Worst. Gig. Ever

Music
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NYE 1990, and there is a big rave as Plymouth Warehouse, at the end of the night I have a bad physical reaction to the vitamins I took that night and ended up in hospital, luckily it was just a funny turn and I got let out in the morning.
The problem is I had promised to DJ with some friends that following day (New Years Day) and I was the one with the equipment/bulk of the records so even though I felt terrible and still shook up from the previous night I had to go do the gig which was at Moorhaven Hospital, an old Asylum.

Whilst its dark Asylum days were long gone (I presume) it was still a center for people with serious mental health problems, the manager of the center was a friends brother an old hippy and knowing full well the kind of stuff we played (acid/rave/house) he thought we would be a good choice to supply the music for an early evening party for the patients of the hospital.

In truth I dont remember a great deal about the night, I know I was on edge all night, my friends took loads of acid and I will still feeling the effects of the previous night, the fact we were in an old Asylum at a party for unwell people wasn’t the vibe I needed that night, and the crescendo of it all was one of the patients (a middle-aged lady) stood in front of me staring at me whilst I was DJing, reached into her mouth, spent some time fiddling about, and threw something at me…a tooth…she pulled out a tooth and threw it at me, not what I needed in that delicate state, it really span me out.

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Good god, that’s hard to top. Who puts on a doo at a mental health hospital and takes acid.

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We have a 100% winner right here. Fucking hell !

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And I should have added, I have not taken a Class A since that night. Call me a lightweight but that weekend finished me off.

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‘he thought we would be a good choice to supply the music for an early evening party for the patients of the hospital’

I can just imagine the interesting justification in that discussion in the staff room. ‘It’ll be proper acid house vibes guys, you’ll see’.

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:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

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Yeah this is what I thought too. Whoever convinced the staff that was a good idea could probably peddle ice to eskimos.

Nuts!!!

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Is Ian Dewhirst on here? IIRC the best djing disaster anecdote ever

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A new night club opened up in my home town around the mid 00’s called Above and Beyond. It was an upstairs/downstairs type thing, really tacky where the upstairs bar/restaurant was all white decor and the downstairs nightclub all black. Anyway, they tried to bring in somewhat name DJ’s at first and it never really worked out, they were tanking money and after a while decided to start giving local DJ’s including myself a shot.

I took on an every 2nd Saturday slot, which was their house music night, rotating with another local DJ each week. The place was dying on it’s arse but the owners had a firm idea of what they wanted music wise and weren’t going to deviate from that despite the lack of punters. My local town Greenock is a place where you’ll still find folk listening to happy hardcore in 2021 and is not the easiest of places to get something started musically.

On this one particular night, I had the pleasure of having a visit from a member of the PRS or some music licensing mob who wanted to know what I was playing over the course of a couple of hours.

Ok fine but now I’m cramped into this phone box sized DJ booth with this large and very sweaty fellow, who wants to chat continuously whilst I’m trying to work. The stench of B.O. from this guy was unreal, it was as if he hadn’t washed for days.

During the night a large group of people who I hadn’t seen before came in together, started ordering drinks, dancing etc… they looked like quite a rough crowd who probably would have been turned away from the door a few weeks earlier but as things were they way they were they were allowed in,

“Play something we can dance to” came a comment from one of the females who’s eyes where popping out of her head and her jaw on the other side of the room. I replied that I was playing dance music, so wasn’t quite sure what she meant, thinking in the back of my mind that they where just looking for the usual happy hardcore type fair.

Her reply “I dunno something like R,E,M. or the Timewarp”

That was my last night there and the place has since been an Indian restaurant twice and has now lied empty for the best part of 5 years.

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Lived in Greenock for a year and it was all hardcore bams or indie boys with parkas and wellend haircuts. Thankfully Club 69 wasn’t too far in a taxi.

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I worked in Greenock for six months and it was unreal. There was a man who used to come into the shop to stand and chat to the staff, they would all laugh with him and he would bring them in sweets. Then I found out he was a convicted repeat sex offender who had served prison time.

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I have nothing to add, other than that this is a very very entertaining thread

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Here is another bad one. its Grandmaster Flash related and I have bumped into a few folks over the years who have had some really bad gigs with Flash, mine went like this.

I luckily get the chance to open for Grandmaster Flash at the Plymouth Dance Academy.
This was a real honour to be asked to do this and really special to me personally as Flash was a big part of my introduction to Hip Hop and musical journey.

So I arrive at the gig and Im told there is a list of records that we are not allowed to play in our sets, it gets handed to the warm up Djs at all his shows (on that tour) and any records on the list are not allowed to be played by anyone other than Flash.
From memory there were about 200 records on the list and it was no problem to me as I wasn’t going to play any of the tracks that I expected Flash to play, I expected his set to be comprised of “block party” classics and I wasn’t going to pull an amateur Dj move and play his big tunes before he went on. Also there were loads of tracks on the list that were not really my thing, good/classic pop tracks but not the kind of stuff I play out.

So I scan the list and its time for me to go on.
I get to my second track and my friend who went on before me is saying to me "this record is on the list, your not allowed to play it! My friend points to the stage below us (Flash had his own stage) and Flash’s hype man for the night Broadway of the group Grandmaster Flash (not to be confused with the Furious 5) is going ballistic waving his arms about in the air and shouting “you are not allowed to play this”. All this is happening in from of about 300 people most of who are watching the stage waiting for Flash to go on. As Broadway was going mental I went into my bag pulled out another record and by the end of the first chorus of the ‘prohibited’ record I had the next one mixed in and the offending record removed. This wasn’t the nicest of experiences Im opening up for a childhood hero of mine and in front of 300 odd people I’m being embarrassed and panicked!
Whist I carry on playing the rest of my set basically walking on eggshells incase I play anymore records on ‘the list’ my friend comes to me list in hand and says the record that had Broadway going ballistic WASNT ON THE LIST! I was sure it wasn’t when I played it! I genuinely chose to play records that didnt clash with what Flash would play and the offending record Tribe Called Quest / Award Tour wasnt on his fucking list!
Latter that night my friend and I bump into the Tour Manager and had a moan about the situation and the Manager says to me “this kind of thing happens all the time”!

I laugh about the night now, and love telling the story but it wasn’t fun on the night, and I never even tried to meet Flash or Broadway latter in the night even though they are both people who music I loved, I decided to give them both a wide berth.

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I used to get loads of aggro off punters when doing the second room of a big club on a Friday or Saturday. My standard thing to say was; ‘Sorry, the regular Dj has been to his wife’s funeral today, I’m just filling in’. That tended to get me left alone.

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Going on late at the Dogstar in Brixton in the late 90’s and being so hammered that I couldn’t figure out how to control the mixer. Long periods of silence met by swift removal and replacement.

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I have a very very similar experience djing with Flash, except mine ended with him screaming at me on the mic. Though he did get a slight comeuppance that night.

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I was playing at a good friends house in the afternoon and a couple I have never seen before walked in then walked straight up to me and said “Have you got any soul?” I said “Yeah but I’m not playing any.” They looked at me like I was an idiot so I gave them the Manson lamps and they walked off.

A few hours later I was playing again and I played Yeke Yeke Hardfloor mix, the same guy came up to me (obviously enjoying it).” and he said “This is Leftfield isn’t it” I replied “No its Yeke Yeke Hardfloor mix.” “He said “No this is Leftfield.” Very insistently, I replied again“No, its Hardfloor.” Anyhow the conversation went on like that for a few minutes then I gave him a Xanax telling him it was a pill.

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Har mar superstar at whealans in Dublin

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Faulty equipment aside and of course stopping the wrong deck I have been fairly lucky. I have had a bread roll thrown at me, took an E and then did way too many spin backs thinking it sounded ace until someone told me to stop doing it and turned up to DJ where the booth was not facing the dancefloor so had my back to the people dancing which was very odd. I did get my mate a gig once despite him telling me he would not play any progressive house. He did and halfway through this set a dude handed him a note saying that he has studied the art of DJ’ing for many years and heard thousands of DJ’s and you are by far the worse I have ever heard. My mate took it fairly well considering.

Edit - this one just came back to me that I somehow forgot about or should I say tried hard for many years to forget. I was playing after a DJ who is transsexual. She had great joy in telling me about her operations but then spent the first half hour or so of my set asking me to touch her private parts (or not so private in her case it seems) to see how good it felt. It was a long half hour with lots of shoddy mixes from memory!

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You win. Did you touch it?

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