# Anyone play a show that just didn't go right.



## kylendm (Feb 23, 2013)

Just played a show tonight in Atlantic City and god nothing went right. Sound wasn't great, the sound guy wasn't too helpful, and my other guitarist broke his string and didn't have a tool to put another on. He has a floyd too so he was done. Most of our songs require another guitarist and we literally played a three song set. 

I'm SUPER bummed about the whole thing because I was so amped on finally playing a show after a long while. Anyone have any experiences like this?


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## Blasphemer (Feb 24, 2013)

Dude, bad shows happen all the time. The best thing you can do is just try and move past it, and make the next one absolutely kill to make up for this one. For serious, the first year or so of my bands gigs were all shit, but we made it through. 

Also, three songs isn't bad. I once played a show with a touring band from Canada who had been out for between 5 and 7 weeks, and were on their last leg of the tour before going home. They almost didn't make it to the show due to their van breaking down, and while they did make it to the show, they were pretty late. Then, their bassists amp wouldnt turn on, so he had to borrow our bassists newly acquired old Trace Elliot head, which he'd used maybe once before at practice, so it's faults were still unknown. Two minutes into their first song, the head blows, and their tour is over at that point. Boom. done. Now THATS a bad show...


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## Winspear (Feb 24, 2013)

I played a gig to which we invited about 20 friends. We were about 18 at the time but a lot of our friends coming were under 18. We'd never had problems with this venue before (function room above a pub) and were told nothing about age limits. Soundcheck goes well, first band or two go well - start getting our friends in and setting up right about 9pm. 
It's a Friday - so a big night for the pub and bouncers turn up at this point. 90% of the crowd got turfed out with no refund. We got 2 songs into our set and then the upstairs received a complete powercut and the gig was cancelled. I expect the landlord decided to switch the power off due to the angry mob that was gathered outside his pub, haha. 
We spent the rest of the night trying to get refunds for everybody.
That was the last gig for that particular 'promotional' company


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## kylendm (Feb 24, 2013)

Thanks guys. Yeah I was just super bummed but it's all good. Just gotta keep going. Also damn those are both some pretty shitty experiences, hope things picked up for both you guys since. I guess it could have gone worse.


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## sage (Feb 24, 2013)

Spare guitars. If you can't afford them, borrow them from a friend. You're bound to have at least one friend with a guitar that wants to see you play anyway that you can bribe with a guest list spot. 

Hope for the best, prepare for total disaster. Carry ALL the required tools to fix your gear.


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## kylendm (Feb 24, 2013)

Yeah we really weren't prepared. I'm definitely bringing both my sevens next time.


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## Marv Attaxx (Feb 24, 2013)

It was a 24hour benefit concert organized by a school. We were scheduled for 2 o'clock in the night. In the end we started playing our show at 5 o'clock in the morning. There were about 15 people left, the others left hours ago or slept.
I was awake for 30 hours or so then. And worked all day. So I actually fell asleep during the gig (I play keys). Woke up while falling. Managed to avoid hitting the floor and stumbled back to my keyboard. But played the wrong song out of pure confusion.
Worst gig ever haha


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## Jazzamatazz (Feb 24, 2013)

Played a show in December where the guy putting it on told us it was going to be indoors, we thought "okay great, indoor show, like a normal heated indoor place". Nope, turned out to be a shed, with like three fires raging and hardly any of the garage style doors open, everybody's eyes were burning, could hardly breathe, also the fires barely made a difference, it was still freezing at 14 degrees (F). And that is just the description of the 'venue', load in involved a 200-foot trek in six inch deep snow with all your gear. The most hilarious part though was that everything was plugged into one single outlet, the idiot running the show had run a massive industrial cable from his house to the farm shed and using a series of circuit breakers and extension cables. We played last, my fingers were absolutly freezing so every note I played felt like I was doing barre chords. The mic was shocking me everytime I used it so it felt like a bunch of needles were stabbing into my lips. Finally halfway through our last song, the power went out, we waited a little bit then the power came back on and we finished the set. Easily the worst show I've ever played.


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## Idontpersonally (Feb 24, 2013)

Hell yea, totally turned me off to the blues.. Blues has some serious trolls. Fn troll verterans. All you need is one and it all goes downhill from there... not cool to play with old people..k im done


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## RevDrucifer (Feb 26, 2013)

If ya plan on playing live for years to come, get used to shitty shows.

Sometimes shit is totally out of your hands, sometimes it's you personally and sometimes it's just something in the air.


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## davedeath (Feb 28, 2013)

the shitter the better!!!
my last band was a hardcore one and we played a horrible show I Set up! local vfw deal.

the drums kept on slipping on the tile floor(no drum mat), poor attendance,bands showing up with out gear,couldn't hear my drummer or bassist, I WAS so Lost during that set.


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## The Grief Hole (Feb 28, 2013)

Our lead guitarist broke his string on the first song and first note at a gig. He went back stage and we thought he was getting his spare guitar. Turns out he was having a hissy fit and drove home.


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## loktide (Feb 28, 2013)

_*Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear, well&#8230; he eats you.*_







shit like this is inevitable. look forward to your next gigs and make sure you don't make the same mistakes again. bring a backup guitar for instance 

as for the sound not being great and incompetent sound guys... well, that's something that is bound to happen at shitty venues unfortunately. i've played around 20 gigs last year and at least half of them had shitty sound and/or a shitty sound guy. it's almost impossible to get good gigs without going through shitty ones as well in this business...


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## musictoyz (Feb 28, 2013)

If you have played shows....you have had bad one's

That is what makes the great one's so special !

And why u put up with the bad ones


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## goldsteinat0r (Feb 28, 2013)

Every show? 

Seriously every show my band plays feels like a chaotic mess, and then we get a great response from the crowd....so whatever.  Don't get down about it. When it feels way wrong just say "fuck it" and go nuts.


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## groverj3 (Feb 28, 2013)

Not really a show, but I think the worst experience I've had on-stage happened when I was still in high school.

My then guitar teacher invited some of his students to one of his band's shows since it was one of the few times we could go see them. They were based out of South Bend, IN and being under 21 we couldn't go see them anywhere they played. Anyway, while the band was taking a break he wanted his students to come up on stage and jam a little with him. I didn't bring my guitar and I ended up playing some other kid's. Strings were like 13s in standard tuning and a mile off the fretboard.

I was also playing through his backup amp, which was a Marshall MG series head. Worst sounding amps on the planet. I played like shit and sounded like shit. That was my first time playing guitar on-stage, too


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## RevDrucifer (Feb 28, 2013)

In the 15 years I've been playing shows, I've never ONCE seen someone show up without their own equipment. Actually, I did once- it was me. I filled in for a buddies band once playing bass. I had a bass but no amp, so weeks before the gig I asked another guy playing that night if I could borrow his. 

That just seems so fucking crazy to me.


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## UV7BK4LIFE (Feb 28, 2013)

kylendm said:


> Just played a show tonight in Atlantic City and god nothing went right. Sound wasn't great, the sound guy wasn't too helpful, and my other guitarist broke his string and didn't have a tool to put another on. He has a floyd too so he was done. Most of our songs require another guitarist and we literally played a three song set.
> 
> I'm SUPER bummed about the whole thing because I was so amped on finally playing a show after a long while. Anyone have any experiences like this?


 


kylendm said:


> Yeah we really weren't prepared. I'm definitely bringing both my sevens next time.


 
So you have a backup guitar but did not bring it? Lesson learned...

And sound guys come with a manual. Problem is, the manual is lost. Just follow their directions and act as if you think he owns the place but don't overdo it. They're like thawing glaciers. And they hate "smartass from the get-go" people.

But even if the soundguy is nice and you have your backup guitar, that's when your amp blows. 
Or when you find out that the backup guitar was still left in a backstage room with a huge temperature difference compared to the stage, and not tuned.
Or you really should have clipped your nails three weeks ago.
Or you have to take a dump, mid-solo.


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## Orsinium (Feb 28, 2013)

My worst experience was with my old band we were playing second to last on the set so my band's vocalist thought it was ok to drink a bit and he got completely shit faced and we played an instrumental set because he was out back in the alley passed out, also the drummer was pretty drunk too and he missed a couple of stopping points and just kept playing. The lesson learned is don't play with drunkards!


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## WhiteWalls (Mar 1, 2013)

Let's just say that the ONLY time I've ever played a show without a backup guitar (because I just sold it and the new one hadn't arrived yet), I just said "well, I'll bring strings, cables, straps, batteries, I can go one show without a backup guitar!"

Three songs into the set, the soldering of my input jack blew up. I was (relatively) lucky because I could finish the set anyway because I managed to recreate some kind of electric contact by messing around with my cable, but I had to stand PERFECTLY STILL otherwise the guitar would just start squealing or lose signal at random


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## Throat Hole (Mar 1, 2013)

too many to list but these come to mind 

i was opening for Mushroomhead at the 2012 halloween show and halfway through the first song my wireless just fucking died when we had a rather decent crowd and while i fixed everyone left and that same show a blew a fuse in my hartke bass head, broke the jack out of my bass by stepping on a cable it was just a bad night 


while playing with fear factory in 2010 my singer/rhythm guitar player had his amp die in the middle of the set 

at a local outdoor gig my singer drank too much and went Jim Morrison and started ranting at the crowd between songs making our crowd turn from 200+ to 10 people to nobody rather quickly... 


i guess you can just never expect a gig to go great, always prepare for a fuckin disaster and if it doesn't fail you've done good


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## ThatBeardGuy (Mar 3, 2013)

The only time things ever went wrong it was with the other guitarist in my old band, first he blew up his amp head, like 30 seconds into our first song he stops making sound, we stop look over and smoke is coming out of his amp ( yay Line 6 spider head) we borrowed another bands amp and finished, the main other issue he had was breaking strings, but that was because he never changed strings during the week before show.


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## Scar Symmetry (Mar 3, 2013)

First World problems really are THE worst aren't they? All I would say is any experience is good experience, you can learn from any show. Keep at it if it's really what you love doing and make sure to learn lessons along the way.


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## Jazzamatazz (Mar 3, 2013)

Scar Symmetry said:


> First World problems really are THE worst aren't they? All I would say is any experience is good experience, you can learn from any show. Keep at it if it's really what you love doing and make sure to learn lessons along the way.


 

Haha what do you want us to express? Third world issues? So I was playing this show with the village and my flute snapped in half which sucked because I forgot to bring a spare, then my animal skin wood drummer died from starvation halfway through the show, it really sucked becasue we were opening for a touring group of bushman singers who all had the plague.


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## neoclassical (Mar 3, 2013)

We played a show for a heavy metal club at a college in Herkimer, NY. They never put on a show and got the PA they would use for speeches in the auditorium. That PA would overload and shut down every time our singer would start singing so we finished the gig with him singing through a bull horn, and our bassist tripping over something and dislocating his knee. The next time they had us out there they got a pro sound system and lights.


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## skeels (Mar 3, 2013)

I have had so many Spinal Tap moments, I couldn't rightly recall them all.

Driving two thousand miles to a music festival to find the venue double-booked.

Driving 300 miles to have an electronic drum machine left on the kitchen table...

Had a drummer have a mental breakdown during our set once. He would play the intro for a song and when we would all kick in, he would start playing the ending. Played our whole set in about four minutes. We took him to the county mental hospital after he crashed our tour van into a house.

"You guys are too loud."

Blown fuses, broken strings....

Had a show booked and we were all loaded in and set up to play with a crowd eagerly waiting when our drummer went MIA til I phoned him at the local bar, where I knew he would be.... "We are going to play now man." The thing that makes this one funny is it was in the days before cell phones. I looked up the number in the phone book and called the bar!

Playing in front of the other bands and the bartenders. 

Police shutting down basement shows, fights breaking out, showered with beer.....

Ah, rock and roll.....

The trick, you see, is that if you keep playing, eventually you will have played so many shows that the percentage of shows that something insane and weird happens at will approach one hundred.


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## Throat Hole (Mar 4, 2013)

skeels said:


> I have had so many Spinal Tap moments, I couldn't rightly recall them all.
> 
> Driving two thousand miles to a music festival to find the venue double-booked.
> 
> ...


i had a drummer like that once  he would never show up on time or at all most of the time and he was always either getting stoned or at the bar 

and its true, the part about weird shit approaching one hundred  its gotten to the point where nothing will phase me short of a complete epic equipment failure where my backups dont work


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## SjPedro (Mar 9, 2013)

I once had a show where the sound team was hired by the locals and things didn't go very well. 

We talked to the hosts and they told us to meet up with the sound crew at exactly 17h in the afternoon to get everything ready by 21h30. 

We got there and the sound crew was no where to be seen. Eventually, the guy showed up at 18h and we very cordially asked him if we could start setting up and getting everything ready for a soundcheck. He said, "uhh, I don't know...I have to get dinner at 19h and I am not leaving anything here"...
So at this point we were kinda pissed at his attitude, but hey, there are divas everywhere right? so we started getting our stuff ready and I started to notice somethings we requested (via the usual technical ryder I sent two weeks before) were missing. The extra stands for the drum set and the keyboard (so they were at a higher level than me and the bass player), mics, cables, you name it! 
This sound guy decided to improvise using second rated mics and monitors and things were not going very well. At this point we were close to panic! but we got on with it and made it through the sound check thinking that the sound wasn't so good, but hey it seemed balanced.

we had some dinner on the spot with a couple of sandwiches because the sound guy went to have his dinner, leaving all the rig unattended. 

Showtime: We went up the stage and the minute the first notes started, we knew something wasn't right. The guy decided to remix everything 
The sound was awful and we were really in a bad mood but we carried on because even if we are amateurs we owed a show to the people there and we had to carry on as best as we could.
If all this wasn't enough, the sound guy brought his eight year old kid along. that is ok for us...but the kid decided to mess with the lights! 
most of the time I was blinded by pulses of white light during the most calm songs even!

Our performance was one of our worst performances to this day and I honestly hated it so much that I deleted every single video that was recorded....it was just that bad and I never want to experience this again!


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## knifefightintheor (Mar 9, 2013)

When I was behind the drums for my OLD band, our guitarist/singer would announce one song, so I'd count that song in, and he'd play something totally different.

Then turn around, look at me and say "What's your problem, man?"


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## DarkWolfXV (Mar 24, 2013)

UV7BK4LIFE said:


> Or you have to take a dump, mid-solo.


 
Shit happened to me and its not even funny.


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## Rap Hat (Mar 25, 2013)

My old band had played a show at this one venue, and we brought in the most money for them they'd ever had; most tickets sold, most drinks, etc. it was an excellent show and they loved us for it. So on our third show at this place, a friend of the band came up to me and the drummer and offered us some pills. Said they were muscle relaxants, and since we were invincible and had tolerances to the moon we both said "sure!" This was about 20 minutes before we had to set up. About 5 minutes before setup, I started feeling weird. Really weird. Got super confused, didn't know where I was. I tried to get my bass amp set up and spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to plug the bass in. The drummer is just as bad off, just barely sets up his kit.
I don't remember any of the show, but I was told the drummer literally slumped over the kit a few songs in, after being horribly out of time. I most likely sucked too. The venue told us never to come back, and I was so goddamn embarrassed I can't even describe it. It was the worst kind of wake-up call, I wouldn't even have more than 1 beer a show after that.

Our frontman was able to convince the venue to let us back, and we had our most interesting show ever; there was a bachelor party before and they had strippers. The two strippers decided they wanted to perform for our show, so we had two hot and naked 18 year olds dancing, grinding up against each other, grinding up against us, and doing things to each other I probably shouldn't mention. It was so seriously surreal. They were planning on doing it for our whole set, but the fronman and drummer's girlfriends kinda freaked out and caused a scene, leaving us to finish the set alone. The stripper manager guy had demanded we pay like $400 for the show, but the girls told him to fuck off and that they were doing it for free.

I was 18 at the time, and that opened my eyes to how wild this stuff could get. Definitely a good opposite to our previous show there


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## -OTW- (Mar 26, 2013)

Jazzamatazz said:


> Played a show in December where the guy putting it on told us it was going to be indoors, we thought "okay great, indoor show, like a normal heated indoor place". Nope, turned out to be a shed, with like three fires raging and hardly any of the garage style doors open, everybody's eyes were burning, could hardly breathe, also the fires barely made a difference, it was still freezing at 14 degrees (F). And that is just the description of the 'venue', load in involved a 200-foot trek in six inch deep snow with all your gear. The most hilarious part though was that everything was plugged into one single outlet, the idiot running the show had run a massive industrial cable from his house to the farm shed and using a series of circuit breakers and extension cables. We played last, my fingers were absolutly freezing so every note I played felt like I was doing barre chords. The mic was shocking me everytime I used it so it felt like a bunch of needles were stabbing into my lips. Finally halfway through our last song, the power went out, we waited a little bit then the power came back on and we finished the set. Easily the worst show I've ever played.



Lol sorry....welcome to Missouri. Where is this place so I can remember to never play there.


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## Jazzamatazz (Apr 1, 2013)

-OTW- said:


> Lol sorry....welcome to Missouri. Where is this place so I can remember to never play there.


 

Haha lived here my whole life, stay away from Dupo shows.


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## Nmaster (Apr 8, 2013)

Just recently had my first show ever in my band, Negated. It was put on as a cancer benefit where all the proceeds were donated to one of the local cancer foundations.

Don't get me wrong, the show went well and everything but...I felt like I was the only one enjoying myself. I was banging my head, moving around the stage having a blast while my other band mates just sort of stood there and looked kinda boring I guess. It might have been their nervousness, but I used mine and just kinda tried to do some showmanship i suppose. Small gripe, but I just would have enjoyed it more if they jammed with me!


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