Worst Gig You Ever Played

[EddieFLA]

Rudi, Nightwolf, Alistair & Nigel...

Thanks for the well wishes. We evacuated last Thursday to the west coast of Florida, near the area that Hurricane Charley hit just weeks before. A friend hosted his daughter, her husband, their 3 year old daughter and Carol and me.

All the TV news was centered on Hurricane Frances and we watched, with great apprehension, as Frances stalled off the east coast of Florida before making landful in the county in which I live. Then, when it finally did creep ashore, it took its ever-loving time to move through. So even though it had been downgraded from a category 4 to a 2, it stirred the pot creating havoc, especially in mobile home parks and at marinas.

Now, 6 days later......

The good news is that our place emerged relatively unscathed. The things I worried about the most did not materialize.  Since normal distribution lines have been interrupted, there is a shortage of everything from fuel to groceries...but that should be corrected over the next few days.

There is another hurricane brewing in the Caribbean which could effect the west coast and panhandle of Florida...but we are taking it one day at a time and folks on both coasts are helping each other.

On the gig front, the storm has made the next few weeks of upcoming gigs very questionable.

Once again...thanks to each of you for your concern and kind words.

Eddie

[Nightwolf]

Good to hear everythings alright for you, welcome home.

[Steve]

Any of you guys ever played to a (near) empty room?

I once had a gig in Bath (UK) It was a private  social club set in an old terraced house that was spread out over 4 floors. From the front of the building, you entered on the 1st floor (2nd for Americans) but the room we played was down on the ground (1st) floor at the back of the building. When we arrived, the place was heaving! Lots of bustle and noise, very promising. We drove around to the back door and set up in the entertainment room. It was very quiete down there! 9.00pm came round and we duly got up on stage and started to play, hoping that more people would drift in as we started making a noise!. At this point, the band outnumbered the audience! And thats how it stayed. Les, (the frontman singer) encouraged the few listeners to join us at the stage and we played a very intimate and personal couple of sets to a few very appreciative people. It was a good gig. But you wouldn't want too many like that!

[Rudi]

There is another hurricane brewing in the Caribbean which could effect the west coast and panhandle of Florida...but we are taking it one day at a time and folks on both coasts are helping each other.

Scarey stuff! In the UK, the weather forecasts are crap, so we would never know what was coming our way.

Nice to know people still want to help in times of need

[john]

Hey

Thought I'd resurrect this thread to see if any of our newer members had any stories to contribute?

Cheers

John

[Donna]

Empty room theme......

Snowstorm and a gig booked several hours away. Also, it was a Dec 23. The band called Irv the ballroom owner late morning about hellacious weather but Irv the ballroom owner was adamant: "You'd better get yer ____'s down here. I got a contract ".

Spent til noon trying to get our 2nd band car working. No go. Packed the 4 of us and the drums in the car. Luckily the sound man (2 towns away) had 2 of the guitars; the other axe and misc went into the trunk and any remaining spcace between drums and musicians were filled w/ gig bags and stage clothes. The kick drum was so big that me and the leader, both itty bitty girls (tho I had about seven layers on) had to do the driving, seated sideways, if you understand.

It took forever to get there. By the time we arrived we'd been doing the bleeping snowstorm and cold for about 8 hours. We besought Irv to let it go, but he threatened mayhem and we brought in the PA and all our gear.

Soundcheck was to a huge empty room. Irv was getting madder and madder as it became apparent no patrons would venture out in the storm. We finished the charade, getting dressed and make up and hitting the stage at 8. We played 1 or 2 songs to no one but Irv.

Only then did he shut us down (and pay us). We packed up, reloaded and promptly headed out into a dark storm and couldn't get warm the whole 3 or 4 hours home. Our soundman went to heroic lengths trying to get the car heater working, but no go.

IRV

[merciful evans]

rough deal, good story. thanks donna.

where did you get that contract smiley!

[Donna]

Hi Evans (why are you 'merciful'?)

I love that smiley! Maybe ya just overlooked it, it's on the emoticons window, if one clicks "show all".

[traite]

Most of my gigs have resulted in some minor disaster or something to cringe over.

One gig in a coffee shop in Edinburgh resulted in a 45 minute set with no clapping and between one song I heard someone say quite loudly 'I wish he would shut up, I'm getting a headache'. On the upside I got free coffee and the best roast chicken paninni I've ever had. Getting no reaction is worse than getting a bad reaction in my book.

I've been wary of coffee shop gigs ever since.

I've also had the string break, string detune, strap snap, dodgy leads, drunk hecklers, drugged hecklers, fighting etc etc etc.

I did have one guy who kept shouting for dead kennedy tunes which I don't do as I only do originals.

It's all a laugh though and keeps the mundane reality at bay for a short while

[undersnow]

I've had a couple horrible set ups. One time I played a gig at an outdoor festival, our pianists keyboard plug went missing and with only three instruments that was pretty devastating, plus it was very cold. We still played fine, but it was just quite difficult with cold fingers, basically no one was there because it started raining and we had to cut the set short because we couldn't do some songs without a piano. It was a disaster!

thats funny about the gay night club btw!

[musicthom]

Now i could tell you about the time we played to 2 bar staff and 1 sound man but that wasn't the worse as we sounded good and played well .

in actual fact it was an acoustic gig played in The Aragon in glasgow

the whole set up was placed in an alcove in an area of about 2 meters square next to the main entrance, the mc had no idea how to use the pa we had constant feedback and the fact that every time the door opened it went across the area we were performing from, made for the worse set we have ever played no wonder no one took any notice of the din we were making

here is a pic of the venue

[undersnow]

That sounds really rough! It must have been awkward with so few people there. Feedback is the absolute worst, I hate it, and I always seem to get it when I have a really smug sound man.

[musicthom]

That sounds really rough! It must have been awkward with so few people there. Feedback is the absolute worst, I hate it, and I always seem to get it when I have a really smug sound man.

Yeh the pits and they always use techy terms as if i am supposed to know what they are on about