What's been your worst gig experience?

[Mahesh]

I recently had a gig at a local festival that was all kinds of mess. To start off with, it was organized far away from the central town deep inside where internet connectivity was scarce and dusty af. The summer sun and dry heat were unbearable.

 

A lot of people attended it. Like a LOT of people. The event itself had hundreds of artists, influencers, comedians, etc being featured over a whole bunch of stages so it was a huge turnout. Unfortunately, the grand nature of the event combined with some of the other things I mentioned earlier caused a whole lot of trouble. There were many delays and the audience wasn't sure of the updated schedules. This left many disgruntled.

 

Because there were so many stages, the noise levels were high and the smaller stages took a hit from the bass thumping in the bigger ones. There was also a shortage of drinking water which made the situation worse. And to top it off, the journey back home was extremely expensive because of the local cab/rickshaw drivers jacking up their prices beyond insanity; since the people had no other choice in getting outta there. 

 

Aw, man. I've seen some pretty bad ones in my day. What about you?

[Jac]

3 hours ago, Mahesh said:

I recently had a gig at a local festival that was all kinds of mess. To start off with, it was organized far away from the central town deep inside where internet connectivity was scarce and dusty af. The summer sun and dry heat were unbearable.

 

A lot of people attended it. Like a LOT of people. The event itself had hundreds of artists, influencers, comedians, etc being featured over a whole bunch of stages so it was a huge turnout. Unfortunately, the grand nature of the event combined with some of the other things I mentioned earlier caused a whole lot of trouble. There were many delays and the audience wasn't sure of the updated schedules. This left many disgruntled.

 

Because there were so many stages, the noise levels were high and the smaller stages took a hit from the bass thumping in the bigger ones. There was also a shortage of drinking water which made the situation worse. And to top it off, the journey back home was extremely expensive because of the local cab/rickshaw drivers jacking up their prices beyond insanity; since the people had no other choice in getting outta there. 

 

Aw, man. I've seen some pretty bad ones in my day. What about you?

that sounds a nightmare. i'v  not had experience like that but l can tell you of one experience that my hubby played on me after he went to a gig and l still have nightmare's over it.

He went to see Alice  Cooper and had front row and during the concert Alice's trick was to throw fake blood over the crowd. My husband got the full force of it  !!  He came home, shouted up-stair's to me to say he'd had a little accident and proudly came into the bedroom covered in the 'blood' My husband has blond hair and was wearing a white teeshirt and l cant tell you the shock l had,  him standing there at the bedroom door covered from head to foot in 'blood' To this day l do not like Alice Cooper !!! ps, l didnt speak to my husband for a week after that either.

[Destrukto]

Generally any gig on an off-night that wasn't attended very well.  The more people, the better.  Promote, promote, promote.  Don't expect the actual promoter to do everything. Promote your own gigs. 

[Steve Mueske]

My band Scarlet Winter was playing at a guitar convention in Chicago at the Hemmons Auditorium. 3,000 seat arena packed. We were nobodies, so we had a mid-afternoon set. Kind of a big deal, though, and the auditorium was still packed because it was a non-stop show through 9 at night. It started at noon, I think. Anyway, mid-way through our short set (I think we had 30 - 45 minutes), the stage monitors blew out. Because it was a fairly large place, we had to anticipate the singing because we couldn't actually hear the singing until it bounced off the back wall. The music we could hear because of the amps and stuff on stage. Afterward, I heard the sound engineer joking that he'd forgotten to turn on the fans on the power amp for the monitors. The mains were still running. I was pretty pissed. I mean, accidents happen and whatnot, but to think it was funny. That really got to me. I was terrified of f*cking up in front of thousands of people. I think it was our second or third show. 

Edited March 24, 2023 by Steve Mueske

[MisterB]

I used to play in a big band. There were probably 18-20 of us. We did a whole gig in front of an audience of 4. 

 

Fast forward, and I played in a funk band. I don't know what the gig scene is like here now, but back then it was dreadful.  Bands start playing at midnight, and finish around 4am.  If you're the opener, so you get to play at midnight, you often get to play in front of an empty bar. If you're doing the main set, you have tons of people there but they're all wasted.

 

But probably the worst experience I ever had. Again, used to play in a funk band. I'm massively allergic to marijuana, and it tended to follow us around. Although illegal at the time, we played in bars where it was evident. We did one where the air was very thick with marijuana smoke. Oh man, I do not remember much about that one and had to go home after the first set.

 

Also once did a new years gig, and we, the band got pretty wasted before we even started. By all accounts, we were terrible. It was still a good time by all... but it was the end of drinking before a gig for us.

 

 

 

[john]

Oh a few to choose from!

 

There was a gig at a university, a big audience and the audio mixer wasted almost 2 hours pre-gig before we realised he had no idea what he was doing, we then wasted more time with an audio engineer from our entourage who didn’t know the gear. We hobbled through the gig with crap sound with both of them at the front of house desk trying to sort it out. At one point I left the front of the stage to go to the desk, make some changes while played and then told them to leave the gear alone or there’d be trouble.

 

At the end of the gig half the gear and half the band were in a trailer being towed behind a land rover 4x4 (ah those were the days). As we pulled onto the motorway (highway), the trailer became unhitched. So there we were drifting across the 3 lanes with no power, steering or brakes in a trailer full of gear. Good night!

 

Then there was the time we were playing in a packed bar. No stage. Just the band in a corner. We had played about half of our second set and had gone down a storm. I had no more guitar to play in the song I was currently singing. For some reason I unhitched my guitar (still plugged in) and hand on mic, still singing, I leant to place the guitar down and… was electrocuted. Someone had spilled their beer and it had run under some of the gear. All was fine until I completed the circuit! We had an unscheduled longer break between songs, they got the power back on (oh yes we didn’t do things by halves) and finished our set without me playing guitar (my hands were still thrumming).

 

We played a large indoor venue, about 3,000 people when there was a power cut for about 40 mins. In emergency lighting we played about 10 acoustic songs. In truth it could have been terrible, but in reality it was a good save.

 

However, the one that goes down as the worst was, at the time, a gig that could have opened many doors for us. We were getting label interest, our manager had booked us at two venues up and downstairs from each other, maybe a month apart. Both were big gigs in nightclubs. Both were large-ish for us, The Garage to about 1,800 people and at about 850 for ‘The Venue” (must have spent ages picking that name). We had played the Garage and had stirred interest. So here we were playing the venue. There was a crate of beer in the Green room for the band and it promised to be a good night. Press were coming. A&R too. It was at this point it turns out the lead guitar player had snorted a gram of speed. Awesome. I went away to cool off and came back and half the band had thought the gig was screwed anyway, so had drank 3/4 of the beers and were drunk as skunks. As the main singer I didn’t drink until after I had performed (alcohol dries the vocal cords and wets the brain lol). It was a disaster. I remember looking over at the guitarist playing gibberish and rocking back and forth at double speed nit long before iirc that was the gig he fell off stage. The bass player was also backing vox and was one of the drunken wrecks, was staring intensely until the guitarist fell off stage, at which point he couldn’t stop laughing but did stop playing.

 

The band didn’t last long after that. Lol