Worst live experience?

[Coffin]

Yeah, back in the days where I started Metal with my brother and a couple of friends we were like "You've got a gig? Let's rock dude!"

So I remember my telephone rang and my brother (who still lived at home at that time) said "You can play a show tonight?" So we packed our stuff to the local school (compared to your high schools) and thought of a nice party with people up 8th grade.
Oh f*ck we were mistaken.
Everything was build up on stage and the first waves of 10 year old kids came in. We had to rename our songs in fact we cared bout the children and started the show.
The kids just loved us. Germany is a weired country what should I say more. Two songs later the teachers switched off electricity, wanted to kick our butts outta school. We had a BIG argument, they'd let us play one more song (these mf's switched off electricity again right in the middle of the song) and then they threatened us with police. If I look back now I still could laugh my ass off, but right on that day I was so pissed.

 

[warped]

We played a gig once and they had arranged a chain of power boards/adapters/extension leads to run the entire bands backline (2 tube half stacks with effects racks, bass rig, vocal processor), the PA system/mixing console, and the lighting rig from a single powerpoint!!!

I've never heard my amp make so much noise - lucky everything actually ran.

Another gig I was sounchecking my guitar levels and bam - power cut out - I turn around and get a loud pop - power back on for a second - bam power out.. The stage hand is unplugging me from the wall and plugging me back in so he can re-arrange it to plug something else in - so my whole rig is going up and down - no probs but pissed me off anyway - I told him not to do that and he cracked the shits at me coz he 'knows what he's doing' (do sound people always use this reason for them doing anything)

Another gig - someone offered to help carry my stuff in - he picked up my pedal case - which is basically just a pedal box with my pedals all connected - and tipped it upside down as he was carrying it - all the pedals dropped out and hit the concrete - all survived - but was a nervous moment trying to power them all on.

And when support bands rock up with just a guitar and say "I left my amp at home coz it's shit - I need to borrow yours" - sure here is my Mesa Dual Recto half stack - help yourself. Then about 2 minutes before you are ready to start playing he comes on stage and says he has to go and needs his extension lead back (which is powering my rig) - so turn everything off, unplug his extension lead, throw it at him, run my extension lead across the back of the stage to the outlet and power everything back up again. So they didn't even stay for our set - no mention of the words 'please' or 'thanks' in any exchange.. Maybe I played better coz I was pissed off

 

[Ckackley]

Oooo... Almost forgot.. My first show with my current band, Cassandra Syndrome.. Lead singer steps backwards, onto my effects processor and unplugs it JUST as a solo starts. Epic disaster.

 

[Tomo009]

Well it's sort of a live experience, seeing as I have very few real ones to speak of.

In my year 12 music practical exam I had the biggest cartoon moment of my life.

My set consisted of

Metallica: The Unforgiven
Jimi Hendrix: All Along the Wattower
Cream: White Room
A couple of Jazz songs I do not remember the name of.

Anyway I had practiced how my exam was going to go for months before the thing, I thought I had it nailed.

I walk out and plug in in front of he judges, I'm using a friends BOSS multi effect pedal (ME-50 sounds right), but it was fine I'd used it a million times before. Everything had been set up perfectly (I thought).

First song, ready to start, the ipod is super quiet but I'm not sure why, try fiddling with knobs for a good 2-3 minutes, nothing working. My time is ticking away, I eventually realize the jack isn't fully pushed into the pedal so I fix that, then obviously the ipod wheel I turned up to full, so the volume jumped to near deafening levels. Sort that out, fumbling around pretty flustered. Went to play the song and wasn't feeling great by now so I forgot my place and came in 2 bars early, looking like an idiot as I for some reason couldn't regain my place for a few bars of the simple intro.

I then continue to screw up the rest of the song terribly except for the solo which I somehow nailed. Even though by this point it doesn't seem like much, I was pretty terrified, I was sweating like crazy everywhere and my hands were shaking, of course I'd set up my playlists wrong on the ipod so immediately after Unforgiven, All Along the Watchtower had started. I had to quickly set up my sound for the song and come in very late, luckily the rest of the song didn't go too bad.

By the next song my hands were so sweaty I could barely play, I was absolutely terrible through the entirety of White Room, making it worse, I was having trouble turning my wah on and off and it turns out there was a chord going underneath it stopping the pedal from clicking into the switch.

After that my hands were barely functioning and I had to play the 2 jazz songs, which were finger picked. Needless to say they were absolutely terrible.

The worst thing was the judges staring stone faced the whole time, made me feel very out of place. I was trying to imagine an actual show the whole time but the snowball of things going wrong just couldn't be stopped.

 

[Coffin]

I remember another one. We won a contest for the support of Six Feet Under. The whole evening was very sweet, as there were SFU, Nile, Finntroll and Belphegor. On every ticket was the time for doors, 7.30pm - our time to begin was like 7.40 or so. You had to buy the tickets via internet but the venue sold tickets also. On these tickets stood doors 8pm. We came on stage and faced like 150 people in a venue for something around 1200 people. Luckily there were at least some, but that was bad luck I guess.

 

[Seanpat76]

I few years back, the owner of a well known Providence, RI club was killed in a car accident. The club threw a memorial show in his honor and my band, at the time, secured a spot on a bill consisting of 8 bands. We were to go on fifth. Well the club thought it would be a good idea to offer all the bands an open bar. That seemed like a great idea at the time. Long story short, our singer drank himself to near oblivion and a few songs into our set became useless and was unable to continue. Thankfully a friend and fan of the band was in the crowd who is the lead vocalist in another band not playing that evening. Knowing all the lyrics to our set, he jumped up on stage and saved the night by finishing our set with us. After our set, I lead our singer to the mensroom where he pukes all over the place, including my arm. That was one dissasterous night.

 

[Krucifixtion]

I haven't had many really really bad live experiences other than the typical stuff like we just aren't playing good at all...having a bad day kind of thing.

One time years ago I thought it would be cool to put pickup covers on one of my guitars. I installed them like the day before the show and only played the guitar at home maybe once or twice at lower volume....not realizing that with my high gain amp I would get horrible screeching feedback. I didn't realize this until we started playing the show. In between all my palm mutes or just playing in gerneral was awful squeeling feedback. I was angry and couldn't do anything about it and couldn't pull the covers off the pickups, because the strings were just not high enough without having to completely de-tune the whole guitar and re-tune on stage.

That and what time and some shitty club, which we will never play again...the owner did a horrible job mixing us. He basically walked away and disappeared, while some mic on stage was getting this horrible humming feedback and on the of that the band before us thought they were playing last and played for well over an hour until someone we new yelled "you know theres another band on" because they were gonna play like 3-4 more songs and it was already like very late. So, basically at that point we played for a few people. We were not too happy.

CT clubs, suck for the most part anyway, but yeah never play the El-N-Gee...it's a crap hold and the owner is a douche!

 

[ShreddingDragon]

My worst live experience so far has been a Steely Dan workshop band gig in school. We were playing in a local bar with some 40 people watching. I had a Digitech Tube Overdrive pedal in front of a JCM 2000, and everything was fine until my first solo came up. I stepped on the OD and after two notes the amp went silent... I checked cables and cable killswitches at all ends, the amp volumes, guitar volume pot, everything, but couldn't find the culprit. The other guitarist didn't cover me, just comped on.
So the solo time passed and I somehow got the sound back on (having switched the OD off now). Next song, same thing. I now realized it had something to do with the pedal - and it wasn't as simple as "on: no sound, off: yes sound"; it kinda went on and off and then suddenly you had consistent sound again until you switched the pedal back on.
I even plugged my guitar straight into the amp during the fray... but it still didn't produce sound until later.
To top off the embarrassment I had to fight back comments from the asshole drummer who apparently had as his life-work to make my days in school as miserable as possible.
I never learned why the pedal did such a thing as queries from all sources turned out vague, but I never used the amp nor pedal live again.

 

[BillNephew]

Dude was that the Digitech Bad Monkey you were using? I have had problems with my rp300a processor switching presets randomly. It happened once during a competition for school when I was playing the clean part for "To Live is to Die." Needless to say, I was somehow on a distorted octave effect preset rather than a crystal clear clean. LMAO I still ended up placing 2nd somehow when another guitarist before me played eruption.

 

[Seanpat76]

I haven't had many really really bad live experiences other than the typical stuff like we just aren't playing good at all...having a bad day kind of thing.

One time years ago I thought it would be cool to put pickup covers on one of my guitars. I installed them like the day before the show and only played the guitar at home maybe once or twice at lower volume....not realizing that with my high gain amp I would get horrible screeching feedback. I didn't realize this until we started playing the show. In between all my palm mutes or just playing in gerneral was awful squeeling feedback. I was angry and couldn't do anything about it and couldn't pull the covers off the pickups, because the strings were just not high enough without having to completely de-tune the whole guitar and re-tune on stage.

That and what time and some shitty club, which we will never play again...the owner did a horrible job mixing us. He basically walked away and disappeared, while some mic on stage was getting this horrible humming feedback and on the of that the band before us thought they were playing last and played for well over an hour until someone we new yelled "you know theres another band on" because they were gonna play like 3-4 more songs and it was already like very late. So, basically at that point we played for a few people. We were not too happy.

CT clubs, suck for the most part anyway, but yeah never play the El-N-Gee...it's a crap hold and the owner is a douche!

I've played the El n Gee and,yeah its pretty hit or miss with their staff. Roses Cantina in Groton is the best venue I have ever played in CT. The owner, Jimmy is the nicest guy in the biz. I have good experiences at the Riverside as well. The stage is pretty cool.

 

[WishIwasfinnish]

One of mine was this:

I was doing a little coffeehouse type performance at my school with a tango band. My guitar was working perfectly, and everything was great....until I plugged it in and THE FUCKING JACK FELL OUT OF THE GUITAR. I couldn't believe it, because of the bad timing and I was extremely pissed at Line 6 for making such crappy guitars (this was a nylon string variax). So, I just mic'ed it and played acoustically, which was not the worst thing, but totally not what I wanted

 

[via]

well i only got the regular stuff going on... HORRIBLE mixing and even worse on stage sound, which affects the performance because you think everyone else is hearing the same soundvomit like you...

i think it's normal when you're playing in a metal band that you want to kill the sound tech afterwards huh?

out of tune problems with my 2nd guitarplayer
onstage monitor which aren't working at all
promoting... which hasn't been executed by the location we were playing in...
a stage SO tiny (and fragile, it was made of compressed wood, lying on beer crates) that the only move i could make was a step on my footswitch to switch my amp channel and headbang... the gig itself was pretty awesome though

 

[rotebass]

i think it's normal when you're playing in a metal band that you want to kill the sound tech afterwards huh?

I think that goes both ways though...

 

[Ryan-ZenGtr-]

My contribution is:

I walk into a new venue. See the landlord. Realise I used to know him, 10 years ago. We catch up and go into his live room. There is a loose group making noise. Landlord says, he's playing my new hand crafted from the mystic trees of endor guitar.... Offers to let me check it out. We turn and hear a crash. The noob playing it drops it off the strap and it bounces across the room AT US. Amidst the shrapnel of what was once a custom hand made Les Paul the headstock has gone to the back of the room and the body is at the owners feet. Tears were justified....

Lot's more fun stuff happened there.... maybe I'll think of something later.

Oh yeah, always put massive strap pins or locking straps on your guitars. OEM use tiny ones for no obvious reason.

 

[Kamikaze7]

Aside from playing all too many shows at The Living Room in Providence, RI and trying to do the sound check. The guy at the sound board sounds like Charlie Brown's mom all muffled and shit so you can't hear what the fuck he was saying or trying to get you to play first to sound check. Thankfully the bassist and I both were using rackmount gear with 500Watt or more power amps. All we did was turn or rigs up to compensate for what we couldn't hear from the monitors. Our drummer didn't care as he was loud as fuck when he played anyway.

The all-time worst I ever had was playing at Jarrod's Rock House in Attleboro, Mass and we're playing a show with death metal legends Macabre. It was still very early in my having a rack set-up and was using a Line 6 Pod Rack pre-amp with the small 4-button footswitch. During one of our songs, the footswitch decided not to work, so I'm on stage stomping the fucking thing trying to switch out of my clean channel to my distortion channel and the damn thing don't work. Being so pissed off at the end of the set, I unplugged the pedal, slammed it on the stage once, picked it up and threw it across the side of the stage where all the bands put their gear. Luckily, no one was hurt or no gear was damaged by me tossing the pedal in an absolute fit of total anger. But still sucks when your playing in front of one of your influences and inspirations when that kinda shit happens. Needless to say, I left before Macabre went on because I was so pissed off, and didn't know they were playing until the next day when my other guitarist and singer told me about it. That didn't help matters at all after hearing that!!!

 

[lookralphsbak]

I plugged the cable that goes from the head to cab into the wrong jack on my cabinet, thus wasting 15 mins trying to figure out what was wrong and as a result my band had to cut our 8 minute epic... Ended up switching heads bc I thought my head was broken and finally just used the headlining bands gear. The next day I tested my amp/cab out and realized the stupid mistake I had made...

 

[zakattak192]

My band, Awakened Remains, played our first gig on saturday, in my basement.

Our joke pornogore band, "Cock Defenestrator" played first, performing such classics as "Vajelly" and "The Cryptic Pussy Stench"

Everyone just looked at us awkwardly, so we cut it short. The only good thing about that set was when everyone laughed when I said "This next song is about going to the Planned Parenthood and raiding the fridge. I hope you're hungry. This ones called Stillborn Sundae". Many lulz were had.

Now on to my ACTUAL band's set:
1. Our other guitarist was in Florida
2. Our singer's mic was broken and kept going in and out
3. I didn't have a boom stand so I had to tape my mic to a straight cymbal stand.
4. At the beginning of our 2nd song, I blew the fuse in my Peavey XXX
5. I had to switch to my shitty 75 Watt Spider II that got unnecessary amounts of feedback, and I had to turn down so much that you couldn't hear me over the bass or the drums.

 

[signalgrey]

I've played the El n Gee and,yeah its pretty hit or miss with their staff. Roses Cantina in Groton is the best venue I have ever played in CT. The owner, Jimmy is the nicest guy in the biz. I have good experiences at the Riverside as well. The stage is pretty cool.

i played there too. not a bad place. i thought it got closed down though...

 

[GATA4]

My band almost played the wrong venue one night. We started wheeling the gear into one venue and realized we were playing down the road just as we locked the trailer up. Not that bad, but after a couple weeks of touring it really sucked haha

Hey man, I have Malachi. Shit rocks

 

[Murdstone]

My band, Awakened Remains, played our first gig on saturday, in my basement.

Our joke pornogore band, "Cock Defenestrator" played first, performing such classics as "Vajelly" and "The Cryptic Pussy Stench"

Everyone just looked at us awkwardly, so we cut it short. The only good thing about that set was when everyone laughed when I said "This next song is about going to the Planned Parenthood and raiding the fridge. I hope you're hungry. This ones called Stillborn Sundae". Many lulz were had.

Now on to my ACTUAL band's set:
1. Our other guitarist was in Florida
2. Our singer's mic was broken and kept going in and out
3. I didn't have a boom stand so I had to tape my mic to a straight cymbal stand.
4. At the beginning of our 2nd song, I blew the fuse in my Peavey XXX
5. I had to switch to my shitty 75 Watt Spider II that got unnecessary amounts of feedback, and I had to turn down so much that you couldn't hear me over the bass or the drums.

You guys sound like a band my roommate and I would love to go see. Where in PA are you?