We all have them, sometimes one after another, mine goes like this. We traveled to Vegas with another band from Arizona, who told us that they would bring the PA. I should have double checked with them before we left because they were an instrumental surf band. Anyway, we get there and when it came time for us to go on they gave us the "we didn't know we were supposed to bring the PA". I think they just wanted to fuck with us, lucky for me I had a big bass rig, (70's Fender Bassman, 350 watts). I ran the vocals and my bass through the amp and we were able to do the gig. You know what they say," the show must go on". Anybody else out there with a story?

I was involved with a gig a number of years ago in a former band in which we had a three hour one-way drive to a small town "Ratrod" car show with my drums, amps and the standup bass in the front seat of my little compact car.

Before we left the show our guitarist tells the bassist and me that he absolutely has to be back home in time for the "Stray Cats" show in which he had laid down some major cash for tickets later that night, (an attempt to win back his former girlfriend.)

We finally arrive and after meeting the organizer, we are told that the other three bands had cancelled and we were the only entertainment for the entire show which started in the early afternoon and lasted until late evening/early morning. The guitarist is so pissed off he tells the organizer "no way" to the point that punches were about to be thrown! One line I recall from the exchange from the organizer to our guitarist "would you pull this at a Hell's Angels' rally?" to which he replied "hell yes I would!' which was answered with "Well you'd be leaving in a body bag!"

So thats when I pulled my band-mates aside and tried to reason that we had just spent three hours driving to the show and would be on the road another three hours to return home, so at the very least we needed to try to arrive at some sort of compromise! I then approached the organizer and proposed that we play part of the day for a increased amount, to which he agreed.

We then proceeded to play two arduous one-hour sets on the back of a flat bed semi trailer in one hundred degree heat with no shade! Following the sets we collected our pay and hauled ass back home (making it in two and a half hours) with no speeding tickets or crashes, but later in the week paid the price in sunburned heads, ears, necks, faces and arms!

The name of the club putting on the show had a tag-line "The car club from hell!" which definitely lived up to their name for the "show from hell!"

I remember a few weird gigs, on stage ready to do the first number,Bang! first hit of the snare and the skins gone! and no spare snare*Shit! what we gonna do now! Another one our drummer broke his stool midset had to play the rest standing up* Good gig though! As a live engineer I once knocked myself out in the dark on stage,gone for 30 mins or so.Damn low ceilings! Been electrocuted a few times but always managed to somehow let go. http://elvispelvis.com/electrocuted.htm

Great thread!

I was playing a gig somewhere in either Slough or Reading, anyway either the guitar or the P.A wasn't earthed properly so every time i step up to the mic to sing I get a belt of electric in the mouth. So, as a solution we stuck a sock over the mic. Anyway the sock really reeks so every time I go to sing I get a wiff of the sock and almost hurl, I kept forgetting this too for the duration of the 30 min set; so I'd play guitar, sing, smell the sock, and get the dry heaves. Retrospectively it was funny because its so stupid.

Nightmare gig eh?

Well my band was slated to support a touring band at a local hellhole called Ronnie's. Ronnie's is a Mexican bar with a garage attached to it where all the bands play. It is also a hellhole: The toilet was covered in what I honestly believe were either the results of some bad mexican food (more on that later) or a makeshift abortion. The ceiling tiles are either falling apart, gone, or dripping some strange smelly brown liquid. The other bathroom is full of graffiti, piss, and other strange unpleasant smells.

There's some background. Now when we get there at 9 no one's there. We're just sitting in the car waiting for someone to open this hellhole when some guy does a somersault over the hood of our car and two cops go sprinting after him into the dark. We had a laugh at that and then the other band showed up. 30 minutes late three women who don't speak English casually show up and open the bar, carrying big aluminum trays with them.

We go in and set up and I try to convince the bartender to at least give us free beers. Then the owner of the bar comes in and says we're not getting paid in beer or money but the shady food they brought in the trays. And there's not a soul in this place, so me and the boys buy some hard liquor and get tanked before our set.

In the midst of our set the sound stops sounding good; fading in and out and I drunkenly kick one of my cords slightly out of my fuzz pedal effectively killing my guitar for the rest of the set. So I just sit on my amp drinking until I figure out what's wrong in the middle of our last song. We finish our set to nobody and pack up. I left and decided to eat some of the food (as I was good and drunk by now) and have some kind of strange meat while the other band sets up. In the middle of eating the other band's guitarist comes and asks to use mine because his isn't working. I agree.

That's when I found out they were some kind of prog/space rock band. And I had to sit through their loooooooooong set of wanking and weird time signatures. That is until the strange meat decides to exit the building. I run to the bathroom, unaware I'm running to the one that looks like some suffered a rectal prolapse in it. Once I get in the smell hits me and I vomit all over the wall but somehow keep standing up. I keep wretching and standing so I don't have to be near whatever was all over the floor and toilet seat. After I wandered out with puke all over most of my right arm I realize that I have to wait for their set to finish before I leave. And that took another hour. It was fucking awful.

Back in the 90's we were playing in Auckland. I hate that town, it sucks the big one big time. Anyway every time I go there shit happens. We were playing at the kings arms, at the time the only small venue available in the whole city. First thing the bar owner gives me their door list, about 30 names; which apparently was friends of the owner, staff and some press. Okay, I don't have an issue with staff (hell they might sell me booze) or press or even regulars but friends of the owner can pay. If you wanna see us play then pay; five bucks or fuck off was the mantra. Just before we're due to go on the guitarist breaks his output socket on his guitar. bugger. I find a screwdriver in my gig bag, have a look at it and decide to try to drunkenly fix it with gaffer (duct) tape... except I forgot to pack it. bugger. The drummer suggests we try to peel some of the old gaff off his drum kit and use that. Which we did. So some used old gaffer and a 10 gauge string later and his lead is hardwired into his guitar and works perfectly. We played the show no problems. The bar staff liked us and one of them started giving me cheap jugs of beer. Not a bad night in the end and we even made enough money to get back home, bonus!

This one luckily turned out as not so much being a nightmare gig, but it really started off as one.

One day, we were to support Los Peyotes here in my home town. Since I had a bad aching in my shoulder muscles, I was on heavy pain killers. When it was up to us doing our soundcheck, I plugged in my effects and guitar just to find nothing was working. So I checked this and checked that for a while and came to the conclusion that my cheap overdrive pedal was broken. I put it aside only to find my tremolo was also not working. I checked all cables again and again, and in the meantime the first people came in. I changed all cables, plugged in my guitar straight into the amp - it worked. So I asked the Peyotes if they'd borrow me their overdrive, what they did. I plugged it in - it didn't work. I thought, "Fuck, this can't be, why do I break everything I touch today?" I was sweating like hell, trembling from nervosity and the pain killers and was feeling more and more dizzy and embarrassed, close to fainting. I thought that that was that and we couldn't play for everything seemed to be broken.
Then, after half an hour of making shit and nearly giving it all up, I took a final look at the setting of my effects and stuff, only to find that I had mixed up "in" and "out" of my effects circuit the whole time, and had plugged my guitar into "out" and my amp into "in". I changed that, and everything worked. Needless to say everybody had a jolly good laugh about my stupidity, including myself.
In the end, it turned out to be one of the best evenings ever - with a delay of half an hour...

With my band, Apache Chief we're either on or we're not. When we're not on we're most likely to clear the room. A couple weeks ago we played this really last minute show at this dive bar in Tacoma called Bob's Java Jive. I hate playing shows when I'm not using my own equipment and I had to play this one with a crate solid state amp rather than my fender deluxe. We didn't really give a fuck since we'd done zero work for this show and all hadnt slept in 2 days so our set pretty much just fell apart but that was fine by us. At first we had a few people watching us, just a few of the regulars of the bar but pretty quickly they all left and we just started laughing. I guess it was a nightmare show but we're pretty used to this nightmare.

This is not so much a one nightmare gig, but one thing that has happened at several gigs. My band, The Experiments, are a loud rock / punk band. We don't hide this, in fact we proudly proclaim it. Several times, when we are about to start playing, and we all hit an E chord to make sure we have the levels right, the club manager will come running up and say "turn down! turn down! Our neighbors will complain!" Nothing is so disheartening. Why did you even book us? Did you listen to our CD at all? Obviously not. This happens at smaller clubs, where the only thing in the PA is vocals. We do what we can to play quiet, but our drummer is a madman, and he dictates the volume level. Can't turn down acoustic drums. I understand the California ABC (Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control) takes a hard line on noise complaints, but really, know who you are booking. Guess we're not going back to that place. :)