went to play a gig at a bar that shall remain nameless to celebrate a friend's birthday.
the microphone was from argos. it actually had, as i remember, an argos sticker or print on it.

not quite blanking..dreaming i was somehwere else.

There was a massive amp stack which feedbacked no matter how far i was away from it.

To protect my ickle ears and so i don't panic i switched the bridge pickup off on my guitar so i can swithc to it if there was massive feedback.

Anyway, by the time it got to us i was completely pissed.

3rd song in i knocked the pickup switch....i thought the pedal stopped working....i yanked it out and plugged straight into the amp...which was sooo loud it shook the place...but had NO DISTORTION.

I tried to play 4 more grindcore songs on a completely clean guitar that drowned everything else out in the whole place...

I gave up, and pretended i was at home strumming on my guitar,, iwas wearing a bearmask, so you feel quite closeted and in your own world.

I closed my eyes and started strumming nursery rhymes and finger workouts..what i do at home in bed when i practice guitar...pretending no one was there.

Frontman unplugged me.

end of show

My band were playing our first ever gig in a church hall (we had to help take down the youth club's art display first) and were absolutely shitting it. we walk on stage and our guitarist trips on the stairs with his guitar on, completely fucking it up. We managed to calm eeveryone down after hours of laughter. 2nd song, guitar string breaks. 3rd song we completely fucked up. Last song there was a crowd invasion and the mic got knocked over so we had to stop and go back to the beginning. CRINGEWORTHY.

2 gigs later we supported Operator Please and Dead Kids though...

there were about 4 people there, not including the promoter, soundman, the other band, and my dad who had driven us.

I just completely lost interest in playing about halfway through the set, and started playing "Holland 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel. The rest of the band joined in, but the drummer stopped halfway through, probably as I wasn't getting any of the chords or words right.

We're probably not playing in Swindon again.

Kicking out the extension lead powering all our amps and our drum machine halfway through the first song, leaving nothing but vocals.

Tripping over the drum machine lead just after soundcheck - sending it crashing to the floor, destroying the input for the plug, then having to play the whole gig with a drum machine that kept breaking after 8 bars.

Playing the biggest gig we ever played, supporting one of our heroes, only for the soundperson not understand the concept of a drum machine in the monitors. We were embarrassingly bad.

We got a real drummer, eventually, obviously.

Standing on a chair and accidentally putting my foot right through it.

Standing on my amp and promptly falling off, slipping onto spilt beer and landing on my arse.

This thread is depressing me.

but that's part of the fun so i wouldn't call that bad or anything.

i guess new years eve when we played as part of that mini camden crawl thing. To be fair we were the most interesting band who played in that venue, the rest were just regular boring Libertines-ey indie stuff whereas we were a bit more Bis/Blondie/Le Tigre influenced so very danceable and high energy.

Anyway...

We were told just before we went on stage that our 45 minute set would be cut to 25 which pissed us off massively as we had worked for months perfecting the set for that gig, how the songs would interweave into other songs with little riffs of more popular songs and such. So that was annoying. Then midway through the second song the sound cut out for a whole ten minutes. We were stood on stage looking like dickheads. Then the sound came back, we could hear nothing from our monitors so we played 1 more song and went off. Horrible horrible horrible. Worst NYE evar.

i've never blanked out on what i'm met to be playing but i know a lot of people who have, this is quite common i think so don't feel so bad about it.

I'd been feeling ill all day and it was touch & go whether I'd make the gig.

I did in the end but my concentration was completely fucked to the point where I completely forgot the words to the first thing I did (which was essentially performance poetry so I couldn't cover it musically or anything and it was really blatant).

Then that just fucked my confidence for the entire gig and I was appalling, Luckily there was barely anyone watching anyway but I was really, really, really bad. I didn't do another solo show for months after that...

with my old band, there was literally no-one there except our friends. Then halfway through our set, some mental local kid who was completely pissed came in and kept grabbing the microphone of me, literally as I was singing into it, so that he could pretned to sing into it and dance about. Despite my protests that, you know, we'd rehearsed a few songs, I wanted to sing them etc. he still wouldn't give up, so eventually they had to give him his own microphone stand to 'sing' into.

although last night was quite an interesting one... we were supporting red snapper at leeds cockpit when halfway in my newly stitched up back wound decides to break free and gush forth a small torrent of blood.
cue not enjoying the gig AT ALL, being in a fair amount of pain, missing red snapper and being patched up in A&E at Leeds General Infirmary...
nice.

a song which has one chord all the way through (pretty much). I was kind of drunk and ended up playing the chord shape one fret up, but was too busy scowling at everyone else to realise it was me who was horrendously fucking up the song. Oh well.

but the one that stands out involved our drummer being very, very drunk and me being offered bass lessons from the barman.

though I had one experience of being very drunk onstage when I was about 18/19, which is the last time I did that.

One gig one of my synths broke during soundcheck, which meant I had to reprogramme about 4 songs onto the sequencer + sound module, before we played, whilst hiding upstairs in the ticket office. Then both guitars broke during that gig.

Other stories include having someone barge into me, resulting in my guitar hitting someone in the face.. which led to a rather nasty stand-off.

More recently having a gig in Wycombe, and my bassist being pretty ill, and him being sick down the side of the car on the way.. and the soundman at the gig being rubbish and trying to mic up the drums despite the venue being a room in the back of the pub..

Well, not 100% empty, my missus was there...

Even so, if it's possible, the room felt even emptier by the time we'd finished...

my old band were playing at the Leadmill in Sheffield, supporting a rubbish but (at the time) big name band.

main band took three hours to soundcheck.

we got to put our stuff on the stage 2 mins before the doors opened.

then we are told that main band want to do a longer set so our stage time has to be brought forward to NOW! So we are on stage as the door open.

During the first song the distortion pedal breaks, not just stops working but literally breaks apart.

a guitar string pings off the guitar and the drummer puts his fist all the way through both skins of his snare.

we make a horrible noise for a while and then leave.

total time on stage < 5 minutes!

My old band in Manchester had some corkers. Mostly involving driving miles and taking ages to set everything up to play to one person, usually one of our girlfriends.

Favourite one I can think of was playing Cuba Cafe in Mcr for some shitty promoter, supporting some local no-mark Maroon 5-a-likes who bussed everyone in from shitsville for their set - loads of people milling about, lots of ppl coming down to see us too, signs are we'll get a decent if not great crowd. Just before we start everyone piles into the tiny, tiny bar to the side of the stage leaving, again, one of our girlfriends to watch and noone else near us as everyone msgs me pulling out. Ace. Couldn't hear the laptop beats at all in the monitors (we have no other drums), the guitar I use stops working so I change to my shitty backup one mid song, that doesn't work, turns out it's the lead, change that, then break two strings, my backing vocals FAR too loud out front but can't hear myself in the monitors so caterwaul away all through the set.

About halfway through realise that my band is possibly the worst in existence.

The end of the last song eventually comes, sick of playing to one person and a shite soundman I unplug and launch my guitar over the 'dancefloor' as far as I can (almost hitting our one fan), kick everything over and storm out.

There's nothing quite as sad as rock and roll behaviour when it's so completely and utterly futile.

I got absolutely twatted on tequilla whilst watching the headliners play shite funk-balls to a full room. None of my equipment worked the next day, so had to spend the entire Saturday mending it all with gaffa tape with a raging fucking tequila hangover.

I love being in a band sometimes.

Guitarist jumps up in the air + does a rock n roll scissor kick + cracks head off beams on low celling + lands in a pool of his own head blood = one night spent in casualty.

man, i have a lot of these...

leicester at the firebug.

we were doing the gig as a favour to a friend who was organising the gig, so we drive all the way down from leeds to be there, and our friends (and at the time label boss') band were also playing and got there pretty early, at about 6ish.

the headliners were a local band (i won't say which one) and one of them arrived at about 6.30, saying the rest of them were on the way.
we ask the soundguy if we can quickly set up and have a quick line check as it was about 7.30 and nothing had been done yet. he refused to do ANYTHING until all of the headline act was there.

they arrived at about 8, they soundchecked and promptly put the bass drum through, so that took even longer to sort out. so after they're done at like 8.30, we're shouted at to "fast as we can" soundcheck and get going. we're told we can't play on the floor (as we usually do) for "health and safety", even though the singer of the other band was later taken to hospital due to an onstage collision, ironically enough.

so we start and we can't hear a sodding thing. he turns our monitors down (er, we have a computer, not a drummer- we need those monitors!!!!) and then cuts our set short. no-one was there either, as the headliners had a crowd of their fans down in the bar with them.

in all, a BAD night.

So I was asked to play a solo acoustic thing at a charity event. There wasn't much information about it, just that they had a load of different acts all lined up and since it was being held 400 metres from where I lived at the time, I decided it might be fun.

Until I arrived and the person who'd "booked" me wasn't there, so there were just a bunch of people wondering who the guy with the guitar was as I was being bounded from person to person. The event had started but was so badly organised, it still looked like they were setting up. Eventually, they sent me and a couple of other performers outside (it was summer) to just "do what you do" there. This meant a fire juggler, myself and a guy who I can't remember what he does (I've kind of blanked it out of my memory a bit) sat outside whilst now and again people popped their heads outside then headed back to the food and drink.

I just sat there and played song after song as though I were sitting in my lounge, enjoying being in the sun and watching the juggler, until a group of people came from inside to watch the juggler en mass, standing pretty much in front of me as though I were one of the crowd. I didn't know whether to carry on or just stand there as part of the crowd watching (the correct answer was to leave).

I ended up stuffing my bag full of the free food (I was a student) then trundling off home feeling like an absolute dickhead.

soundman somehow forgetting to put our singer's microphone into the pa was pretty disasterous and embarassing (obviously after the first song he realised but the negative mood had already been set by then)

our other guitarist accidently leaving his flange pedal with a ridiculous setting on for about 3 songs (the monitors were so bad we only realised towards the end - can't imagine what the audience were thinking)

and the band on before us was an acoustic two-piece comprising a couple of teenagers. They soundchecked, and then bolted! They texted the promoter to apologise, I thought it was brilliant.

played a gig at the turnmills in london.
we were the first band on out of four, and despite having to drive from leicester and the other bands all ebing based in london, we had to take all our back line for everyone else to borrow.

we go on at half 8 and there are only 10 of our friends there. there was a part in our last song where it broke to down to me playing a riff. i repeatedly stopped playing and was eventually threantened with violence by every other memeber of the band.

after our set they all left to go tot the pub. for some reason i stayed and watched the other bands. the were all rubbish. even he promoter left before the last band. we didn't get paid.

the next day our guitarist wrote a very long and angry email to the promoter. our "label boss" told us not to send it because the promoter worked at fierce panda and we shouldn't burn bridges.

at another gig i got strangled by the other band's guitarist because i wouldn't let him use my amp.

reminds me why I didn't start my band up again. The ABSOLUTE TOTAL heartbreak of gigging makes me sad just thinking about it.

ergh.

One that sticks in my mind vividly.....

During my time in my first serious band, (before I had moved up to London) we managed to get a gig in Soho at the club called Gossip.

Like every young band, we were absolutely convinced that all we had to do to get signed, was fall onto the stage and hit a couple of chords.

Anyway, as we were waiting for our slot and silently shitting ourselves, we noticed that there were a hell of a lot of people with note pads and cameras. In our deluded state we naturally thought that this was going to be our big gig - hilarious really, 1 gig in London and we thought we would make it big time.

We got ready to go on stage, and once the act before us had finished simply everyone walked away and left us with about 10 people watching, we were gutted.

Needless to say, we ploughed into the opening chords of the first song, and the bassplayers strap came off so that he had to hold the bass up prized against his elbow for the whole of the first song.