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#444885 - 10/25/07 04:03 PM
And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
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theofeelios
Silver Member
Registered: 10/11/06
Posts: 280
Loc: meeting a stranger in the alps
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Mine's a toss-up between these two:
The morning after a night of acid-fuelled lunacy, the dirt road we'd been following to one of the rural cover gigs we did in our dues paying years turned unexpectedly into the guy from Deliverance's back yard. He kindly directs us through his yard to the two blocks that make up this particular town and we find a small tin building that functions as the watering-hole, pool hall and fightin' place. Its dirt floors are also the home of 3 or four chickens. Chickens.
They push the lone pool table against the wall and we set up in about an 8 foot square of dirt, just behind the two speakers on a stick PA that the Ronnie Hawkins-type bandleader we were backing had plugged into one outlet. We find out we got the gig because the ancient mosquito-faced madam of the establishment had designs on the bandleader, and as he kindly deflects her advances we try and play on as the 3 staggering drunk patrons hoot sarcastically and heckle, 'yew wanna fight, errrr whut? to my two brown skinned bandmates. It's pretty cool hearing someone call you a chickenshit in a room full of chickenshit...
And, a big festival where upon the first vocal I attempt makes painfully clear to me that my amp is improperly grounded in the form of a large arc that jumped from the mic onto my lips, (where I still have a little white mark), dimming all the house lights and knocking me to my knees. I finish the song about a foot back from the mic with little birdies circling my head. They tell me they've fixed it before the next song. Turns out they hadn't. Eventually they did, but I was a little, tentative, and in shock for the rest of the show.
Edited by theofeelios (10/25/07 04:15 PM)
Edit Reason: punctuation
_________________________
...the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories. F.Cohen
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#444893 - 10/25/07 04:09 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: theofeelios]
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MercuryXL
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Registered: 02/12/02
Posts: 4797
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Great story! Ain't that America.
My worst: supporting Nana Mouskouri, doing Depeche Mode covers at a Shriners Convention in Trenton. Dismal.
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#444894 - 10/25/07 04:10 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: theofeelios]
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DontFeartheRingo
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Registered: 12/12/06
Posts: 408
Loc: the buckle of the Pop Belt
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So... many...
Perhaps you've seen the scene in the Fugazi documentary where Brandon is asked how many times he's eaten breakfast at Denny's while touring, and he just won't answer. He won't even speculate, because KNOWING is just too terrible. It's too hard to think about.
So, y'know, it's hard for me to even get my head around how bad it's been at times. In Baton Rouge once, the club owner packed up the PA while we were still playing. We just played through it. The kids knew the words, anyway, so we managed to turn that into a small victory. We made $800, too, which the door guy slid us while the owner wasn't looking.
I don't even want to talk about Vincent Van Go Go's in Mobile, Alabama.
Fuck.
OK.
Enough.
_________________________
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#444896 - 10/25/07 04:14 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: MercuryXL]
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theofeelios
Silver Member
Registered: 10/11/06
Posts: 280
Loc: meeting a stranger in the alps
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It was actually somewhere in alberta canada.
Same shit, different chickens.
_________________________
...the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories. F.Cohen
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#444897 - 10/25/07 04:15 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: DontFeartheRingo]
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jmassif
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Registered: 08/19/02
Posts: 5554
Loc: Town Called Massif
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I'm not one of them musical artists like the rest of y'all but I distinctly remember my most horrible DJ gig, which involved the owner (after hearing mixes prior to booking us) sending his bouncers up to tell us to play more house music, even though the place was packed and bumpin.
When his goons couldn't do the job, he cut into the PA system with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at like +200 db volume and then had us escorted out of the venue.
In NYC mind you. Good times that.
Asshole.
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#444932 - 10/25/07 05:03 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: Mr_Coffee]
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klarkkent
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Registered: 03/27/02
Posts: 2210
Loc: A nearby, faraway place
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Boy, in thirty-five years of gigging I've got a few....
* My bass amp stopped working at the end of a set at the Dallas Agora Ballroom. Of course, this was before they started building direct outs on bass amps, and I had totally forgotten about the passive DI going out to the PA while I commenced to beat the piss out of the amp in an attempt to get it to work. The resulting chaos brought the club manager to the stage in a big hurry.
* Large outdoor festival, with the stage setup on a sloping hill. The stagehands didn't do a very good job of leveling the stage sections. In the middle of the set, I was moving over in front of the drum riser and stepped on a commercial door mat that was on the stage. Turns out the mat was covering a hole where the stage sections didn't meet - and the next thing I knew my right leg went right through it, slamming my bass (and my balls) on the stage. Ouch.
* Playing a club that had just changed over from a strip bar - the runway was still in place. Stairs on the side of the stage with a curtain running beside them. The curtain was covering a gap of about two feet between the stairs and the wall. I know this because I missed a step and fell in the gap. My bandmates pissed themselves laughing at the sight of my feet and guitar neck sticking out of the gap.
I could go on, but I'll let someone else take a turn.
-- klark --
Give a man a match and he will be warm for hours. Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
_________________________
From a retiree's diary: "Mailman skipped my house today. Will be waiting with shotgun tomorrow."
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#444934 - 10/25/07 05:06 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: Mr_Coffee]
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theofeelios
Silver Member
Registered: 10/11/06
Posts: 280
Loc: meeting a stranger in the alps
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Once I got lucky and the particular music, in this case a symphony, coming through my 'radio unit' and blasting out my amp was in tune and in time with the blues shuffle we were playing. We broke down real quiet and jammed with it for a good 3 minutes before it changed.
But, back to the bad, the worse and the ugly...
_________________________
...the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories. F.Cohen
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