Share your gig stories. - General

I assume there are some gigging musicians in here, lurking somwhere!! Come out and tell us your funny gig stories.

The first time I decided to play live I choose to do so at a church talent show. I also choose to enter the day of and decided that I'd improvise whatever I'd do. Anyway, I get up there, and I wasn't consciously nervous, but as I started playing I had an out of body experience and was watching myself screw up over and over. Then out of nowhere I go into some tapping sequence hitting not making a mistake and pull off something that I've never done and probably wouldn't be able to do on the first try and I ended it on a good note. It was all pretty bad except for the tapping part, which people complimented me on. I probably would have been best improvising over a backing track, or at least over a drum beat. The other live experience I had was where I was playing in my brother's band. In the band there is a bass, lead, rhythm, keys, and drums. They decided have me fill in because their keyboard player wasn't going to be there and they could use someone else to reenforce the rhythm with some guitar. Anyway, as we are playing (sounding just fine), the lead guitarist goes over and turns off my guitar, the other rhythms player guitar, and then the bass guitar. All that is left is him playing lead and drums. It's not hard to see why they kicked that guy out later that night.

Death Metal parody band at elderly home.

I'm playing in a blues band at the moment, and there's a lot of weird things going on each time we play(mostly because of booze and drunken people) Firstly, my payment for the first gig we played, was a bottle of swedish vodka. Now, for the gig itself. We had planned that we'd have a guest artist on the guitar, but the band leader said that the guest artist usually couldn't handle his alcohol, so we had to take precautions(we had two setlists just in case). He would just play some guitar solo's in some of the tunes anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. We started to play our repertoire and got to the 5th tune, when he suddenly waltzed drunkenly up the stage and grabbed his Fender to play. Problem was that he wasn't going to play until the last 3 tunes(there were like 10 or something in total). The bassist told him this, and he went down again. Then, when we were about to start the last tunes, we called him up. No one had seen him, so we had to send people to look after him. He'd fallen asleep on the toilet with a bottle of whiskey near his feet. We dragged him up on stage and plugged in his guitar, and we were all ready to go. He started playing his solo, but we heard he was getting more and more sloppy, until he swirled around, lost his balance and fell backwards over his guitar amp and landed on the neck of his expensive Fender. It wasn't broken amazingly enough. We then put him in a chair just to be on the safe side, so he wouldn't fall over again. It went pretty good until the guitar suddenly got silent again. He had fallen asleep on stage in front of 50-60 people and slept through every tune until we finished the last tune. He then woke up and said "I think I got too drunk and fell asleep, guys". And from that day, we never hire guest-artists who can't handle their alcohol.

It was at a crappy pub. The promoter told us they'd have a license for the night to let over 16's on the premises after 9, because we had a good 100 people who were mostly 17 or so coming down to see us. Roll on the day, we're set up and the pub manager comes in going "who the fuck invited 100's of 17 year olds, none of them are allowed in and we're going to get a huge fine and could be shut down and blah blah blah" so after that anyone involved in the gig hated us, and the promoter covered his own ass. We still played the gig, but with none of our fans there it was for 50 death metal fans, and we're an indie rock band. The sound guy didn't bother setting our gear up properly because of all the hate towards us. It was the most painful set of my life, we were told never to come back.

Well, I just got back from my first gig at a dubstep rave. I did my hour and a half set, the entire time the headlining DJ was doing soundchecks, and basically fucking up everything I tried to play. He would mess with all the volume levels so I had to compensate by changing the levels on my mixer, the entire time trying to scratch, beatmatch, and talk to the crowd. It still went pretty good though.

jumped into a drumset at a crescendo while playing got like 20 cuts on my body and fell on my guitar which made an ungodly grinding noise 10/10 would do again

[QUOTE=thisispain;32121818]jumped into a drumset at a crescendo while playing got like 20 cuts on my body and fell on my guitar which made an ungodly grinding noise 10/10 would do again[/QUOTE] ugh why I guess I'd have to have been there.

[QUOTE=Aljaud;32122495]ugh why I guess I'd have to have been there.[/QUOTE] noise rock needs a good show, go with the flow. i used to listen to a lot of sonic youth

"noise rock" lol. Cool, I guess. ;)

try not jumping into a drumset when playing this! [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kx5rNw0rq4[/media] one time i cut my hand open because i forced a drumset too hard into my hand these are all great stories

I play drums. I would not like someone jumping on them.

Was asked by a friend to play at a school event, leaned the songs night before (badly) started playing and forgot half. just started making noise. best day ever.

Did a gig that was a 440 Mile round trip by car. 5 hour drive to get there. The promoter had assured us the show had been suitably advertised and we were getting paid a fair whack for the trouble plus expenses. We get there, set up and play.... to [b]One[/b] Person. Luckily for us the venue had a reputation to keep in terms of bands getting their pay and we still got paid the full amount. Halfway through the gig I notice the sound guy has his reverb hooked up to the desk with one of my jack leads... The sound guy tried to steal one of my jack leads... All my leads have velcro tags, 2 Neutrik NP2X-B Connectors with a red bushing on one end, and then a wrap of red or purple tape at both ends so they are pretty easy to identify (I make all my own leads)... Needless to say I confronted him about it and he apologized :v: Was great though because we got a free hotel room and I had far too much to drink, Good times.

in a band of 4, we get onto stage at some pub, we quickly noticed the singer diddnt join, so we started the set without vocals, soon to find out she quit halfway through the first song

My progressive metal band of 6 played for a very small backyard party in an elderly neighbourhood. It was hilariously awkward, but we rocked the shit out of that gig anyway xD

Me and my band were supposed to be playing a gig in a city that none of us were familiar with at a venue that had recently opened there. We looked up directions on how to get there and printed off a map but realised we had left it at the singers house when we were most of the way to the city. The venue weren't answering the phone so we tried asking for directions but since it was a new venue no one knew where it was. Needless to say we missed the gig and spent about 3 hours driving around in circles before giving up and going home. I was the only one who found the whole thing hilarious.

During a live gig I threw out signed CD's of my new album into a mosh pit infront of the Tables/stands where my turntables and other equipment were because people always asked for it even though I wanted to release it on Sept. 13 in honor of Daft Punk (the day they started recording Human After All, my favorite album) and I had said no literally hundreds of times. So I cracked, somewhat. 49 CD's were re-labled Justin Bieber CDs, 1 was a signed copy of the album with a bonus remake of Phantom Part 2 live by Justice. Never released that anywhere else and dont plan on any time soon :v:

I've played my fair share of unusual shows, but the one that sticks out in my mind right now was with my former band The Truth About Comets. We were a hardcore/Spazzy sounding Metal band (that sounded like this - [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VB4l3drgyQ[/url] ) and we were the first band on at an all day event. Being first on, absolutely nobody was at the venue so we played to one guy who was stood slap bang in the middle of the room, hardcore dancing all by himself. It was amazing. We used to rehearse on Sundays, so we basically got a free rehearsal in front of one enthusiastic hardcore dancer. Hopefully we gave him a good show!

Even if it's just one person who enjoys the music you play it's still awesome because there is somebody who enjoys the music you play.

We were up in Rhode Island because we had a medium-sized gig coming up at a Yacht club and we wanted to enjoy the sun and weather as well (It was in the summer). Two days or so before the gig this lady calls us up who lives down the road and says she wanted us to play at a party and she'll pay. So we packed up our things and headed down. We dressed rather nicely and when we got there it was literally five adults and four kids. We set up on the back yard and all the kids (including my brothers) immediately ran off in the other direction and watched from inside the house while we played. The adults went inside as well. We still got payed so that's all the mattered. It wasn't our best gig so to say though. It was also a little hard because our singer couldn't come up to Rhode Island (she's a girl so she has a higher vocal range) so we had to rearrange our set list and learn a whole bunch of songs last minute. It went well though, we sold out all the seats there and never ever got payed even though they said they'd pay us.

Shitty gig story, but gig story nonetheless. The production company that does shows in my town is very flaky with checking in with venues to make sure they know there's a show there, etc etc. Anyways, as you might guess, we had a show with a few touring bands one day (Lions!Tigers!Bears!, The Party Foul, Jamie's Elsewhere, and Parley), so we went to the place where the show was supposed to be it. It was a YMCA though, and the people that owned it had no idea there was a show there, so me and 5 other local show promoters called EVERYWHERE that we'd previously thrown shows within a 30 mile radius, and after 2 hours of calling around found a little memorial hall to have it in. We finally all drove there, and it turned out it was a little lodge with pictures of the previous mayors or something like that. My band ended up not being able to play due to time loss, but the vocalist of Jamie's Elsewhere got me and 14 others guest listed, then after the show we all (touring bands included :D) went to one of the bands's vocalists house and partied hard all night long