Detroit, get there and the PA doesnt work, took all day for out P/M and FOH to fix it.
DC: had the mid show intermission, come back and someone wiped out the whole show on the monitor board, all our jazz cats use wedges...that was fun for the 1st couple songs heh
1st tour: lost the stupid power supply to the digitech RSD1000 in san fransisco. I had runners runnin all day looking for one. called the digitech rep, tried like 5 diff adapters, finally found a generic multi tip multi voltage power supply about an hr before soundcheck and didnt get fired ha. almost took the whole show down in Sacramento since all the guitarists sounds for the show were in there.
At a jam session/open mike, just as the bar was to close a tremendous thunderstorm broke out & water started pouring in under the doors. Luckily my amp was on the raised stage & all got out unscathed, wading through almost knee high water.
Learned the hard way the chord charts I had in red ink disappear in red stage lighting. In red light the white page turns entirely red. Time to panic.
Somewhere I saw Dave Grohl say that he found Krist Novoselic backstage afterwards drinking champagne with Brian May. So, you know, happy ending :)
My one paying gig A dude got shot two feet in front of me. Kind of put a damper on the second set.
I was 20 years old, playing tenor saxophone and lead vocals in a swing revival band. (We had formed as a ska band, but ska went away, and neo-swing popped big, so we just rode the wave.) The horn lines were easy and singing is not very demanding (or at least, it wasn't for 20-year-old me) so I just got absolutely SHITTY at shows. So one night, we were playing at the bar of a Holiday Inn on the highway outside of town (SUPER classy), and I ended up drunkenly dropping my saxophone. It bent a couple of the keys, which, if you don't know, is a time-consuming repair job that cannot be handled during a gig. I finished the gig with the horn hanging around my neck, kinda like how Bret Michaels used to sling one of those shitty acoustic-thinline guitars over his back in videos, but never actually played it. It was rough.
Remember when Bobby ate a Ambien and fell backwards on the stage at a Further show?
Remember when Bobby showed up at half time and the Mud Dogs won the Bourbon bowl, do ya!?
The young supervisor at work took two sleeping pills instead of vitamins right before night shift last year. Then he told everyone!! Ha ha. Poor kid.
There are a few but the one that jumps to the front for me right now was when my band was playing a dancehall / dinner venue in a small town called Whitney, Texas. Some gal got too drunk too fast and was asked to leave. Well, she did and then she called the TABC (the Texas Bar Police) and said they were over serving and well, the joint got raided during our second set. We had to keep playing while the cops were handing out sobriety tests and arresting folks both in the venue and parking lot. I remember calling the end of the set to hopefully let things chill out and this big ol bubba cop who really liked his job asked if we would keep playing "them old outlaw songs about drinking and getting stoned" while they finished up their raid as music playing usually kept folks in a more relaxed state....
Another that comes to mind is not so much of a nightmare as it is a laugh. We were playing a show at a Bandido establishment outside of Houston back in 97 or 98 where they parked their bikes on the dance floor, now this was back in my rock n roll days and we were playing Sin City and they were jamming so hard that they felt teh need to firre up their bikes and kinda throttle along with the song.... well... the pipes were pointed at us on the stage.... after we finished the song we had to break for almost an hour to recover from being deaf and choking on motorcycle exhaust....
Ahh the good ol days....
who's the guy with the bed head hair?
its great !!!
love it !
I played at an elks club in riverton wyoming in 1995 when I was 14. We did oldies. Clapton, ccr, santana, stuff like that. The crowd of about 300 instantly lined up in front of the stage. They all, one after another, asked us if we knew any country. We did not. By the time we were just a couple song into our first set of 4, they had all but one, left the hall for the bar room, and to add insult to injury, they cranked the jukebox and shut the doors to drown us out. That one guy stayed for the first couple sets and eventually left. We played the whole gig and got paid. Also I dropped my piano and broke a G key before we ever even got set up. We played a gig for one person, and even he eventually abandoned us. I was traumatized, I never really gigged again. A couple here and there, but ever since then I haven't been interested in pleasing a crowd. Besides, how could I play live in my current band, when I'm the singer, the guitarist, the bassist, the drummer, the keyboard player, AND the sound guy?
Should have just played Rawhide 100 times.
@@alanlevesque7180 We might have, but I hadn't seen The Blues Brothers yet unfortunately.
I saw The Giraffes in NYC a couple of years ago. They were indeed awesome. Not as awesome as flame to the floor awesome. But still, put on a great show. I think they are still around
I was on the stage crew of a mid-sized venue in the late 70's. One night we had a big name band come in and they blew out the stage power during the sound check. We had to scramble for 2 hours trying to get power restored with a restless audience waiting. The band was pretty mellowed out though.
Worst Gig: the Sound guy doesn't have any cables to run our sound, he was stoned and he spent the entire time hitting on our lead singer. We went on 40 minutes late and all the people who came out to see us play left 20 minutes earlier.
I opened for a band called Mushroom Head in the early 2000’s. We played our set and when we finished the audience was silent, staring at us with their arms crossed. The sound guy told us to get the F@$& off the stage, and so we did…
Okay ~ Perhaps, Worst-Moment + Best (fortunate) Save!, but related (an idea for a another episode?). Let's take trip in the Waaay-back machine...to '87 or so. Playing a punk-rock/Frat party in a park pavilion in LaCrosse, WI. I was playin' the lead on the surf-punk classic Pipeline + due to a wet-t-shirt contest just prior to our 2nd set (Yes, this was a thing back then!), the polished + slick concrete slab on which we were playing on became a great body-surfing surface (yes imagine that!). Well, a large fella named Rambo (my bandmate's buddy) took the legs from underneath me slidin' across the floor mid-song - with my hittin' the pavement right on the strat's whammy bar (brrrr'nnngong)....Meanwhile drums + bass are still goin' Budddaaa, Buddaaa, Budddaaa, Buddaaa ~ not miss'n a beat. Rambo helped me up and we finished the song ( a bit out of tune) + a set in stride...
Jumped off the stage after a set. Broke my foot. Had to finish the gig. The show must go on!
Old buddy of mine was backstage with the stones and smoked some rock star green and apparently it may have creeped up a bit too much and ended up falling off the stairs with mick laughing his ass off. End story 😂
I pissed myself on stage while on mushrooms once. I didn't notice, but pretty sure everyone else did. Not a disaster, but it did take our band (all of us were shrooming btw) about 15 minutes to figure how to turn on our amps, and plug our cables in.
I’ve been electrocuted, had lacerations that required several stitches, close encounters with large amounts of open flame… One time in Arizona, a whole broke through the stage and I nearly broke my leg. But the best one ever was when the venue we were playing had some type of sexy lady contest and a gaggle of half nude dames nearly knocked all of my gear over.
Good times and good memories… Wouldn’t change a thing.🤠
8pm start time in a small club, we're just about to start, and the entire place goes dark at 7:59 pm, someone goes to the breaker box and turns the electricity back on.
I feel lucky. Bad gigs for me has been going on last to play for tables and chairs when the bar was packed a hour ago. All things considered I guess I'm doing okay.
That's just a free practice space for the night!
I believe it was the late 80s. I was talked into going to a Night Ranger venue in Tampa. I think they only had one hit. It was called Motering. You know, what's your price for life. I hated that song because the radio was playing it non stop. Well l sit thru the concert then they started to play it and the power blew.lol. But they continue to play, no electricity. Then they disappeared into the night like a ranger.lol. It was horrified.
"Sister Christian"
@@kitano0
It's been so long, you are right. Thanks
When I was a kid and in a rock band we opened for a local band that was popular. I was the drummer. We were told we had to use the band's PA, amps, and drums. We get there and I find out the drummer is left-handed! FAIL! I was basically a metronome at that point not much in the way of fills.
There's videos on TH-cam where the band gets in physical fights onstage. Some are sad and a few are hilarious
I was playing a 2000 people venue, headliners for a festival. Our record company were there to record our set for a live release. I was only playing for the 2nd half of the set. Wasn’t feeling great, turned out I had bronchitis but didn’t know it … drank quite a lot of strong codeine based cough meds and then just a single Jack Daniels. Cue my big walk on and the song breaks down for my guitar part … I played like a god, well, until i looked at the rest of the band at the end of the song … I was so out of it I had played everything exactly 1/2 a bar behind the song. No live album … oops.
I don't like to think about it!