I once saw a band called Prevention
I was hoping they'd be better than The Cure.
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Sun 28 Jul 2013, 19:16, 1 reply)

I was at a gig recently and inadvertently got too close to the bass guitarist's subwoofer cabinets.
He shouted:
STAY ABOUT FROM MY BINS!
( stuj (^(^;;^)^) GO TEAM SPIDERS!(^(^;;^)^), Sun 28 Jul 2013, 14:35, 7 replies)

Boxcar - 1, me and my girlfriend - 0.
Back in the 90's there was an Australian dancey, housey 'band' called Boxcar.
Despite the fact that I wasn't totally gay I actually liked them. My girlfriend at the time also "didn't mind them".

So we bought some tickets to go and see them on their Oz wide tour at a local nightclub.
The night of the gig I headed over to her place to have a few drinks before the performance. She was living in a shared house - a couple of her housemates and friends joined us for drinks and were going into the club district as well.
Someone suggested we have a drink of goon and sure enough by the time the taxi turns up to pick us up my gf and I have consumed about half of a 4Ltr. box each.
We are well and truly fucked. So we all decide to smoke a nice big fat spliff between us.
Anyhoo, we've got tickets and someone bundles us into a cab to drive a kilometre or so to the gig.
As the cab pulls up I feels a queasy sensation and the world starts to tilt and spin. Very soon after we walk in the front door my gf also expresses her feelings on 'unwellness'.
We get our stamps on our wrists at the door after showing the door-staff (a couple of blokes I know thru work) our tickets.

Then I hit full-on-white-out mode.
The room starts to rotate around my head and no matter what I try to do my guts are feeling like the white chargers killing the dark riders in that Lord of The Rings movie.
Once they start there's no holding them back.

I rush out the doors I had only moments earlier entered. Then I run around the corner to regurgitate about 2 lts. of cask white wine. My gf seeing what I have done joins me in emptying the contents of her tummy. We spew together for a few moments before our friends find us. They then manage to bundle us into the very same cab we came in - which transports us the short journey home. All before the gig has even started.

We got home safely, had weak, drunk shower sex, crawled into bed and woke up the next morning hung over, $60 lighter, no banging good gig under our belt and facing the knowledge that neither of us could ever live down getting so pissed on goon that we chucked a whitey at the start of what apparently was a topnotch dance gig.
Spewing in communion is a bond that I imagine few couples can enjoy remembering.
tl;dr - it was actually a good gig apparently, just not so good for me!
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sun 28 Jul 2013, 13:06, 14 replies)

At last, an opportunity to pearoast something...
So there the three of us were at some godforsaken student union bar in North London pissed up on warm pints of Brown Ale watching The Adverts for some reason. My mate Jule was a big fan, as I was, but our other mate Elvis (named for his thick black NHS glasses) didn't know them so well.

A few days earlier I'd recorded a C60 with the "Crossing The Red Sea" album so he'd know the band before we saw them; there was enough space at the end to stick a couple of singles on, including "Take Me I'm Yours" by Squeeze.

I can still see it now; a crowd of punks leaping around yelling for their favourite Adverts song; "Play One Chord Wonders yer bastards", "Come on, lets have Bomsite Boy" etc etc, and in the middle of this gobbing maelstrom is my mate jumping up and down yelling "Take Me, I'm Yours"...

I still have trouble with bladder control when I think about it.
( da5id <YOUR SIG HERE>, Sun 28 Jul 2013, 10:53, 2 replies)

I generally just drink myself unconscious and get a minion to wake me up just before Slayer come on.
Except for this one time when me and my friend Celeste got asked to play at Reading.
The audience were REALLY MEAN to us.
:,(
( stuj (^(^;;^)^) GO TEAM SPIDERS!(^(^;;^)^), Sun 28 Jul 2013, 8:40, 2 replies)

I heard that bjork once shat live on stage
I have no idea if this is true, but would imagine that would have made for the worst gig ever.

Other than that - got dragged to see chas and dave a couple of years ago. Bad enough, but a group of teenagers actuslly rushed the stage. At a chas and dave gig. In lewisham. I hope they all died of shame.

Also rihanma. Lasted about an hour, which was mostly costume changes, and just unpleasantly gratuitous. I'm not remotely prudish, but her gyrating and moaning over some backing dancer's face was just unpleasant. Madonna did it 20 years ago love, and it was shit then.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 22:59, 1 reply)

we can laugh at this... but only now
Me and the bro were in a band a few years ago. Mainly covers but with a few of our own songs thrown in for good measure. We sounded good when we did any rehearsals, which was few and far between cause the lead guitarist (who will remain nameless cause he was about as much use as broken condom) decided the football was much more deserving of his time. Anyway, said guitarist managed to get us a gig as he knew a guy from the local running club (or whatever the fuck it was) who was putting on a night for all the club members. We thought 'yea, might as well do something for a change'. Worst. Decision. Ever...

So to start with, we got to the place - the local football club, and if anyone here plays in a band and has played in a football club you know that its gonna turn out shite. How shite? The parents had brought their kids to the place, and were playing Tag when we were setting up in the main hall. We played Chillies, Oasis - that sorta shit, and by the looks of it they were expecting Neil Young or Dolly Parton.

As we were setting up, the drummer noticed he hadn't brought the hihats. Pissed off faces all round. 'Right, no problem, we're gonna go home, get fed and come back. We can pick them up when we're on our way'. No problems.

We do a little tune up, a quick practice (without the hats) and everything is grand. The bro and I leave to get fed and changed and pick up the hats. The drummer, 'guitarist' and the singer sat there.

So we come back around half 9 or so, to see the broken condom of a guitarist half pished. Fucksakes...

To give you an idea of how bad he was, he couldn't tune his own guitar. WITH A TUNER. And he has been playing guitar FAR longer than i've been playing bass. Which was about a year before joining the band.

So we deicide that it would be a good idea to start before he gets to fucked out of his own skull. We start with Oasis - Supersonic. The 'guitarist' starts to play the opening riff - when suddenly we realise - HIS GUITAR ISN'T EVEN IN TUNE. We play on to a crowd of about 5 including children.

Two songs in - RAFFLE. A fucking raffle. The organiser asks our singer if he could do the announcing, which he does beautifully.

The raffle ends, and half of the audience fuck off home. The rest piss off to the bar. :|

So here we are, playing to an empty hall (well, I say empty, the kids were enjoying the space playing tag). Two songs left in the set, and the drummer decides he's had enough. As hes about to stand and get a swift pint, Captain Broken Prophylactic turns to him and roars 'SIT THE FUCK DOWN'. Me, my bro and the singer burst into laughter, and decide fuckit, one more for the road and then we're done.

We finish, and at the end the organiser is standing at the back of the hall giving us a pity clap. Our very first round of applause.

We got 100 notes out of it, which Cockhands McCantplayforshit takes and proceeds to snort up his fuckin nose. Never seen a penny from that one.

But to be fair, didn't get boo'ed off, bottled, or had any piss thrown at us. So in some respects... It could have been worse.

Heres one of the songs we did ...
https://soundcloud.com/no-more-heroes-ni/no-more-heroes-evolution
(blowfelt www.soundcloud.com/blowfelt, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 15:15, 2 replies)

A man turned up to our local pub
He was a one man band.

He had a snare drum, a mic and a background tape.


He got my brother up to play the drum, then half way through his second song, he got up whilst still singing on his wireless mic, and went outside and sat on the wall for Matalan carpark on the otherside of the road to the pub, and proceeded to finish another 3 songs singing. Quite what the people outside thought of this random man singing was one thing... seeing my brother randomly playing a drum to a phantom singer/empty mic stand was quite another.

We never saw or heard of him again.
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 14:25, 1 reply)

Acacia
… “supporting” Björk at the Barrowlands, July 1995. Bloody appallingly dreadful. The frontman, having clearly ingested some class of epic hallucinogen, was wandering about making vague burbling noises, and would occasionally stop to rummage about in a backpack he was (for some reason) wearing. The keyboard player was gamely trying to keep everything together, but the rest of the band had either sodded off or were in their own twelve-tone polyrhythmic reverie.

I seem to remember it all ended when the singer fell over, perhaps with the assistance of a projectile lobbed by a helpful Glaswegian. Good times.
( scruss, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 13:02, 2 replies)

I was in Mexico many many many moons ago and there was a band called The Sierra Madre.
They were like punk bandas doing mostly Springsteen covers and traditional latin. I think were all actually from the US. The lead singer was called Treasure well he probably wasn't really called treasure -- he was probably called Juan or Pablo but he called himself Treasure. Anyway we were doing a bit of a road trip and bumped into them twice in two different but equally donkey-loving motel bars. The second time he recognized us -- one of the group was a stereotype lobster-colored tourist so we didn't exactly blend in -- and we got talking during their break. They apparently played five nights a week across California and Mexico. I asked if anything had ever gone badly doing that much work and Treasure said "Bad gigs? We don't need no stinking bad gigs."
(Pob Baredome pm me for pre-teen girl pics, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 13:01, 1 reply)

Zebedee Rays
These were a support band I saw once at the Marrs bar in Worcester; they were supporting eith Ginger (Wildheart) or CJ & The Sattelites, I forget which. They were a local band, and had a bit of a following, so I was intrigued. By God they were bloody awful; Started off energetically enough, the singer leaping about hitting a cow bell, but it just went on..and on...and was just awful.
(kitescreech still here, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 12:40, Reply)

The other story
In 2004, I briefly played bass with a (actually really bloody good) band called Ciccone.
I replied to a post on a messageboard, they sent me a CD and to my surprise, I liked it a lot - indie, punky pop with a male and a female singer, a bit blur and libertinesish, and better than a lot of bands that sold a lot more records.

Anyway, I got the impression they had suddenly been left without a bassist, because they were auditioning bass players while also preparing for gigs - they asked if I'd be able to learn most of the album in a couple of weeks, as they had a gig at the Dublin castle lined up, and needed a bassist to be in the video for their single. I'm by no means a great bassist, but I'm a quick learner so I agreed (though it was tactfully understood on both sides that this didn't mean I was permanently in the band - they were audtioning other people, and for some reason I had blond curtains and enjoyed wearing a black v-neck t shirt at the time. Not a great look)
The gig was in the summer of 2004. Specifically, the night England played Portugal in the quarter final of the Euro's.
Nobody was I the back room at the time we were due to start, so the promoter told us we could wait until after the football.
Great match, though it ended, as always happens, with England going out on penalties. Back then that was still heartbreaking rather than tediously inevitable.
We had to go on stage 30 seconds after. Suffice to say we didn't win the crowd over.
I got talking to the singer of the band Art Brut afterwards, who asked me what I thought of the gig. I told him I had played bass in it "oh, yeah - that was excellent stealth bass playing" he said, which seems to be a very nice way of saying that I have absolutely zero stage presence

(If interested, look up "Ciccone look at you now" on YouTube, and Rebekah Delgado, the singer on spotify)
(clinteastwoodbradfield, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 11:15, Reply)

Towers of London.
Quite a few years back some workmates had a band going and were playing quite a few gigs in Aberdeen; Moshulu, the Tunnels and Kef. This time it was Kef and they were going on before a new band called "Towers of London" who were doing a small tour.
They were 30 minutes late coming on; pushing the crowd as they stropped onto the stage. During their set they spat on the crowd, shambled about everywhere and threw a strop when the mic stopped working and slammed it on the ground. It was shit, utterly, completely shit but Donny Tourette clearly thought he was something special.

Another one was "The Hold Steady". Christ they were dire. The singer did nothing but mumble and sweat all over the stage. The bassist actually gave my mate an apologetic shrug as if accepting the fact.
( Maffers I flow kinda strange like Spina Bifida footprints, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 11:15, 24 replies)

Bloc Party, and another story
Mild claim to fame first of all: I was Bloc Party's first bassist. A mutual friend gave Kele (then known as Roland) my number and he asked if I'd be up for joining his band.
I rehearsed with them for a few months, and went through about four drummers in that time.
(Once, memorably, a drummer played for two minutes in the practice room before it became clear he couldn't drum - Kele faked a pathetic "I want a day off school mum" cough, apologised to the drummer and said "I'm not feeling well, maybe we will practice again next week")
Back then the guitarist, Russell, was already fucking excellent and inventive. I was alright on bass, and Kele was not a brilliant singer or a great guitarist, but was painfully shy, though clearly had all the ideas for the direction.
The songs were alright - in fact the best sign that they knew what they wanted to do was that songs that to me sounded fucking excellent were ditched in favour of songs that attempted something different, to mixed success.

Anyway, I played one gig with them. It was a disaster. Maybe twenty people were there.Kele's stutter got exponentially worse with his nerves, and the more he stuttered the nervier he got.
At one point he tripped over his guitar lead and didn't quite go arse over tit, but he got very embarrassed and lost the confidence he had - in the next song he stopped playing mid verse to tune up while the rest of us played on - he then almost hid on stage for the rest of the time.
I liked their music, and had one further rehearsal, but I found them quite awkward company, and have never been nervous about playing - I also think they weren't massively impressed with either my musical ability or rapport with them, and so I stopped going to rehearsals and they stopped phoning me.
Only problem was I'd lent Kele my guitar.
I bumped into him once while he was on the way to a rehearsal, and he clearly had my guitar in his bag, as when I asked him about it he got all shifty and couldn't get away quick enough, saying he would give me a ring and get it back.
The next time I saw him was when I realised that the band I'd been in were now pretty massive. I emailed Kele and he said he'd lost the guitar somewhere along the way.
Friends of mine still shout "where's Keef's guitar?" whenever they catch Bloc Party at a festival
(clinteastwoodbradfield, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 10:46, 3 replies)

Judas Priest, London 1998,
went backstage after the show and was invited to Rob Halford's - was arrested later for breaking into a bike shop.
(Haywood Manley, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 10:16, 10 replies)

The Gig that Never Happened
Kidderminster, circa 1983. Ive just discovered the joys of Metal, thanks to a copy of Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" album. Me and my mate see in the listings (probably in Kerrang!!!) that there's a 3 band thrash mini tour coming to Birmingham Odeon - Metallica, Exciter and a 3rd band I cant remember. We bought tickets, near the front (row C i recall)...and it was cancelled due to lack of interest. So i could have seen Metallica before they were famous!
(kitescreech still here, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 10:07, 4 replies)

I saw Orbital's last ever gig. Twice.
And I've seen them three times since. Is that the musical equivalent of an online strop?
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 10:05, 10 replies)

Here's a list of fucking great gigs I've been to.
Jesus Jones - played at some upstairs dive off Lake St. in Northbridge. No real stage or lighting. Just a room full of people a PA, some lights jerry rigged on C-stands and the band. Things got a bit hairy when the keyboardist started chucking his instrument about.

Regurgitator - several times in big venues and small. Even when they started to get a bit jaded about the whole thing they still gave it their all. The 'Gurge passing was a sad, sad, thing.

Ricaine - For a band that plays such a tight, technical sound - live they sure as shit crap on anything they've ever done in a studio.

The Mark Of Cain - (pretty much as a band) told off a bouncer for being rough with me as I was quietly standing backstage watching their gig at the Swanbourne Hotel.
They insisted that he buy me a beer at the bar for being so rude to me just because I was standing where he felt I shouldn't be. They stopped the gig while all this was happening and didn't start playing again till I was happily ensconced behind the speaker-stack, stage left with a free beer in my hand.

Severed Heads - This 1 I'm actually quite proud of (but marks my vintage I think!) - whilst propping up the bar of the Old Melbourne prior to a Severed Heads gig I recognised Tom Ellard (lead whatever-the-fuck-you-call-that
- programmer?).
I asked if I could buy him a beer as I told him how his music had awakened something in me at a time when little else could.
He was chuffed and had a quiet drink with me as we talked about gardening and the best ways to do homebrew from scratch.
EDIT:
Single Gun Theory - good 90's dance music done with some good dancing - bonus points for getting the audience to belly dance!

May have included some roasted peas btw.
If people like cowfoot can post "alright", AB can repost a link to some-one else's story and shambolina can post his rarely on-topic drivel then this sure as fuck belongs here.
& now you guys know what music I [used to & still do] listen to. Amongst lots of other stuff.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sat 27 Jul 2013, 6:53, 20 replies)

Gary Moore
Dragged along to this gig after being told he was awesome by my girlfriend. Managed to listen to the first half of the self-ingulgent wankfest without running on stage and murdering him with his own guitar and retired to the bar for the second half along with most of the audience.
( doctordoctor I feel like a pair of curtains, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 6:37, 4 replies)

Ravealation 1998
Stage manager at one of our foremost tennis coaching/playing establishments over near Heathrow back in 1998.Full out rave with approx twelve thousand sweaty, 'aving it individuals on New years eve, and everything is going well until the current Dj who is playing has about twenty mins to go untill end of set, still no sign of next dj, then ten, then five. I step up, go down to the sound engineers pit(who, I noticed earlier had sound checked the venue with a 'world dance' cd). I then get him to swap to the world dance cd after the current dj had put his last tune on. Cue me then playing slip mats to the crowd for the next hour. One person in twelve thousand noticed. Dj 'SS' you owe me.
(Gruffstuff, Sat 27 Jul 2013, 0:13, 1 reply)

Not recently, but I suffered about five minutes of a John Miles gig once...
(remember him? Had a bit of a hit in the 70's with the dirge "Music was my first love" - and he seemed to enjoy hurting the one he loved).
Anyway, some genius 'impresario' had booked him as support to Robin Trower.
I feel I gave the shit-fest that was Miles a fair hearing, but soon the rising bile was burning the back of my throat so I sought sanctuary in the theatre bar - which was rammed!
In fact, the party got so boisterous that the management threatened to stop serving. Apparently, the noise was drowning miserable Miles out and upsetting his fan.
(minimalist ..., Fri 26 Jul 2013, 23:57, Reply)

Iron Maiden at the NEC in 1988.
Iron Maiden were at their towering best (before Bruce left and Blayze Bayley had to pretend to fill his mighty shoes) with progressively better and heavier and harder albums. Unfortunately the support were some nobodies called 'Killer Dwarves'.

The front man for the killer dwarves was, er, well, quite diminutive. The music was generic, uninventive metal and at the end of each track the front man (making up for his size with lots of energetic leaping bout and during the non-singing portion of the songs walking on his hands) would try and whip up the crowd with an 'AWWWWWWRITE! YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST!' (silence) 'WE'RE HERE TO ROCK YOUR WORLD' (silence) 'COME ONNNN!' (silence) 'ARE YOU WITH ME?' (silence) 'SCREAM FOR ME BIRMINGHAM!' (silence) 'JUST THE LADIES!' (silence) 'THE LEFT SIDE OF THE HALL!' (silence) 'YEEEEEEAH!!!!!!' (silence except for a few low voiced Midland accented utterances such as 'fucking prick').

In the end, frustrated but still trying, he stood atop a monitor, spotlight picking out his tiny tiny puffed out bare sweaty chest and rivulets of perspiration glinting in his hair and with all of his lung power yelled into the mic (with the NEC's sound system pounding this into our ears) 'I HOPE YOU GUYS ARE GOING TO BE BETTER THAN THIS FOR FUCKING MAIDEN!!!!'

...at which point there was an acknowledgement by way of a faint murmur throughout the crowd 'Oh thank fuck for that, they're finished'. I think he took the faint sussuration for a final acceptance that the audience thought he was OK after all.

Maiden were excellent however, which made up for that.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 26 Jul 2013, 23:33, 6 replies)

Of course I thought they were all amazeballs at the time..
Slayer
Sepultura
Slipknot
Deftones (supported by Linkin Park)
Spineshank
StaticX
System of a Down
Vision of Disorder
Raging Speedhorn
Machine Head

..Thank FUCK I grew out of that shit.
(SquidHead, Fri 26 Jul 2013, 21:39, 31 replies)

Going to see gigs is for the halfwitted and feeble minded.
Also, your genitals are extremely small, unless you are female; in which case they are distended and cavernous.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Fri 26 Jul 2013, 21:09, 3 replies)

I saw
The Pogues back in the mid 80's when Shane could drink a skin-full of booze, and still perform and entertain - loved 'em.

Fast-forward 25 years to Manchester arena - fuck me. He made it out to slur about one song in three, the rest being sang by (I think) The Dropkick Murphy's lead singer.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Fri 26 Jul 2013, 20:24, Reply)

Jimmy Carr Red light
Went to watch Jimmy Carr with my best friend at the Blackburn King George Hall. My friend was filming a sketch, using his mobile phone, when Jimmy Carr stops and exclaims 'can the guy right there with the long hair stop filming!' my friend looks around from side to side and looks back to the stage. 'Yeah you' shouts Jimmy. My friend, who is still filming, shouts back 'but i'm not filming'. Jimmy - 'you are, I can see the red light on the back of your phone'. Busted
(Cat2903, Fri 26 Jul 2013, 19:14, 2 replies)

First gig I went to was Cliff Richard at
The Liverpool Empire.
Support act was Terry Scott dressed as a schoolboy doing a silly voice.
Wasn't Live Aid I'm tellin you.
( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Fri 26 Jul 2013, 18:40, 7 replies)

Ka-Boom!
1984, Tunnel Club, Greenwich. First 'proper' gig. Everyone's there: y'know, my Dad. And his girlfriend. I'm raring to go. Hair freshly crimped. New strings on my Ibanez Iceman. Sneakily turned my amp up after soundcheck. Finally, the moment arrives and we take to the stage. Just about to start, and there's the most enormous BOOOOOOM!!!!!!! And a HUGE flash. Green smoke fills the air. "Fuck me!" I thought. "I didn't know we had pyros!" Then our drummer, Gary, stumbles out from behind his kit. He's green. His shoulder-length hair is standing on end and frizzed. And he's holding his right arm out in front of him, from which all the skin is hanging in strips. He'd just put his pre-gig fag out in an ashtray into which a fucking dunce from the metal band the night before had emptied the contents of a flashpot that hadn't gone off. Dad orders ANYONE to call an ambulance, then rushes Gary off to the gents to pour cold water on his maimed limb. My reaction: "Can we do the gig without Gary?" Turned out that no, we couldn't fucking do the gig without Gary.
(YewTree, Fri 26 Jul 2013, 17:44, 4 replies)