Gigs from Hell Stories...

[EllenGtrGrl]

Mine are nowhere near as nasty as some of the stories I've read. The one that sticks out in my mind, is when the band I was in 17 years ago, opened for a 'Zep tribute band at a festival. We got the "treat the opening act like crap" business to the max. The tribute band screwed around setting up:

1. The singer spent 20 minutes alone running sound checks on his wireless mic, saying "ah f@k" instead of "check 1, 2".

2. The guitar player (who must have weighed about 400 plus pounds - his Les Paul looked like a toy on him), kept on goofing around with his pedals (because he was so heavy, and would have broken them, by stepping on the footswitches, he put them on a small table, and activated them with his hand), and spent at least 15 minutes alone screwing around with a theramin.

3. The singer was a primma donna, who threw a hissy fit, and held things up even further, when he threatened not to perform, because there was no Malibu Rum on hand for him to drink (the festival organizers only had a liquor license for beer - no booze).

By the time the goofing off and the drama stopped, we literally had 5 minutes to get everything on-stage and set up to play. We had no sound check. The soundman tried adjusting our sound on the fly (it went from being downright awful at beginning of the set, to lame and mediocre by the time we did the last song). Normally during set up, I'll use a cheap voltmeter between my guitar and my mic, to check for ground problems (I don't like getting zapped on the hand, to check for a bad ground). Because of our lack of set up time, I hadn't been able to check the ground. During our first or second song, I stepped up the mic to sing some vocals, and found out the hard way, that we had a grounding problem - I got zapped on the lips (our other guitarist told me that when he saw me getting zapped, he thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head!)! As a result, I spent the reat of the set singing, with my mouth 3 inches away from the mic!

When we were done with our set, the main act (with the exception of the drummer - he was pretty nice guy, who chatted with my band for a while), completely ignored us (I learned later on from a friend who was in the audience, that he saw the singer [the little twit!] trash talking us, while we were playing).

We did get paid, but that's one of the few good things I can say about the night.

[SteveiJobzz]

Played Drums in a band for awhile during high school.

 

We were asked to play a benefit show. Rock For Food or something like that. Slot #3 of 5 or something like that. The acts before us (acoustic) were allowed a half hour each. Seems fair. We get on stage, play 4 songs, and then are kicked off by the staff (our high school teachers). Apparently, we were allowed a 45 minute slot OR 4 songs, whichever was done sooner. To make it more of a kick in the balls, the headlining band (a {censored}ty Beatles cover band) used our drums, bass amp, and guitar amp for their whole set, and played for over 2 hours.

 

We stole half the crowd (who were mostly our friends anyways) and played the rest of our planned set in my parents' basement. It rocked.

[Alecto]

Alecto wins. Gang Bangers, Hell's Angels, & Junkie Prostitutes. That's the hat trick right there.............

Gee thanks . . . I think?

Man, I think you guys were fortunate to get out of there with no extra holes, bumps and bruises.

Not to mention still having all our gear.

Yeah, that's about our feeling as well. Did I mention our booking agent did a LOT of apologizing after that show?