Terrible gig experience

[DJ-Wood]

Hello,

 

I wanted to share with you my awful experience of a gig I played on Friday night.

 

I work for a very large (creative but non-music related) company, with a very large function space for entertaining clients. The social committee at my company put the word out that 'wouldn't it be great if we had a house band, there must be some musical types amongst all of these staff'!

 

Anyway, 'ta da'! we have a bassist (me), singer/guitarist, and a drummer working here, so off we go.

 

We learned some cover songs, we practiced hard, we finally gigged on Friday in front of all the staff.

 

About 15 people bothered to watch us, the remaining mass just stood outside smoking and drinking. It started to rain just at the end of our first set, so everyone came indoors just as we were finishing up. Thinking there would be a short intermission and then we would carry on, I went off to get a drink.

 

Anyway, someone somewhere had decided that we were not going to be the only entertainment that night. Oh no, someone had also organised an ARM WRESTLING contest to run concurrently with our performance. Which went on for the best part of an hour and a half, with every drunk male in the place having a go with each other.

 

Anyway, we finally get to start our second set. But whats this? Ah yes, we, the musicians, are actually here simply to perform the backing music whilst the 'Drinking the Champagne out of a Frisbee Using a Straw Contest' gets under way.

 

If this were a gig in the real world I could say to myself 'at least I'm getting paid'. But this was something I'd entered into unpaid, in the spirit of good will, and I'd hoped that people would at least respect the hard work that I had been put in, in my own spare time.

 

Any other 'worst gigs' out there?

[Steve Force]

Hmmm. sounds like the people had fun--wasn't that the point of this event?

 

Did you hear of any complaints? I am sure by now you have gotten some feedback--please let us know what you learned!

[moot]

If you plan on having a club act, get used to being ignored.

 

It took me years to learn not to take it personally - a trick the guitar player still hasn't grasped.

[BenLoy]

Get used to it.

[DJ-Wood]

Ok,

 

I suppose in retrospect I'm being a bit uptight about the whole thing ... nobody was booing us, nobody threw anything at us, any acknowledgement we did get was all positive (clapping)

 

Ok, point taken, lesson learned! Thanks

[Fred TBP]

Yeah, sometimes the worst gigs are the ones where you're being totally ignored. (exception being the biker bar/party when the ladies feel like howling at the moon ) I didn't mean to add to the misery, but another repressed memory just surfaced from my former glory days. Try this one for size:

 

-You're playing in one room of a 3-bar sports complex. In the next room is a pay-per-view event happening simultaneously. (forget the 3rd bar, that was closed) Because the pay-per-view got maximum advertising, there are hundreds of people at the pay-per-view event, but you are playing for 20 people in a room normally holding 700-1,000.

At half-time, all of a sudden a few hundred people flood the club and now you're doing a set for a near-capacity crowd. 30 minutes later, you're back to the 20 people. You mention to the club owner that, besides the fact he gave you lesser billing, you did have a near-capacity crowd and should count the bar take into his calculations, but he considers the bar take in your venue part of the overall take for the pay-per-view event.

Incidentally, the pay-per-view people didn't pay to see the band, because they were already in the complex and the bouncer let them all in for free. So your take of the door is far less than it should have been.

And I forgot to mention that, since the drummer had 20 beers and is a little off on his timing in the fourth set, you are told by the bartender that you now have to pay for your 3rd beer of the night because the drummer used up all your free drink credits. What drink credits, you say? Talk to your manager, the bartender says.

Almost no money, no people, four sets, and you're tired and thirsty. It's enough to make a robot cry.

[badgerbass]

Yeah, I agree that you gotta get used to being ignored, still people who plan these events have no idea what it means to have live music. I mean, the musicians shouldn't expect people to stand there in rapt attention hanging on every note, but...

 

My worst experiences have been playing at several church affairs like spaghetti dinners when everyone is there to chat and catch up, not really to be entertained. So, you have a room full of people eating and shouting to each other to be heard over the music and 50 kids playing basketball behind you and you have to ask yourself, "What's the point?"

 

The last one I did last year where my band played for free (of course) at a church carnival. Competing with the rollercoaster for sound and having a completely apathetic audience that mostly just walked past us, made me decide never to do one of those again. The icing on the cake was the person who did the karaoke got like $400 for basically doing nothing -and she wasn't very good at it!

 

I am an amateur musician and don't make a living at it, so I just do the gigs that I am going to like or get some other benefit from. I know it is different for working musicians and I respect what they have to go through.

 

Guy

[Quinn]

Reminds me of that immortal quote:

 

"I said Spinal Tap first, THEN puppets!"

 

Seriously though, don't take it personally. Sounds like you guys did fine. That's the way corporate gigs are from my experience. You'll probably get much deeper interest at a boho nightclub full of sweaty music geeks, but those gigs have their own drawbacks!

[davebassman]

Frustrating situation.

 

I remeber doing a gig for microsoft when Windows 95 was launched.

 

We did two sets. For the first set the audience were quietly eating dinner. Very mild.

When we came out for the second set it was mayhem! Dancing on tables, groping and to top it off, they had tied about thirty cloth napkins together and were skipping rope!! What a sight!

[Tom Capasso]

Been there. The nerve of some people - their entire life should be hanging by a thread to hear me play every fill...

 

When you are in a "concert" setting and it looks like folks are watching you, many are not. They are not equipped to understand the music. If they have a good time, they'll associate it with you.

 

I'm sure you went over well, and I'm sure you'll play again. There are always some people paying attention. Don't be surprised if folks start asking what bar you play at. You may even get some private party work.

 

My band formed at work, though we never played a work-event (weasel keyboard thought management's view of him would suffer if they saw him rock). We play bars on a painfully infrequent basis, but we get folks from the job coming out to see us and have a good time. And none of us works at that place anymore!!

 

Make good music, and have fun.

 

Tom

[jpmiii]

That's showbiz folks!

 

Don't take it personally, corporate gigs can be kind of strange, your with your coworkers so it's up to management to get the party rolling. If the top guys get loose everyone else will follow their lead.

 

In bar gigs I've found if the band is having fun on stage the audience will also, well most of the time anyway.

[chewstermaniac]

I completely left the music scene behind a little over 5 years ago. I had come to a crux in my life where I needed to start making some real money playing music (i was really sick of craft dinner and hotdogs) or find a job that did pay me well. The gigs just seemed to be more of a burden than a boon. People weren't appreciative, the bar scene in my town was swaying towards dance clubs and live music was on an out.

 

So I moved to a new city, got enrolled in a 3 year course, got a job right out of the door, and now I play again.

 

I play now because I love to. There is nothing else I've ever done that can compare to the feeling a few musicians sync'd right up and giving it their all. I enjoy playing bass. I do it because I enjoy it. Am I the most technical, flashy, amazing player you'll ever see? HELL NO!! But I also don't strive to be that guy. I'm putting some time in again on theory and running my scales, having a few musical epiphanies. But I do it because I love to do it. Not because I have too.

 

So my moral after all that? Play your music because YOU like to play, because YOU appreciate what YOU do, because YOU love to feel those low notes vibrating your tonsels. Do it for yourself, and every gig will be your best yet. Music has almost become a faith, a religion if you will, because it has become more about personal growth and less about the "love and affection"

[Wonderdog]

chewster nailed it.

 

I consider myself extremely lucky in the band I'm in now. The four of us love playing so much that we absolutely DO NOT CARE whether there are 5 people watching or 5000 - of course we are professional, so we are always getting paid either way which helps. But that aside, there are many night when the bar owners have to ask us to stop playing at 1:30 or so because we've gone past our set time. Myself and the guitarist and singer have stayed and played entire impromtu acoustic sets after the drummer has left for the night just because we wanted to keep playing. I can honestly say from experience that we put out the same effort and same energy, and have as much fun, on nights where the 4 of us outnumber the "crowd" (yep - there were 3), as we do when playing to packed houses - and it's because we each, individually, think that grooving with a band IS the prize - not the crowd, or their reactions, or the money.

 

TT

[Jimbroni]

Consider the alternatives. It could went like this.

You're progressive rock band, british influence, opening for A SKA band and a college alternative rock band. Playing for a bunch of cute college freshmen girls who wanna do the other band and are expecting nothin more or less than two chords and tight leather pants. Where they just sit there staring at you with there mouths hangin open. Thinking who let these freaks in here. It could of went like that.