Worst Show Ever

[Babs]

Shall we share our worst show experiences here?

I apologize if there is a thread about this (I'm guessing Open Mic experiences is the one that comes closest).

This was my worst booked show to date. I drove out to Chino for this one, to perform in front of a bunch of people with neck tattoos at a bar nestled between a Big Lots and Lario's Meat Market.

Video is less than a minute, but gives you a good idea of what I was dealing with. I followed a hip hop act, and at first the guy who booked me said "okay, after they're done, you go up". No intro. I got him to give me one, poorly, and I proceeded to stand eye-level with the crowd and attempt to talk over all the people moving equipment on and off stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQlIVrs9du4

At one point I saw the guy in the crowd and asked if he was going to light me, and he just shook his head. So I kept going until I heard a guitar tuning up and I got the hell out. I think I was up there for 10 - 12 minutes?

Now it's your turn!

[I love nny]

Wow, the only way that could have been worse is if at one point they asked you to help move the equipment during your set.

[brewcaster]

I have nothing to contribute accept for encouragement that this thread keep going. I love this stuff.

I am not a comedian, but I have played my fair share of music concerts to the sound guy and the band's girlfriends.

MORE!!!

[SlyBattery]

Wow that was brutal. I have to give credit to any comedian who can sit through that. I have never been on stage with my own comedy, but I think I would have bailed on that long before you did.

[Me, The JerBear]

That was PAINFUL to watch. What a bunch of dicks.

Think of it this way: everybody has to pay their dues and this experience will help you to appreciate the good shows (and there WILL be good ones) where the crowd is all nice and receptive and they laugh at every spot they're supposed to.

In the future I would recommend 'owning' the stage and making every asshole with a guitar case either sit down and stfu or get off YOUR stage.




Dignity and Respect
Me, The JerBear

[Babs]

Oh yeah, I just laughed the whole thing off. It's a rite of passage of sorts. But in the future at something like that I will probably not try to tell any real jokes because they all failed miserably.

I wish the part was on there when one of the band guys stood a few feet in front of me and yelled "JOHNNY! JOHNNY!" repeatedly to someone in the crowd.

I also love how they are hugging each other with congratulations behind me.

[JManderville]

I think in that instance it's probably best to just bag the jokes and start making fun of the situation as best you can. Maybe even stop the people behind you and interview them while they are trying to set up their gear. Great video!

[CBB]

From the bit you posted it looks like you handled yourself quite well despite all the shityness. You didn't really seem panicked, just annoyed. I feel like I might have slipped more into the panic side of things.

[Vercetti]

Babs, you and I travel similar roads. Doing comedy with music acts can be PAINFUL.

Here's a couple quick little stories from my own experiences...

Saint Paddy's day 2009 my friend asked me to do few minutes at his band's gig. The problem was that they played for 2 and a half hours before I went up. Without an intro. It's St. Paddy's so people are just wantng to hang out, drink and whatever. They didn't want to sit and pay attention to someone talking. But still, gotta do it.

So the place is packed and I go into my first joke. I finish the joke and out of the big crowd I get one laugh. I tell my second joke and it gets a mild chuckle as the girl at the front table angrily gets up out of her chair and leaves.

I keep trucking along. The set continues to go south as one of the musicians decides that instead of letting me do my jokes he was going to try to have a loud conversation with me trying to make himself part of my act. which comics LOVE of course. After that I finished and left.

Another time at a bar open mic I work I was trying to do jokes to a particularly loud and chatty crowd. They were just blatantly not listening and ignorng the fact that someone is onstage. Usually I can truck through but that night I just got so pissed I said "Alright then, see you" and walked off the stage.

Afterwards I'm outside with my friend talking about it (basically it's him listening to me say different variations of "What the fuck is wrong with these tools?") when a lady comes out and sits down right next to where we were. She catches my eye and says to me in a condecending tone "A word of advice?". I kind of shrug her off saying "Sorry, I'm not really in the mood.".

She continues anyway..."You know, you really shouldn't say 'Jesus Christ' onstage. This is a Christian bar and there are a lot of Christian people here that wouldn't appreciate you talking the lord's name in vain.". A Christian bar. A Christian. Bar.

I didn't know whether to cry or laugh my ass off, but a bad night did suddenly become really funny.

[PaulC]

My worst show was kinda similar to Babs'. It was in a small restaurant/bar that is a regular live music venue, so they had a stage, PA, lighting rig, etc, but for some reason the comedy show wasn't allowed to use any of that. The comics had to stand on the dance floor in front of the stage. There were no lights pointed at the dance floor ('cause who lights a dance floor?) so the room was in an even level of medium darkness from the comics up front all the way to the back of the audience.

Perpendicular to the audience was the bar and behind the bar there was a giant flat screen TV that the bar refused to turn off. Compared to the rest of the room, the TV was bright as a thousand suns. Even if you were looking straight ahead at the comics (who were hard to see in the darkness) the light from the TV blinded the right side of your peripheral vision. Playing on the TV, on a loop, was a DVD of the Carnivale parade in Rio. So the audience could either pay attention to the comics that they could barely see OR watch HD video footage of giant parade floats shooting fire and incredibly hot, huge breasted Brazilian women in sequined bikinis and peacock feathers.

Then the host comes up and throws out a few jokes and they all tank. The crowd is surly and distracted and just isn't having any of it. Even the people who clearly came with the comics don't seem happy to be there. So the host decides to try some crowd work to loosen the folks up and force them engage with the show. She turns to the person sitting right up front and this is what I hear from my spot in the back of the room...

Host: Thanks for being here. What do you do for a living, Sir?
Audience Member: I'M A WOMAN!

To be fair, it was a dark room and she was a pretty man-ish woman, but what little air had been in the room got sucked right out. There was no saving it at that point. Every comic went up and ate shit. I was four or five in the line up so I had had to wait like in WWI, watching guys go over the top of the trenches only to get mowed down by machine gun fire and knowing that I was now one step closer to the ladder. Predictably, my set was a disaster. The whole show was just a complete cluster fuck from top to bottom.

There is a craft not just to performing stand up comedy, but also to producing a good live comedy show. Certain rules should be observed. Among them:

1) Proper lighting is key.
2) Remove as many major distractions as possible.
3) Don't insult the audience. At least not during the warm up.
4) In the battle of Comedy Vs. Fire & Tits, Comedy will always loose. Always.

[I love nny]

Host: Thanks for being here. What do you do for a living, Sir?
Audience Member: I'M A WOMAN!

This type of thing is always funny, except for when you do it.

when I worked at Target I used to rock some pretty long hair. (middle of the back) Not a day would go by where someone would mistake me for a woman. Now from the back that's one thing but from the front when i had a FULL beard thats another. I once politely correct a woman after she instructed her daughter to hand the nice "lady" the ball she was buying.

I said "The nice man would love to ring up that ball."
The woman responded "Don't confuse her"

[Vercetti]

There is a craft not just to performing stand up comedy, but also to producing a good live comedy show. Certain rules should be observed. Among them:

1) Proper lighting is key.
2) Remove as many major distractions as possible.
3) Don't insult the audience. At least not during the warm up.
4) In the battle of Comedy Vs. Fire & Tits, Comedy will always loose. Always.

Another thing I'll add to this list is a proper intro. I've played many a music open mic where the host fudges the intro or just doesn't do one and I have to dig my way out. That's bad because if the host doesn't give a shit about the acts then how is the audience going to care?

The last time he actually did introduce me but I had to wait for the band to break down their guitars first. So it was "Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Neri!". And then the band taking their time unplugging their guitars and then me taking the stage a minute later. That wasn't awkward at all.

You gotta laugh at shit like this, cuz let's be honest, they make for fun stories.

Also, I should stop playing with musicians.

[dan telfer]

Unsolicited advice can turn any mediocre show into the worst you've ever had. It's almost always a funny story later, but in the moment there is nothing more frustrating than having someone who you may not respect or even know try and condescend to you like they know exactly what you need.

My worst show is a very long story, but here's the short version. In one night I:

- Started getting a sinus infection.
- Popped out a filling.
- Bombed in front of an audience of 500 who nearly booed me offstage.
- Introduced the headliner, who was getting high in the green room bathroom and wouldn't come out for 5-10 more minutes (I wasn't bailing early, I did my whole time).
- Got cursed out onstage by the headliner for not knowing he was in the bathroom getting high when I intro'd him.
- Was lectured backstage by the headliner between shows about being too "faggoty."
- Got stuck in the green room with the headliner as he dry-humped a prostitute.

[scamboogah]

Sorry to hear that Myq Kaplan was such a jerk when you opened for him.

[drieux]

This thread is a great idea.

Shortly after starting standup I got booked to open for a band at a small bar in a small town in Michigan. Was not told the band was comprised of small town high school metal kids, and the bar would be full of their friends (yes, illegally). The owner told me to get up while the kids were still fine-tuning their pointy guitars and triple-quadruple bass drum pedals and pointing the mics at their face to be super-Metallica-y. To top it all off, right next to the stage was a Golden Tee machine that two old redneck drunks were playing with all the energy they'd saved up by failing at life. I have no idea what my opening bit was at the time, but I'm sure it was something poorly constructed and full of nerdy references, and it took all of 45 seconds for the first "faggot" to come from the audience. Many more followed. I bailed after six minutes, was supposed to do 15 and probably had the material to do three. Owner said he didn't think I deserved the $20 he'd promised me, so instead I could just have "five or six drinks for free" before I drove away.

Also, third set ever for an open mic at a club. Booker vocally let us know he hated all open micers and that if we wanted to record our sets, we had to set up our audio/video stuff at the table in the far back next to the kitchen, which was closed due to health violations. Get onstage and the audience consisted of three old ladies, a few drunk 20-somethings and two Marines on leave who decided the funniest thing ever would be to make threatening faces to whomever was onstage during their entire sets. Bombed ridiculously, get offstage and get my audio recorder. Get in the car for the ride home, plug it into my stereo and listen to my set...not only had I done a great job bombing, but turns out one of the problems with the kitchen was an infestation of crickets, who were very audible throughout my set. The tape is literally bad joke, attempt at punchline, no laughs and then crickets. Again and again for four minutes.

[scamboogah]

Literal crickets! That's awesome.

I can't wait to hear about your show in Arizona next to an open door during the tumbleweed storm.

(I'm sure you remember that children's reading show, Literal crickets...)

[CarolineEAnd]

Unsolicited advice can turn any mediocre show into the worst you've ever had.

Oh dear. I have a story.

When I started doing stand-up I made the rule that at every open-mic I'd go to, I'd try a new five minute set. And it totally worked because within a month I was getting booked to paying shows, and within half a year I had a full 30 minute set that got laughs. I had one open mic where the majority of my friends were going to be out of town, so I decided to try more experimental stuff. More story-telling, less clear punch lines. And honestly, the set went pretty well. I got a lot of laughs.

So, there's this comic named Brian. He's about 10 years my senior, been doing stand-up those 10 years, and each open mic does the same 5 minute set. I'm not going to ruin it for you, but it's basically a list of ways to die in New Orleans. And he yells and talks about rape and how women deserve to be abused. Great great stuff.

After the show, he asked me to go outside with him. After I told him no, he said "You know, you're a really good writer, but...you act the exact same on stage as you do with your friends. You gotta develop a character. You have to be someone else on stage. Look at the great comedians, they all did it."

I walked away after that, going through the list of the great comedians (Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins, Eugene Mirman, Doug Benson, yup, all characters). I've been unable to do any of the jokes I did that night because all I can think about is how I need to be more of a Carlos Mencias and less of a Jen Kirkman. Ugh.

I should be happy about that being my worst experience, but it soured me on those jokes, which did get a LOT of laughs.

[ErikNielsen]

She continues anyway..."You know, you really shouldn't say 'Jesus Christ' onstage. This is a Christian bar and there are a lot of Christian people here that wouldn't appreciate you talking the lord's name in vain.". A Christian bar. A Christian. Bar.

Did a variety show at a storefront art gallery/community center type place in Boyle Heights a few months back. Followed two spoken-word poets and a bongo player. Standing room, 60-70 people, I stood on a milk crate.

(The milk crate thing might not be true. Maybe it was just a tiny stage. I remember it as a milk crate.)

My closer contains the line "a lot of imaginary concepts are dead -- like communism!" I get to that line, and there's an audible gasp in the room. I'm thrown a little, but I'm rolling through the joke, which is a pretty loud and pretty fast joke. So I just keep going...

So I'm going backstage -- they have a guy making tacos on a grill behind the theater, I paid for some before my set, and I want to pick them up. And the booker, a guy I met when he was in the audience at a Neil Hamburger Spaceland show I did, comes up to me laughing. "I can't believe you did that last joke."

"Why?"

"Well, the whole audience is communists."

And it all clicks into place -- Boyle Heights, the spoken-word poetry, the woodcuts on the walls about "the blood of the peasants," all of it. Of course I have just done a show for some Communists.

The woodcuts alone should have tipped me off, really.

That isn't my worst show story. I killed at that show -- big laughter throughout, couple of applause breaks. I even got them back before the end of the closer (which, fortunately, only mentions communism the one time.) But if I had been bombing when I dropped that line... well.

[ErikNielsen]

Okay. OKAY. Worst show, non-Big Fish division. Two candidates. Not that I haven't bombed more than twice. I've bombed at least five times. But these are either the two worst, or the two that have kind of a story attached to them. (Most of the rest are just "hey, I was doing new stuff, it didn't work." Or "hey, there were three guys in the crowd, they weren't into my act.")

First one was around a year into my career. Comedy Studio in Boston, audience of six (unheard of today, right?), and all six are there with one of the other comics.

Now, that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes, the six guys are only there to see their friend. Other times, they're good people. A couple weeks before I left Boston, I performed one of the greatest sets of my life in the basement of the Cantab for five comics and a half dozen of Ken Reid's punk music friends. (Punks, as a general rule, love me.)

These, though, were not punks. These were not friends. These were half a dozen guys from the guy's day job -- a sandwich shop. I'm not sure they were even there to see the guy, except in the broadest possible sense. They just sat at the center table and glowered the whole time. Not to say sandwich shop employees don't have a sense of humor. These guys certainly didn't, though.

[Phil]

My company didn't have money for the annual summer party cause of the recession, so the employees threw their own party, and asked if bands wanted to volunteer and perform. I volunteered to do comedy.

It was a beautiful day and everyone was outside, only a crowd of factory worker drunks remained inside to rock out to 2.5 hours of 70's Finnish rock cover songs. At like 10:30pm I went on, everyone is wasted, the sound system was horrible, there was no introduction, no proper lighting.

People were just confused. Most probably didn't speak English either. Some girl yelled "you suck!". I agreed. After 7 mins or so I said good night. Very embarrassing.