By far, my worst gig ever

resohead

Silver Member
I consider myself an above average drummer but I'm light years away from what I see from other players. I'm not Mr Chops but I have a very good feel for music.

So, I started with a country band, had two practices, and a Fri / Sat night gig a a big hall two days later. I've played some country for years.

Friday night was the worst night of my life, drumming or not. From the first note till the last note four hours later, it sounded like I had never played drums and I could not get it together. This had never happened and I have no excuse. On breaks, I went outside, smoked a cigarette while leaning on my car, head down.

No one was dancing and at the end of every song was dead silence except for maybe a cough. I still had Saturday to go.

Saturday the dance floor was packed(my sign of success)the band was smiling, it was a great time. I was back but where did I go?

I played a gig while not quite over pneumonia, another with an abscessed tooth from hell and other maladies. They went fine.

Has anyone else completely crater at a gig? I hope not.
 
I had a couple bad ones where the whole band just sounded band for most of the night. One time my band was politely asked to stop playing.

I did a "trainwreck" thread a few months ago when I first started visiting this forum. There are some good stories in that one.
 
There are some good stories in that one.

I'll look that up.

I just remembered a private party gig that wasn't any of the bands problem but was the guy that booked us. He wanted R & B. Like the Temptations, that sort of thing? That's what we do. Listen. :)

This was for grads of a black college and they were very urban and we were too dumb to know that R & B had changed.

After two songs in the first set we knew we were in trouble so we threw all of our best stuff at them. It didn't work.

Before we started the second set a guy asked if we could just play their CD's. LOL We looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said, why not?

We spent the rest of the night partying with our crowd and still got paid.
 
I have had a few bad gigs in the past 20 years......it happens.

I have had nights where I have had my mind go blank and just forget the song I was doing. Funny thing is I can hear my mistakes and when I mention them and apologize to the band...they say they never heard me mess up! Even my number one critic, my wife, will say the same thing!

There are nights where the whole band just has a bad night. I guess that's to be expected when the average age in the band is 57 years, three having heart problems, working hard jobs before a gig...etc.....
 
This was for grads of a black college and they were very urban and we were too dumb to know that R & B had changed.

I am an absolute fanatic about the old time rhythm and blues. As for the new stuff, it can put me to sleep in no time. I am of the opinion that a good musician wants to please his audience regardless. I just think that it is a terrible shame that the scene has deteriorated to the degree that it has. Of course, this is all completely subjective, and I know that there are those who would suggest that I am just growing old, but I know that there are an army of us who feel the same way.
 
Chalk it up to an "off" night. What changed so drastically in 48 hours? Was it the same crowd of people Saturday? Maybe Friday's were the fuddy ones. Don't worry about it, it sounds like you guys all recovered quite well Saturday and everyone had a great time of it. Cheers!
 
Thanks rogue, I was working long hours in retail at the time and you have to talk another store manager into covering for you on their day off. That went down to the wire, I was always exhausted with the long hours.

I had to sneak into a health club to use their showers and change. I got to the venue at the last minute so that didn't help. The next night I took off much earlier and I went home and laid down for 30 min. I felt desperate.

I was so bad, I thought maybe I had an aneurism and didn't know it. I don't think I played one song right.

Who knows? As the night wore on I wanted to say I was sorry to the band but what would I say? They were too drained to listen anyway.

Anyway, worst night of my life, playing or not.
 
I once played a gig where I got so drunk I completely flubbed the last set. If I were still capable of feeling shame I might have been embarrassed.
 
So resohead, what was the final tally? Why exactly were you off? Can you explain it? If so, that's better than not having a clue. I always have to know why I messed up, so I can understand it better and avoid it in the future. Sounds like you were tired and stressed. You are on meds too, I betcha that's where everything stems from. If you are on multiple meds...sometimes they don't play well together... I know even one beer affects my "time circuits", so psychotropic drugs.....nuff said. Could that be it?
 
Sure, I've played some stinkers. If you're an up-and-down kind of person, there'll be more variance. There are three possible responses - continue as usual knowing the next time can't be as bad, practice and listen like crazy or take a break to clear your head.

What kills me is when two similar songs are close to each other in the set (never a good idea) and I can't get the first one out of my head and start the second song at the wrong tempo. That's embarrassing.
 
I've played two or three.

I played on really close to my house in a community center kind of thing, which was my second gig ever which didn't go down too well (well, I don't think it did?)

Then, another one in a suite thing which isn't far from me either, I just struggled to hit everything and everything felt out of place.

Then, me and my friends thought it'd be fun to go up to a open-mic and play random songs that came to our heads. That went bad, we were all over the place! Which is quite unlike me...

Only those gigs, I think it's natural. Every other gig I've played has been a huge success!
 
Has anyone had a bad gig that didn't involve playing crappily? I had a gig last week that was absolutely horrendous, first off I get to the place at about 4PM, expecting to play at around 6PM, I ended up playing at 11PM. The place we were playing is known for original acts so I don't know why the lead singer keeps going back there as we are in a cover band mostly. After two original acts, we finally take the stage, it's so painfully obvious no one's into it, to makes matter's worse, the musicianship is subpar, the bass player kept having trouble with his cable, one of the guitars kept switching off, one of the guitarist has to ****** tune after every song. It didn't even matter because we got to play around 4 songs, since it was a Thursday so there was a curfew at 12 and we didn't even get paid. To top it off, a fellow drummer from college was there, his band absolutely killed (that was the only good thing of that night, listening to some good music) and I was just so pissed off and completely embarrassed, I got out of there as fast as I could. I then though about it and found no compelling reason to be in the band anymore, the guys are sloppy, I'm not having fun playing covers and we're not even getting paying gigs, I guess I was playing with them mostly cause they're guys I know from highschool, but I'm quitting the band.

It's funny how you can play so many good gigs and it takes one bad gig to shatter your confidence, suddenly I was second-guessing myself and basically thinking I was a crap drummer, luckily another band I'm in has had two shows since then and they have been killer so that gave me a much needed boost of self confidence.
 
You're probably right, Larry. At the time I was only taking one med and had done well on it for 5 years. But when I reach a point of exhaustion, it can trigger bad things. Too much stress is bad for you. To me, all the wheels can fly off. I reckon they flew off that night.
 
Yea, stress can trigger stuff that isn't there all the time....Be kind to yourself.
 
We played an outdoor gig in 98 degree heat last summer. We all sucked. There didn't seem to be anything we could do. The guitars wouldn't stay in tune; our horn player kept trying to find the right notes by trial and error; I was far from my best; it was terrible. The gig before and the gig after were pretty good. In general, I think we have a good band, but sometimes the gig ghosts make you pay.
 
i played a really bad gig when i was 11 infront of my school, that was awful
ever since then i always practiced

sometimes if there is bad sound/monitor mixes or something then things can get sketchy though, depends on the bassist really
 
We played an outdoor gig in 98 degree heat last summer. We all sucked. There didn't seem to be anything we could do. The guitars wouldn't stay in tune; our horn player kept trying to find the right notes by trial and error; I was far from my best; it was terrible. The gig before and the gig after were pretty good. In general, I think we have a good band, but sometimes the gig ghosts make you pay.

That sounds truly awful. I'd be flaking out like Moonie playing in that kind of heat.
 
Thanks rogue, I was working long hours in retail at the time and you have to talk another store manager into covering for you on their day off. That went down to the wire, I was always exhausted with the long hours.

I had to sneak into a health club to use their showers and change. I got to the venue at the last minute so that didn't help. The next night I took off much earlier and I went home and laid down for 30 min. I felt desperate.

I was so bad, I thought maybe I had an aneurism and didn't know it. I don't think I played one song right.

Who knows? As the night wore on I wanted to say I was sorry to the band but what would I say? They were too drained to listen anyway.

Anyway, worst night of my life, playing or not.

Hi Reso, thanks for posting this. Did you have time to warm up?
 
Yeah, first gig and no time to warm up. The bass player played drums and set my kit up so I don't remember having time to do more than say hello to everyone. I worked hard for that $50.00. So did the rest of the band.

I've been around music since I was 12. I was first chair cornet for 3 years in high school and had done UIL solo and ensemble stuff and did it well even though I was so nervous I had no saliva in my mouth. So, looking at the whole scheme of things, I'm cutting myself a break on that night.
 
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