the absolute awesomest/coolest/funnest gig you've ever played

[bikehorn]

I'm not sure how much explanation it needs - just post a story about the one gig you/your band kicked the most ass at.

 

 

here's mine:

 

 

My high school was not one that was populated by a large number of people who liked rock...mostly "urban" MTV music fans and a large number of italian kids who liked dance music...they were all into tight nylon pants, lowered honda civics and soccer jerseys. still, there were a few of us rock & rollers.

 

the school was holding an AIDS awareness campaign, and a girl i knew was organising a talent show to raise some funds. unfortunately, things weren't going too well because most of the acts that had auditioned were hopelessly bad. one day in my extended english class she told me about how {censored}ty it was sifting through all the lame acts, at which point she asked me if i could get some {censored} happening, maybe just a song or two and maybe keep the show from being canceled due to excess lameness. so, given that she was a friend of mine and that it was an opportunity to kick the collective asses of all the pop and emo clowns, i told her i'd get something together. i had plenty of time, a whole month and a half since she was planning it way before the school's AIDS campaign even kicked in. besides, i was going to be there anyway because i was the only guy in the school who knew how to use the school's 16-channel mixer.

 

I didn't have a regular band at the time. in fact, i still don't because there are just too few musicians my age who play anythign other than poor renditions of already-bad ska songs in my area. So i talked to some friends of mine and we arranged a one-off thing. we hyped it up plenty but never told anyone what we'd be playing, lest we get blown off before we even played. we practised all the time and got everything flowing smooth as the Heineken tap at your local watering hole.

 

a month and a half later the show finally rolled around, and enough people bought into our "come on, we're gonna play some cool {censored}, and your money goes to AIDS victims. you can't lose" argument, as well as "official" advertising of the show that all the tickets were sold...about 350 of them and the show was being held in the school's drama room/auditorium. great acoustics, although i think that was an accident of architecture...and we had all the stage lighting too.

 

so one after the other, a host of {censored}ty acts go on, and the MCs try their best to hold straight faces while announcing the next ones. the funniest was probably a bunch of dorky 14 year olds who were covering a Slayer song...without a drummer. they walked up with their practice amps and a CD and told me they were going to "guitarsync" to the actual song. . it was comically bad. people came and went, being drawn in by something they thought would be good, but then leaving as soon as they realised how bad it was, until the act just before us came on(we were the "closing act" for practical reasons) which was a group of kids beatboxing. it was really bad but people liked it for some reason.

 

finally our turn came, and we totally faked it as a "real" rock show...we darkened all the lights as we walked through the crown tot get to the stage(with our guitars on ) except a few random flashing ones(pays to know how to use a lighting board), had stacks of non-functional but cool-looking equipment and speakers on stage, etc. and once we got on, we made a few random noises a la "In The Light" by Led Zeppelin, then stopped.

 

then we just ripped into the opening of "Pride" by U2(our first song) and the lights flashed on...i was playing guitar because i couldn't find anyone who could play the part while i played bass, so i just found a bass player. we totally blasted through the song, i mean, it was unreal. we nailed it note-for-{censored}ing-note, not a single {censored}up, and it was made a hundred times cooler by the primitive flashing stage lighting program we'd come up with the night before and uploaded into the lighting controller. when the song ended, to my surprise, all the "i hate rock" kids were applauding and cheering just the same as the people we'd begged to come to the show in the first place.

 

then we launched into "Start Me Up", probably my favourite Rolling Stones song, and despite one or two mistakes during the solo(i "was" Ron Wood) we pulled it off really nicely, every time i looked up there were more people piling in from the hallways. when we finished and got off, i honestly felt like i had just banged a hundred hot chicks - it was such an awesome rush...and to top it all off, our stiff, boring principal almost pulled the plug on us(literally, she was about to have the caretakers cut the power to the auditorum because we were "too loud" even though it was lunch and there were no classes)...until the vice principal, a big Stones fan stopped her.

 

damn, i don't think i'll ever play that well again for a LONG time.

 

EDIT: {censored}, sorry for the long post.

[Sixgun77]

My most fun gig was probably about 9 years ago in this {censored}ty punk dive in Baltimore called The Loft. It was packed and loud. My band at the time actually had a folowing which was cool. True to my metal roots I did a good ol' stage dive mid song. Crowd surfing while playing ska-punk on fretless was kick ass!

[rikshaw]

we had a couple of young ladies that were getting to know each other better on the dance floor.

amazingly, thats all it takes to pack a bar!

 

they were given the boot before it got too far

 

[Thunderbroom]

I've only got a few gigs under my belt, but the most memorable was on Halloween 2004. During our next-to-last song, we were shut down by two of Chicago's Finest. We were playing a backyard party too loudly too late in the evening.

[Retrovertigo]

One of my bands first gigs was at a Fine Arts Festival in the auditorium of my school. We got the gig on short notice, when my friends movie, Lord of the Bling 2, wasn't finished in time. So we had to cover about 2 hours with not a lot of material. We got done playing our originals and the covers we actually worked on, and still had about 20 minutes to kill. After a brief discussion, my keyboardist and I decided to cover two more songs (which the rest of the band didn't know.) So the two of us proceeded to sing Burn on Down by Ben Harper and the Marijuana Song by Phish to finish out the night, much to the dismay of parent/teachers in the room:p Overall, the whole 2 hours sucked, we were terrible. However, the girl I invited to the show was....very impressed with the last 2 numbers.... fun night:D

[Incubitabus]

Here at VT, one of the sororities puts on a talent show called "AnchorSplash" every year. I nyears past, my fraternity just sent our pledges onstage to do some stupid renditions of 80's rock ballads or 90's teeny-bopper {censored}.

 

Frankly, 3 of us were just getting tired of it.

 

So about 2 months before the show, we started practicing together. We pulled in a friend from another fraternity on keys, me on bass, my bro (and best friend) Benjy on Drums and "Donnie" (named for the New Kids on the Block member he disturbingly resembles) on guitar. In a month and a half, we hammered out 3 songs we could play: Back in Black, Lets Get Retarded by the Black Eyed Peas, and our best one: Summer of 69.

 

One small problem, though. We had no one of any vocal talent in our fraternity besides me, and I cant sing while playing (not well, at least).

 

So with one week left we decided to improvise. We dropped the keys guy (who had set up to do something with his own fraternity by then) and picked up a guy who could scratch and a crazy kid from Virginia Beach and hammered out a full gut-wrenching rendition of...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

prepare yourselves.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Faith". The Limp Bizkit version. Complete with Fred Durst look-a-like lead singer and a guitarist wearing a black cloak from halloween and made up to look like one of Wes Borland's many on-stage personas.

 

I have never had more fun in my life. Two thousand preppy popped-collar Frat Boys and "Buy me a drink before you try to talk to me" Sorostitutes sat there in VT's massive auditorium and watched us purposfully defile the stage that The Black Eyed Peas had performed on just a few weeks prior.

 

I wont say we nailed it, but we didnt care. We had a {censored}ing blast...

[Fred TBP]

When: Late spring of 1972

Where: Reception Hall, West Point Military Academy, West Point, NY

Event: Freshman ball

Attended: 250+ freshmen, 60+ instructors/other officers, 200+ drop-dead gorgeous women in formal wear bussed in from a local all-girls school.

Material: covers by Santana, Allman Bros, Hendrix, Cream, other FM hits of the time, plus an opening jam of "Meeting Of The Spirits" by the Mahavishnu Orchestra (half the band were closet jazz cats).

 

Highlights:

--seeing sunset from West Point

--the food (catered and first-class)

--the women (hotchie-matchie, there wasn't an ugly one in the entire bunch, and there were busloads of them!)

--the curtain opening and seeing 300 men with identical razor cuts and dress uniforms

--the applause (they were into the music, especially Hendrix)

--the after-party (I remember very little of that except it included select women and illegal substances... )

--the pay ($500 in 1972 currency divided by 7 people)

 

Only crowd I can liken to the military people are the bikers at parties I've played at. Both groups have more in common than most people realize, and I wouldn't mind having a biker at my back in a firefight!

[Jonny Five]

Last year, I was playing in an Indy Rock band called Red Scare (no relation to the hardcore band). A friend in the band (not a member, just a guy who hangs with everyone) decided he was gonna bleach his hair. I said, "{censored} it, i'll do it too!" Our singer hears about it, and jumps on the wagon. The evening before we're going to bleach the hair, we have rehearsal. Our lead guitarist debates throughout the practice if he should join us. At the close of the rehearsal, he says "Yea I'm in."

 

We drive down to the friend's appartment, all bleach our hair. Drummer has red hair already, so he sits the bleaching out. Our keyboard/trumpet player already bleached his, so he gets drunk and passes out in the living room.

 

That weekend, we have a show. We all get these matching CCCP shirts with hammers and sickles on them, and come on stage wearing sweatshirts, all very blond. We get in a huddle, take off the sweatshirts to reveal identical outfits, then launch into the set looking like Communist Clones. The audience loved it, we loved it. I don't think it'll be possible for me to top that.

[anothertxn]

Tie for the spot:

 

1) OKC, bunch of skater kids that had no idea what the hell we were, utter distruction everywhere, rafters above the crowd to hang from, numerous random crowd humpings....all before 9pm.

 

2) Austin, sold out show following big article in the weekly, best we've ever played, collapsing on masses of people, and the fact that although the venue was full and there was a line outside, not a single person left during our set.

[Les_Izzmor]

We played an outdoor show outside of Camden Yards after an Orioles game that was great.

 

The bar was crowded to begin with. About 5 songs in the game ended. We were quickly surrounded on all sides by people singing and dancing and gawking.

 

The Orioles had come back and beat the Yankees late in the game as well so the crowd that arrived was FIRED up!!

 

We were only supposed to play one set for an hour. We ended up playing two sets with the second one being 2 hours long. The crowd just wouldn't let us stop.

 

 

 

[fastplant]

We played a 4th of July show 2 years ago that was really cool. It was at a outdoor bar in the middle of a park. The bar itself gets a huge crowd on the weekends and this was a 4th on a Fri. or Sat. if I remember right. It's right on the water and they do fireworks from a barge. Anyway, the papers said the next day there was 5,000 people there, so it was a cool night.

 

The management told us to do a set, then watch the fireworks and wait 10-15 minutes after they're done to make sure they were over before we started the second set. We watched them, then waited a good 25 minutes just to be sure. We then went into The Star Spangled Banner, full band version, hehe. The crowd went nuts. Then we busted into our second set. About 5 songs in, the fireworks start up again. We look at each other and shrug. We said, "screw it," and kept on playing. The crowd was digging the rock mixed with fireworks. Ended up being a really cool night.

 

I even have a few pics from the night:

 

http://www.sideshowband.com/7403.html

[Badassbass]

Wimborne folk festival, Dorset England 1995. Playing with LadyWinwood's Maggot (see http://www.dusk.abel.co.uk/maggot/html/main.htm)

 

Played on a flatbed lorry in the back garden of a pub as part of a Summer folk festival. Yours truly dressed in traditional African gear (!). Music a blend of folk, thrash, punk, rock with stupid jokes and ad-libs to crowd thrown in. Crowd REALLY up for it! Three girls at the front of the stage screaming and making some tasty moves at us with my girlfriend standing furher back with her arms crossed (you know the look!). I yell down at her that she's supposed to throw her underwear at us. She yells back she's not wearing any. Lead singer points at her and tells everyone over the PA she's going commando. Big cheer and girlfriend disappears under a table. Gig's really cooking and the crowds keep piling in the door so the management has to close the doors. Crowds begin climbing over the walls to get in. Police turn up and worried about crowding try to shut us down. Crowd objects very loudly so we start up again. Eventually gig ends because we can't hear ourselves over the crowd singing and everyone spills out onto the lawn outside pub for bit of spontaneous acoustic jamming. We join in and it gets silly again. Police turn up with a van and hats get knocked off. We escape while the place erupts in a good-natured riot with lots of police hats going missing and drunk music lovers bundled off in police vans.

 

A good night

[tdempsey]

kinda pales to all your stories, since I've only been gigging regularly the last year, but here goes:

 

April 15th, tax day we journeyed out on an est. 1.5 hour drive to E. Stroudsberg PA (we're Westchester NY-based). I even posted a poll "Would you drive 1.5 hours for $150..."

 

Well it took three hours, but here's the point: the place was packed with people who wanted to rock.

 

Don't you always play better whe the audience is maxxed out and "in the mood"? We killed.

 

[Mofopotomus]

Not a gig per se, but I was at my friend's house during a party. I snuck my amp and bass into one of the back rooms. My friend who plays guitar and another friend on the cello joined me. Basically we just sort of rocked out for a while (and yes, the cello can rock). People would come and go and it was a ver chill atmosphere, tons of fun too.

[fureybass]

One night, we were playing a show at our favorite bar. A little place on the patio. We booked it, so we headlined. We started playing, the played, and played. I think we started about 11:30, and then it's 2 p.m. and the bar tender's telling us to cut it. It just didn't stop. It felt more like a jazz set than a rock set, all the songs blended into the next. We were shocked at the end of it.

 

"Wait, we just played for 2 hours? That's was only six songs."

 

I don't think we made any money, but it was a fun show.

[1tallbassguy]

This weekend has the makings of being a blast. We are playing a 1975 class reunion, in Lake Jackson Texas.

Because we play mostly 60's and 70's classic rock, we will surely bring back some memories to the re-uniters.

Plus were making great pay, I'll end up with $250 at least!

[Zeromus-X]

My last band played a show at a Super Tuner type event... you know, hundreds of pimped out imports, etc. They set up a stage, which I figured was going to be just some complete {censored} thing since it wasn't the main focus. Get there and there's a wall of PA on either side, stage is probably five feet tall, and huge. It was great. Not a single person there probably cared about us, but we were so high up, we couldn't really see them anyway.

[crabfunk]

Lots of good gigs, many in bars, a few outdoors street dances, but the one I remember clearly from my early days of playing: My high school hosted a 2-day jazz festival each year. We ran sound and lights and everything, then played at the evening show when the judges were deciding the winner of that day's competition. We played "Squib Cakes," a total two-chord Tower of Power funk jam, with drum solo, open bass solo, flute solo, keyboard solo, screaming trumpets, and the song killed. When we ended the song, about 900 junior high kids were screaming and jumping like maniacs.

[Grey_Dad]

Colchester Free Festival, UK, August Bank Holiday 2001.

 

We played the jam stage in brilliant sunshine, blue sky, a couple of thousand happy people sprawled out on the grass and a couple of hundred gathered in and around the stage in the open tent.

 

Rocked away for 40 minutes and it was just f*ckin' great. Absolutely the best experience we had as a band and the high point of my playing "career".

 

Wifey said after we played the first couple of bars to "Really doesn't matter" which we opened with a split passed through the front of the crowd when a whole bunch went to gather round and watch Robin our guitarist and another bunch went to watch Old Dad on his 'Ray

 

I so much want to do it again...

 

GD

[NeonVomit]

Okay... two excellent gigs, very different though.

 

1) with my black metal band Blood Harvest. We were headlining in another town, with two local favourite bands opening for us. They basically played a bunch of Metallica/Iced Earth/Iron Maiden/Megadeth covers. The crowd was a cover-loving crowd, so we weren't looking foreward to much. Finally, was our turn. We took to the stage in corpse paint, dressed in all black, and our singer wielding a goat skull. He took the mic, and did his Ihshan-type undead scream, and we launched into one of our own songs. The crowd was scared {censored}less. We then played a Slayer song, and the moshpit came up onto the stage.

 

It was sick. I was rolling around the floor, beating the crap out of my Washburn, with my Big Muff never turned off. The sound that night was killer.

 

2) First ever gig with my other band Lacrima. Chick singer, very different stuff. We were only playing 3 songs (we were part of a multi-band evening) and a lot of other bands were making their debut.

We did a Nightwish cover (since we have a sax player instead of a keyboardist, I played the piano part on bass in a 2-hand tapping way and the sax player did the atmospheric bits) which really got the crowd going, and we finished with Poison by Alice Cooper which actually set off a moshpit. Great, short and sweet show.

[Badassbass]

Originally posted by Grey_Dad Colchester Free Festival, UK, August Bank Holiday 2001. We played the jam stage in brilliant sunshine, blue sky, a couple of thousand happy people sprawled out on the grass and a couple of hundred gathered in and around the stage in the open tent. Rocked away for 40 minutes and it was just f*ckin' great. Absolutely the best experience we had as a band and the high point of my playing "career". Wifey said after we played the first couple of bars to "Really doesn't matter" which we opened with a split passed through the front of the crowd when a whole bunch went to gather round and watch Robin our guitarist and another bunch went to watch Old Dad on his 'Ray I so much want to do it again... GD

 

That's only 1/2 hour away from me! Is it on every year?

[basshunter]

Probably the coolestgigi I ever did wasn't a bass gig, it was a mandolin gig. Some friends of mine had THE local hot Grateful Dead cover band (well, they still do actually...). They were doing a gig at a good sized local club, and had decided to open with an acoustic set. Having jammed together in the past, they called me up and asked me to come to rehearsal to run through a couple of tunes on mandolin, playing up the old GD "oh, and we have this friend here who play XXX, he's going to sit in for a few" thing. So the plan is for me to come up on stage to start the set, play a couple of tunes and that's that. We're in the band room, chilling out and "preparing" our selves for the show. Somebody knocks on the door and tells us its time. We go out and HOLY {censored}, the room is packed!!!! We break into the first song and from the start, everybody is totally on, its electric on stage and in the audience. I break into my first solo and the place goes NUTS!!!! The energy just ramps up from there...we play the songs I'm supposed to play, the crowd is frenzied and we're just jammin'. After my last tune, the bass player leans over and says "hey, if you want to play along with any of these other tunes, just jam away". I stayed through the entire set (about another hour) and we smoked, played songs that weren't planned, and had monumental jams...the place was out of control...after the set, we're walking down the steps off the stage and the bassist says "how did you know all those changes?"...my reply? "I didn't!" Got off stage and must have had 50 people come up to me and tell me how awesome it was that I was up there. And a whole bunch of people asking me what "that little guitar like thing" was

 

It was pretty much that show that made me realize that I needed to get back into playing live music again, and not too much later I went out and bought the first bass I'd had in probably 12 years. And here I am...

[niftydog]

short and sweet;

 

booked for a gig at a local tavern one sunday arfternoon, turned up, set up, played half of one song, got told to "shove it up yer arse" by several patrons because the football grand final was on the TV and they couldn't hear it.

 

Got paid full amount, packed up, wen't home. All in about 1 hour.

[Markee]

Played a corporate party at the Hope Island Inn up near LaConner/Anacortez a couple summers ago for a Seattle Insurance Company. We set up on the deck outside that suspended out over Puget Sound and watched the Sun set above the Olympic Mountains as we played 3/4's of our first set.

 

Everybody in the party got so drunk they pulled the plug on the venue and sent everyone home. They paid us the whole amount of course, but I felt like they were kind of buying our silence. Everyone had driven to this gem of a spot and everybody drove home as well.

 

Two things stand out from this experience. Corporate parties are great paying gigs for the semi pro player, or (one who doesn't play for a living), and it doesn't take much wind off the water to make your nose run and stiffen up your fingers when you're playing even if it was an 85 degree day. Fond memories of that day.......

[Geuel]

This isn't a gig I had, but it's funny.

 

http://danojohnson.com/txtalltales.html