Your worst gig played or seen

^ mainly because the acoustics change when the venue is full from what it was during the sound check - a bad sound engineer will compensate for that on levels rather than EQ.

For the end of year 12, me and some dudes in the year level were asked to play a thing for the end of the school year, in front of all the year 10s, year 11s, year 12 and all the school staff at our campus. I can't remember who came up with the idea (most likely our drummer), but yeah, we ended up playing a bunch of classic rock and metal stuff (so parts of   We Will Rock You by Queen, so parts of Iron man by Black Sabbath TNT by AC/DC and of course the totally unexpected Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple)

Firstly, there was zero stage monitoring, so I could barely make out the vocals, couldn't hear the bassist nor the other 2 guitarists at all and basically could only hear myself and the drummer. It's amazing we were even able to be in the same sections of the songs in that circumstance.

Secondly, or some reason by the time we got near the end of the peformance, at the TNT part which was the last song of the medley, I got extremely nervous and anxious, RIGHT BEFORE THE GUITAR SOLO and it continued into the solo (given I have been getting severe anxiety problems that year, that sort of thing seemed to strike at any random time). Pretty much every note was being bent out of tune and my vibrato was horrible (picture Kirk Hammett trying to play AC/DC leads and you're on the money......or the guitarists from Dragonforce, either one or the 2 is okay) because I was so nervy that I wasn't able to totally control what I was doing at all.
The musicians in the crowd (which wasn't many luckily) must have been cringing during that solo.

And then weirdly enough, we straight after played an instrumental version of BB King's rendition of The Thrill is Gone (although we even then had our own arrangement of the piece) and my playing was perfectly fine and totally in tune and controlled during the guitar solos


Edited by Petrovsk Mizinski - October 20 2009 at 05:12

Dean wrote: ^ I'm sure you mean Peter

That's what I said look ^^^

^ I'm sure you mean Peter

^ Ha, I've experienced that as a band manager - the van containing half the band and all the gear got lost on the way to Camden and arrived with barely minutes to set up and play. Somehow in that short space of time (and while on stage) one of the band member's (no names to protect the innocent ) imbibed so much stress relieving beverage that she could barely stand and managed to bend the mic stand double in an attempt to support herself - needless to say the gig was more emotional than intended. I imposed a pre-gig alcohol ban after that, and suggested that only water be drunk while on stage.

I saw bad gigs, and I played bad gigs, which I won't describe. I don't care much if I'm performing in front of a small audience (ten people) as far as I'm somewhat satisfied with performance. Also there were performances where audience cheered, shouted, applauded, asked for encores, but I don't think my band was deserving it. However, it's all part of the experience.