I know there's a lot of musicians here so I was wondering about if any of y'all hav played somewhere where you had such a bad experience you didn't want to play there again. My band played yesterday at this Irish bar in one of the suburbs of the Minneapolis and the place was not set up at all to accomodate bands. Cramped layout and terrible acoustics. We were using our own equipment but were wedged into a corner of one wing, the place had an 'L' shaped layout and we were wedged into a corner of the short tyne of the 'L' with the bar at where the tynes met so no one could hear us on the other side of the 'L'. The place was so accoustically poor that half the time we couldn't here each other either and consequently didn't have a good show. In addition to the physical problems with the space they treated us like crap. For one they didn't comp our drinks, the other places we've played have usually given us a set number of free drinks, but when we were done playing we were tearing down and loading up our one of the waitresses comes tearing out into the parking lot yelling "You're not trying to skip out on your tab!" We were still loading stuff and hadn't even been paid yet so it wasn't like we were running to our cars to take off. After I had loaded the last of my gear I headed back to get paid and join our friends for a drink. We had been going through their patio which had an exit to load and unload so when I went up to the door from the patio to the bar the rent-a-cop wouldn't let me in and even held the door shut. They were charging a cover that night so they didn't want people coming through their patio but he had seen me passing through earlier and anyway there already were people out smoking on the patio. I yelled at him that I was with the band and pointed to the shirt I was wearing that had our name on it and the sign behind him saying we were playing so he finally got the message and let me back in. An all around ad experience and even though we got paid, better than our other gigs, it just seemed like such a hassle that I wouldn't want to play there again.
Played a gig in New York many many years ago and on the 3rd song of the night ("Evil Ways"- Santana) a tube in my beloved Marshall amp blew. Ended up playing through the PA. Funny thing was, I guess I felt I was letting the band down because of my amp fiasco, but it ended up being one of the best nights I ever had playing wise. I went into a zone.
I played a gig last year with a classic rock/r & b band at some bbq cookoff in Conroe. These were some guys that I had never played with before (except for the trumpet player) and we didn't rehearse or anything. It was one of those show-up-and-wing-it kind of gigs, which can actually be pretty fun...as long as the musicans in the band can hang.... Well, that wasn't the case... The guitar player kept calling out songs and instead of letting me count them off, he would just start playing. I kept thinking he was just noodling around, so I wouldn't start playing because I was waiting for him to stop. He didn't stop. So I would start playing in the middle of the song. This happened with pretty much every song. Not to mention, he had no sense of TIME whatsoever, so he would start playing the songs in super double time. The bass player was AWFUL. He would just play 1 and 3 on the root note for every single song. Hell, I could have done that....while playing the drums! Oh, and the load-in....MY GOD, that was the WORST load-in in my entire life. I had to roll all my gear for literally a mile, through crowds of drunk people, across hills, dirt, gravel, through a bunch of carnival rides, little kids running around, mud...WORST load-in/out EVER. They want me to do it again this year, but I told them they would have to provide the drumkit. Word is they're "working on it". Incidentally, I had a great gig today. It was with a jazz combo playing standards, which is something I hadn't done since college. I really miss doing that. We're doing it again tomorrow, so if anyone here is planning on being in Old Town Spring tomorrow, stop by and check us out.
That sounds a lot like our band. A lot of our songs start out with guitar or vocals first. Our drummer doesn't even like to be the guy to set the time. Generally this isn't a problem except on Friday where the acoustics were so bad we couldn't always hear each other and would start off time.
