Gigs... shambles or smash hits ?

I want to find out about a fail, flop or fiasco you've been involved with - and also the 'kick-ass' performances you find most memorable.

Last Sunday I went to a gig in my local park with a band playing retro stuff. It was raining, the crowd was sparse, the seats were wet and the band struggled to get applause from the old folk (mostly) who turned up ... but probably couldn't hear :)

Unfortunately the speakers and mics weren't set up very well and I could hear the guy on bass trying to sing along... it was awful (but funny)

Then the guest vocalist came on (just a family member who wanted a 'go') We had to wait because she'd left her lyrics in her car. They said she'd been practicing all week (not enough obviously) I noticed that the backing music got louder and louder, to drown her out presumably.

The highlight was waving my umbrella to the beat... and a rousing rendition of "Come together" They did their best and I kind of enjoyed the way they battled through.

I wondered if any of you had tales of things going wrong, either at your own gigs or one's you went to ?

Also, how about the best gigs, how big, how good, how memorable ?

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I spent some time playing drum in a puunk band in the 90s. Mostly I remember carrying equipment and nights at strange places in a sleeping bag + a lot of bla bla after the gigs.
At some time a friend asked to join their band called Contramination. The funny thing was, the singer lived in Bristol, one guitar player studied in Amsterdam and the bassplayer in Barcelona. Nervetheless we played about ten gigs. Quite a lot considering that we only met in the practice room maybe four times. So always when the singer came over he organized something.
Once we where supposed to play in Amsterdam on new years eve. I don't remember any details ...only we had to sleep at our guitar players place. He and his girlfriend lived in an occupied house with no heating our electricity. It was a very cold winter -20°C . This I remember very well !!

:o life gigs can be very dangerous especially for drummers !!!

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Ouch!

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Uh, memories of first gig ever still make me cringe. Only 20 people showed up, halfway through the show a fight broke out at the bar and instead of the piano the pub owner had promised to provide I had to make do with a Casio keyboard that had seen better days and must have once had more keys. 2 months later we were asked to step in at short notice at a festival with a crowd of 2000 people. Had a sore throat before we started and completely lost my voice 30min in.
Definite highlight came a couple of years later when the great Champion Jack Dupree invited me to jam with him on stage in Hamburg.
All in all very happy that the gig bug and the need for postering is gone.

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Sounds like a fun topic :D I don't think we've ever had a catastrophe, but just general things go wrong, some funny, etc. We were in a 'battle of the bands' competition once, and I blew a tire on the way there, I had most of the equipment in my truck. Our band leaders dad picked us up in his Dodge Viper and I swear we flew over there so fast. I'm not sure how the equipment got there, but it got there. We ended up winning the competition as well :W
Oddest experience was another competition, between 3 bands, we were the 2nd band to perform. In between the 1st band and us, they had a lingerie show going on right up on the stage while we are trying to setup. Talk about trying to keep my eyes off those lingerie gals while my g/f was in the audience, that was a chore :o:D
Another crazy thing was packing up to head to a gig, our singer and bass player start jawing at each other, it comes to a head and the singer knocks out the bass player! :o I think the rest of us were just looking and thinking "are we even going to the gig now?". We did all go to the gig, amazingly, tensions were odd, but we played.
For me, the most fun I've had are the really small places. We played at a pizza place in our home town and it was so packed in a small spot, but the sound was amazing and the vibe was awesome. People like 1 ft away from you, no stage, just all occupying the same space. It was similar vibe at this bar we would frequent by our local college, small, packed, and just super cool to play at.
One thing I don't miss is lugging around a full stack and head...my back appreciates that so much now :)
I think that lingerie gig was the most memorable, it was a fun crowd, of course the lingerie gals were a nice change from normal gigs, and a fight broke out during our "punk/mosh style" song. Good times...we didn't win, but good times :)

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I'm really enjoying your memories guys....
keep 'em coming

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Early days when our band was 14-16 year olds we put on our own gigs by hiring a hall and selling tickets. We cobbled together PAs from whatever we had. One gig two guitars and the bass played through the same 100w valve PA amp and a 4x12 cab we got from a second hand shop because that was all we had.

The highlight was when we tried pyrotechnics - a piece of plywood with 2 nails banged in wired directly to the mains with fuse wire between the nails covered with the contents of as many fireworks as we could find. My GF set it off with a light switch in the mains cable POW! - looked great, loads of smoke, all the power in the hall went off including the amps and left the drummer playing on his own in the dark. Oops - we didn't think of that. Those were the days. :)

I don't remember ever playing a gig that you might call good musically, we were terrible, but people did like us so we must have had some sort of charm. It was late 1970's and you could get away with anything because people out in our hick town thought punk was supposed to be bad and we certainly were that. We were always drunk and so were our school age audience. We made a record for £15 in a 4 track studio and sold thousands of them. lol

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You're lucky to still be around after that explosive start Zedders. Wonderful nostalgia :)

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Maybe a good time to make some advertisement.
Also in the ninetees. I really do not remember any exact dates I was on a small tour with my band which was organized by our label. Sounds more professionnal but that was a guy who mades some compilations and drove out to do the merch. His deal was the records for us the merch for him. Actually selling t-shirts and sweaters was more profitable than selling cd's :). i guess he knew that. ( Nevertheless, I loved guy, greetings to Ralf)
Later they started having trouble (always that shitty money thing ). But that was already after I left the band.
Now we had this little "tour" with the band Bambix.
That was actually maybe the nicest that I can remember. They where really nice, no argues about being headliner or something, even they where so much better than we. At least that's what I thought. At that time they had one of the best drummers I ever saw play live. He had one several prizes for his double bass drum play in the Netherlands. And they where really nice and somehow down to the ground people.
Now that was round about 30 years ago. The band Bambix always kept on going in different lineups. Heart was their singer Wick Bambix.
I saw them play in different lineups over years and years, never reaching the pupularity they maybe deserved.
Now I found that she released a new album. Unbelivevable that she kept doing her thing for so long. That's really admirable !!!:D

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I only ever had one paying gig in my life, and that was Sylvester 91 I think in a cool restaurant overlooking a beautiful desert crater. Here is the story, probably not as cool as some of the stories here, but I only got this one:

I was living in this small desert town, and having the time of my life guiding tours with jeeps in the desert, and I managed to get permission to use the warehouse cum practicing hall of a local dance company. We could go in the evenings and make as much noise as we want. So I asked a couple of friends, a drummer and a guitarist/singer if they fancied having a jam once a week in this place? They said yes, and for the first jam they brought along a guy who had a Kurzweil keyboard, a violin and a nice amp, which he let me use for my Strat, and so we jammed along and had some fun. So when we met up the next week my friend Ilan said "Guys, I got us a gig. 50 Dollars each for 2 or 3 hours and free drinks and food". We said sounds cool, when is that? "Sylvester evening, in 6 days" :o :| :o

We had nothing... so we started practicing like mad every evening, we did some easy standards like "Wonderful Tonight", "Many Rivers" - me singing that one, "Let it be", "wish you were here" as I knew how to do the guitar solo, and some others I can't remember. Maybe one original song we wrote and practiced.

The funny thing is, in those 7 days we went through the whole spectrum of events a normal band goes through in 3-4 years. First we were exited, then we started arguing, Chuck the drummer (R.I.P) got disinterested, the keyboard guy tried to force his horrible violin playing on us, Egos flared up, I left the band and told them to duck off on the 4th day, but made a spectacular comeback the day after, after hours of calls and discussions and what not. On the day of the show we were still practicing for the whole day, but then disaster struck: I started to lose my voice :O (not that there was much, but even that was gone). So by the early evening when we went up with the equipment to the restaurant we were in deep trouble. But the restaurant owner said "don't worry, I got a grandmother solution" She came back with a glass of "Koggelmoggle" , which was made of raw egg yolk, honey, sugar and some other ingredients. It tastes funny but by god it actually worked :)

So we started playing, and it went ok to be honest, Ilan my buddy is a good rhythm guitarist and knew a lot of songs, and could sing as well, and had some previous experience in gigging. In the middle of one of the songs we suddenly heard a cat being tortured, wtf was that? We turned around and the guy had sneaked his violin in there and was sawing the sheet out of it. Chuck the drummer took full advantage of the "free drinks" and had 7 or more beers in short time, which did affect his timing (which was iffy to start with). And just as the party got going we ran out of practiced songs... lucky for us that Ilan had a large repertoire of songs, so he took over with Chuck drumming along as good as he could, and I...well I just mainly sat there looking pretty and sing along whenever I could... Anyways, it was ok, people even enjoyed some of it, we got paid cash in the end, and the band broke up directly after that :D

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Seems like the 1990s was a productive era for starting up new bands. We had the Brit Pop thing happening 93 - 97ish I think and that was a style that many tried to emulate

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