Gigs from Hell Stories

[xricci]

We used to post these stories here http://www.allaboutjazz.com/threads/gigsfromhell.htm. If you're a musician and have a story to tell, we'd love to hear it.

Anything along the lines of....

* Unappreciative audiences or employers
* Lousy pay or working conditions
* Horrible/inappropriate song requests
* Personnel problems, equipment problems, screwed-up logistics
* Strange but true stories

...will work.

[DWBass]

Well, besides many gigs paying lousy, I do have one bad gig experience that I'd love to forget. It was at the 'Windows Of The World' restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center in NYC! The stage was a raised one! And for some reason, my amp was producing an annoying mid-range frequency hum that I just could not dial out nor could the sound person dial out through the P.A.! I had to turn my amp down so low that I could not hear myself on stage and if I played a little harder than usual, the hum would return. It was horrible and I had to endure this for 4 hours!! Ugh!

[lorifredrics]

I was livinI in Austin Texas, i was hired to sing a wedding ceremony I will soon not forget. The father of the bride wanted me to sing the Pie Jesu from the Weber REQUIEM , of course he pronounced it Pie(as in American Pie) Jesu with a j as in John. He asked whether I thought that this piece which is from a Requiem would be appropriate for his daughter's wedding. I said , "well it depends how you feel about the wedding". This went right over his head so I said , "umm it is usually sung when someone dies". He said "well, it's awful purty".
I sang the thing and everyone at this Texas wedding thought it was so sweet.:shrug

[swingking]

I was playing in an Austin based country band [the best band I ever played in] & our booking agent booked us into a club in San Angelo called the "Honky Tonk Hilton" on the outskirts of town.it was nothing more than a barn with no heat except for a bonfire outside .the tables were those large spools used for cable by the phone companies & bales of hay for chairs.cracks in the floor big enough for a chicken to fall through.the first night we spent the whole night at the club because there was no way to lock it up [to guard our equipment]the owner of the place was a crazy Greek & he and some other wacko were having a knife throwing contest with the stockroom door at the end of the bar being the target....people were walking in & out of the bar area constantly......I just knew someone was gonna get a blade between the eyes.when we got back to town needless to say we fired the agent. all the guys in that band are still pro musicians except me. this was mid 70's.:shrug:

[EdByrne]

Johnny Pacheco

The Fania All Stars were led throughout a Central and South American tour by Johnny Pacheco, a very fine flautist, but for mysterious reasons which nobody would reveal, none of the band members would speak to him. I found him to be generous, funny, and a good traveling companion; and although I never gambol, I would accompany him to some very interesting old world casinos. I gradually got the sense that he was thought to have gotten rich on his successful recordings of plagiarized tunes.

Johnny was accompanied by his manager, as well as his bodyguards. All the stars, by the way, were accompanied by personal bodyguards, who not infrequently would pull guns on each other on the bandstand during performances. Oftentimes gun fights were only narrowly avoided. Machismo lives!

When we got back to New York City we were to close the tour with a Madison Square Garden concert. Heading out from the dressing room to the stage, however, Johnny was knifed in front of me. He took a serious wound in the chest from a disgruntled song-writer, and was bleeding profusely. After he lay down briefly to gather his energy and get bandaged, he did the entire two-hour concert with style, before being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance immediately thereafter.

As a postscript, a few years later I saw a film clip from a Fanya All-Star movie, in which I appeared. We were never told that we were being filmed, and we were never paid for such a shoot. . . You can't argue with the Mafia.

[sameaglesquintet]

Im not sure whether this classifies as a gig from hell but it was quite a funny experience.
6 of us had been booked to play at a wedding in exeter which was about a 3 hour drive or something similar. I think we have been promised £150 each + wedding food, accomadation and a taxi to our accomdation from the grand house.
We arrived and everything was going to plan until the "food" we were given. Literally we were shown the kitchen and all they had were a couple of tins of baked beans and some bread, and some dirty brown stuff in a plastic box.
Well, this wasnt the nice "buffet" i was expecting. firstly some of the beans exploded in the microwave which was not brilliant (we didnt clear it up tho :P) and then our bass player dropped a bowl of baked beans down our drummer, pretty much a disaster in his suit.haha.

Then it was time to play, we were playing cheesy 80's pop music and then a jazz set with a singer. The gig went fine and it was a laugh. Then we packed up. Our bassisit went for an explore with me and the sax player in their large garden (probably about a square mile - 1.5k) we saw this dark shape and though a river was across the garden with a grass slope leading down to it - it was VERY dark and we had to use our phone lights to see - anyway this actually turned out to be a 8 foot drop off a wall - the garden was on 2 levels. Our bass player took one cautios step off the wall that we couldnt see and then fell into the darkness - coincidentally into a bush of thick nettles. He was stung everywhere and his face swelled up. What a laugh!

In the end they only paid us £90 each or something, and they didnt provide the free taxi they had promised.

It was a fun gig tho!
But they treated us badly and didnt fulfill their promises.

[Jofo]

Cape May Jazz Festival 1998:

Last day of the festival is the jam session, which is a requirement of all performers or you do not get paid. My quartet, sans me, is onstage burning, and when the tune is over I get called up, and the personel changes. Here's the linup:
-Me on upright bass
-an R&B drummer who looks like Prince
-a 90 year old clarinetist and pianist
-a sheila e. wanna be percussionist
This lineup is trying to figure out what to play when all of a sudden, a guy in leather pants and jacket jumps onstage with a telecaster, plugs into an amp, and yells into the mic "This is a song Robert Johnson wrote in 1912!" and proceeds to play "Crossroads", Cream style.
Now, I'm playing the riff on upright with gut strings, the drummer is playing the beat to "Billie Jean", the clarinet is doing Dixieland riffs, and the percussionist is playing a samba. I think the pianist had a mild stroke.
I'd give anything to hear a tape of that.

[jazzbluescat]

Cape May Jazz Festival 1998:

...I'd give anything to hear a tape of that.

Me too. :D