Embarrassing Shows You've Seen & Bands Insulting Each Other Onstage

[Jerry Scotty]

Bradx just killed this thread and possibly the whole forum. Great stories. Sure wish user: k. hadn't quit.

[TVeye77]

Some more embarrassing shows I've played.

Before the fake goth / electronic band broke up, we played a 'show' in someone's backyard, this weird gay kid in Nutley, NJ. His parents had a nice place. We did a couple songs and then... He turned out all the lights and started projecting porno movies onto the side of his house. People stopped watching us, got up and left, and went over by his house to watch the porno... I was mortified, especially since the "girl I liked" was there, and she didn't even watch our band, she watched the porno. 

Bradx just killed this thread and possibly the whole forum.

Those were good stories, fucking hardcore.

My punk band when I was a teenager, ONE embarrassing show sticks out as being the Worst in my mind. Not shows where there was violence, not shows where people got arrested or whatever. This one where we were in a room full of people STARING at us. Not even clapping or booing or doing Anything! It just sucked so bad. We played with The Smugglers in Champaign, Ill and these fucking kids just all stood there, looking at us like we had 2 heads.

Song ends, golf clap for 2-3 seconds. After the gig we sold a PATCH. That's it. It was so shitty.

[nicolai]

I swear I saw a hardcore band once -- can't remember which -- play before another Ryan Adams-lite alt-country band that sang a lot about drinking whiskey and the usual -- can't recall them, either -- and as they finished, the singer said, "Tom Petty's after us."  I think it was in a Milwaukee basement.  Tom Petty band was not pleased as they began. 

Damn, this sounds like something I woulda of done.  If this really happened in a Milwaukee basement from like 2000-2010 it might of actually been me or atleast someone I know.

[2 Cold Scorpio]

About 5 yrs ago, opened from the Pierced Arrows at Subterreanean. Fred Cole was one of the singer's idols so he' nervous and drinking more than he usually already did. 

Vee Dee finishes their set and we set our amps up.  We're about to start when the singer walks down from upstairs onto stage smoking a cigarette.  Keep in mind, you can't smoke in bars/clubs on Chicago.

Needless to say, club employees tell him to put it out....surprise surprise...he won't put it out.  He proceeds to into a grown man tantrum about how they can't tell him what to becausr in his words, "everyone is here to see us".  Finally, i get pissed and tell him "you're not Alan Vega, motherfucker". This sets hin off more and starts cussing me out.  We finally start playing and it is the biggest pile of hoeseshit.  Constant starts , stops and restarts.  So bad that Faceless Man would have shaken their heads in disgust.  Singer is barely singing, mostly just bitching and complaining to sound man about how shitty it sounds, all the while he's unplugging our cords while we try to play. 

This torture goes in for 10 minutes and we finally stop.  Back upstairs, singer tries to talk to Fred who fixes him a look of bemused disdain.  Needless to say, we werent invited back there for quite a while.  I think the set is on youtube somewhere

[Scrod Prickknee]

Probably tough to top the LSOK shit...Evolutions were similar, too. Rarely did a show just go off where the band played & people clapped & etc., for either. Sometimes funny, often embarassing.

2006 or 2007: Busy Signals begrudgingly agree, after much badgering and a number of obvious false promises of dough from one Wreckless Derek, to play with the Plastic Letters at a coffee shop in a south suburb of Chicago.  We arrive at the "club" and it's clear that no one in attendance, aside from our band and the Plastic Letters, is older than 21.  We spend most of our time in the van or walking around the venue, which is nestled in a strip-mall seemingly removed from anything resembling the city some 30 minutes due-north.  We eventually head inside when we learn that it's easy to smuggle beer into the coffee house and they also allow smoking indoors.  I wander in as the first band plays.  They are four 17-year-olds dressed almost precisely like the Raspberries, the Knack and Incredible Kidda Band rolled into one.  They sound like Motley Crue or Turbonegro. Number of songs left in the set announced after every single song, thankyous piling atop one another after every other.  After an hour of originals and a number of Dead Boys, Jam and Ramones covers, we take the stage and play to about 50 teens who unfold lawn chairs, sit and cross their arms -- kids who were previously dancing, screaming, sweating, yelling and making out -- as they watch us play.  We end our set, exchange a series of smirks and funny looks with one another, then retreat to a table.  I and the other member of the band who smokes light up.  A member of the first band walks up to our table and says, "I want a cigarette."  My bandmate says, "Then go buy some at the gas station over there."  The teen says, "I actually already have smokes," then affects a streetwise haughtiness and adds, "I just want a light."  I don't say anything and hand him my lighter.  For what seems like ten minutes but is probably two, we all watch as he attempts to stoke the light -- over and over and over again.  He can't do it.  My bandmate says, "Christ, just let me do that for you," and does.  The teen puffs on his cigarette, coughs violently, and then looks at our female member and says, "What are you doing later?"

He told me 'n crowbar the next night in Milwaukee, "yeah, we played in Chicago and it was awesome. Well, not quite Chicago, out in the suburbs I guess. The kids think we're rock stars and they HATED (big grin) the fuckin' Busy Signals. We sold so much merch." He was being extra-bafoonish so we stood right in front of him and off-keyed every "woah-oh" (which was half of every "song") until he turned red and fired beer bottles at us. The Milwaukee show didn't go nearly as well as the like, Chicago suburb one.

There was a band from central WI called Los Nosferatu who were kids who couldn't play well but did ok in the "spooky intstro" and "ghoulish Rip Off" categories. They were amped up to open for the Reds, who at the time (at least to people in the area) were the ultimate Rip Off thing going. Guitarist Dan O (who posts here occasionally, or used to) tried to impress with high nrg Guitar Wolf inspired splits guitar solo with hanging tongue during the first song, shreds knee, falls down next to also-fallen mic stand, and moans/writhes in pain into the nearby mic while the drummer kept going and Scott the Racist Bassist stood over him rocking out until they realize Dan was going to need to go to the emergency room a couple minutes later.

The last band I was in was basically an embarassment every other show or maybe even more often than that. Everyone got too fucked up to play except me, pretty much every time we played. One time it was so bad at a club we hadn't played before that the bassist (who is in his mid-30s) cried and was inconsolable the rest of the night. I don't think he hit a single correct note. Once, we played in the basement of the singer's house, and we were set up and hollering in the mics for him...but he was passed out upstairs so hard that punching him didn't wake him up. Someone came up and "sang" a song about how he needed to come and sing, but that didn't work. Finally, I went upstairs and just dragged him down, as it was already 20 minutes or so of us standing there fucking around. He sang stuff (but not the songs), the drummer puked several times, and it was completely unrecognizable. Sadly, that was not the first time the singer had passed out and had to be woken, and the drummer (second one, currently drinking for AKE) puked nearly every set, if not during, than right after. I figured that was enough for me a couple years ago, and it has been.

Forgot about this one: first legal 21+ show I saw was the Mistreaters, Detroit Cobras, Baseball Furies and Lost Sounds in Milwaukee, at the Cactus Club.  I drove over three hours to see it, as the Lost Sounds were my favorite band at the time.  All the bands were good, but the Cobras were grating for obvious reasons.  (That said, their drummer was simple & incredible.)  Drove up to Green Bay to see the Lost Sounds the following night, and Jay said something like, "We played with the most pretentious fucking band in Milwaukee last night," in ref to the Cobras.  And he was right.  And the LS were even better at the white trash bar in GB that night.  Fuck.  They were really something at that point. 

Worth noting: that GB show was one of the first shows the Catholic Boys played with Eric back in the fold on drums, I think, and they were really fucking good.  Covered "What Gives?" and "Do You Love the Nazis?" and it blew me away.

Detroit Cobras are always embarassing. That night in Green Bay was nuts. It was the first-ever Main Stage punk show, which became the venue of choice for a few years until there was the shooting and one of the sound guys got nabbed for making kiddie porn. To this day, sleaziest joint I've ever seen bands in, and that's saying something. After Catholic Boys/Strong Come Ons/Lost Sounds, there was "California mud wrestling." I headed back over to the _____ House and smoked a bunch of opium. In fact, out of the 4 or so times I've ever done that, 3 were coincidentally while Jay was around. One night he said to me all concerned, "Todd man, you really like that opium, huh?" Haha. Anyway, Jay drank his own piss and smashed tables and other shit after I left, green weenie etc. Those were the days or something.

[Old Kyle]

Some part of the second half of the 1990's.  Sugar Shack was playing in Dallas and nothing good ever comes of that.  I may be combining some nights here, but I'm pretty sure we started and ended the night at a friend's house.  This young lady was a nice person, a big fan of the band, etc etc.  I don't know what her deal was, but our bass player dubbed her house the Speed Museum. It's hard to explain, but it appeared that she had crudely re-done the interior of her house.  Rooms were built inside of other rooms.  The bathrooms were seemingly useless (one of them was painted all black and the tub and toilet were filled with old rose petals).  Bloody dolls and bizarre pornography lined the walls, both those original to the house and those makeshift ones, newly added. 

Anyhow, we partied a bit, nothing major, and headed up to the club.  This was the Dallas version of  Emo's (I think it was called the Orbit Room?).  It was a raging show and we were playing pretty well, having a good time, etc.  The lady that booked the club had Goldschlagger (sp?), or some variant thereof, shots brought to us as we were playing.  I was pretty drunk at this point and I remember the shot looked really odd under the stage light.  A couple of tunes later and we find our singer is completely passed out.  I mean just out cold.  I guess he just crumpled to the ground and we could not, no matter what we did, revive him. 

Oddly, we didn't let this deter us.  I guess Andy, our other guitar player, sang the songs and we continued on.  And it seemed to go fine, though I can't imagine that it actually was!  At some point, I noticed this creepy old man was in the crowd and he had two, very obvious strippers who, I guess, had just gotten off of work.  The girls were still wearing some kind of skimpy, pre-strip outfit, but they had jackets on over them.  The old man and the girls began to produce dollar bills, which they would stuff in our pants as we played.  People in the audience were fighting and, at one point, a fight spilled over toward the stage and I was knocked off of my feet.  However, we just continued on and eventually finished.  I remember thinking how odd this show was, and how odd it was that we were playing as if nothing was happening, but we were wasted at this point and it just couldn't be stopped.

We were told that everyone was going to the Speed Museum after the show.  We attempted to revive our singer, who had continued to lay on his back right in the middle of the stage as we had played.  We found he could not be revived.  We were pretty sure he wasn't dead, or anything.  So, a couple of us grabbed the dude and picked him up (he's 6'4 or more, so it wasn't easy) and moved him to the car.  From there, we drug his passed out ass around, sort of Weekend at Bernie's style, just propping him up wherever we could.  I remember the party being kind of gnarly with people smoking speed in the "chasing the dragon" style with straws and tin foil.  For us, though, the Speed Museum party wasn't too eventful and we left and got a couple of rooms in a motel (we were already past spring chicken age at this point and not really wanting to sleep on someone's floor. 

Singer never woke up till the next morning.  We theorized that he was "Roophied", but for what purpose, other than to create mayhem, who knows?  As for me, I woke up the next day with a massive headache.  As I went to take that first morning after piss, I found about 15 dollar bills in my pants.  I thought to myself "this is the most money I've ever made in the music business."

[frankie teardrop]

About 5 yrs ago, opened from the Pierced Arrows at Subterreanean. Fred Cole was one of the singer's idols so he' nervous and drinking more than he usually already did. 

Vee Dee finishes their set and we set our amps up.  We're about to start when the singer walks down from upstairs onto stage smoking a cigarette.  Keep in mind, you can't smoke in bars/clubs on Chicago.

Needless to say, club employees tell him to put it out....surprise surprise...he won't put it out.  He proceeds to into a grown man tantrum about how they can't tell him what to becausr in his words, "everyone is here to see us".  Finally, i get pissed and tell him "you're not Alan Vega, motherfucker". This sets hin off more and starts cussing me out.  We finally start playing and it is the biggest pile of hoeseshit.  Constant starts , stops and restarts.  So bad that Faceless Man would have shaken their heads in disgust.  Singer is barely singing, mostly just bitching and complaining to sound man about how shitty it sounds, all the while he's unplugging our cords while we try to play. 

This torture goes in for 10 minutes and we finally stop.  Back upstairs, singer tries to talk to Fred who fixes him a look of bemused disdain.  Needless to say, we werent invited back there for quite a while.  I think the set is on youtube somewhere

My square co-worker was at this show cause she was so excited to see me play in a band. The next day she just smiled and said it was fun with a very awkward expression. Funnily enough, I warned her that something like this was very likely to happen and that she didn't really need to come. I'm pretty sure she thought I was kidding. She brought her "hot chick" friend, who I can only imagine was mortified.

[bradx]

its not about a show, but there is a story i would like to tell.  its 1997, and i pack the van full of my friends and we head down to madison.  a couple of my buddies had a place down there, and we went to visit them.  the drive down wasnt especially noteworthy, other than roy driving the wrong way down a divided highway.  i told him to turn around and he refused "i dont want to" hahaha, as we are driving directly into oncoming traffic going 65 mph. 

anyways, we find the place and i park out front.  the windows are all covered in tinfoil since the cops busted him the last time, for calling a bomb threat to police, threatening suicide by blowing himself up and "raining body parts" on everyone.  he got a month in jail for that, and when he got out, settled in to lots of drug use and drinking.  his roommate had the recent reissue of the real kids first album, i was pretty excited to hear that.  the other roommate would drop acid and stay up all night long, and in the morning drive the airport "limo" (van) while tripping his balls off. 

so we got drunk and stoned, and when we got up the next day, the van had a flat tire.  i guess i didnt notice it at night, but there was no parking on that street, we were actually parked right in the middle of a lane of traffic.  in the daytime, it was a busy street and everyone was having to drive around the van.  so i went back inside to work up the energy to replace the tire, and by the time i made it back outside the van was towed. 

dude's roommate says dont worry about it.  he knows where the impound lot is.  so our plan is, since the van isnt registered and doesnt have plates, we'll just go steal it back from the impound.  so we're walking down the street, its like 9am, and this girl with us is loudly projectile vomiting all over the sidewalk.  just walking and puking everywhere.  getting lots of dirty looks from people. 

finally we make it to the impound lot, and we dont see the van.  it takes us half the day just to get there, and its all fenced in, with barbed wire and a guard shack, etc.  no way we could get in there anyways, so we head back to the apartment.  its been a solid 8 hours of walking in the summer heat, and when we're like a block away, there is the van.  they towed it just around the corner.

its parked on a hill, and we still have to fix the flat, so we pop the spare on and head back for manitowoc.  about halfway home, in the middle of nowhere, the other front tire blows.  so we're stuck on the side of the interstate, and this is before the age of cellphones, so all we can do is walk, or sit tight and wait for a cop to show up.  we wait for the cop.

the cop gives us a ride to the closest town, mukwanago.  its the middle of the night by now, and he brings us to the one gas station, and the pay phone doesnt work.  we tell the cop, he replies "telephones are not my department" and leaves.  i call ann and beg her to come pick us up, she just hangs up the phone on me.  nobody else can get any help.

my one friend who could get some help (and shall not be named, for reasons that will soon be apparent) really didnt want to.  see, i knew that he was (mostly) a virgin, but not quite.  he actually fucked his young cousin not so long before, and her family lived nearby.  so he knew if he called his parents and asked for help, his dad would call his aunt and uncle, and then he might have to see this girl, and knowing how we were, the last thing he wanted was for that to happen, with this group of friends.  why someone would fuck his cousin and tell his friends about it in the first place is beyond me, but thats what it is.  she was like 14 years old. 

so yeah, that was our last option, but after sitting there for a couple hours he realized we had no choice.  so the aunt came to pick us up, and the whole group stayed the night at their house.  in the morning, we had breakfast with the cousin, who was being very flirtatious with her kin, and he was quite uncomfortable.  good looking girl though, and we actually held our tongues.  eventually they bought us a tire and helped us change it, and we made it back to manitowoc. 

not long after a couple of my friends were high on meth and drove the van into the lake, but thats a story for another day...  not sure why i wanted to tell this story, but it was hanging on the edge of my consciousness since last night, so i figured, why not?  maybe after work tonight i will tell some evolutions stories, or the first time i played a show while tripping on acid, or the time i ended up accidentally doing a big line of heroin right before a gig, thinking it was cocaine, hahaha. 

have no fears, i have stories for years...

[Marko]

Best thread in ages! Thinking of it most of the stories are wilder and more exciting to read than almost everything in the highly dissapointing We Never Learn.

[Scrod Prickknee]

Bradx just killed this thread and possibly the whole forum. Great stories. Sure wish user: k. hadn't quit.

He's quit and come back several times before, so who knows?

I have plenty of k. stories, but I'll leave that to him. What a fucked up little corner of the rock world NE Wisconsin was for a spell.

[levon]

I'm eagerly awaiting one NickG's contribution to this thread.

[kevin e]

I saw Le Shok in Gainesville, FL, circa 2000 or 2001. I didn't like any of that stuff but you can't be too picky in that town if you want to go to a show so I went. Just a little historical/regional perspective - people there LOVED The Locust and all that kind of stuff. Anyways, Le Shok gets up there and are either too wasted or completely incompetent to play their songs but they still expect everyone to fawn over them and NO ONE is buying it. They stumble around and talk shit for about 10 minutes, don't get any sort of reaction, and walk off for good.

[sloweducation]

My buddies and I who had been loosely practicing for a few months happen to all take a trip together minus the bassist to meet some other friends for two weeks traveling around in Armenia/Georgia a few years back. We decide to attempt to book ourselves a show while there. Picked up a few flyers off the streets and called some #'s to no avail.

Second to last night in town we hit up some dumb club with Bob Marley posters all over the place. Old hippie lady slides over next to me on the couch I was sitting on, starts flirting with me, I mention I'm in a punk band and she flips out and tells me her husband owns the club and we simply must play tomorrow night. Apparently there was a Doors cover band playing the next night and they wanted us to play after them. We mention we have no gear and she says to show up for sound check in the afternoon, talk to the band and everything should be groovy. We show up, attempt to talk to 4 rawk doods in the Doors cover band and they basically said with their body language, 'go fuck yourselves.'

The show if we can manage to get some gear starts in like 4 hours. We start scrambling, some local friends start calling around, we manage to find an acoustic with pickups & all chip in for a cheapie used electric. Yep - we figure it all out, much to the consternation of the Doors cover band.

We show up around 9, the Doors band is already playing to a packed house. Seems this band is the hottest act in town and play once a month at this club and think very highly of themselves. Lady tells us we're up next, around 1030. 10:30 comes, goes, 11 comes , goes. The owner tells us to get ready and keeps nudging us towards the stage. There's not really a backstage area, so we are basically standing there with our two bullshit guitars right in front of the band as they continue to go on and on and on. I think they played the whole discography. At one point , they must have sensed their time was up and tell the crowd, "there's a punk band here from NY who want to go on, here's what theyll sound like." And they go into some kinda no-wave jam , ironically their best sounds of the night. After they get bored with that, they start again with "Light My Fire," I think for the 3rd time. Finally the owner gets up on stage and unplugs 'em, telling em 'we are here to see the NY PUNK band."  As they are wrapping up , my buddy who's taking the hit and going to use the acoustic, asks the guitar player if he could borrow a pick and dude just turns and laughs in the other direction.

As we get up on stage and get ready to play, the owner runs up to us and tell us its some girls birthday like it means something to us, "wish her a happy bday into the mic." OK. "Happy Birthday XxXX" As I say that 50 Cent's "It's Yo Birthday" comes on the system and we have to stand there on stage the whole time while the whole fucking song plays.

Doors guys are in the front row and I walk up to the mic, " here's our first song, "Riders On The Storm, go fuck yourself." and we "rip" into Misfits , "Angel Fuck." Death stares from the old men, who eventually leave. Crowd goes into a frenzy. Play two more originals and they pull the plug. As we are standing there still trying to parse what just happened , the owner of the club runs up to the stage and says "you gotta come back next week! that was awesome!"  It was most certainly not awesome but who I am to tell them. We walk off the stage and all these young Armenian kids start grabbing us to take photos with them and telling us how great it was to see a "real punk band." 

First time on stage for me and my pal and was very fun night.

[frankie teardrop]

I would def like to hear the Doors cover band impromptu punk song. That actually sounds cool as fuck.

[sloweducation]

I would def like to hear the Doors cover band impromptu punk song. That actually sounds cool as fuck.

Yea, me too. Should mention we were all plastered by that point and maybe anything that wasn't a Doors song would have sounded great. They were really good at their instruments and posing, I'll give 'em that.