# Worst live experience?



## SenorDingDong (Feb 24, 2011)

Now in my days of music, I have had some pretty shitty things happen live.. From puking bass player to drummer forgetting all cymbals.. But the worst thing live was at the Webster, my old death metal band Shadow Sanctuary was opening for Taiwanese black metal band Chthonic... We were on right before Chthonic and after our second song, my rhythm guitarists guitar dropped UNBELIEVABLY out of tune. We were in drop c, and he ended up in like A or something... But for some reason he refused to tune, so I ended up having to palm mute A LOT of our third song to try and cover up the difference. Thankfully there was no solo in the song, or he would have made me sound bad 
But after that song me and the sound guy exchanged a glance and he knew what was up, so he shut off my rhythm's amp. Saved! But by far the worst experience, especially being right before such a tight band. At least it has a happy ending. So what is YOUR worst experience?


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## Soubi7string (Feb 25, 2011)

shit I don't know where to begin.
hmm well there was the first show or any show at this place called Fathom,shady fucking place, and we were playing and no monitors or anything(even though there were some dude just wouldn't turn them on),Lead forgot to bring his NS pedal so he was squaking and squealing, the dude wouldn't give us a soundcheck(he literally refused).Then at the end of the night they said we didn't bring in enough people, which was BULLSHIT cause we clicked the door and got 80 something to show and the requirement was like 50 or something.So yeah overall that was probably our worst night.I'll share more later.


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## ZXIIIT (Feb 25, 2011)

I would say yesterday was my worst show in a while.
Was very sick and felt like shit, we did our soundcheck before playing our set, only to realize that our levels were completely opposite (loud vocals/guitars, very low drums/backing tracks) so the first 2 songs were a complete mess.

2nd singer kept going off time because of the sound issues and me feeling like shit affected my stage presence.

The last 2 songs were ok, felt the adrenaline and got into it, but will definitely be one of our worst shows to date.


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## jymellis (Feb 25, 2011)

ZOMB13 said:


> I would say yesterday was my worst show in a while.
> Was very sick and felt like shit, we did our soundcheck before playing our set, only to realize that our levels were completely opposite (loud vocals/guitars, very low drums/backing tracks) so the first 2 songs were a complete mess.
> 
> 2nd singer kept going off time because of the sound issues and me feeling like shit affected my stage presence.
> ...


 
damn maing, hope ya feel better.


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## ZXIIIT (Feb 25, 2011)

jymellis said:


> damn maing, hope ya feel better.



Thanks man, have a show tomorrow so I better !


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## synrgy (Feb 25, 2011)

I've been lucky, in that one of the worst things to ever happen was a blown transformer in the middle of a DJ set. We re-routed power and had it resolved in about 3 minutes. It was actually pretty funny; the power blew *JUST* at the peak of a minute-long buildup/crescendo.  *edit* Imagine all the sound at a Tool show cuts out immediately after Maynard sings "I must persuade you another waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy". It was like that. 

In one of my old bands, we got booked for one of those 'if you don't sell tickets, you owe the venue money' sort of shows. The problem is, the only person in our band who knew it wast that kind of show was our drummer, and the idiot (no really, he was a complete imbecile) neglected to share that information with the rest of us, so we were totally caught with our pants down. 

NOBODY was at the show besides us, the band who played before us, and the band we were opening for (Tribal Instinct, who were seriously the biggest bunch of posers I've ever had the displeasure of listening to) and a few obligatory girlfriends.

We were completely broke, and the venue people were basically trying to shake us down at the end of the show, threatening violence and the whole nine. Ultimately, our drummer had to leave all his cymbals with the venue as collateral until the band could come up with the $180 something they wanted us to pay them for the right to play in their dank hole-in-the-wall. It was a mess.

Mind you, they didn't ask the headlining band or the band who played before my band to pay a dime. I have no idea why we were the only band being picked on.

Anyway, that was like 11 years ago.


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## ryzorzen (Feb 25, 2011)

My band *almost* played the wrong venue one night. We started wheeling the gear into one venue and realized we were playing down the road just as we locked the trailer up. Not that bad, but after a couple weeks of touring it really sucked haha


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## Varcolac (Feb 26, 2011)

For the first few gigs with Prometheus, it seemed I was cursed to break all equipment. 

One gig my guitar's output jack worked its way loose during the last song. Not the lead; the wires connecting the jack to the pickups. Fortunately it was during the outro of the final song, so I just had the synth player turn his keyboard all the way up and mimed the last chords. 

At a gig three weeks later, using a different guitar, I managed to kill a Line 6 Spider during the same section of the same song. The sound started farting out and by a minute from the end there was nothing coming out of the speakers. For a minute I thought my second guitar in a month had gone the way of the dodo, but checking it through the bass amp after our set proved it wasn't the guitar; I'd just killed the amplifier dead. 

And then there's the two times that I've launched in to the first riff of the first song, only to have my guitar strap fall off. Twice that's happened, and I've had to finish the first verse with the guitar on my knees until I can find a suitably musical place to hold a note and readjust my strap. I keep forgetting that I only have straplocks on my bass; I should really get some more for my other instruments.


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## JohnIce (Feb 26, 2011)

My worst was only weeks ago.

A fellow AE student had planned to start up a monthly rock club at a local bar, and for the first event he asked my band to headline, with his band opening. We said sure, it was a good idea and well-needed in the town. So we do soundcheck, everything works pretty well, then we go off and his band is going to soundcheck. He asks me to do the sound for them, which I was happy to do, no biggie. So a few hours later their band go on to play their set, and it sounds great, I do some minimal tweaking and walk around the room listening etc. being pretty active throughout their whole set, even though the rest of my band were backstage drinking and having fun.

Then we go on. The dude has been drinking a lot during the show, so he goes off stage and "rearranges" the mixing console as he thought it had been when we did soundcheck... then he disappears. We go onstage, everything sounds like shit, and aside from being busy playing, I had no clue what was on each channel or what I could do to fix it. The crowd starts thinning out, either going downstairs or leaving entirely. We end up not playing two songs, and during the final song, only 2-3 of our closest friends are still in the audience.

When we come offstage and go back to the dressing room, there sits the dude, drinking with his band and a couple of girls. Completely oblivious to the fact that he had fucked up his own arrangement, completely humiliated us in our home town, and probably caused the bar to lose a ton of money from people leaving early. Not to mention being pretty fucking unproffessional in general.

We've had a lot off minor accidents onstage, for example I once broke my D string during the first song and didn't have a backup, so I kept playing the set... these things we can handle. But shit sound is shit, and there is nothing you can do about it, especially if your "sound tech" doesn't show up at all.


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## Inazone (Mar 1, 2011)

My worst gig was an EP release show back in 2008. My wife was also in a band at the time, and she'd done a gig at this little hole-in-the-wall type of place that was tiny but had the type of layout that created the impression of playing to a big crowd. The house PA was minimal but sounded good, and the sound guy knew the board. I went ahead and booked us there.

Well, the night of the show arrives - a torrential downpour going on outside to set the mood - and we are sitting through the opening band. They sound pretty bad, but it's their first show, so we figure it's just them. They finish, we start setting up our gear, and this girl jumps on stage, barking orders at us in some sort of Eastern European accent that makes it very hard to understand her. As it turns out, she's running sound that night, and she's making it very clear that no death metal guys are going to tell her what to do. (Our bassist, who was trying to calm her down, was told "Shut the fuck up or get the fuck off MY stage!") 

This was a recipe for disaster. Our rhythm guitarist was playing through a new rig (Peavey Triple XXX half stack) and was barely audible. I had to stand with half my pedalboard off the stage to get anywhere near a monitor. The kick drum trigger was virtually absent in the mix, and the bassist was blasting everyone off the stage. It sounded like ass, and naturally, this was one of those shows where people who hadn't seen us live in years came out to see us. 

Disaster!


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## Jogeta (Mar 1, 2011)

Mine was at this:







My wireless packed in. Then my backup cable broke.

I frickin' ADORE The Red Chord. Pretty much all the band merch I have is theirs. I guess they are sort of my heroes?

Looking like a twat in front of them burns to this very day!


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## poopyalligator (Mar 1, 2011)

I have a bad habit of being the clumsiest person ever when it comes to playing live. One time i tripped and hit my head on the floor monitor, and started to bleed quite a bit. I ended up playing the whole show with a bunch of blood on my head and face. I was playing in a pop punk band at the time so it didnt add to my metal look lol. There was another time where i tripped before a show and split one of my rgs clear in half.


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## Goatfork (Mar 1, 2011)

I was playing show with a make-shift band once for the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. Basically, you meet up with a bunch of musicians, form bands, and put on a show of a couple songs each at the end of two weeks.

I was lead guitar/vocals in our band and our last song was the BLS version of No More Tears. During the clean section immediately before the solo, I walked over to the other guitarist to have one of those 'rockstar moments' where you just kinda rock-out fretboard to fretboard. 

The solo comes up, and not only am I on my clean channel, but I'm a good 15 to 20 feet away from the distortion box acting as my lead channel. I dash over and jump onto the button, disconnecting the pedal somehow from both leads, 'tweaking' some knobs with my foot, and I'm still late for the solo. I manage to plug it all back in, reset the knobs, and get right into the song just a couple measures before the fast part kicks in.

That. Sucked.

I know it isn't that bad compared to some of the horror stories posted here, and I know there are far more worse than those posted to come, but that's my worst.


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## AcousticMinja (Mar 1, 2011)

We were at this local venue, one of those sell tickets to play ones, and both bands bailed, so we were the only ones playing. On top of that, I couldn't hear my vocals for the life of me and ended up being flat half the time I was singing. Lame.


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## SenorDingDong (Mar 1, 2011)

Wow your guys stories totally beat mine! Especially dealing with an angry Eastern Euro chick haha


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## Bloody_Inferno (Mar 1, 2011)

Where do I begin....?

One particular gig with my first band began with a horrible miscommunication between my singer and guitarist. Singer books a gig and guitarist goes off and watches the Two Towers premiere. Of course both being stubborn means neither was cancelled so our band went ahead and did it acoustic, without the guitarist, and me on guitar and our drummer on bongos. I bought my bass and keys, but I was forced to use my singer's acoustic with the high E missing. It also didn't really help when my singer drank himself to oblivion before he got onstage either. 

On a grander scale, I was in a Gospel RnB band that played in the Melbourne Town Hall. That was a huge gig and a lot of buildup to it. Around 2 minutes before we hit the stage I got really nervous and ended up vomiting on my guitar.  Thankfully it was dark and right before I got onstage so I just wiped it right off and played. But what's worse that happened came afterwards. After a few songs the whole onstage power went out. It held up the show and we all checked our power supplies to see if everything is good. A few minutes and power went back on again. We played a song then bam, power went out again. It turns out that one of the keyboard player's power supply was playing up and interfering with the earth line... or something like that.  Dunno, but we fixed it right away and finished the show. 

There was also a few recent shows last year where our then manager booked a gig and got mistaken between 2 venues, which cost us our punters and promos. 

And also another gig where he booked headlining and he told us that we only had 15 minutes to play RIGHT WHEN WE WERE SETTING UP ONSTAGE. That gig sucked even more when our soundguy's mike on my amp failed and he didn't bother to replace it. I cracked it after our set, immediately packed up and went home. We sacked the soundguy then and eventually sacked the manager. 

Lastly our album launch had a few problems. We used 8 Randall rental quads, while looked good onstage sounded horrible. I ended up breaking a string and used a backup that admittedly wasn't adequate for the material (though minor problem really). And it didn't help that our soundguy (another one) got plastered and forgot our settings. Outside his resident venue, we pretty much never worked with him again.


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## AvantGuardian (Mar 4, 2011)

I played a gig in Tacoma one time for two people (my girlfriend and her friend). The other bands didn't stick around to watch us, and they didn't bring any crowd whatsoever. I also was running a fever and was having some pretty intense headaches. The band I was with was from Seattle, and no one wanted to drive down to Tacoma (45 minutes to an hour drive) to see us, especially since we were playing in Seattle once or twice a month back then. Actually, we had one fan from near Tacoma and he came out to the show but he didn't realize it was 21+ and he was 20, so he couldn't get in.


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## -42- (Mar 4, 2011)

Honor Band concert in eighth grade.

Goddamn trombones couldn't keep tempo worth shit.


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## stupidspoge (Mar 4, 2011)

I was doing a show for my school's performing arts class. Musicians recorded some clips of their playing, and the composers (also students) selected the musicians they wanted in their piece. I played Arch Enemy for my tryout, and got stuck in an indy rock act. What? (It wasn't my only act. The one I composed was metal.)

So a drum set and all of the amps were put on an 8' x 8' dolly, which was wheeled out for acts which needed it, and wheeled into the wings when it wasn't needed. The extension cord that ran to the riser came unplugged once during rehearsal, so somebody wrapped it in gaffing tape. The second night, they wheeled it on, and it came unplugged. I saw this, and one of the crew tried to plug it back in, but it was covered in tape! -_- There was no guitar that night, only synth, drums and vocals. Surprisingly, I got a nice clean out of my 5150 with the right settings. (when it had power.)

The last night, when we were moving the platform backstage after my piece (the metal one) one of the crew knocked the other guitarist's amp head (B-52 AT100) off of his cab! It fell into the drums and made a racket. We were scolded later by the music teacher... It, and the drums were fine though. Stupid crew...

Otherwise school performances, nothing has gone wrong.


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## Ckackley (Mar 4, 2011)

Damn .. So many .. lol 

Bad PA set ups, horrible management, gear we were promised not being there.. But the worst by far was getting electrocuted on stage. Somehow the power got weird and as I stepped on my volume pedal I got the crap knocked out of me. We finished the set without any volume swells and the rest of the band was like "WTF" until I told 'em what happened. I said something to the venue tech and his response was " Yeah, we've had that happen before. Been meaning to get an electrician in here but never got around to it. " I wanted to choke the man slowly to death . lol


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## Coffin (Mar 4, 2011)

Yeah, back in the days where I started Metal with my brother and a couple of friends we were like "You've got a gig? Let's rock dude!"

So I remember my telephone rang and my brother (who still lived at home at that time) said "You can play a show tonight?" So we packed our stuff to the local school (compared to your high schools) and thought of a nice party with people up 8th grade. 
Oh f*ck we were mistaken. 
Everything was build up on stage and the first waves of 10 year old kids came in. We had to rename our songs in fact we cared bout the children and started the show. 
The kids just loved us. Germany is a weired country what should I say more. Two songs later the teachers switched off electricity, wanted to kick our butts outta school. We had a BIG argument, they'd let us play one more song (these mf's switched off electricity again right in the middle of the song) and then they threatened us with police. If I look back now I still could laugh my ass off, but right on that day I was so pissed.


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## warped (Mar 4, 2011)

We played a gig once and they had arranged a chain of power boards/adapters/extension leads to run the entire bands backline (2 tube half stacks with effects racks, bass rig, vocal processor), the PA system/mixing console, and the lighting rig from a single powerpoint!!!

I've never heard my amp make so much noise - lucky everything actually ran.

Another gig I was sounchecking my guitar levels and bam - power cut out - I turn around and get a loud pop - power back on for a second - bam power out.. The stage hand is unplugging me from the wall and plugging me back in so he can re-arrange it to plug something else in - so my whole rig is going up and down - no probs but pissed me off anyway - I told him not to do that and he cracked the shits at me coz he 'knows what he's doing' (do sound people always use this reason for them doing anything)

Another gig - someone offered to help carry my stuff in - he picked up my pedal case - which is basically just a pedal box with my pedals all connected - and tipped it upside down as he was carrying it - all the pedals dropped out and hit the concrete - all survived - but was a nervous moment trying to power them all on.

And when support bands rock up with just a guitar and say "I left my amp at home coz it's shit - I need to borrow yours" - sure here is my Mesa Dual Recto half stack - help yourself. Then about 2 minutes before you are ready to start playing he comes on stage and says he has to go and needs his extension lead back (which is powering my rig) - so turn everything off, unplug his extension lead, throw it at him, run my extension lead across the back of the stage to the outlet and power everything back up again. So they didn't even stay for our set - no mention of the words 'please' or 'thanks' in any exchange.. Maybe I played better coz I was pissed off


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## Ckackley (Mar 5, 2011)

Oooo... Almost forgot.. My first show with my current band, Cassandra Syndrome.. Lead singer steps backwards, onto my effects processor and unplugs it JUST as a solo starts. Epic disaster.


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## Tomo009 (Mar 5, 2011)

Well it's sort of a live experience, seeing as I have very few real ones to speak of.

In my year 12 music practical exam I had the biggest cartoon moment of my life. 

My set consisted of 

Metallica: The Unforgiven
Jimi Hendrix: All Along the Wattower
Cream: White Room
A couple of Jazz songs I do not remember the name of.

Anyway I had practiced how my exam was going to go for months before the thing, I thought I had it nailed. 

I walk out and plug in in front of he judges, I'm using a friends BOSS multi effect pedal (ME-50 sounds right), but it was fine I'd used it a million times before. Everything had been set up perfectly (I thought).

First song, ready to start, the ipod is super quiet but I'm not sure why, try fiddling with knobs for a good 2-3 minutes, nothing working. My time is ticking away, I eventually realize the jack isn't fully pushed into the pedal so I fix that, then obviously the ipod wheel I turned up to full, so the volume jumped to near deafening levels. Sort that out, fumbling around pretty flustered. Went to play the song and wasn't feeling great by now so I forgot my place and came in 2 bars early, looking like an idiot as I for some reason couldn't regain my place for a few bars of the simple intro. 

I then continue to screw up the rest of the song terribly except for the solo which I somehow nailed. Even though by this point it doesn't seem like much, I was pretty terrified, I was sweating like crazy everywhere and my hands were shaking, of course I'd set up my playlists wrong on the ipod so immediately after Unforgiven, All Along the Watchtower had started. I had to quickly set up my sound for the song and come in very late, luckily the rest of the song didn't go too bad.

By the next song my hands were so sweaty I could barely play, I was absolutely terrible through the entirety of White Room, making it worse, I was having trouble turning my wah on and off and it turns out there was a chord going underneath it stopping the pedal from clicking into the switch.

After that my hands were barely functioning and I had to play the 2 jazz songs, which were finger picked. Needless to say they were absolutely terrible.

The worst thing was the judges staring stone faced the whole time, made me feel very out of place. I was trying to imagine an actual show the whole time but the snowball of things going wrong just couldn't be stopped.


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## Coffin (Mar 5, 2011)

I remember another one. We won a contest for the support of Six Feet Under. The whole evening was very sweet, as there were SFU, Nile, Finntroll and Belphegor. On every ticket was the time for doors, 7.30pm - our time to begin was like 7.40 or so. You had to buy the tickets via internet but the venue sold tickets also. On these tickets stood doors 8pm. We came on stage and faced like 150 people in a venue for something around 1200 people. Luckily there were at least some, but that was bad luck I guess.


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## Seanpat76 (Mar 5, 2011)

I few years back, the owner of a well known Providence, RI club was killed in a car accident. The club threw a memorial show in his honor and my band, at the time, secured a spot on a bill consisting of 8 bands. We were to go on fifth. Well the club thought it would be a good idea to offer all the bands an open bar. That seemed like a great idea at the time. Long story short, our singer drank himself to near oblivion and a few songs into our set became useless and was unable to continue. Thankfully a friend and fan of the band was in the crowd who is the lead vocalist in another band not playing that evening. Knowing all the lyrics to our set, he jumped up on stage and saved the night by finishing our set with us. After our set, I lead our singer to the mensroom where he pukes all over the place, including my arm. That was one dissasterous night.


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## Krucifixtion (Mar 8, 2011)

I haven't had many really really bad live experiences other than the typical stuff like we just aren't playing good at all...having a bad day kind of thing.

One time years ago I thought it would be cool to put pickup covers on one of my guitars. I installed them like the day before the show and only played the guitar at home maybe once or twice at lower volume....not realizing that with my high gain amp I would get horrible screeching feedback. I didn't realize this until we started playing the show. In between all my palm mutes or just playing in gerneral was awful squeeling feedback. I was angry and couldn't do anything about it and couldn't pull the covers off the pickups, because the strings were just not high enough without having to completely de-tune the whole guitar and re-tune on stage.

That and what time and some shitty club, which we will never play again...the owner did a horrible job mixing us. He basically walked away and disappeared, while some mic on stage was getting this horrible humming feedback and on the of that the band before us thought they were playing last and played for well over an hour until someone we new yelled "you know theres another band on" because they were gonna play like 3-4 more songs and it was already like very late. So, basically at that point we played for a few people. We were not too happy. 

CT clubs, suck for the most part anyway, but yeah never play the El-N-Gee...it's a crap hold and the owner is a douche!


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## ShreddingDragon (Mar 8, 2011)

My worst live experience so far has been a Steely Dan workshop band gig in school. We were playing in a local bar with some 40 people watching. I had a Digitech Tube Overdrive pedal in front of a JCM 2000, and everything was fine until my first solo came up. I stepped on the OD and after two notes the amp went silent... I checked cables and cable killswitches at all ends, the amp volumes, guitar volume pot, everything, but couldn't find the culprit. The other guitarist didn't cover me, just comped on.
So the solo time passed and I somehow got the sound back on (having switched the OD off now). Next song, same thing. I now realized it had something to do with the pedal - and it wasn't as simple as "on: no sound, off: yes sound"; it kinda went on and off and then suddenly you had consistent sound again until you switched the pedal back on.
I even plugged my guitar straight into the amp during the fray... but it still didn't produce sound until later.
To top off the embarrassment I had to fight back comments from the asshole drummer who apparently had as his life-work to make my days in school as miserable as possible.
I never learned why the pedal did such a thing as queries from all sources turned out vague, but I never used the amp nor pedal live again.


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## BillNephew (Mar 8, 2011)

Dude was that the Digitech Bad Monkey you were using? I have had problems with my rp300a processor switching presets randomly. It happened once during a competition for school when I was playing the clean part for "To Live is to Die." Needless to say, I was somehow on a distorted octave effect preset rather than a crystal clear clean. LMAO I still ended up placing 2nd somehow when another guitarist before me played eruption.


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## Seanpat76 (Mar 11, 2011)

Krucifixtion said:


> I haven't had many really really bad live experiences other than the typical stuff like we just aren't playing good at all...having a bad day kind of thing.
> 
> One time years ago I thought it would be cool to put pickup covers on one of my guitars. I installed them like the day before the show and only played the guitar at home maybe once or twice at lower volume....not realizing that with my high gain amp I would get horrible screeching feedback. I didn't realize this until we started playing the show. In between all my palm mutes or just playing in gerneral was awful squeeling feedback. I was angry and couldn't do anything about it and couldn't pull the covers off the pickups, because the strings were just not high enough without having to completely de-tune the whole guitar and re-tune on stage.
> 
> ...


I've played the El n Gee and,yeah its pretty hit or miss with their staff. Roses Cantina in Groton is the best venue I have ever played in CT. The owner, Jimmy is the nicest guy in the biz. I have good experiences at the Riverside as well. The stage is pretty cool.


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## WishIwasfinnish (Mar 11, 2011)

One of mine was this:

I was doing a little coffeehouse type performance at my school with a tango band. My guitar was working perfectly, and everything was great....until I plugged it in and THE FUCKING JACK FELL OUT OF THE GUITAR. I couldn't believe it, because of the bad timing and I was extremely pissed at Line 6 for making such crappy guitars (this was a nylon string variax). So, I just mic'ed it and played acoustically, which was not the worst thing, but totally not what I wanted


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## via (Mar 13, 2011)

well i only got the regular stuff going on... HORRIBLE mixing and even worse on stage sound, which affects the performance because you think everyone else is hearing the same soundvomit like you...

i think it's normal when you're playing in a metal band that you want to kill the sound tech afterwards huh?

out of tune problems with my 2nd guitarplayer
onstage monitor which aren't working at all
promoting... which hasn't been executed by the location we were playing in...
a stage SO tiny (and fragile, it was made of compressed wood, lying on beer crates) that the only move i could make was a step on my footswitch to switch my amp channel and headbang... the gig itself was pretty awesome though


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## rotebass (Mar 13, 2011)

via said:


> i think it's normal when you're playing in a metal band that you want to kill the sound tech afterwards huh?



I think that goes both ways though...


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## Ryan-ZenGtr- (Mar 13, 2011)

My contribution is:

I walk into a new venue. See the landlord. Realise I used to know him, 10 years ago. We catch up and go into his live room. There is a loose group making noise. Landlord says, he's playing my new hand crafted from the mystic trees of endor guitar.... Offers to let me check it out. We turn and hear a crash. The noob playing it drops it off the strap and it bounces across the room AT US. Amidst the shrapnel of what was once a custom hand made Les Paul the headstock has gone to the back of the room and the body is at the owners feet. Tears were justified....

Lot's more fun stuff happened there.... maybe I'll think of something later.

Oh yeah, always put massive strap pins or locking straps on your guitars. OEM use tiny ones for no obvious reason.


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## Kamikaze7 (Mar 13, 2011)

Aside from playing all too many shows at The Living Room in Providence, RI and trying to do the sound check. The guy at the sound board sounds like Charlie Brown's mom all muffled and shit so you can't hear what the fuck he was saying or trying to get you to play first to sound check. Thankfully the bassist and I both were using rackmount gear with 500Watt or more power amps. All we did was turn or rigs up to compensate for what we couldn't hear from the monitors. Our drummer didn't care as he was loud as fuck when he played anyway.

The all-time worst I ever had was playing at Jarrod's Rock House in Attleboro, Mass and we're playing a show with death metal legends Macabre. It was still very early in my having a rack set-up and was using a Line 6 Pod Rack pre-amp with the small 4-button footswitch. During one of our songs, the footswitch decided not to work, so I'm on stage stomping the fucking thing trying to switch out of my clean channel to my distortion channel and the damn thing don't work. Being so pissed off at the end of the set, I unplugged the pedal, slammed it on the stage once, picked it up and threw it across the side of the stage where all the bands put their gear. Luckily, no one was hurt or no gear was damaged by me tossing the pedal in an absolute fit of total anger. But still sucks when your playing in front of one of your influences and inspirations when that kinda shit happens. Needless to say, I left before Macabre went on because I was so pissed off, and didn't know they were playing until the next day when my other guitarist and singer told me about it. That didn't help matters at all after hearing that!!!


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## lookralphsbak (Mar 14, 2011)

I plugged the cable that goes from the head to cab into the wrong jack on my cabinet, thus wasting 15 mins trying to figure out what was wrong and as a result my band had to cut our 8 minute epic... Ended up switching heads bc I thought my head was broken and finally just used the headlining bands gear. The next day I tested my amp/cab out and realized the stupid mistake I had made...


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## zakattak192 (Mar 14, 2011)

My band, Awakened Remains, played our first gig on saturday, in my basement.

Our joke pornogore band, "Cock Defenestrator" played first, performing such classics as "Vajelly" and "The Cryptic Pussy Stench"

Everyone just looked at us awkwardly, so we cut it short. The only good thing about that set was when everyone laughed when I said "This next song is about going to the Planned Parenthood and raiding the fridge. I hope you're hungry. This ones called Stillborn Sundae". Many lulz were had.

Now on to my ACTUAL band's set:
1. Our other guitarist was in Florida
2. Our singer's mic was broken and kept going in and out
3. I didn't have a boom stand so I had to tape my mic to a straight cymbal stand.
4. At the beginning of our 2nd song, I blew the fuse in my Peavey XXX
5. I had to switch to my shitty 75 Watt Spider II that got unnecessary amounts of feedback, and I had to turn down so much that you couldn't hear me over the bass or the drums.


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## signalgrey (Mar 14, 2011)

Seanpat76 said:


> I've played the El n Gee and,yeah its pretty hit or miss with their staff. Roses Cantina in Groton is the best venue I have ever played in CT. The owner, Jimmy is the nicest guy in the biz. I have good experiences at the Riverside as well. The stage is pretty cool.



i played there too. not a bad place. i thought it got closed down though...


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## GATA4 (Mar 15, 2011)

ryzorzen said:


> My band *almost* played the wrong venue one night. We started wheeling the gear into one venue and realized we were playing down the road just as we locked the trailer up. Not that bad, but after a couple weeks of touring it really sucked haha



Hey man, I have Malachi. Shit rocks


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## Murdstone (Mar 17, 2011)

zakattak192 said:


> My band, Awakened Remains, played our first gig on saturday, in my basement.
> 
> Our joke pornogore band, "Cock Defenestrator" played first, performing such classics as "Vajelly" and "The Cryptic Pussy Stench"
> 
> ...



You guys sound like a band my roommate and I would love to go see. Where in PA are you?


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## zakattak192 (Mar 17, 2011)

Murdstone said:


> You guys sound like a band my roommate and I would love to go see. Where in PA are you?



Media. Delaware County.


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## Murdstone (Mar 17, 2011)

zakattak192 said:


> Media. Delaware County.


Nice, I live right outside of Edgemont. I'll have to hit you up next time I'm in the area if you're still playing


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## zakattak192 (Mar 18, 2011)

Murdstone said:


> Nice, I live right outside of Edgemont. I'll have to hit you up next time I'm in the area if you're still playing



haha alright man


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## Krashguitar (Mar 23, 2011)

I can recall two horrible shows.

In 2009, my band just lost a vocalist, and we had to play a show a month from that day, so we figured no problem, we'd get one... and so we did. Only catch was we got him 2 days before the show. He forgot all the lyrics, so half of the time, it was all instrumentals. Let's not even mention the sound guy and his genious idea of moving the mic off my amp.

A month or two ago, we had a show with a full band line-up, in which the drummer and I had communication issues during the set. He couldn't hear me half of the time, and would screw up, taking me along with him. Our vocalist at the time decided to read lyrics live, and during one of the songs, he was reading the WRONG lyrics, and all I can remember was him on the floor looking for the right lyrics.

I guess that's what happens when your band doesn't practice as often as it should. :/


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## samincolour (Jun 2, 2011)

My personal worst horror stories:

I used to play in a fairly technical metalcore band, one with lots of harmonies and riffs over breakdowns etc (think ABR meets Parkway), and on the first day of our first major tour our other guitarist's appendix burst, which obviously put him straight into hospital. We had no time to get someone else to learn the songs at short notice so we had to do the entire thing with just one guitar (me) playing. I thought I pulled it off (trying to play both parts on one guitar without a looper etc) until I saw the various videos we filmed to make a tour montage... Cringe!

Another one was a hometown pop-punk vs metal show, and because of various reasons, we ended up being the only metal band playing on a bill of four other pop punk bands. First song, I fall flat on my arse and then snap a string. That was back in the day when I didn't back anything up or have any strings etc, so lesson learnt from that haha.

Another was just a few weeks back, we headlined our local venue to a packed room. Halfway through the set I knock a full pint of water all over my shoes and pedalboard. Nothing broke but I had to take my socks and shoes off, and stepping on EHX pedals with bare feet doesn't tickle! (Just remembered, this happened a year earlier too and absolutely SOAKED my NS-2. I still have/use it. That is solid proof that Boss pedals NEVER die.)

Our van broke down outside one venue, we loaded in and played etc and loading out it pissed down with rain and fucked all our gear... My wireless has blown up and when I swapped to a cable my amp shut down on me... I once caught someone walking away with my 6505 and pedalboard... I have so many stories, I have MEGA bad luck live  !


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## SenorDingDong (Jun 2, 2011)

samincolour said:


> My personal worst horror stories:
> 
> I used to play in a fairly technical metalcore band, one with lots of harmonies and riffs over breakdowns etc (think ABR meets Parkway), and on the first day of our first major tour our other guitarist's appendix burst, which obviously put him straight into hospital. We had no time to get someone else to learn the songs at short notice so we had to do the entire thing with just one guitar (me) playing. I thought I pulled it off (trying to play both parts on one guitar without a looper etc) until I saw the various videos we filmed to make a tour montage... Cringe!
> 
> ...



Dude, sounds like you have the worst luck possible... Shit mine wasn't even that bad. I never bring backups though


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## ShreddingDragon (Jun 2, 2011)

BillNephew said:


> Dude was that the Digitech Bad Monkey you were using? I have had problems with my rp300a processor switching presets randomly. It happened once during a competition for school when I was playing the clean part for "To Live is to Die." Needless to say, I was somehow on a distorted octave effect preset rather than a crystal clear clean. LMAO I still ended up placing 2nd somehow when another guitarist before me played eruption.



No, it was Tube Overdrive DIGITECH HARDWIRE HW CM2 TUBE OVERDRIVE - Thomann UK Cyberstore

Haha, my old Behringer V-Amp 2 changes presets randomly if the footswitch is connected...


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## Alexjorgenson667 (Jun 2, 2011)

This one time (June 2004ish) my black metal band Terra Noir played this black metal fest in the mountains of Colorado called Gathering of Shadows. Turns out our drummer has lung problems and eats very poorly. So being that the fest takes place in the middle of the rocky mountains (very high elevation) and when we arrive at the location in the day our drummer is just drinking nothing but soda and eating his horrible food (burgers, fries, chips, and whatever else have you). 

When we finally are getting ready to get on stage our drummer we find out is passed out cold in our vehicle. Attempts at waking him up totally fail. Our vocalist convinces he is just sleeping and just passed out, maybe he drank too much and passed out or something? Anyways we decided to have our other guitarist (also a drummer) hop behind the kit. 

We manage to pull off 4 songs, not very good but decent enough and then our passed out drummer finally shows up and wants to finish the gig. We play our final song with our drummer and then he goes back and passes out again in the truck. 

We pack up the next day and drive back to Utah and our drummer is crashed out still (from the night before) and sleeps the entire 10 -12 hour drive back to SLC. We are all just freaking the hell out. We figure he is just passed out but we have no way to contact his parents or anything. 

We finally arrive and drop him off at his place. He calls me the next day and tells me he just woke up a few hours ago which means he was crashed out cold for 24 or more hours. I guess he got altitude sickness or something and almost died on us. It was not the greatest road trip by any means.


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## p0ke (Jun 2, 2011)

My worst gig must've been the last gig with my old band Apaphis (progressive/melodic/death/thrash, 7-string A-standard tuning + couple of songs in drop-C). 

Our drummer must've been too nervous or something, because he forgot the rhytm of the snare thingy at the beginning of our first song, which was a bit like the one on Arch Enemy's Enemy Within, so I had to show it to him on guitar... 
Then, after 10 seconds or so, he just stops playing all of a sudden, I turn around and notice that his snare has fallen into his lap... He had apparently forgotten to tighten it properly... 
Then he sort of lost where we were going and just played normal 4/4 beat throughout the song (he was supposed to play blastbeats etc.)... It was an epic mess, I sort of lost track at some point and I noticed our basist playing some random stuff too . 
That first song just ruined the whole show, we didn't enjoy playing at all. The rest of the show went quite well anyway, and there was a bit of a moshpit going on too, so the audience must've liked it  Oh, and the stage sound was the best I've ever had.


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## Blasphemer (Jun 3, 2011)

I just end up sucking a bit live because I tend to go all Dillinger-y at shows. I mean, I could just stand there and hit every note perfectly, but people are paying to be entertained, and they can just get our album for free if they want to hear how our music sounds all nicely put together and perfectly played.

Other than that general thing, though, one of my worst shows was at a campus event. This is straight copy-pasta from my blog, BTW:
Another occasion that we got screwed out of was an on campus event. One of the dining facilities was hosting an outdoor dinner on one of the warmer days in spring, and they wanted live music. Through a network of people that our other guitarist James knew, we got on the booking. We were to be there at 5, and play at 6. This was supposed to be prime time for playing for a crowd, as they were expecting a hefty body count.
We get a call the morning of the show and as it turns out, we actually need to be set up and ready to roll by 4 sharp. This pissed us off because we all had class until 3, so we had to bust ass to get to the location, set up, and start playing in only one hour. We get there, load our gear in, and start setting up only to find out that we were going to be playing to a rather small crowd, with all of our stage power being supplied by a gas generator. So, for the entire set we had awful ground hum and the generator even quit during one song, putting our amps at danger of blowing-the-fuck-up. 
After our set, we set out to get some food, and sure enough, thats right when people start showing up. Not long after our set ended, a guy with a cheap acoustic and a backwards flat-brim hat gets up on stage and plays bad Lady GaGa, Oasis, and O.A.R. covers. He had a full crowd. Awesome.


Also, dealing with idiot sound guys SUCKS when you announce all of your song names and band name VIA sound sample of GLADoS from portal speaking. I guarantee half the people we play in front of dont know who we are because of the jackasses behind the board at my school...


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## samincolour (Jun 3, 2011)

Jstring said:


> Dude, sounds like you have the worst luck possible... Shit mine wasn't even that bad. I never bring backups though



There are tons more, shit gets broken pretty much at every show haha. At my first show with my current band I dropped my pristine condition Jim Root Telecaster and took a huge chip out of the body, which I very nearly cried at  In an old band aaaages ago (Psyopus-style math stuff) I was doing the usual spaz-out whilst playing and smacked our singer with it and bust his eyebrow open. He still hasn't forgiven me for that! 

Also, everyone's done the usual playing-to-the-other-bands thing. I filled in on guitar for a friends band (Demoraliser, check them out) not too long back on a weekend mini-tour, and we played this venue in Nottingham (can't remember what the venue name was) where there was a strict 'no mosh' rule. When we asked about it the promoter said that the floor was so weak that it would probably cave in so bearing in mind the venue was three floors up and directly below it was a cafe bar and under that was a Clinton Cards, we'd all die. The bit that was the weakest was directly in front of the stage so not only was we playing only to the other bands and one dude with dreadlocks, everyone was stood still miles away from the stage. I've never felt more awkward on a stage!

Just remembered another one. We drove for three and a half hours to headline Blackpool. We turned up before it started, a bunch of kids were mega stoked for us to play. Anyway the changeovers took forever and a bunch of bands played much longer sets than planned, which pushed our set back and back until eventually we were told we couldn't play. After a lot of arguing they agreed to let us play but only for ten minutes because of the sound curfew. They could only offer us £15 payment so we made sure we got that before we went on. We borrow the last bands backline so we could play our full ten minutes (lol), and thought fuck it, just do our full set. This venue also had a no mosh rule, again due to the floor, but those kids LOVED it, and were jumping as hard they could to try and break it. Anyway to cut a long story short we're now banned from that venue not only as a band but as individuals too haha. Ten minutes can fuck off!


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## Zeff (Jun 4, 2011)

Numerous power outages, wireless packs going bad, pedals dying are common

The most memorable, On tour with BLS, I went through 4 guitars in one 50 minute set. My main guitar (floyd equipped) broke the locking nut and the guitar wouldn't stay in tune. 2nd guitar I broke a string(floyd again), 3rd guitar ripped the strap lock off, 4th made it through with constant re-tuning between songs.


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## kamello (Jun 12, 2011)

at my first gig, I was playing with a cover band, playing some 80's rock shit (Bon Jovi,
Scorpions, and stuff like that) the lead singer was sick, forgot all the lyrics and still
went on-stage without telling all that to us, thanks god the girlfriend of the other 
guitarrist jumped on stage and sang the rest of the songs,
she sings pretty well so everything went all right , but still, i almost shit myself
that day


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## Alimination (Jun 12, 2011)

Back in 2008 I was in a Death Metal/Punk band called Barricade, and we did a local show out in the middle of the desert with a bunch of other bands here in las vegas.

The generator we rented kept turning off and on for all the bands including us. and you know, since we were out doors and all... the sound didn't really reflect off the walls back to us so I couldn't hear the drummer or anything for shit. Everyone ended up going off tempo and it was just a total mess.

On the other hand, everyone was wayyyy to drunk to even notice.


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## Polarisnickroy (Jun 18, 2011)

My Band's fist show at this venue. We sold all our tickets, then the manager told me the date of the show had to be moved. Most of the bands dropped because it was close to the holiday season, like mid December. So we are told we would be put on a show Jan 6th. I looked at all the bands playing that night and they were rather big, nationally touring bands. We show up for load in and bands are already playing, The manager told me the wrong date, we were booked for Jan 7th......

So we drive home pissed and get ready the trip again the next day, as we arrive, the manager is outside then venue. a sewer pipe broke inside the place and raw sewage was flooding the entire place.


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## demoniaco (Jun 18, 2011)

I put a marble under the floyd rose of an agile 7 stringer to make it "fixed" and used that to open at a show for a band brought from out the country. Guess what? The marble fell... the guitar tuning went crap and I kept playing for two songs out of tune and then left the stage and the band with only one guitar which did not work well... total failure.


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## Now get brutal (Jun 19, 2011)

The worst show I ever played was in Mount Pleasant, MI. It was some house party fully of people. So we begin our set, and the pit opens up in the middle of the living room. Fine by us! 30 seconds later a guy gets thrown into our drummer, destroying his kit, breaking stands and cymbals. NOT GOOD. We got $40 in "sorry the guy went through your drum set" donations. I'm so glad we drove 4 hours to play for 60 seconds and have close to $300 in damages. Worst show of my life.


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## RandoozleXxX (Jun 19, 2011)

My worst experience has been not getting paid, or for being told to expect a good turn out and end up playing for a few kids. But Pot fixes most problems these days


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## SilenceIsACrime (Jun 21, 2011)

I have two stories I think are worth sharing in regards to gig horror stories -

So my band got a gig on some sort of "local band festival" with about 12 other bands and were scheduled to play fourth. We thought this was going to be great because hopefully most of the people would have shown up by then and also because the venue was having the bands backline four at a time, meaning all the other bands stuff would be off the stage so we would have tons of room. The band that played before us was some awful, cheesy death metal band who painted their faces and poured fake blood all over the place. Unfortunately, a lot of this fake blood got all over our frontman's keyboard; no harm done other than pretty aggravating to clean off. This band gets off stage and as we are setting up we realize someone has knocked over the rack unit for my guitar rig. We are pretty miffed already as the venue was rushing us and so start to put it all back in it's place when we realize that in the fall an output jack for the sonic maximizer broke. As we are struggling to get the gear up and running someone says into the mic "hey sorry, one of the bands before us broke our shit so we are trying to fix it." Not the most tactful, but true. We finally get it working and play the show, which went fine, but after we finish and start tearing down some of the guys from the band before come up to us and start threatening to beat the shit out of us. "We heard you were saying 'FUCK *name omitted*!!' and 'Those guys are assholes!!' up on stage!" Mind you, these are drunken, 40 year old, 200+ pound Irish biker dudes and we are a bunch of scrawny 20 year olds. It came so close to a brawl that the manager of the event came down and broke it up. We originally planned to demand for them to pay for our broken gear but wound up not being worth the trouble. Pricks.

Another time, we got booked headlining spot on a show at some dive bar with some buds of ours from Utah (us being in Nevada) and two other, non-metal bands. One was a pretty awesome jam band and the other total alternative crap. The venue was mostly filled with friends of the non-metal bands, but we thought it was just good to have anyone there at all. Our friends from Utah went first and put on a pretty good show, even though people didn't seem entirely enthused. Next was the jam band, which were good but played for a lot longer than they were supposed to, around an hour and 20 minutes. The alternative band was next, and took about 45 minutes just to set up, and then ALSO played for about an hour and a half. The lead singer was a total shmooze too, waaaay too into himself. Was awful to watch. By the time my band starts setting up it is getting close to 2 a.m. and we are exhausted. Finally, we are ready to play our set, but guess what? The two bands before us and all of their fans had left, leaving us to play for our Utah friends at 2:15 in the morning. We played the show anyway as not to disappoint, but leaving at 3 a.m. having played to basically no one (new, anyhow) was a pretty shitty experience.

So there you have it! Definitely don't wish to relive any of those nights....


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## Bryan Griffin (Jun 25, 2011)

Haha - some fantastic stories here guys...I enjoyed the read!

Hmmm, I've had a few nightmares myself. First was when my old band played our EP launch gig in a pretty 'romantic' venue in south west Ireland. The turnout on the night was incredible and we packed out the venue (doesn't happen so much for Irish metal bands!). I can get quite energetic when playing and halfway through the set I got my foot jammed down the side of the stage - had to finish out the song without being able to move in front of EVERYONE!

We also played an open air art college gig once. The organisers had put a couple of shitty couches across the front of the stage as a barrier. One guy jumps up on a couch and his friend shoves him pretty hard - he ends up sailing through my 5150 halfstack and sends the whole lot tumbling to the ground (including my painfully expensive Sennheiser wireless system). A couple of broken cables (and teeth) later and it was all good again!

As far as bad gigs go, we had them all. We played at our friend's birthday bash one night (a local tattoo artist) and three...yes THREE people turned up for it.

The list goes on...


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## The Grief Hole (Jun 26, 2011)

There are some doozies on here. Don't think mine could compare but..

Very important gig for us supporting a big band with record company people there. At the time we were enjoying playing but not always getting on with each other. Our (primadonna) guitarist had Jackson as his main guitar and I had offered him my BC Rich as his second which he refused as it was too cheap for him (plus our singer guitarist wouldn't bring his other gibson). 

Anyway we kicked into the clean intro of our first song which raised a cheer and the second we hit the distortion the guitarist's first 2 strings broke. We carried on playing as he went back stage, thinking he would come back. Lo and behold at the end of the song hes still not back. By this point the heaviness of our dual guitar attack is sadly lacking. Next song, no guitarist. We finish four songs in because the sound sucks. We go backstage and find out the guitarist has driven home, leaving us to take back his gigantic marshall stack in my renault clio. Whilst we are packing that in to my car my fender precision bass gets stolen as does the singer's SG. As we are asking people outside if they saw anything a group of guys comes up and say we accused them of the theft. Get in to a fight with us which the main band sees. The ban later say they don't want to tour with us because we look like trouble. 

Remarkably, we were offered a recording contract through EMI. 

Our guitarist refused as he wanted to join his father's shipping company and the drummer and singer thought it wouldn't pay well. 

15 years later. I'm rocking out in Japan and the others have rooms full of dusty instruments.


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