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Your worst gig

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Soloist:
I hear alot of "worst gig " stories from other local musicians so I was wondering what were some of yours?

Here's one of mine:
Back in  the fall of 1985 (holy shit I suddenly feel old) I was a 15 year old teenage guitar player who just moved to a new town. Didn't take me long to hook up with some fellow musicians at my new high school, form a band and start to play small gigs.  We had a handful of gigs under our belt when we signed up for a local "battle of the bands". We went on 4th out of 10 bands, and each band could play 2 songs. Song 1 we played Take these chains off by Judas Priest. I nailed the solo and going back into the chorus my guitar strap came undone and I dropped my axe. Leaving a nice size divet on the bottom corner. Picked it up and finished the song.
Song 2 was Slick black Cadillac by Quiet Riot, I broke 2 strings playing the solo but carried on. To top it all off, Our bass player was having some terrible stage fright and decided to drink some liquor and smoke a little weed prior to us going on.  By the time I finished butchering the solo his buzz kicked into overdrive and he started stumbling around the stage. He tripped over his mic cord, fell into the drum kit, knocking over a cymbal that fell down slicing the power cord for my amp in half.
Lessons learned:
1. from that point until now I install Schaller strap locks on all my guitars.
2. i haven't broken that many strings playing live, cause I change them alot more frequently than I did as a kid.
3. I won't play with someone who gets hammered prior to a show. Afterwards,  knock yourself out!
So pretty much everything that could go wrong did.
We did boot that bass player not long after that, I wonder what ever happened to that guy..........
Anyways that was my first horrible gig. Let's hear some of yours  :headbanger:

rabidgerry:
Hahaha great story man.  I have worst gigs, many of them.  However what annoys me is some of these gigs end up the crowd loving it and people saying it was really good and yet I fell like I played so shit!  That for me is hard to deal with.
Anyways one story back in our early years was when we were playing some show, our first show out of Belfast I believe and we were promised backline to use which was cool as we could never have gotten all our gear to the gig in the first place.  So we show up and the organization of the event is terrible.  First off no one is there really other than other bands, second, the back line we were promised was grossly under equipped for us.  Anyways, we started playing as we were the first band on that night, and about 4-5 songs in some guy walks in, and right the way up to where we were playing, and begins switching all the gear off, lifting it down and taking it out the side door.  We were getting ready to have a fight when someone stepped over and said "that's that guy's gear and he wasn't asked permission for anyone else to use it".  So the show ended early and the gear was takin out of the room, the so called promoter hid in a corner somewhere and didn't give us an explanation and basically the whole thing was a joke.  That being said, that fateful night we were the only band who got to play so we stole the show I guess  :lol:

Kim:

--- Quote from: Soloist on January 10, 2018, 11:32:01 AM ---I hear alot of "worst gig " stories from other local musicians so I was wondering what were some of yours?

--- End quote ---

What a great idea for a Topic! 

Man.....I can recall a lot of little things going on here and there but not really an entirely "bad" gig. 

A gig where my patch cables in the rack case decided to go bad.  No warning, just intermittent signal going and just winding me up.  There's me, literally kicking my rack case while playing in an attempt to get it to behave and finish the set.  Pretty entertaining for the crowd I suppose. 

Had a strap come off, but actually didn't drop the guitar.  Had to crouch down and play for a bit until the guitarist from the support band noticed what happened and jumped up onstage to fasten it back on for me.   :bow:  I've also done the same for others onstage.  Good to have each others' backs that way.

Tried to do a Halloween gig in 5" heels.  Guess I didn't think that one through very well; I had an absolute miserable time trying to hit the correct buttons on my midi floorboard, and my feet really hurt like hell on top of that.  Funny I made it to the show, set up, soundchecked, and hob-knobbed about the place all the way up to to showtime in those heels with no problems.  The minute we start playing onstage and then it's f*ck me.  Had to kick them off my feet halfway through the first song and they stayed off for the rest of our set. 

Someone booked us to play at a popular club (which we've played several times before with success. The owner loved us!) on the same night the city was having their annual River Festival thing.  The band playing at that Festival was this relatively unknown and somwhat obscure band that happened to go by the name "Foreigner".    ;)  Guess where everyone was that night?  Not at the club we were playing.  We played to 5 people and the club staff and the owner was hopping mad.  He blamed us for not drawing the crowd and we were like "Dude.....FOREIGNER is playing down at the f**king Riverfront! Who were we supposed to draw in?  YOU booked us for that night!"

Dante:

--- Quote from: Kim on January 10, 2018, 05:32:19 PM ---What a great idea for a Topic! 

--- End quote ---

I couldn't agree more!

Now then, how to pick the WORST gig out of all the friggin train wrecks I've been through....

* The time I broke the headstock in half on my 1983 Explorer (custom shop edition, built by Wayne Charvel, in candy-apple red, with a Kahler) Now, it's blue and worth less than a third of what it would be, had I not broken it.

* the time my MP-1 was acting up, so I brought my MP-2 instead - and it made more hum than tone when I showed up to the gig, so I used a Tube Screamer and my Crate Powerblock head for the entire 4 hours gig.
* the time my rhythm guitarist got so drunk on St. Patty's day that he fell down onstage several times....or any other time he got so drunk that he played the wrong shit and gave the rest of the band the stinkeye (as if WE were making mistakes).
* the time my out-of-touch other guitarist was so out of tune, the bass player tried several methods to shut him down during the song including; stepping on the tuner to mute the signal, unplugging the cable from the tuner, moving the mic away from his amp, and even unplugging the amp altogether....gawd
I have more, lots more...remind me again why I do this?

tomy:
Hi everybody and happy new year 2018 !

It's a good thread for me, my first gig was also the worst because it ended at ...ER ! but it's the only one !

Back in 1988 (30 years  :facepalm:), first band at school, we were a sort of "funky band" with an yngwie malmsteen fan as lead guitarist (he was unable to play rythm)
who always finished every solo with a guitar flip (even at rehearsal).it was kind of scary being aside this guy !

On gig day he forgot his strap at home so I lent him my secondary strap... an elastic one !  :poop:

As he finished his first solo he throw the guitar for flip but then the elastic strap get stuck in his armpit...it stretched a little bit
and the guitar came back right to his face... it broke his nose !here we go on our way to the ER with his parents yelling at us
'cause we were such a bad influence...and us, trying to explain the only responsible is Mr Malmsteen... it's his fault not ours !

Here is the 2 lessons I've learned ;

-no guitar flip, ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever...

-someone offering you an elastic strap is not a friend, don't trust him !


Tomy
 

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