Your Worst Gig Ever

la szum

la szum

Axe-Master
I was ruminating outside last night under the stars and recollecting the worst gig I ever played.
Everything that could go wrong did. I'll explain more in another post when I have more time to
write it up with all the gory details. It's kind of funny how bad it was when I think about it now,
even if, at the time, it was kind of harrowing. I know that it certainly stands out as the worst gig
I have ever done, and by quite a large margin.

Anyone else have a clear cut winner in the "Worst Gig Ever Sweepstakes?" :)
 
One night we played to the bartender at the bar. About half way through our set she walked out and we continued to play to no one.

Then there was a time my tube amp blew a fuse during sound check and, of course, I didn't have a backup. I had to run home 30 min each way to grab another amp. I set the amp down and the sound guy threw a mic on it and we started our set. Fun times...
 
Hard to pick a "worst" but one memorably bad one was at Angel Fire Ski Resort in northern NM. (Usually one of our favorite places to play.) I had broken my left elbow and had surgery to repair it a couple of weeks prior to the gig. My left arm was in a brace to limit the range of motion. I was in searing pain on every song. And there was virtually no audience, because it was snowing heavily and nobody wanted to drive to the Country Club. We played one set and the lady running the event called things off. I've never been so happy to see a gig end early.
 
I had a gig Many Years Ago where every time I did anything it was wrong, right out of the gate. Words to the wrong verse, do the bridge a verse too early, don't stop at the end, stop too early, start at the wrong fret, really everything you can flork up, I did, one after another after another.

I wasn't under the influence, sick, brokenhearted, insane, nothing I know of bent my brain, but I was officially OTL, a real hazard.

At first I was just surprised, since I was gigging a lot, and actually pretty good in my own way. After a while I was scared and paranoid, waiting for the next shoe to drop. Hoped it'd go away after the first break, nope. After a while it was actually kinda funny, in a bent sort of way.

Luckily the rest of the band knew me well, and just kinda of rolled with it best they could, didn't kick me out or anything.

I was sure nuff glad when the cloud of Wrong was gone the next night. Don't know what I would have done if it had stayed. Way too hard to enjoy myself like that, and music was my life.
 
iaresee said:
Just one night? Story of my life when I was in an all-originals band! :D Took us a few years to take the hint.
Click to expand...

Ha, I know what you mean but this was the only night that ever happened. There have been many shows where we played to 1-5 people and some of them were wives/girlfriends of the band.
 
Years ago my band played in a roller rink in a small rural Georgia town in the dead of winter. The cavernous building was warmed slightly above freezing by kerosene heaters spewing thick black smoke. I guess there were about 10 drunk and/or drugged teens in the audience. Days later we were still sneezing out black snot from those heaters, and I'm sure our last chords were still reverberating in that metal building. Bad thing was it was a two-weekend engagement.
 
One time Pink Floyd tribute show with famous Hungarian musicians. All sounds dialed in my Peavey Profex II.
1,5 hours before the show, the system battery that soldered to the board has died.
It would turn on but lost all presets.

The keyboard player worked in a music store, so we jumped into the car and drove there. I spent 5 mins (!!!!) setting up basic sounds, then rushed back to the show. We pulled it off, but it was a nightmare for me.

I replaced the battery, but my love with the Profex broke, and I sold it.

I am the guy on the right, with very long hair. (Not the "red guitar" player)
 
Last edited:
Fotukito said:
Years ago my band played in a roller rink in a small rural Georgia town in the dead of winter. The cavernous building was warmed slightly above freezing by kerosene heaters spewing thick black smoke. I guess there were about 10 drunk and/or drugged teens in the audience. Days later we were still sneezing out black snot from those heaters, and I'm sure our last chords were still reverberating in that metal building. Bad thing was it was a two-weekend engagement.
Click to expand...

New year gigs outside are also fun.
 
My band booked a show at a biker fest, what they didn't told us was that it was at a place in the middle of the mountains and that we had to play around 1 am. Long story short, it was february and while back in the city was just slightly cold, by the time we played, the place was freezing so I ended up with numb fingers and the whole set went like those "shred" videos on YouTube. To this day I can't watch any video from that gig without wanting to shoot myself. That was embarassing...
 
My "worst gigs" weren't horrible in terms of technical difficulties or problems with the band being in sync, but they were definitely memorable. We still talk about them at times.

Once, while traveling to a gig, we lost the bass drum from up on top of the pickup truck! Some driver started flashing his lights, got us to pull over, and we proceeded to look for it, knowing even if we found it, it probably wouldn't be of much use, what with coming off a truck at highway speed. :tearsofjoy: We phoned ahead to one of our guys who lived in the city we were playing, and he managed to find someone at the college he attended that loaned us his bass drum. The show went on, albeit an hour late. On the way back after a 4 nite gig, we searched that stretch of highway in the daylight and never found a trace!

Then we had a gig in which I had a brand-spanking-new, PRS Singlecut Burgundy Tiger Eye 10 Top that at the time was the finest guitar I'd ever played. It was on loan to me for about a month from a friend of our bass player who headed up artist relations at PRS at the time. Everything I played on that guitar was just magic! But we were playing at the upstairs bar of a restaurant, starting at 9, and they still had dinner patrons downstairs who complained of the noise, mainly the bass & kick drum reverberating through the floor. Our drummer just hit hard, so even though we tried turning down, it was no use, and they told us to wrap it up after playing only 3 songs. I had so many friends/family showing up that night, some of whom got there after we were done, which really sucked!

Then there was the gig where we could do no wrong. The place was packed, the band was on fire, everybody having a great time, but again, a restaurant/bar that stayed open after dinner, owned by a younger husband who loved us, especially due to the large group of alcohol-buying, home-for-break, college kids that had heard us from the street and came in (from some nearby event that had just wrapped up), and an older wife who amazingly, just wanted to go home ("I'm tired.") Some shit about not feeling comfortable with leaving her husband to close up. We had played our sets, but it was only midnight, and he wanted us to stay until 1:30, willing to pay us double, but she wasn't having it. So she essentially closed up a full restaurant/bar full of paying customers!
 
My first paid gig shortly after moving to LA was playing a Live-Band Karaoke gig in a Karaoke bar in Koreatown (this will be important in a second). The bandleader called me up through a recommendation and basically said "You'll just be sightreading charts all night, if you can read well, you'll be fine". I was hungry, and considered myself a strong reader due to many years playing in pit orchestras, Churches etc.

I was finally going to make a dent in the LA music scene and was on my way to becoming the next Steve Lukather...or so I thought.

I show up to the gig, set up my gear in a tiny bar and the bandleader gave me a big book of sheet music and placed it on a music stand. I opened it up and all the charts were in Korean. Tempo markings, Chord symbols, Style Markings, roadmap signs etc. While most of the standard notation was present, the rest was in Korean. If you haven't guessed by now, I don't know how to speak or read in Korean.

I basically limped through the next three hours of torture on the gig. The band didn't care that I couldn't read the charts and I basically fell apart after three songs. They called out the names of the songs at me (again, in Korean) and I didn't even know what page or chart to turn to. I remember randomly turning to a page in the book and reading down the chart, who knows if I was even playing the same song the rest of the band was. All the songs were Korean pop standards, so I was also completely unfamiliar with the music itself. We didn't play a single song in english or any song that was on a typical American top 40 setlist. I sheepishly collected my pay, threw my gear in my car and sat in the alley for an hour in tears contemplating moving back home. If this was the barrier of entry to becoming a musician in LA, I was completely crushed and not ready to swim with the sharks.

Luckily, I have had a respectable career thus far and haven't gotten a "real job". Grateful to still be making a living at this. Whenever any gig gets difficult or bad, I'll never forget that first LA gig. Nothing will ever be as difficult or soul-crushing as that first one.
 
Last edited:
levipeto said:
One time Pink Floyd tribute show with famous Hungarian musicians. All sounds dialed in my Peavey Profex II.
1,5 hours before the show, the system battery that soldered to the board has died.
It would turn on but lost all presets.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you don't look too happy there. But you had great sound!
 
RoshRoslin said:
My first paid gig shortly after moving to LA was playing a Live-Band Karaoke gig in Karaoke bar in Koreatown (this will be important in a second). The bandleader called me up through a recommendation and basically said "You'll just be sightreading charts all night, if you can read well, you'll be fine". I was hungry, and considered myself a strong reader due to many years playing in pit orchestras, Churches etc.

I was finally going to make a dent in the LA music scene and was on my way to becoming the next Steve Lukather...or so I thought.

I show up to the gig, set up my gear in a tiny bar and the bandleader gave me a big book of sheet music and placed it on a music stand. I opened it up and all the charts were in Korean. Tempo markings, Chord symbols, Style Markings, roadmap signs etc. While most of the standard notation was present, the rest was in Korean. If you haven't guessed by now, I don't know how to speak or read in Korean.

I basically limped through the next three hours of torture on the gig. The band didn't care that I couldn't read the charts and I basically fell apart after three songs. They called out the names of the songs at me (again, in Korean) and I didn't even know what page or chart to turn to. I remember randomly turning to a page in the book and reading down the chart, who knows if I was even playing the same song the rest of the band was. All the songs were Korean pop standards, so I was also completely unfamiliar with the music itself. We didn't play a single song in english or any song that was on a typical American top 40 setlist. I sheepishly collected my pay, threw my gear in my car and sat in the alley for an hour in tears contemplating moving back home. If this was the barrier of entry to becoming a musician in LA, I was completely crushed and not ready to swim with the sharks.

Luckily, I have had a respectable career thus far and haven't gotten a "real job". Grateful to still be making a living at this. Whenever any gig gets difficult or bad, I'll never forget that first LA gig. Nothing will ever be as difficult or soul-crushing as that first one.
Click to expand...
This was hard to read. I'm happy you survived that.
 
levipeto said:
One time Pink Floyd tribute show with famous Hungarian musicians. All sounds dialed in my Peavey Profex II.
1,5 hours before the show, the system battery that soldered to the board has died.
It would turn on but lost all presets.

The keyboard player worked in a music store, so we jumped into the car and drove there. I spent 5 mins (!!!!) setting up basic sounds, then rushed back to the show. We pulled it off, but it was a nightmare for me.

I replaced the battery, but my love with the Profex broke, and I sold it.

I am the guy on the right, with very long hair. (Not the "red guitar" player)
Click to expand...

Dude that is awesome kicking butt I’d say Rockin Roll
CraigP said:
This isn't me...but close!!!

Click to expand...

That was a crazy keyboard drop man I would have freaked
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom