I just heard from Lewis from The NovaRays... apparently they got fired last night from their show at Fish On Fire in Orlando after playing just a couple of songs... because they were too loud...

A similar thing happened to The Intoxicators! when we played in Orlando once (we got paid for our show though... and had already played 2 hour long sets).

I was wondering about other people's gig horror stories...
So post them here!!!

Anyway, here's his blog from The NovaRays' MySpace that tells their story...

Are We PUNK ROCK or something?
Current mood: pissed off

Well, The Novarays got booted out of a gig last night. Seems that we where booked early for a dinner crowd (8pm) and the booker was freakin' cuz we were too loud.

Mine you we were playing "Baja" by Lee Hazelwood and had other slow, relaxing tunes ready like "Theme for Young Lovers" and our version of "Turn to Stone" ready to go...in fact, "Baja" was the song that got us booted. Lee Hazelwood Punk Rock!?!? hmmm....

Being seasoned pros, we are used to catering to a clubs needs...turning down is the most common, followed by..."could you play one more short set"...these things don't really bug me anymore, but, last night was different. We got the shaft from the get-go. We are a Surf Rock band....we are not Punk Rock or metal, but, we do rock. I truely don't think this fellow who booked us understood the type of music we play or did he even visit our website to check us out...to top it off, WE'VE PLAYED THIS CLUB BEFORE and had a great reaction from everyone who was there! (the booker showed up after we finished so he totally missed the show)

I play a 25 watt Fender Deluxe Reverb. Pete plays thru a 100 watt Ampeg Bass combo. Most car stereos are louder. I feel the table in front of us was just too close, and in direct line of my guitar speaker...so they politely asked to be seated at another table. Apparently that was all the booker needed to justify giving us the boot after only two songs...WITHOUT PAY.

When hired by a club, you do your best to make the club happy...that's what The NovaRays try to do each and every time we play out. The people who book us know that and expect us to put on a entertaining and professional show.

We deliver.

I've learned a couple of things from this experiance, get a signed contract outlining what you expect from the gig and what the club will get from you...like a cancelation fee...works for both sides. AND, if you get a bad vibe from the place or booker, don't do the gig. Listen to your gut, people, it's usually right.

HBkahuna
I think Baja Marty has a recent gig horror story....

oh man...........................!

Who told me the story about the guy that tryed to mic the reverb tank?

Kristena

"Turn the knob to 10 and break it off!" -Baja Marty

Big Wave Dave can back me on this one...

A couple years back, The Lava Rats were approached to play a fundraiser party for... I think it might have been the pink ribbon campaign, but the alcohol has made that blurry. Besides, it's neither here nor there.

So we roll down to Palo Alto (a solid 30 miles from the Rat Cave), find the restaurant where the gig is, and get everything loaded in. As we are about to kick things off, one of the restauranteurs comes up and informs us that they "don't really have permits for live music, so if you could keep it down so the neighbors won't hear, that would be great"....

Well, we have played small places before, and as much as we love being one of the loudest bands on the scene, we can turn down if need be. So I pull down past half volume, Kenan (yes this was back in the Kenan era) does the same, and Taylor pulls out rods in place of his sticks. So we kick off the first song, get through about three -- all with the crowd digging it -- then get our first request "could you guys bring it down a little? We can hear the music in the parking lot." Mind you, the parking lot is separated from where we are playing by a FUCKING WOODEN FENCE!!!! You can hear conversation in the area in the parking lot if you really give a damn. So we do standard drill for a BS request like that -- we give the "mock turn" and pretend to bring the volume down.

So after a couple more songs, the same guy comes up and asks us to turn down again. It was at that point I found out the guy was just some random attendee at the show -- not connected with the restaurant at all. So at this point we're getting pretty aggro, and decide we're giving people one last chance. So we turn down in earnest this time, and the volume on my Showman is at 2 at the very most. I literally can hear the acoustic resonation off my Mosrite better than I can hear the signal going through the amp. Someone has the cojones to come up and ask us to turn down just a smidge more, and we promptly say "no. We're not turning down, we're turning off" and we take off our instruments and start to break down.

What happens after that? The second band goes on, with a full PA, and plays at twice our original volume for the next hour-plus. The rationale of the people "we'll let them play until the cops come, but if that happened with you, these guys wouldn't have been able to play at all.

And to think, I even lent a guitar strap to the guitarist in the second band!

Well Tom, I do talk about the Fresno "oven" show quite a bit. I think in addition to our poor fog-encrusted gear that's used to being played in 50-something temps going a little nuts, the biggest red flag for me about that show was when the pickup tension springs in my Dano baritone got so heated that they couldn't keep the pickups from magnetically touching the strings, which, while it sounded kinda cool, was NOT a welcome development.

Yeah, I remember that soundguy being a bit of a turd too. But I can't hold too much of a grudge against mother nature -- she's been good to us more than often.

~B~

Hee's a story from last night about a gig gone bad. I wrote this as an e-mail to a friend who asked how our gog went last night, so some of the names you might not be familiar with... We were opening at a casino for a great band, Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys

"Our evening took a bad turn near the
end of the set that slowed our sales down tremendously. Here's the
story....

We were asked by the house to turn down about 6 songs into our set. We
turned down. We were asked again to turn down - we turned down. (we really
did turn down, so much so that it damaged the sound I think, and it was
tough to play with any enthusiasm) At the end of the set, I said " this is
going to be our last song, but we can't play it softly, so I'm going to let
'er rip" About halfway through it, a bouncer type guy comes over and says
turn it down - I said its the last song, and turned down. He then repeated
"TURN IT DOWN, OR DO I HAVE TO?" and got on the stage in my face, and made
a move towards my amp. By this time the song was ruined, and I turned the
amp off and said "that's it, we're done." The crowd booed, and Maui got on
the mic and said we were getting run off, so sorry....
I was pissed, and the bouncer guy walked away - I went to chase him down
to give him my 2 cents, but thought better of it and went into the bathroom
to cool down for a second. The whole band was POed, and packed up as fast
as we could.. Maui got the bouncer guy to come back to the bar, and the
had a huge argument. Maui told him never to do that to a band again, and
the bouncer guy said we wouldn't have to worry about it, because he would
make sure we never played there again! Maui informed him that he would be
lucky to have a job come Monday morning because of his threats and rude
behavior, and I think he informed him of the bands association with Joe. ( the casino head guy and an A-sonics fan who booked the gig for us personally.)
The bouncer guy got pretty flustered at that, and ran off again.
Everyone in the audience was having a good time before this whole thing
went down, and Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys were all seemingly digging
it too. They all said that it wasn't too loud, that we play louder than
that all the time, and that it wasn't even as loud as the Skylark allows.
Jeff West said he thought they played louder than we were playing. Some
other people said the same thing while Big Sandy was playing too.
When Big Sandy started, they played a slow song, then they lit it rip
with a hot rod song, and he kept making cracks about it being to loud, and
asking if the bartenders thought it was too loud, etc - he was really funny.
They weren't loud at all - the drummer used brushes for almost the whole
set.
At the end of their first set, during the last song, a older lady from
the casino came over and stood in front. I thought she wanted an autograph
or to say how much she enjoyed their first set. When they finished, Big
Sandy bent down to talk to her, and his face turned serious when she told
him that THEY were too loud, and they'd need to turn down. Big Sandy
looked her straight in the eye and said " its a big casino, you should go
somewhere else if the noise bothers you" and stood up and walked away.

I did enjoy Big Sandy - they blow me away with their musicianship, and
his stage presence is a lesson in itself. I also got to meet everyone in
the band before the show, and they were all super nice and friendly.
Ashley Kingman sat with me during their first break, and was very nice and
entertaining with funny stories of equipment purchases and such. Too bad
the casino bullies had to damage it.

Oh yeah.... A guy that was watching us play was really diggin it, and
he yelled at the bouncer guy too after it was all over with, then he came
up to the band and talked to us. He said, in a thick, thick, Russian
accent - " I come here all the time - this is the first time I like the
music." Then he became our first cd sale. I believe he asked us to play a
party for his daughter sometime in Sept.

Howz that for a story?
Chris

"You can't tell where you're going if you don't know where you've been"

We'd love to! I'll have to do some checking to see if it's a possibility next year.

Chris

"You can't tell where you're going if you don't know where you've been"

Had a show with High Noon in St Petersburg that got tear gassed by the Russian mafia in 94.

Looong story.

The Thunderchiefs

That is friggin Hi Larious Ted.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

p.s. Kinda similar Mike Palm of the Deoras said he was playing a gig in a club and the sound guy was miking up all the amps, and set a mic
infront of the reverb tank. Mike said dude, thats not an amp its a reverb tank, he said whats a reverb tank?

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Jeff(bigtikidude)