# Viva Las Vegas... - Site: Analog Industries - Author: Chris Randall - Date: 2010-11-09 - URL: https://analogindustries.com/2010/11/viva-las-vegas/ I'm going to be out of the office until Thursday, spending some time in Sin City with my Special Lady Friend. We'll rock this shit when I get back. Until then, an open thread! The subject: the worst show you've ever played. I'll start: In 1992, SMG was opening for KMFDM on the Angstfest tour, and we played in Palo Alto at a venue who's name escapes me. I recall it was in a large Quansit hut, if that helps anyone, and it may or may not have been called The Edge. KMFDM traveled with a large P.A. that was about 3/5ths subs. These subs lined the entire front of the stage at most places we played, providing a de facto stage extension for those lead singers inclined to do Lead Singer Stuff in front of the monitor line. (I was, up until that day, just such a person.) Normally, the edges of these subs would be marked with white tape, because seeing the difference between a black sub and black nothing isn't easy in a dark club. This day, for some reason, they never got marked. Around mid-way in to our set, I was out in front doing whatever dumb shit I earnestly did back then, walking along, when I discovered the hard way that there was (unusually) space between the subs. For the record, I'm 6' 4" tall. These subs were 6' tall. So I essentially disappeared, guitar and all, causing much curiosity among my band-mates. (And, knowing the group I had at the time, a certain sense of relief, no doubt.) Much like falling in to a swimming pool, there is simply no way to recover from such a thing and look cool at the same time. I've been spit on, called every name in the book up to and including (inexplicably, given my general pallor) a nigger, punched, kicked, had full beer bottles thrown at me, guns pulled on me, got a mouthful of chipped teeth with a side order of meaty lip chunks and Beta 58 windscreen on many occasions, body-tackled, electrocuted, and generally mis-used throughout my tenure on stage, but that is the one moment I really wish I could have back. ## Comments (16) **Stream723** (2010-11-09): The name of the venue is indeed, The Edge. I saw that tour at the Icon in Buffalo. There was a Hustler (or some other similar magazine) centerfold taped haphazardly to SMG's keyboard. We were right up front and Chemlab's singer licked my friends face and En Esh kept laying down during guitar solos and resting his head on my GF's boobs... good times. Anyhoo... Worst show was my ill-advised participation in a Laptop Battle night in the basement of a club on 6th st in SF. From the moment I triggered my first loop.. I realized that every piece of audio on my machine had been replaced by random bursts of static. All i could do was shut it down close the lid and sheepishly leave the stage under the pitying gaze of 22 year old Drum and Bass lovers. I cringe ever time I think of it. **Computer Controlled** (2010-11-09): Damn dude, you sure don't look 6'4 in your videos =o] Let's see, my worst gig was probably when i decided it would be a good idea for me to do a live Techno set with a friend who had nothing but a laptop. I made the mistake of letting him be the master clock. And as i figured would happen, he kept crashing. And kept crashing. I finally got fed up, took him out of the MIDI chain, muted his mixer channel and finished the gig on my own. Nothing harrowing, but annoying nonetheless. **speak_onion** (2010-11-09): I'm not sure if it was my worst show, but the worst time I've ever had playing a show was at The Looney Bin in Providence, RI a couple of years ago. That place is a warehouse/loft where some ex-RISD kids live (SHOCKER!) and we (Xrin Arms and myself) got there pretty early and it was rainy and freezing and everyone was acting kind of weird, so I just put on my headphones and put up my hood and pretended to sleep until the show started. Apparently the show was some kind of costume party(?) so when someone "woke" me, there were all art kids all in ironic costumes everywhere. Also, someone had drank all my beer out of the fridge (ripping off touring bands is a cool thing to do!) and I just went into the foulest mood. I started my set, but I accidentally stepped on and broke the Eden bass amp on the floor behind me (well played) that was powering the sub and some girl came and leaned over my gear and put her face 2 inches from mine and started yelling, and I was just like, "get me the fuck out of here." I was half confused and half pissed and half way-too-sober for this shit. I was really stoked that it was the last day of tour and I didn't have to stay in that place. Bus ride back to NYC was sublime. **lazenbleep** (2010-11-09): playing live improvised lullabies and fairy tale music to hand cranked childrens cinema. Then finding out I was playing in the last tent at the festival to have any amplified music. The next hour was spent fending off the zombiest, f*d up, drum and bass demanding ravers. best quote 'wtf is this mate' 'its a live soundtrack' 'no its not , its shit' :# **Aahzekiel** (2010-11-09): Mistakenly assuming that an acquaintance from the bar would be a good partner for an impromptu three hour show. By the time it was over, both of us were ready to get off the stage (what stage? corner of a bar) and never, ever try to do that again. **D' MacKinnon** (2010-11-09): Worst show ever? Probably the show where my lead singer had popped three xanax, drank roughly ten shots worth of vodka and then stumbled and fell off the stage during our set after mumbling through most of the lyrics. Oh, and this was at the show where were had a bunch of media attending to interview us after the show. After that performance they didn't. **neB** (2010-11-09): Worst show for me was when we were invited to play a Music101 festival in south, SOUTH Georgia about 8 years ago. It was supposed to be a benefit show to keep music in schools type of thing. The night before, I made the mistake of drinking WAY too much... The day of the show, we all drove about 3 hours south of Atlanta in our 'bus' at the time - which was a horrifying experience all to itself. If you drove above 60 and below 45mph, the bus would shake to the point where your teeth would rattle - and it had a nasty habit of 'veering' in different directions...think canoe in the ocean during a hurricane. Once we got there, it was a HUGE set up with multiple stages on a enormous field. BUT, there weren't many people there...and by 'not many', it was set up for thousands, but only a couple hundred people actually showed up. On our stage, we had the misfortune to be set up where the sun shined directly at us - this was in the middle of summer. Think magnifying glass and ants. SO, after a horrifying 3.5 hour drive and the sun beating directly on me as I wore my typical rock band black, and being incredibly hung over - I ended up vomiting on the stage for the entire set while a handful of parents, teachers and young children watched in horror. Not my best moment. **noisegeek** (2010-11-09): I had a traumatic bluegrass experience. 10 or 15 years ago, I was working as the resident tech for a local theater that was hire out for a day by a reasonably well known (now) bluegrass musician. This was before "O Brother Where Art Thou" came out and everybody got into bluegrass and roots music for five minutes, and so this guy didn't really have much opportunity to tour in this area. He had a lot of family and friends around here though, and wanted to do a show that they could come to, so he rented the theater and brought a bunch of his friends into town to do this show. A failure in communication meant that the duration of this event was never made clear to me. The work itself was simple enough, and he brought an engineer to record it as well as some fairly nice gear, so that was nice. The first couple hours were pleasant enough. The musicians really were good. Top players all. It was around hour four that I started to wonder though. There was a lot of turnover in the audience; people coming, people going. In the end they played for about ten hours, with two intermissions. To this day I can only deal with about ten minutes of any sort of bluegrass/folk music at one time. **synthetic** (2010-11-09): This is definitely open thread material: making of Metallica's Black Album. Stupidest studio story of all time, makes Bitch Slap look tame. Replace the drum heads every three takes, replace the guitar strings after every CHORUS. Turn the 2" into a ransom note. The height of ridiculous major label behavior. http://mixonline.com/recording/tracking/metallica_enter_sandman/ **BPT** (2010-11-09): Oh, man. Do I really want to relive this? Ok, let me set the scene. . . Oxford University Hall (yes, that Oxford), my weirdo, Californian, psychedelic electronica group, opening for famous indie rockers the Sh*ns. DSI Evolver and small keyboard controller sits on top of my guitar case, which in turn sits on top of a keyboard stand. Cheap, Chinese power transformers to make our Yank gear useful on British voltage. Huge crowd of drunken, Sh*ns-loving British college kids. Oh, and inhalation of pre-show bud left by bemused older British sound engineer ("spiritual children of the Mothers of Invention", he offered. ???) About halfway through the set, a string on my Tele breaks. Non-herbally enhanced me would have remembered that my guitar case (full of spare strings) was right in front of my face, but, no, Oxford-budded me has NO CLUE where the case holding my strings could POSSIBLY BE. I exit the stage and essentially run around in circles -- stage left, stage right, behind the stage, back stage -- in a vain attempt to find my guitar case. Meanwhile, the very patient stage hands keep pointing out that it was right where I left it. Oh, yeah, you don't say? Now that I found the case, several minutes later, I whip a new string on in record time, and bend down to hand-engage my tuner pedal. Only to watch as a tiny arc of current zaps from the tuner to the current transformer inches away. Which brings down the whole front of stage circuit. Yikes! In front of hundreds of now angry and confused Sh*ns fans, encouraged to heckle their worst by countless pints of lager! Oh, jeebus, that was a rough 5-10 minutes. Thankfully, the other guitar player in our group begins reading a poem about leading a band of Native Americans to conquer and colonize England. That got them occupied with something other than my foolish antics. Of course, bringing down the power was the worst thing I could have done at that point, as Mark now has no way to respond to his increasingly agitated hecklers. I will never live this down. Oddly enough, we sold a bunch of cds at this show, and several young Britons congratulated me on my impromptu comedy of errors performance. If they only knew. . . Great weed in Oxford, btw. **nylarch** (2010-11-09): >>Probably the show where my lead singer had popped three xanax, drank roughly ten shots worth of vodka and then stumbled and fell off the stage during our set after mumbling through most of the lyrics. You were in Happy Mondays? **stevehumbert** (2010-11-09): "lead singers inclined to do Lead Singer Stuff " and "a mouthful of chipped teeth with a side order of meaty lip chunks and Beta 58 windscreen". God, I love this site. Anyway... I had just split from the World's Greatest Unknown Late 80's Electronic Duo. I sort of persuaded the only other really good band in the area (mid Scotland) that they needed a new singer in the rather comely shape of me. They brutally ejected their current mikewrangler and instated yours truly. Over the next few months every other band member said they thought it would be a good idea to relocate to London. It should be borne in mind by New World readers that 500 British miles is roughly equivalent to 14 trillion US miles; it is a journey that cannot be contemplated without the help of Nasa. i applied for a job in London, got it, told the band. All hell breaks loose; I am a cad and a bounder, why ever did they sack poor Arthur etc. etc.etc. However, it all seemed to calm down and they got a new vocalist. On the week of my departure to The End Of The Known Universe we were all pals and I was going to support them.... me singing solo to a newly prepared set of backing tapes. And to an audience who had followed me for the past couple of years, and I had told that this was going to be the best version of my songs, ever. Soundcheck fine, but when it came to the actual gig the backing tracks were at a level that was underwhelming. Mice fart louder. I went to remonstrate with the the sound guy who said, "You're not actually the one paying me, are you?" I pranced about tragically for a few songs, sang a ballad accompanied only by Jupiter 8, and retired defeated. Worse still, the previously ousted vocalist walked up to the mike as I was departing, and sang a rousing acapella version of "She Taught Me How To Yodel" to deafening applause. The horror , the horror. **takokichi** (2010-11-10): That place was (is?) The Edge, I saw that show and after all these years finally know that I wasn't *that* drunk and something actually happened to you! Just out of high school, we got to open for one of the local, "hot" bands. We were allowed to play 5 songs, the last of which we were supposed to act like it was an encore---play 4, leave the stage, come back out. Our finale was Priest's "Living After Midnight", 'cuz we rocked like that. 4 songs down, standing backstage, the drummer from the headliner stops our drummer and says he wants to play this song. Rich is thrilled that a star is gonna play his kit, we are thrilled that we're gonna play w/ a real drummer. Maybe 3/4 through, dude unleashes on that drum set and it starts falling apart, hardware and stands and cymbals all over the stage, him laughing like a maniac through the whole episode. Wow. The entire audience was laughing, too. Fucking humiliating. The first person that I looked up to that I realized was just another dick. **Wade Alin** (2010-11-10): That's easy. Los Angeles, with you. Laptop dead. MOTU Dead, Backup Dead. ; ) **beauty pill** (2010-11-10): So much humiliation and calamity in one thread! And without ME. Kind of amazed. Ain't no fail like a Chad Clark fail, 'cause a Chad Clark fail don't stop! I can fail you under the table any day of the week, son! Trying to think of a good story. There are many. Will come back and report soon. - c **DotNoir** (2010-11-12): Back in the days when I was still in a band, a small time demo band playing heavy rock, we got booked a gig in a small town 100km away from our town. This is long distance for a band who has no name other than a bit in their own city here in Finland... Our singer wanted us to "headline" the event, so we negotiated and got to be the "headliner" of the show. Well, we got to the town 6 hours before our gig and then our guitarist noticed he had left his switcher pedal and all the wires in our rehearsal room, so I drove back and got them. When I got back we did a sound check and then... Well we waited for 4 hours in a cold "backstage", and weren't even able to drink any beers since it was a youth concert... ...Well, then all the local bands had played and it was our turn. We entered the stage and noticed that only 5 people from the crowd of about 150 was still left to listen to us. Well, trying to be professionals, we decided to play like the venue was full and started rocking out. In the middle of the third song of the set the sound engineer started waiving his hands in the air and we stopped playing thinking there was something horribly wrong... ...and there was. He just announced to us "This is the last song of your set". We were promised 45 minutes of stage time and well, what can you do in that situation? We played the 3rd song till the end, gathered our stuff and never answered to that person who contacted us in the first place to go and do the gig. Incidentally this was the last gig we ever did with that band as well. Oh, the memories.