That's disheartening Dragon.
I saw the Rock a Teens play up here in 2003 -
Also only 12 people were there - my friends and I.
And they still are my favorite band.
I felt really bad for them.
They soon broke up after that tour.
I wish I could have told them that what they were doing is/was important no matter what their perspective was.

Defeatist wrote:That's disheartening Dragon.
I saw the Rock a Teens play up here in 2003 -
Also only 12 people were there - my friends and I.
And they still are my favorite band.
I felt really bad for them.
They soon broke up after that tour.
I wish I could have told them that what they were doing is/was important no matter what their perspective was.

This was in February or January of 2001.

I have a few...

My band played at this girls birthday party a few years back. We set up and played in this chicken coop in the back yard (which was kind of cool actually). We lugged all of our heavy ass equipment a long way to this chicks house. We played one song, and the neighbors came outside and threatened to call the cops. We then had to lug our shit all the way back to our studio downtown. Very disappointing.

I had this side project going with these other guys. We played at a party and we set up in the woods. We had several long extension cords plugged together, and we got power from this trailer that was a few hundred feet away. The drums were set up on unlevel ground and kept falling over. The power kept going out and flickering and shit. The mosquitos were fucking terrible (it was sweltering hot & in texas). On top of it all, we played shitty and the few people that came out to watch us slowly left one by one. Embarrasing performance. That really sucked.

The last show that I played with my current band was a wash. It was the first show with our new drummer. So we were all stiff, and the tempos were a bit off. I had never had any problems with my guitar... but as soon as we start to play, the g-string (ha!) comes out of tune. So I tune mid-song. I bend alot, so every time I would bend the g, it would slip out of tune. This happened through the entire set. So we rushed through the songs while playing them out of tune. We played only 3 or 4 songs and got off the stage. Our friends walked up and gave us that pity shit... "Oh... you guys did a great job". stuff like "I really like those new songs." I hate that. All I could tell them was that we played like ass.

Great thread idea. I really needed somewhere to vent this.

The last show that I played was actually the most horrible. My band too is what I would consider prog-punk, pretty spacey at times though. The day before that I had been court ordered to stop drinking. I always perform after putting back a few, so this totally harshed it. I could see playing sober in public if you were used to it, but Im not. Anyways, 45 minutes before we left for the 1 hour drive, i found out my girlfriend cheated on me. Other wise I would have been able to avoid thinking about that bullshit by just drinking. Technical problems included buying new strings and not breaking them in, forgetting my tuner, finding out the stage was wood and we didnt bring a carpet so the drums slid around first song, not having had practiced in a week b/c we have been soundproofing the garage, etc. It was all around fucking awful and I really regret even going. Luckily we played a flawless inspired set the week before that and people understood that we just had a bad show.

We drove up to San Fran from LA to play one radio show and then a live set at a club in SF. By the radio show, 11AM, I started getting a migraine headache (it runs in my family). Play the radio show, migraine's getting worse all day, get to the venue at 7p so we can do sa soundcheck, though our set isn't until midnight. Soundman doesn't arrive in time to give us a soundcheck, so we, a little pissed, move our shit to the back of the stage. First band starts at 8p. Migraine getting worse, nobody arriving at the club (we find out later that the promoter, who bailed before our set even started, didn't promote the show at all...), the soundman must be completely deaf, because he's got the volume cranked to Shea Stadium levels. I throw up a couple times from the pain, getting red spots in my vision, they turn to black spots, finally I can just barely see, but by the time of our set, I can see that there are a grand total of three people left in this cavernous venue. We play our set, I throw up once more, then I drive back over the Bay to my brother's house in Berkeley. Can't sleep because my head hurts so bad. Drive home to LA the next day.

That show sucked. Hopefully the show I'm playing in three hours won't. No headache, so I'm good so far, but my sweet old Yamaha analog delay is going out...

worst shows...i have a couple

1) we were on tour and running out of money, went to play a show at the bluebird in portland, showed up...bar was empty. opening band was this really bad pseudo punk(punk cause its cool) band. they finished and there were about 10 people in the bar now...the other band we were touring with played and rocked the house of 10 people. we then played for all of them,
experiencing tech. diff. such as broken strings and kick pedal. after the difficulty we ended up playing for about 20 min. and niether us or the other touring band made more than 20 dollars total. (not that its about money, but we were so broke) after the show we went to a party at this vintage clothing store where our friend worked and schmoozed it up for a bit. then we decided to go on to the roof to smoke cigarettes. one of our friends was waisted and running around on the roof like a dumb ass and fell off of the roof 4 stories into a courtyard, slammed his leg on a concrete slab, shattering it, and then falling onto cardboard. . . he was briefly unconcious as we scrambled to find him running about through this apartment complex. finaly found him the paramedics arrived and took him out on a stretcher. as they were wheeling him into the ambulance somone yelled to him "spencer give us a sign if your o.k." he responded with throwing up the horns.
so mostly the entire evening was a bad show!


2) played a show with this cocky surf rock band at a crappy new metal bar
first :we had friends from various cities as far as 6 hours comming to see us play and a touring band from minneapolis.
second: surf band played for at least an hour and a half
third :touring band played for 15 min.
fourth : my band did NOT get to play (what the fuck!!!)
fifth : guy that booked the show , who was the surf band's guitar players little bro, gave us 10 dollars cause he felt bad.
gave touring band 10 dollars also
mind you there was a good turn out at the show!!!!!!1
after confronting the promoter about his dumb assedness, he gave us an additional 10 dollars, thanx buddy.

we ended up giving the touring band our cut, so they made 30 dollars, i hope they made it to there next show o.k.

SO I GUESS IT WAS THE WORST SHOW I EVER DIDN'T PLAY

One of my first gigs, at this pub/club place. I was all excited because we had practised so much and we had the songs pretty much nailed down.

During the opening seconds of the first track, the intensity of the moment got a little better of me, and I swiped my right drumstick up too high, and it came down with my glasses in tow.

My glasses land right on my snare drum, and I'm fucking blind without them. I thought they would have bounced off, but no. It's like they're glued to my drum.

So I try and put them on mid-song with one hand, while keeping the beat with the other. Utter failure. I lose the beat and eventually just throw the specs to the side, leaving me to drum half-blind for the rest of the song.

My playing sucked for the rest of the set. All my enthusiasm had been sucked out by a pair of glasses and the drumstick that made them fly.

My first 'proper' band's last ever show was the worst (although highly entertaining to me now). At the end of a scrappy, cancellation-prone, indifferently attended tour we ended up playing at the opening of a new Virgin multiplex cinema in the Northwest for some reason (yeah, I know). By that endstage we were ready to kill each other. We also wanted to kill the promoter when we found out both the other two Nationally Famous bands had pulled out and the opening celebrations turned out to be a chaotic weekend of disasters. Needless to say the gig was not promoted and no-one showed up. We ending up sharing the stage with the local radio station and playing a 500 seat cinema to eight kids...actual kids. Ten, twelve year olds with promo Disney packs, mooning, doing Mexican waves, chucking balloons around. It was 'Puppet Show and Spinal Tap' incarnate. After the blazing row that followed, for the seven hour drive back to London not one of us, band or crew, said a single word to each other. We split up fairly soon afterwards.

Ever see that video of Sonic Youth playing feedback to Neil Young fans and the girls in the front row (of a seated venue) have their fingers in their ears?

You should have made them little kids cry!

My old band played an outdoor festival once. This is what made it bad:

*We played on a stage behind this building to where no one could see us unless they walked waaaaay around to the back of this place.

*We played not very far away from where another band was set up. We were playing at the same time, so the sounds were mixing.

*The sound was fucking terrible (I hate playing outside).

*The first chord of the first song, my other guitarist broke a string. Then he didn't even finish the song with the band. He instead ran off the stage (no shit!) and went to his car to get a spare pack of strings.

*We were being videotaped, and all of our friends were there with their parents and friends and shit.

So bad!!!

My worst shows tend to be outside shows.