Bumpy Moments with YOUR Band?
 

I'll tell you a story about not-so-good moments with my band. But in return I'd also like to hear yours.

I think the worst show my band has done was back in August. We got informed by the person in charge of the show that there's a little rec centre that's having a grand opening, and they're looking for bands. Well, at the time I was thinking "Hey, it's an all-ages show and that's what we want, right??" We didn't care how far it was, we were willing to drive as far as possible to do a kick-ass set.

Well, the band and I practiced as much as we could. And we were so sure it was gonna kick ass and everything. We were even told by e-mail that there would be pizza given to us. (SCORE...or so I thought for now).

So on the day of the show, we drove for like almost over an hour. As we got there, the new rec centre was located in the middle of a park. Didn't really bother me too much, but at the same time, it's like it was in the middle of nowhere. Then the guy organizing said there'd be pizza, but there was a very limited amount...I mean, VERY limited (one slice per person). We had to save it for the other staff members at the rec centre, and they weren't even large pizzas (alright, so maybe it shouldn't be a big deal, but we WERE told there'd be food for us, though they never stated how much food).

First band went on stage, they played a good set, but there was barely anybody there. Just their parents/relatives, but in few numbers. After that, it was our turn. And get this....the first band didn't stay behind for our set! I dunno what their reason was, but I'm pretty sure it was because they were fed up about how the show was run too and they just wanted to get the hell outta there.

During our set, our drummer was having problems with the kit in between a couple of songs, so I had to do some talking for a couple of minutes to the very few number of people in the audience who were sitting on their chairs.

After our set was over, the very few people who were there for our set liked what we did. That part was definitely worth it for sure. The part that was kinda hurting though was that a bunch of other randoms came in, but they obviously were NOT there for any of the bands....they were there for the DJ's during intermission.

The final act was this one guy, and again, only a few selected number of people in the audience. He did a good set, but definitely not the right audience.

So overall...wrong gig, wrong place, and wrong time. Though the few people who were in the audience liked what we did (and I thank them so much for that), the band and I agreed to not to play at bad locations like that, and we'll just stick with playing places that will be for sure bumpin'.
Definitely something we indie bands have to go through, but at the same time we all have choices.

there were none

mainly cos after two or three jamming sessions, they all left

(I'm like Hitler there)

Accepted a gig once at a campground, a summer party of sorts. The budget was low, it was a long weekend, so I ended up by myself and the bass player!! Thing is I had originaly agreed to play for 4 hours!! I had to bring my own little PA too. Well there was about 20 people there and only a few knew each other. And it seems that nobody was drinking, so most where pretty stiff. Another buddy showed up and played with us for about 45 minutes, so that helped. Still, makes for a long night.

We got paid right away, so that was good. And the organizers told us they loved it, so it wasn't all bad. But boy, I'm never going to do that again!!

I've been playing the occasional gigs with the band I'm in now for a few years and every concert has been great with decent turn-outs and really appreciative audience who tend to sing along and so on .. More than you can ask for, really! So I've no gig-complaints from the current era of my musicianship.

.. But when I was a teenager in the late 90s, we did some gigs that did not go down very well. We had this electronica group with a stage show that really was all about stuff I'd rather not mention on this site or any other public place; it was pretty awful and all we wanted to do was shock, entertain and perhaps offend. The music was loud and was more or less a mix of chiptunes and electronic acapellas. The audience were pretty shocked at what we were doing. Once we played in a bar and when we were through our first set, we had a break. Some tough guys came up on stage during the break and basically threatened to beat us up. One of them stumped his cigarette in my friends shoulder, but the fight didn't happen. We told the bouncers what was going on, but they didn't throw out the troublemakers. Just as the second set had started and we'd started playing, our sound got cut off and they switched to the DJ. Then we get told to get out :p: So we were the ones getting thrown out that day.

Another time, there was a local festival and we said we wanted to play with a band just for the hell of it. It wasn't actually a real band with any material, but me and a couple of other guys were making music so we just used some random stuff from our private catalogs. The stage was actually on a small pier in a lagoon so we had some shallow water between us and the audience who were sitting on the beach. One of my mates who is not really a musician at all joined us on stage (why not?) and we were all pretty drunk .. at some point, he decided to wade out in the water and show his junk to everyone. A journalist there thought we were pretty pathetic (we were!) and so our awful gig ended up getting half the press coverage of the entire festival. Of course, the press was pretty negative, but we loved the attention anyways :p:

The hairiest gig-situation I ever read about was Mark Hewins tale about when he played a gig with Soft Heap in a french prison. It's posted on my website, but I assure you this is not a shameless plug; it's actually good reading and highly relevant to the topic.

Link : A Riotous Gig in a Strange Place | The Polite Force

I personally would consider that EPIC!!! :)

One of my friends lives in a small close-knit village a few miles away from where I live. She said they were having their annual fete and the organiser, a nice old woman, wanted to have a band playing towards the end, to keep the punters interested through to a jazz event they were holding in the evening. We agreed, and I, as the band's frontman and spokesperson, had a few conversations with her and a gentleman who had agreed to sort us out with a PA system. We were all set, until our rhythm guitarist suddenly sprung on us that he had to visit his grandmother on the weekend it was to take place and that he couldn't miss it. Our drummer was on a skiing holiday at the time, some place in France I think. He had said he was fine to do it, as we were keeping in contact through facebook. Unfortunately, a few days after we had confirmed that we would do it, he sent me a message mentioning that he had slightly broken his leg. And he was now in cast from hip to toe.

Safe to say, not wanting to back out on our word, the lead guitarist and I said we would sort out something acoustic out as we had done a couple of acoustic sets before. In the end, I forgot all my words, we had a crowd of about 7 people as everyone else had gone home, and a drunk couple fell backwards off of a haybale. The End.

I've played most all live venues except the (big Dog) stadium. And everything that could happen or go wrong has happened. From mic chords shorting out to total electrical failure. I'm not proud to admit, that I've been pretty fucked up on stage before. But I've always been lucky enough to pull it out of my ass, and finish the show. It doesnt take long to learn and work together as a band in order to cover up mistakes that come along. Just keep it "Fun" and learn from the mistakes that arrive. Its all part of paying your dues. :D

But one of the funniest ones, was back in the 80s when we had a two night gig, Friday and Saturday night. I pretty well sang 25 to 30% of my vocals out the first night. And we were sitting at the club a couple of hous before we started. And one of the guitar players suggested that I should take a hit of speed (Black Beauty), because it might help my voice. That was a major mistake on my part..Lol..so..
I suggested opening with a fairly easy cover by ZZ Top..(and nothing came out)!:yikes:

I asked the guitar player "What am I gonna do now"? He casually turned and said "just drink whiskey strait, with no chaser".

I'll never forget playing somewhere in Columbus, Oh. And we were all just returning to the stage for our 3rd or 4th set, and one of our guitarist, while stepping up on the stage itself, fell flat on his face with his guitar on, Geesh..hehe. I could hear someone in the crowd reply "Damn, that guys drunk". I can still see that happening so vividly..hehe.

Why did they abandoned you.

basically dictating what they should or should not play

I do solo stuff, which is terrifying. I've been playing a little bit in a garage jamming with some other musicians, but my live performance has been all me.

Probably the worst was a set in which I seriously got so tense, I decided to replace some of my more complex songs with some really easy songs I knew, because I was super-tense.

One of the songs I replaced a harder song with was VERY simple: The only chords in the song were Am, C, F, G. It was easily the simplest song I was going to play.

Things didn't go tragically awry - I was, however, for some reason unable to play the easy song...because I kept forgetting the lyrics. My hands were shaking so badly that the change from Am to C kept being weird, and I kept just singing the weirdest lyrics to the general tune of the song to cover. At one point, the lyrics became: "I'm on stage and can't play guitar / I'm onstage and my feet are asleep / I can't remember lyrics, I'll go far... / duh-duh-duh, lightning to strike."

It was nerve-wracking. My friends were kind and said they didn't even notice...because I just kept playing anyway...but I don't believe them.

Wow that sucks. Why did you decide to play guitar then.

I have honestly had no bad gigs. I'm on drums/djembe/random objects and usually get really into it so I'm always dancing around and excited, and so is the rest of whatever group I happen to be playing with that night... I usually don't play for big crowds, the most being around 50 or so... but I'm playing just for the joy of playing so it's no big deal.

I guess the worst one I ever did was the night I played with some friends and we hadn't practiced at all, and our EQ was totally screwed up, and there were about 7 people there. I was mostly upset about how much we sucked.

There is a monthly artist showcase in my city. All sorts come out; acting troupes plugging their plays, contortionists, karaoke singers, improv groups, puppeteers, all kinds of neat things. My friend and I had a noise band. We played there 3 times. After the first time, we were only allowed back because the guy who organized it thought we were hilarious.

The third time we brought a bunch of strange things to use in our set: jars filled with shells, homemade tambourines, toy guns, and aluminum cans. We got a bunch of audience on stage to do sort of a "noise drum circle" thing. So we start barking at everyone to play faster and faster. By the end everyone was literally breaking **** on stage. The guy running it had to call an intermission after the set. He made my friend and I clean up, and the offenders didn't help a bit. They all "had to go" and just disappeared until the next act came on stage. The guy running it wasn't impressed and basically said that we weren't welcome back.

Dude... that's awesome. I want to be in that circle.

It's hard to find reliable people who share even a slightly similar vision for their music

I think it's easier to get together and work together as a concept band. The bands I've been in have generally had pretty clear concepts that we all understood.

An added benefit is that I find it easier to be creative within a frame as well. It's easier to sit down and think "Okay, I'm gonna make a shanty" or "I'm gonna compose a Morricone-ish western tune" than just "I'm gonna make a song". At least I generally think so.

We had to kick the original vocalist out because he sucked, and his mum told me off for it. He couldn't play anything, and he can't sing, whereas the rest of us all play and sing well.

Oh, and I left this covers band, and they've been talking so much **** about me. Leaving a band is like breaking up with your partner. You can never be 'just friends' afterwards and it's awkward as hell.

I disagree personally. If I set out to make a specific kinda song then it comes off as sounding forced to me. Different strokes and all.

I agree. We never set out to write anything. It just happens. Usually by taking some lyrics somebody thought up and putting them to a chord progression someone else thought up. Once, using that method, we ended up with a 50's doowop/pop song with incredibly depressing lyrics involving drug addiction and suicide.

My best 'bumpy moment' isn't quite from my band, so much as... caused by my band haha

There's a warehouse downtown that caters to my local scene with roughly 20 rooms to rent for bands. Come to think of it, I have 2 bumpy moments from that place.

The first one was actually during my very first visit to the warehouse, we didn't even have a room yet. We'd just been asked to play our first show and were jamming with the other band while a Top40 cover band practiced down the hall. We didn't think anything of it, they'd start playing some poppy crap, we'd paint a kaleidoscope of sound.

Then one of my bandmates got thirsty and walked out to the vending machine and past their room. Apparently the vocalist was having a diva moment and flipping out at her bandmates about how much she hated the warehouse and how much we sucked with our noise and blah blah blah. We laughed.

-------------

The 2nd bumpy moment was from within our jam room in that place. We'd normally head in on Friday nights until about 11pm. Turned out it was one of the more quiet evenings, normally just us and the punk room from upstairs and across the way that was obviously shared between 3-4 groups.

One fine evening we're hanging out in our room and enjoying a post jam pipe and we're listening to the punks practice what sounds like the same song over and over again.

1! 2! 3! 4!
RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE
...STOP!!!

over and over.

I remember commenting about how much of a dick that singer must be since he was also the guitar player and the guy who kept changing how fast the song went every single time.

So we decided to be dicks about it.

1! 2! 3! 4!
KICK INTO THEIR RIFF AND PROCEED TO ROCK IT THE HELL OUT

...

Fast forward 2-3 years. I'm working some new dead end job with this punk dude. Takes about all of maybe 10 minutes for us to start talking music and to figure out we've both jammed at the same warehouse. I tell him that same story.

DUDE! THAT WAS US!

Apparently the singer lost it when we started playing their tune better than they could as an improvised joke when they were actually trying. He was apparently a giant douchebag and scammed my co-worked out of his fair share of the vinyl pressing of their disc they'd all paid towards during their time together. So whatever. Everyone else thought it was hilarious.