# Worst gigs played thread



## 7 Dying Trees (Jun 18, 2007)

I've played one or two where i've just known it's been bad, for comedy reasons or others through no fault of my own.

Still, this thread is inspired by last night's catastrophy where a faulty cab (well, it died) stopped my gig 2 songs in, so after that the band just played two more and stopped. I was really glad it was a pub gig...

Basically, last night sucked, and I'd probably rate it among my top 5 of bad gigs. Number 1 in that list is probably going to stay there a long time, as a wholoe band fucking up a festival headline slot is tough to beat...


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## garcia3441 (Jun 18, 2007)

In 2004 my band was booked for a show in Pine Bluff. We show to see that the big sign outside reads 'Under New management', instead of the band's name. The new manager tells us no play, no pay. So we go in and see that it's now a redneck bar (With no chicken wire in front of the stage). Half way through the second song some jackass threw a beer bottle that hit me in the face and broke my jaw.

The moral of the story: Metal bands should never play redneck bars, no matter how desperate for cash they are.


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## neon_black88 (Jun 18, 2007)

garcia3441 said:


> In 2004 my band was booked for a show in Pine Bluff. We show to see that the big sign outside reads 'Under New management', instead of the band's name. The new manager tells us no play, no pay. So we go in and see that it's now a redneck bar (With no chicken wire in front of the stage). Half way through the second song some jackass threw a beer bottle that hit me in the face and broke my jaw.
> 
> The moral of the story: Metal bands should never play redneck bars, no matter how desperate for cash they are.



Thats fucked man! Did you do anything about it?


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## garcia3441 (Jun 18, 2007)

neon_black88 said:


> Thats fucked man! Did you do anything about it?



I wanted to kick some ass, but the singer pointed out that there was 6 of us and about 100 rednecks. The bar owner paid me not to call the cops, and the insurance company paid for the rest.


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## Mr. S (Jun 18, 2007)

ha, yeah, last week was the worst, no monitors is pretty shit but i mean i was just playing solo stuff that i write and record and then play to my backing track live, so the fact i couldnt hear myself if i played kinda sucked, i then proceded to have a bit of a go at the engineer working the desk over the mic and appologised to those in in the crowd then i got a mate up and do some improv playing which turned out pretty well in retrospect. 

i dont do it often play solo like this and probally wont again for a while now, i really need to find people who are willing to learn this pretentious prog wank that i like to make  until then i'll have to play it safe with good 'ol metal 

and to make things worse the guy at the bar couldnt pour a pint to save his life, probally didnt help that he pored my ale into a larger glass i had some pretty continental head going on there..


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## ledzep4eva (Jun 18, 2007)

7 Dying Trees said:


> Number 1 in that list is probably going to stay there a long time, as a whole band fucking up a festival headline slot is tough to beat...



What happened...?


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## neon_black88 (Jun 18, 2007)

Mr. S said:


> i then proceded to have a bit of a go at the engineer working the desk over the mic and appologised to those in in the crowd



I hate it when people do this



garcia3441 said:


> I wanted to kick some ass, but the singer pointed out that there was 6 of us and about 100 rednecks. The bar owner paid me not to call the cops, and the insurance company paid for the rest.



 how much did he pay you if you dont mind me asking?


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## Mr. S (Jun 18, 2007)

neon_black88 said:


> I hate it when people do this



in my defence i had had a fair bit to drink, but the fact that he hadnt even bothered to connect the monitors took the piss in my eyes


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## neon_black88 (Jun 18, 2007)

Haha well thats ridiculous, if its warrented I guess its fine. ALOT of people seem to blame the sound engineers for everything even if its not their fault, and I hate seeing performers lay the blame on a sound guy infront of a whole audience, its just unprofessional.


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## InTheRavensName (Jun 18, 2007)

...I just want to hear this festival story


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## metalfiend666 (Jun 18, 2007)

Well there's been a few. My first band played a gig at my house at a party I had, which unfortunately conincided with my neighbours daughter's 18th. Fuck knows how many watts that disco had, but we were a thrash metal band playing at full volume inside and you couldn't hear us outside at all. As in we had the patio doors wide open and if you stood literally outside the door you couldn't hear us  Unfortunately it was the hottest UK summer ever and everyone else was outside...

Same band played a gig at a punk night (we didn't know that until we turned up) to total silence from the crowd.

Next up was a charity gig with a band from an old workplace, just playing covers. I had one solo and went to step on my boost pedal to find it buried under someone's mikestand and totally inaccessable. Suffice to say noone heard my solo.

Finally was the second gig by my second band. We played at a local venue to a small crowd and the soundman couldn't be arsed. We could hear nothing onstage apart from the drums and got totally lost in the second song. The video of that gig is very bad


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## InTheRavensName (Jun 18, 2007)

uhm...we got fucked over playing a punk night

...got very drunk...they said something about fascism...we made Hitler jokes...fell over...Fred passed out

I've NEVER seen that much beer in one room...but twas all in good fun 

the gig was shit...I was too pissed to remember to turn my Pod to "direct" so all I played sounded like a wet fart...for 30 mins...Stu was used to using a big kit and got stuck with a 4 piece...soundman didn't turn the mic on...

and we got paid £15 all said and done


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## eleven59 (Jun 18, 2007)

The second show my old band ever played (there's something magical about second gigs, I guess  ) was pretty bad. 

We were playing with 4 other bands at a bar next door to a church on April 20th. When I say bar, I mean it's a house that was converted into a bar, and we were playing upstairs. Carrying everything upstairs sucked, but I'm glad I only had my combo and not my halfstack at this point. We basically played in a corner of a big long room with a bar in it. This was the show we invited all our friends and family to. We're obviously the least known band of the night as we had just started playing shows. The show was running late, and the band that was supposed to headline wanted to go second last so they could get out of there sooner as they had to work the next morning. By the time we hit the stage, it was 1:30am. Thankfully all our friends and family stuck around to watch, but they basically just sat there watching, not very energetic. There were windows behind us, and I could see a big clock on a building across the street. About halfway through our first song, I broke a string (we always started our set with our drop-C songs that I played on my 6-string, then switched to the 7-string/5-string for the A-standard songs) and switched to my 7-string, which didn't like drop-C at all. About halfway through our set my amp crapped out (my combo amp has a tendency to overheat and cut the sound completely). I shut off my amp and let it cool off for a bit and it worked fine from then on. Oh, and the drummer's kick beater kept falling off all night. Halfway through our second last song, the bar turned the lights on. We finished at about 2:15-2:30 and got out of there at about 3:00am. Oh, and all night, my mic wasn't on and I didn't know it (no monitors) so the audience didn't hear any of my backing vocals (only on two songs, one of which was our cover of System of a Down's "Spiders" ) or any of me talking between songs (since our singer didn't like interacting with the audience).

Oh, and we got this show on video 

Oh, and we didn't get paid for this show (though we only ever got paid for shows like twice out of our 5-6 shows we ever played, and both times was only like $50-75, and always an amount that was exactly impossible to divide evenly among 4 people easily).


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## noodles (Jun 18, 2007)

My first show with Division was just god awful. We were opening for Sonata Arctica, who took roughly three years to sound check and setup their ego stacks and stadium banner in a 500 person club. The first local opener the took and vacated the stage with all the speed and efficiency of a tree sloth. The second opener ran over their time. When we finally got on stage, I had to endure a monitor mix that was *only* my guitar coming from the sidefill, and maybe a dash of vocals in the monitor in front of. I know I screwed up royally, because I couldn't hear anything but me the entire time. After three songs, we get cut for time (we got a fifteen minute set).

I then got to go drink beer and watch the singer from Sonata prancing around in flannel pajama bottoms. I hate that fucking band.


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## Drew (Jun 18, 2007)

Hmm. I've got two I'll mention, chronologiucally. 

The first was a house party my old high school band played - the night I got the "listen, I've been seeing someone else for a few months" conversation, over instant messanger the day after I drove out to meet her fucking grandparents, from a girl I'd been seeing that spring at college. Shortly after I'd met her she'd been so horrified that I didn't have a mp3 of "Hotel California" that she sent me one, and typically we were scheduled to close our first set with a cover of that tune. The first set blew - the second was marginally better. 

The second gig was memorable in that it was at a frathouse toga party, and 15 minutes before we were sceheduled to start I had two pints of beer spilled over my (new, on it's third gig) TSL head. This blew a fuse and shattered two tubes. I basically ran across campus and back and borrowed a friend's Spyder 1x12 combo, which wasn't quite loud enough to cut through and, beign cranked up to hell and back, sounded like ass. The fact that we were sort of a DMB-esq jam band with a slightly harder edge and the crowd was expecting Animal House v. 2.1 didn't work in our favor, either.


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## garcia3441 (Jun 18, 2007)

neon_black88 said:


> how much did he pay you if you dont mind me asking?



$500 cash.


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## 7slinger (Jun 19, 2007)

saturday night, as we are getting ready to drop into a thrashy-post-intro-type-riff-thingy in one of our songs, I apparently kicked my pedal board on the down beat, which somehow not only changed the patch I was on, but also changed the bank I was on by 2 banks...I was left on a patch that apparently bypasses my preamp all together, which left me with the sound of my 50/50 and nothing else, in a really heavy spot. The sound guy was pretty much a dink, and had no bass guitar in the mix at all, so there was nothing there to help hide the incredible suckiness...it took me a few seconds to realize what happened and figure out how to tapdance my way back to the proper bank and patch...the recording of this song = not very good


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## HamBungler (Jun 19, 2007)

The first two gigs with the current band I'm in kinda sucked...First one we were playing full stacks (not a good idea when playing in a small coffee house-style place) and neither the lead guitar player nor myself could hear anything, and our drummer was freaking out cuz he couldn't hear us, so it basically became a big ball of shit before our very eyes.

Second one was much better, we miked our cabinets this time and had one turned towards each other to act as monitors. Only thing is, we played thrashy/progressive stuff, and the whole crowd was emo. And I'm pretty sure the kid wearing the Metallica shirt had never listened to Metallica in his lifetime.


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## InTheRavensName (Jun 20, 2007)

I feel Noodles pain...I saw them at Bloodstock 04, took em hours to set up and they still couldn't get it right sound wise till the last song

..which is a shame, because I fucking love Sonata Arctica


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## Leec (Jun 20, 2007)

haha some good horror stories.

My biggest horror story doesn't sound so bad, as it's just a neck pup dying during the solo of the first song of a set. But it freaked the life out of me, and I never recovered for the rest of the gig, and it's always haunted me since. I've never felt comfortable on stage since.


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## Roundhouse_Kick (Jun 20, 2007)

Hehe some of these are funny. Ive had a fair few bad experiences but nothing major. Played one gig in a 400 odd capacity venue to 3 people. Played another gig in lancaster to a pretty big crowd that was active and loud when we started, and we managed to clear the room apart from the other band. Played basically a kids youth club in barrow which was hilarious, we were loud as hell playing techy thrash, there were kids stood with there hands over their ears, or just leaving to play on the swings/climbing frame outside  

Other incidents include
-Bassist playing a song tuned a step higher than everyone else because he didn't understand my tuner
-Singer kicking my lead out of my pedal just as I had gone to cockily stand out of the front of the stage
-Exactly the same thing happening the next gig 
-Singer being drunk at her birthday gig and waffling on for ages between songs, getting her friends onstage and telling them how much she loved them.  Giving me a shout out after my solo, and then telling the other guitarist, down the mic, that he was rubbish and would get a shout out if he practised more. He was pissed off.


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## HighGain510 (Jun 20, 2007)

Hehe... well the band that I was planning on joining hadn't started gigging yet. They asked me to play with them as the other guitarist was a friend of mine from PSU and I was really thinking about joining until I got a job which blew all my free time!  

Anywho, once they finally got a guitarist they liked they pulled a gig at a local tavern/restaurant so I came out to support them. Possibly THE funniest gig I've ever seen. They were supposed to go on at 9 but they got through about the first 20 seconds of a KSE cover and the owner came running over and told them they couldn't play until 10:30 because the elderly people eating there were getting startled and he was afraid of someone having a heart attack. Seriously. Who hires a band they KNOW is going to play metal at a restaurant that is filled with old people?  Then watching them finally go on after 10:30 and being told to turn it down was hilarious. I was struggling not to bust out laughing!  Ah well, they still gig but have better venues now so I guess it worked out for them.... still wish I could have been gigging with them as they got to play a couple bigger shows in Philly, one opening for Marc Rizzo (one of my favorite guitarists ever)!!!


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## DDDorian (Jun 20, 2007)

I played a one-off show for a friend a while back, performing mostly covers of pop-rock stuff. I was pretty much the only person there that had actually played in an ensemble situation before, so anytime any one person played something that caught another off-guard, everyone would just stop playing. I ended up taking the blame for most of the screw-ups as the band would die every time I took a solo or added a fill. It did mean I got to take an extended solo in the middle of a Christina Aguilera song when the rest of the band died, which was good for my ego, but for the audience... not so much, heh.

I was in a restaurant band at one point, playing something of a mix between elevator music and a mobile phone ringtone of The Godfather theme, and the band decided to give me a solo spot so that they'd have time to go outside and have a cigarette. Fifteen minutes and a room full of scowling Italian pensioners later, the band decided on my behalf that the Maxon stayed at home from now on


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## Desecrated (Jun 20, 2007)

In my teens I did a small gig at a venue and everything was going pretty well, the audience wasn't really responding to it, (no surprise, the music sucked). But at least the sound was really good and the band was well rehearsed. I have to say that it was one of the best monitor mixing I have heard.
So far so good. 

So we went of stage and talked with some guys in the audience that we knew, and apparently, the sound out to the audience had been 100% shit, the only thing they heard was the bas and some mumbling. I still don't know how the fuck they managed to get such good sound to the monitors and how they fucked up the sound towards the audience.


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## metalfiend666 (Jun 20, 2007)

Easy, they had the speakers plugged into the wrong jacks. You got the house mix, they got the monitor mix


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## telecaster90 (Jun 20, 2007)

I haven't had anything terrible happen, but two things come to mind. 

In October or November, around there somewhere, my youth band played at a local church for their youth service. I played lead and sang lead vocals as well. I rode with our bass player and meet the rhythm guitar player there. No drummer in sight. He doesn't show up until about 15 or 10 minutes before we play, giving us no time to practice real quick. We also didn't have monitors onstage, so all I could hear was the drums behind me. The show went pretty well from what people said, but we were winging it.

Then a month ago or so, the jazz band and percussion ensemble at my school played at the middle school in town. I used my 7 for the percussion ensemble set and my tele for the jazz band set. The volume knob on my tele had came off a week or so prior, so it was just the stub. We play our first song and I turn the volume down while the principal/jazz band director said some stuff. We go to play the next song and I forgot to turn the volume back up, so I have no sound coming. I start panicking becuase I have a short solo in the next song and I comp under a solo. Luckily, I had my Schecter which was still in tune, so I grabbed it and played. It took me until when we were packing up for me to realize what happened.


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## dissident (Jun 20, 2007)

One quite funny thing that happened to my band is our drummer said he had us a gig at this battle of the bands thing where the prize was £1000 and some recording time. So we get there and it was a working mans club, we set up all our stuff and start to wonder where all the other bands are. Just before we start we find out all the other &#8220;bands&#8221; are like 10-year-old kids singing along to pop backing tracks. The audience looks quite surprised when we started to play to say the least lol. 

I think the moral of the story is don&#8217;t let drummers sort out gigs! Or anything for that matter. 

Also, at a proper gig the other guitarist was head banging away and head butted the end of the mic which hit the singer right in the mouth. It split his lip open and there was blood all over the stage, he still has a scar from it. Thankfully the sound guy saw the funny side of it!


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## Oogadee Boogadee (Jun 20, 2007)

noodles said:


> My first show with Division was just god awful. We were opening for Sonata Arctica, who took roughly three years to sound check and setup their ego stacks and stadium banner in a 500 person club. The first local opener the took and vacated the stage with all the speed and efficiency of a tree sloth. The second opener ran over their time. When we finally got on stage, I had to endure a monitor mix that was *only* my guitar coming from the sidefill, and maybe a dash of vocals in the monitor in front of. I know I screwed up royally, because I couldn't hear anything but me the entire time. After three songs, we get cut for time (we got a fifteen minute set).
> 
> I then got to go drink beer and watch the singer from Sonata prancing around in flannel pajama bottoms. I hate that fucking band.




this by far was the worst show ever, for me as well. This is probably the only gig that ever had me FURIOUS. It's one thing when a couple avoidable hurdles pop up... but at this gig, everything went wrong and what made it so infuriating was that it was all nearly do to selfish human judgement... not some unforseen equipment issues. We worked hard to promote and bring a crowd.... and on top of that, those who had never seen us before probably thought we sucked because of the unknown behind-the-scenes bull shit!!!

Mike had us a little worried for a second too... I had never seen that kinda anger from him... I thought we were going to be bailing him outta jail after that song... er... set.


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## Jongpil Yun (Jun 22, 2007)

First and only gig I've played, playing as a backup for my friend (broke his wrist snowboarding, the dumbass), sucked ASS.

First time I've ever been on stage, it's dark as shit and I don't really know my way around (it's at my friend's High School by the way, following the Jazz Band of all things) I trip and fall over the wah pedal and narrowly miss killing myself or breaking my guitar. That's before we even start a song.

Next, I couldn't tell when the fucking wah was on because it had no LED. I tried to turn it off but instead of hitting the switch just ended up leaving it in the treble position. Needless to say, it sounded like shit until I figured out what was happening. Stupid gummy switch.

Next, I'm about to go into the solo of Cowboys From Hell, go to hit the DOD overdrive pedal he had (which has no rubber feet), and the damn thing slides off the stage and just kind of hangs there, so I was playing the solo expecting the sound to cut out at any moment. Luckily the singer managed to pull it back on the stage without cutting out the sound so it didn't go too bad.

Finally, probably the worst thing to happen, is I broke a string on his 1570 and had to switch it out for my Stratocaster (damn my 1527 for burning), go to hit a huge stretch, bang my wrist against the lower horn, which hurt like shit, and went for the 24th fret for the big note at the end, which... wasn't there. So what was supposed to be the orgasmic finale of my uber cool outro solo ended up as just a little "clink".

I've yet to play live since 

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I found out I was playing shit off key (half step flat) in the first song because I thought the guitar was tuned to E standard instead of Eb. Why it was in Eb I have no idea.


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## 7 Dying Trees (Jun 25, 2007)

The festival gig (waldrock 2004) was terrible. A day spent waiting to go on stage, followed by the laptop with backing tracks going down and severe cold. Basically the laptop started working, the drummer went on stage to check, but then started playing, we all looked at each other, decided he wasn't going to stop, ran on, hands frozen and stiff, and then the front of house guys decided to turn the PA and lighting on seeing as the whole band was suddenly on stage... Which left the crowd wondering what kind of preposorous band would have a 1 hour intro ( the war of the worlds interlude music)

And it got worse from there, vocal boy was drunk, had an england flag painted across his face, and didn't know holland had just lost and were out of the european cup and decided to say: "Make some noise! You sound like you've just lost a football match or something" along with other choice comments. Keyboard player got drunk as he couldn't face how badly it was all going, and then it started pissing it down with rain, and we got to watch
people walking off.

Oh, and halfway through the set, the singer drags on our guitar tech to do some "pub singing" of an AC/DC track, confusing the fuck out of everyone even more and basically killing any chance of salvation. 

I walked off and was just embarressed... Truly the worst gig I have ever played, although not through my fault 

I think there was more bollocks as well, but that'd be digging deeper into it, and it's best left alone...

Oh, did i mention we were the headlining band?


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## InTheRavensName (Jun 25, 2007)

Sounds filthy


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## metalfiend666 (Jun 25, 2007)

James wins


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## noodles (Jun 25, 2007)

metalfiend666 said:


> James wins



No doubt. My story didn't involve my band imploding.


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## Shawn (Jun 25, 2007)

Back in the summer of 1999, we we're playing in the battle of the bands in Portland, Maine and I had my 7620 equipped with a DiMarzio cliplock strap. I was playing really aggresive back then and I jumped up and landed with the guitar being thrown to the ground.  The fucking strap not only took the screw out but it took a huge chuck of wood out of the upper horn leaving a gouge.  I played the rest of the song on one knee until after the song was done, I quickly repaired by duck taping the strap to the upper horn, it sucked. After the night, I went out and got some epoxy to fill the gouge and I repaired it by putting the original strap buttons in place. Since then i've never used those straps.


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## thadood (Jul 3, 2007)

As far as playing with crappy bands and crappy venues, we've had TONS of those. We just played the Complex (Memphis venue) with some Arkansas bands. They sounded like raw shit and included rappers.. at a metal show. The sound guy didn't know what he was doing, either. The monitor mix was terrible: all I heard out of my wedge is myself.. in icepick-highs mode. The house mix was terrible, too. The kick was muddy because he was trying to compensate kicks with a lot of bass. Vocals were always WAY too high. Blah blah list goes on.

As for us having actual bad shows, we've had about 3 that haven't gone too well. There's only been one time where we screwed up so bad that we just had to completely stop. That was at a high school, for some music showcase; it wasn't school related.


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## distressed_romeo (Jul 3, 2007)

7 Dying Trees said:


> The festival gig (waldrock 2004) was terrible. A day spent waiting to go on stage, followed by the laptop with backing tracks going down and severe cold. Basically the laptop started working, the drummer went on stage to check, but then started playing, we all looked at each other, decided he wasn't going to stop, ran on, hands frozen and stiff, and then the front of house guys decided to turn the PA and lighting on seeing as the whole band was suddenly on stage... Which left the crowd wondering what kind of preposorous band would have a 1 hour intro ( the war of the worlds interlude music)
> 
> And it got worse from there, vocal boy was drunk, had an england flag painted across his face, and didn't know holland had just lost and were out of the european cup and decided to say: "Make some noise! You sound like you've just lost a football match or something" along with other choice comments. Keyboard player got drunk as he couldn't face how badly it was all going, and then it started pissing it down with rain, and we got to watch
> people walking off.
> ...



Wow...just...wow.


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## sakeido (Jul 3, 2007)

All these stories about pedal fuckups and gear crapping out makes me SO glad I have the simplest rig I could possibly have


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## Ancestor (Jul 4, 2007)

I was playing bass for a band. Couldn't get the guys to come to practice, so I don't know the songs very well. Made the mistake of listening to the guitarist and changed my rig, vastly decreasing my comfort level. And, finally, drank a couple shots of Rumplemintz before going on (along with beer, natch). 

Not too good. I ended up hurling my bass (in it's case, don't worry) across the bar at the end of the night. I should have just turned way down and everything would have been OK. Live and learn.

And besides, what the fuck do I want to play bass? I'm a guitarist, baby.


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## Tombinator (Jul 10, 2007)

Nine years ago, my old band (hardcore punk/dark ska - ala The Rudiments) who I played drums in, booked a show at a local church. I was pretty skeptical about it and the results proved my hunches. 

I hadn't eaten anything that day, so my girlfriend at the time and I left to get a bite to eat after we set up, while the rest went to the main room to pray. After we got back, sat around and waited for the sheep to flock out of each others' embrace. As they walked by us in the main hall, we got alot of dirty looks. On stage, we had no monitors, so I couldn't hear jack and shit, and jack left town. Speaking of jacks, the guitarist/vocalist's instrument jack keep shorting out. But who cares right, it's fucking punk rock? Not really, it was actually pretty damn annoying. The placement of the guitar and bass amps were strictly to my right, so I had my head tweaked throughout the whole set in order to, well try, and hear. Mostly because our songs were a bit more complex than traditional punk/ska and had many different bridges, sections and subsections. The pastor pulled us aside after the show, and told us that we couldn't play there any more because we had the words, "shit" and "fuck" in our lyrics, which I thought was a bit amusing. At the same time, both the other members in the band were going through some extreme phases of being reborn christians. They wanted to change the lyrics to religious idealogical inspirations, I didn't want anything to do with it, so I quit only a few days after. The most hypocritical and post-humorous part I realize about it afterwards, is they were and still to this day are heavy drug abusers, while I was the most sober one and anti-christian. It was originally a group of friends getting together and having fun that went awry.


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## auxioluck (Jul 23, 2007)

One of the last shows we played, we were supposed to be "headlining." Well, the 2 other bands showed up an hour late, so we got to open for a 17 year old band that covered Breaking Benjamin, followed by a family band that thought they were Evanescence. I'm not selfish, but it was at a gig called "Metal Mondays." Seriously. Anyone feel me on this?  If you are going to be a gigging band, at least have the integrity to show up on time. I'm not mad about it anymore, but that is probably the worst gig experience I had. Besides our drummer knocking a hole in his bass drum head in the middle of a 32nd note run. The quickest bass drum flip I've ever seen in my life.  Other than that, minor things included me switching to the wrong channel, then switching past the right one, then realizing the first one i was on was the right one. All while I'm supposed to be holding a scream. I decided a short scream was less embarassing than having the wrong channel. Unfortunately, this happened 3 gigs in a row. Needless to say, I got rid of my rig and got a different one. It sounds better anyway.


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## Stitch (Jul 31, 2007)

Haha, I forgot about these.

Three particularly bad experiences at two different gigs with two different bands.

At my first ever gig with my band A Day Late In December, we were playing in somewhere called The Loft which is basically a converted floorspace above a big pub/club. It's a great venue, but the ceiling is low and the soundguy was a wank. Being the openning band meant we were last to soundcheck and we were already a half hour late past open doors. So we setup an the guy has disappeared. He turns up 10 minutes later with a plate of fucking ravioli and procedes to watch me and the singer setup all the levels properly before blitzing all our settings and saying "_I'm_ the one paid to do that..." and we were just like "Where the fuck have you been then?!"



Same gig - the bassist has a habit of thrusting his bass up in the air so the neck is vertical during little silences at the end of riffs - he hits it right on time, throws it up, and promptly swears loudly as he thumps his hand off the roof. Not as bad as the time the guitarist swung his guitar over his shoulder and my head was impaled with an Ibanez headstock. Wish he had owned his Schecter back then...

Second time was at a school night - actually a great night. My band and a local pop/indie band named Jakil (awesome, awesome musicians and great guys) banded together a covers band to cover some of the more recognisable/funny songs of recent times, including Sikth's "Mermaid Slur, Papa Roach's "Last Resort", Limp Bizkit's "Rollin'" and Killswitch Engage's "The End Of Heartache.

I was doing the heavy vocals for all the songs (rough vocals or screams/roars, which I lvoe doing) and while it sounded great midway through "Last Resort" the singer changes his mind about the lyrics and indeed the tempo so I am left screaming lyrics which no longer fit the song. And during "The End Of Heartache" my mic stand gets knocked off stage by the bassist's windmilling hair and clouts my mates 6 year old cousin on the noggin. Marginally worse than the "ker-chthoonk!" noise it made was her face streaming with tears. We got her up on stage after our set to apologise though. She loved that.


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## MF_Kitten (Jul 31, 2007)

i´ve played lots of gigs where it was just impossible to hear shit... and i´ve only played one gig where there were no technical issues at all, with my gear... i´ve played one good show with minor technical issues too, though, my power supply was plugged into a broken power-thingy, whatever, and suddenly the power would turn off, and my sound would disappear for a little while, and i had to bump the plug around a little to get it back...

also, at one show, the sound-guy ordered that we use his cables to avoid a fuzz with ownership and stealing and shit, and so i did... of course the cable just slipped right out of my guitar like it was lubed up with KY... i had to do the cable-around-the-strap-trick...

i´ve had shows where i was using a wireless, and my jack output on the guitar was all wiggly, and i would randomly lose my sound... so my other guitarist, luckily took over my main part while i fixed it quickly...

i´ve had gigs where the sound was so bad i played a whole song without distortion, and no-one could tell, including me...

my first show just plain sucked, we had one shitty song, and one song we made that same day, we forgot EVERYTHING once we got on stage, and everything SUCKED, and after playing said two songs, the strap on my pal´s shitty les paul ripped the screw out, so it fell to the ground... so yeah...

i have played tons of shitty gigs... i played one really really good one, where everything was sweet, but after that, we celebrated by drinking, and i ended up having a fucking terrible night 

i miss gigging though, and with my current knowledge, i know it would be SCHWEET to gig again...

also, i´ve played a gig with my current band at a school, where my drummer showed the parents his band... i had to deal with ALL the sound work and shit, it was fucking stressfull, as i had NEVER done it before, there was a shortage of everything, and i had to improvise alot, but the sound ended up decent as fuck, and we pulled it off pretty well, with no mistakes in playing the songs... we only used two marshall MG100hdfx heads plugged directly from the cab sim output into the board, with decent results...


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## Summers45 (Aug 1, 2007)

In my last band I was playing bass, we had a pretty good run gigs-wise and never got many problems. However, one gig my amp cut out halfway through the first song - speaker had blown. No backup, so the band ended up playing the remainder of the set without a bassist. Needless to say it sounded like crap, but it was wierd to be standing at the front watching my own band play heh.


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## Ojinomoto (Aug 1, 2007)

HamBungler said:


> Only thing is, we played thrashy/progressive stuff, and the whole crowd was emo. And I'm pretty sure the kid wearing the Metallica shirt had never listened to Metallica in his lifetime.


  Why does this this sound familiar!?


I have a GOOD one for those wanting a good read.

This past semester at college I was playing bass for the Show Choir at a gig in the college theater. We were playing a really technical song that consisted of advanced choreography and demanding vocals from the singers, all this being done while running around dancing. My bass part was a jazzy bass-walk, it was easy so I could look around while I played. (Side note: We werent gonna play a song that uses the guitarist and I in the choreography so I played with a cable. Also, we use this thing called sequence, Its basically a MIDI backing track that the meat of the music in the show.) The song is at its climax and we were giving it our all. All of a sudden, the power goes out on the bands side of the stage and the electronic drums, the sequence, and guitarist, who used a wireless and a POD, are dead in the water, but guess whose still in the monitors because hes running on phantom power? Yeah, me. Our sound guy, mixin board, monitors, and mic receivers use a different power source so they were still live, and continuing with the song. When the power went out, some of the singers looked over to us, while singing and dancing, and gave us that deer in the headlights look. Funny as hell! But luckily, Im still playing the music because its the same pattern over and over again and everything came so fast, I never hiccupped in my playing. So basically, these folks are doing there thing to just a walking bass line. Funny as hell! They were able to finish the song and no one in the audience who has seen our show before could tell something went wrong. How do you like that for professionalism? BUT IT GETS WORSE!!! We traveled to France this past May and played two shows at Noirmontier. Our drummer couldnt come so the musicians recorded our music to a cd in a studio, took out the bass and guitars, and used a portable CD player ran from the stage to the mixing board and used that as our sequence. It was done that way so our keyboardist/ sequence operator could stop and start it. THE SAME SONG MENTIONED ABOVE STARTS and midway through the power is lost AGAIN but this time to the entire place! (we were suckin some serious juice!) The main engineer who ran the theater was sitting on the steps of the entrance by the front of the stage. The place goes black and he TAKES OFF running across the floor in front of the stage! All you could see was some bright colored shirts dancing and STILL singing in the dark. This time, everything was cut so all you heard were the singers, still singing, just without the mics, and the sound of the footsteps hitting the wooden floor! I shit you not! Funniest thing Ive ever seen. There wasnt anything I could do so my crazy ass just starts doin the Carlton dance, (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) acting dumb and shit. Two seconds later the power comes back on while the singers are continuing on and the CD starts playing from where it stopped, so since we were already beyond that point in the song, its quickly shut off and I pickup where the singers are at. Since everything got so fucked up, the singers, and myself, got kinda lost in the end section that is repeated a lot and we couldnt get back on the right track, so everything starts to fall apart until everyone just stops while in the middle of the choreography. There was a second of silence, overflowing with embarrassment, that passed before the French crowd (who were awesome, by the way) cheered us on. We acted as if nothing happened, smiled, apologized for nothing, and continued on with the next song. Im not one to say This is what you are supposed to do in your situation, but in the midst of the chaos we came out looking like some pros.


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## Stitch (Aug 1, 2007)

Keeping going is one of the best things you can do. If the drummer goes gruesomely out of time in one of my bands or I lose my place, if you act with complete conviction, more often than not people will not notice and assum it was intentional , and especially with the sort of the stuff we play, its deemed an extra layer of technicality 

More than once someone has congratulated me on a 'cool wicked sounding bit' that was really my cockup 

It's when the whole band grinds to a stop to swear at the bassist that you realise something is up


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## auxioluck (Aug 3, 2007)

stitch216 said:


> Keeping going is one of the best things you can do. If the drummer goes gruesomely out of time in one of my bands or I lose my place, if you act with complete conviction, more often than not people will not notice and assum it was intentional , and especially with the sort of the stuff we play, its deemed an extra layer of technicality
> 
> More than once someone has congratulated me on a 'cool wicked sounding bit' that was really my cockup
> 
> It's when the whole band grinds to a stop to swear at the bassist that you realise something is up



 Reminds me of when the mic picked up my voice in the middle of a song at a gig while I'm yelling at our drummer, "What the fuck was that??"


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## Ojinomoto (Aug 3, 2007)

auxioluck said:


> Reminds me of when the mic picked up my voice in the middle of a song at a gig while I'm yelling at our drummer, "What the fuck was that??"



HA HAA!! If I heard that live I would shit my pants!


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## NegaTiveXero (Aug 6, 2007)

I haven't really had any BAD gigs. I've had some that could have gone better, but nothing like we got booed off or super crazy shit happened.

The worst I can think of is when I was helping out 7StringOfABlick's band...uh, ABlick lol and during one song the drummer, Kent, kicked one of the beaters out of the double bass pedal, it was pretty funny, he put it back and we finished off the song. In another song, Eric (7StringOfABlick)'s amp suddenly stopped making noise after he changed channels, and we all looked at each other like "wtf?", but we kept going. It was pretty bad because it was the first show I played with them and the crowd wasn't getting into it as well as we had hoped, so we didn't have much energy. And the stage was pretty small.

The show we played a few days later though, was FUCKING GREAT. So, it made up for it.


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## maliciousteve (Aug 6, 2007)

the worst one I ever played was the second to last show with my previous band. We were ready with new songs, new and better equipment and a good head on us. But my drummer decides he wants to drink and smoke before the show ,to ease his nervousness due to a girl he had banged turning up to the gig. We get on stage, first song, slight mess but passable. Then progressively throughout the set he goes out of time more and more, drops his sticks, stops during songs and by this time i'm furious. Then we play the last song which we totally fucked up. I'm so angry that I take off my custom 7 string and was about to launch it at his head. Luckily I stopped myself and tried to play the last song, but at this point the drummer can't function what so ever so we stop and I tell everyone to get off the stage and forget it. 

We started with a full crowd and promptly ended with about 6 people in the audience. 

Luckily our next gig was pretty damn good and recorded a really good CD the following weeks, but their attitudes were worse than shit so I quit about 2 months after finishing recording.


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## DaveCarter (Aug 23, 2007)

Once ended up with me (electric) and a piezo-equipped classical guitarist plugged into the SAME AMP!!! To make it worse he was on the end of a short cable and was sitting right next to it. Needless to say when i switched to the overdrive channel for solos, the amp squealled like a bitch so I had to play clean  I was not happy....

On another occassion I did a gig where the keyboard player hadnt had a chance to rehearse, but assured us he could just play along coz he knew the songs. He clearly didnt!!! He put everyone off so much that the rest of us all looked at each other and simultaneously turned ourselves up in an effort to drown out the little prick


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## shredfreak (Aug 23, 2007)

Haven't rlly had that crap gigs but we do have some bad luck from time to time >.>

Worst time would have been this one imo:
The local club that organizes a lot of gigs had a very good soundman & every time he gave use a killer sound. We decided instead of the cheapass/crappy first demo to get a live one instead (it would have worked well actually). Everyone showed up including the guy to record the stuff but during soundcheck the good soundguy is missing. Apperantly the guy quit for reasons unknown & the owner took the liberty of doing the sound. Endresult now is that i have 100 pisspoor demo tapes that look quite decent untill you hear em . needless to say i got a lot of beercoasters & frisbees now .

Also that night, we got the oppertunity to open for an italian band on their european tour, Underhate & Natron. Both amazing band but sadly not very well known. The date planning was pretty crap aswell since major bands like the haunted were playing 50 miles away from us aswell. Result: barely a dozen ppl showing up on our first major support gig, what a way to go that night


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## ogisha007 (Aug 30, 2007)

Two days ago I had my first ever gig, with a band that was doing Nightwish covers. We were doing great at rehearsals and stuff, and a couple days before the gig, the keyboard playes decides to get a flu or something and have a temperature over 39 degrees Celsius, rendering him totally useless.  
So the bass player gets some chick (his friend) to fill in on the keyboards, and it turns out she doesn't know how to play half the songs we were supposed to play, and that she had about 24 hours to learn them. In the end, the setlist was almost completely different. 
So, we finally arrive in time for the soundcheck, and it turns out that we're only gonna play for 20 minutes instead of 35.... (OK, so no Dark Chest of Wonders, no Bless The Child... deep breaths, relax...)
But wait, it gets worse. I get up to the stage for the soundcheck, and what do I see before me? A LOUSY GOOD FOR NOTHING FENDER SUPER TWIN REVERB. After hopelessly trying to dial in a distorted sound that goes beyond a weak crunch, I had to resort to desperate measures - my Digitech Death Metal pedal  I'm pretty sure I sounded like a hot steaming bowl of fresh poo. As if that wasn't enough, the bassist apologises for his mistakes at the end of the third song. You damn idiot, nobody ever does that!! Oddly enough, the crowd kinda liked us (probably because we were playing on some small beer festival, so there was rarely someone completely sober )
Oh well, now that I think of it, it wasn't *that* bad, I was just very pissed off because of stuff that didn't go according to plan.


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## Stitch (Sep 4, 2007)

This thread makes for some fairly interesting reading!

i think it should be stickied


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## InTheRavensName (Sep 4, 2007)




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## rahul_mukerji (Sep 5, 2007)

Funny experiences, not as bad as the ones mentioned before.


Our band (basic radio friendly rock) was called by the singers manager to perform in D.C. for some charity event. When we arrived we were quite surprised to see that it was primarily a harcore hip-hop/ rap event. So my band members and I stood out like a really sore thumb. Imagine ending up at a hardcore hip-hop/rap event with guitars in your hand wearing T-shirts with metal band names when everyone else is wearing bling bling gear. Oi !! Needless to say, THAT was my most awkward 2 songs on stage. We were so out of place there !!! I think some people were laughing at how uncomfortable the entire group looked. 


At another gig in Virginia, the local hot band dropped out and so did the crowd. Only 3 bands ended up coming to the venue. We played for the other bands. There weren't more than 12 people there and most of them were the managers for the band FORWARDHEAD (which went on to open for Anthrax the following week). When Forwardhead came on I was the only idiot listening. The venue was absolutely empty and the other band and mine had left for the night. I kept on Moshing and by song 4 the band just walked off.

On the bright side, I got a couple of copies of their album and some free stickers and promo stuff for my headbanging efforts !!!


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## Groff (Sep 5, 2007)

We got offered a gig in asbury park NJ on a THURSDAY night...

Needless to say noone besides the other bands were there.

On the upside, I know the songs so well, I played, sang, and watched an episode of the simpsons(subtitles) all at the same time!


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## Naren (Sep 18, 2007)

This wasn't a bad gig so much as there were 2 really bad songs out of our 7-song setlist, most remarkably being the last song.

The last song was actually our oldest song and we'd never ever ever messed it up before in practice, rehearsal or live. I have no idea what was up with the drummer, but his tempo was screwed up at the beginning. Then he started playing about 2 seconds before he should have which made both me and the other guitarist about half a second off for the first few seconds. Then he was supposed to play just the high-hat 4 times, but he entired after just 2 times, then where he was supposed to be playing double-bass at an excessive speed, it was just single bass and sounded really hollow. Then he made the next section too long and then the next section after that too short. Then for the bridge, it was supposed to be 2 sections in length, but he stopped after only 1 and a half sections. At first me and the other guitarist kept playing, but then I started trying to make up for it by changing what I was playing to just palm muted B power chords on the accents. Then, of course, the last section of the song, was timed wrong. It was also our last show with that drummer, so, as you can imagine, he was pretty depressed. The bass player, other guitarist, and myself jokingly told him not to worry about it, but he was like, "Yeah, uh, I'm gonna go hang myself with a guitar cord in the other room now."

And, since it was the last song, it just made our really good performance before that seem kinda crappy. There was one other song that we fucked up on though and that time it was kinda my fault. For the solo, it was really dark and I couldn't see the fretboard well and I was also using my baritone seven, although I had been practicing it on my regular-scale seven. So, when I started the solo, it was supposed to start on the 12th fret of the high G string, but I ended up starting it accidentally on the 15th fret. I managed to change over to the correct notes after a second or two, but...


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## SunburnedCactus (Sep 18, 2007)

My worst gig. Ah, has been a while...

Basically I was feeling rotten, having been floored by some nasty virus the last week, but I turned up nevertheless, taking one for the team you know? In any case after much Czech lager and disappearing for "smokes" my colleagues end up in a far worse state than I. The singer is basically just rambling tunelessly into the microphone and his freshly strung electro-acoustic is absolutely ear-bleeding, so much treble and yet so out of time. The drummer seems to be playing a different gig entirely, starting and stopping almost at random throughout the set. And I later find out the keyboard player had taken a pill before he started, causing him to get faster and faster and faster. And then say "Yeah, by the end I thought we were sounding mint, man!"

Somehow we got through the setlist in the right order, but by the end, with the singer shouting at the crowd to "fucking sing" despite being unable to do himself, I wasn't too pleased.


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## Ojinomoto (Sep 18, 2007)

SunburnedCactus said:


> My worst gig. Ah, has been a while...
> 
> Basically I was feeling rotten, having been floored by some nasty virus the last week, but I turned up nevertheless, taking one for the team you know? In any case after much Czech lager and disappearing for "smokes" my colleagues end up in a far worse state than I. The singer is basically just rambling tunelessly into the microphone and his freshly strung electro-acoustic is absolutely ear-bleeding, so much treble and yet so out of time. The drummer seems to be playing a different gig entirely, starting and stopping almost at random throughout the set. And I later find out the keyboard player had taken a pill before he started, causing him to get faster and faster and faster. And then say "Yeah, by the end I thought we were sounding mint, man!"
> 
> Somehow we got through the setlist in the right order, but by the end, with the singer shouting at the crowd to "fucking sing" despite being unable to do himself, I wasn't too pleased.



Please tell me you did something or said something to them about this!


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## poisonelvis (Sep 18, 2007)

worst gig?two years ago in sac,ca.we hooked up with this promoter?(scumbag)who hyped this gig for two months,was on the rock station the whole bullshit thing,new kickass metal bar,we were stoked,we show up for the show,the other two bands are there,cool guys from chico,and theres no house pa.,we did bring ours just in case,the owner won't let us set it up,his sound guy is the only one doing sound in his bar fuckers(real qoute)so this is looking bad now,we set up and do a two hour sound check(took that long for him to get the feedback out)we are ready,it's 4 pm,we go to our hotel,back to the bar at 8pm,there are two people in the bar,the first band plays,the second plays,10:45 we get ready to go on,there are now 6 people,we play anyway,after we are done the bar owner wants us to pay him 200.00 bucks(huh?)his lose on the night,see he would have not stayed open so late if not for the bands playing(huh?)so he is charging us for renting his empty bar,soooo we broke some stuff and split.the promoter(scumbag)then wanted us to pay him for his time on the show(huh?)at the first rest stop i yanked his dis.cap,and ran it over with the van,your payed up now dick....and we left him.


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## SunburnedCactus (Sep 18, 2007)

Ojinomoto said:


> Please tell me you did something or said something to them about this!



I just went straight home to bed that night. But words were said soon after, oh yes.


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## ChaNce (Oct 1, 2007)

Cover band, Apple Cup at WSU, 1992 WSU 42, UW 23 - The Drew Bledsoe Snow Bowl! Dumping snow on the Palouse, we are the biggest cover band in town, we are playing a Frat party in front of about 400 people (they had cleared out their entire open downstairs) we had a 3 foot high stage, and were playing grunge covers. Good times. Anyway, Im on stage left by myself, and there are these huge plate glass windows that are even with the stage (the bottom of the windows are even with the stage, the tops are about even with my head). Everyone is wasted, having an awesome time. We had rules, essentially that everyone had to be in the vicinity or we didn't play. So it was packed, we had just won the rivalry game against the hated Huskies, and we were KILLING it. I was wearing a silk shirt, unbuttoned to the belly button, playing a LP standard, doing by best Slash impression, in both playing style and drinking.

The crowd was just insane, and there were 3x2 frats there, the three that sponsored the party, and their compatriots from UW. So six houses total. At WSU, voted best party school for nearly a decade before the crackdown a few years after I left. 


We had a section of the second set where we ripped through Even Flow, Alive, Why Go, State of Love and Trust, and ended with Ocean to chill for a bit. So I'm standing on my side of the stage, mindlessly playing Ocean (not th e hardest song) and I catch some rumbling in the crowd in front of the right side of the stage, like a fight breaking out. 

All of a sudden, this dude, all pasty white, rips out of the shirt he was getting held by, jumps on stage, and barrels toward me. I am of course out of my skull, and not responding very quickly. I turn away, he brushes me, and goes crashing through the window out into the snow. Just shredded him. Bleeding everywhere. 

Within 10 minutes, the ambulance had picked him up, the frat boys tossed a piece of plywood over the window, and the show had started again.


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