I guess it would be worse if you were a stripper. But it sounds like it would suck big-time. My condolences to you. Was it a younger audience maybe not into the blues?
Never got boo'ed off but over the years have played to a few absolutely disinterested crowds. Wrong band for the gig. Worst was when we(a hard core blues band) somehow got booked to play a'society' wedding. Absolute disaster.They wanted ABBA and we gave them some R L Burnside.The father stopped us after the first set paid us off and we (gratefully) sloped off. So getting Boo'ed off can often just be because what you are trying to play doesn't fit the audiences expectations. But if you are a Blues Band playing Blues and you get boo'ed by a blues(y) type audience ,well then you probably have a serious problem to look at.
Shit happens to everyone. The fact that you were boo'ed sucks. Its over. What is far more important is what you do next. Are you gonna take your ball and go home or will you work harder and get better prepared for the next time.
When I first started playing out, I used to attend a jam. There was a woman who attended every week. She sang, "House of the Rising Sun". I saw her do that tune probably 26 weeks straight. It was horrible and it never got any better. People booed her every week. Eventually, they started throwing raw eggs at her. After a number of weeks, the eggs were hard boiled. After a hard boiled egg hit one of the band members, they told her that they feared for her safety and told her not to come back.
People can be harsh and cruel. Playing any instrument well is hard work. If you aren't prepared, you're screwed. Do your homework. Practice your ass off and get back out there. If it takes you a year, that's how long it takes. ---------- The Blues Photo Gallery
Many years ago some friends of mine were playing in Scandinavia, where they actually had a Top 40 hit at the time. It was one of those package deals with three bands and they were the headliner but the sort of venue where a crowd showed up just because it was the only thing happening for 50 miles around.
They played the opening number and at the finish there was dead silence. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Nary a ripple. Then a voice from the back shouts out, "Turn the jukebox back on."
The boys carried on like troupers but at the end of their set they, "walked off to the sound of our own feet." ---------- LSC
You need to go to an ukulele festival. I attended a large outdoor one last summer, 3 day event. No bands scheduled, strictly a jam fest. In the evening they had a sign up sheet, everyone had an opportunity to walk on stage and play 2 tunes. A few people started it off playing solo but as the night went on duets, trios and more formed. I listened the first night, went till 3 am. The next day I prepared to play with a few people, playing harp. After my duet with Joni I was stopped as I was leaving the stage and the next act told me to stay on stage, he was planning to play some 12-bar blues and wanted me to play with them. Of course they played country, but it went well enough. As I tried to leave again I was escorted back on stage to play with yet a third group. Later on I joined a large all star band. So I go to an ukulele fest and end up playing harp! BTW: I do play ukulele. I guess I was the only harp player out 200 people attending.
Last Edited by on Feb 11, 2012 3:34 PM
..."People booed her every week. Eventually, they started throwing raw eggs at her. After a number of weeks, the eggs were hard boiled. After a hard boiled egg hit one of the band members, they told her that they feared for her safety and told her not to come back."...
Jezus. Rough crowd. Reminds me of a scene from the Blues Brothers movie.
---------- Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy. -Dan Castellaneta
Haven't been boo'ed off. Yuck. But I too have played to completely disinterested crowds - once at a saloon that often has a good blues crowd but I guess it was spring break because the place was nothing but kids who barely tolerated us - and proceeded to put hip-hop and gangsta rap on the jukebox at every break, LOUD. As said above - wrong band for the crowd.
Once a woman said "Can you play anything better?"
She was drunk, but I was a bit taken aback. I said "Sorry, we don't know that one." ---------- /Greg
Not yet. Anyhow The Blues Brothers is my favorite move, even tho' it isn't all that bluesy. I laugh a lot every time I see it. Genius comedy. Worth studying. Make people laugh during your hello. Kind of joke they can't help but play over again in their minds. While you play the blues for them.
Never boo'd off but had the crowd walk out systematically until the place was empty. We used the last 1/2 half hour to jam some stuff and pack up. Simple case of wrong band. Crowd was mixed, country to hip hop and no one wanted to hear another blues band. ---------- "Keep it in your mouth" - XHarp
I had a 30s and 40s acoustic blues duo with a modern psychedelic bent. We were hired to play one of the roughest bars in town. They had heard our CD. After the first set, they asked us to leave. I asked for our guarantee. They paid us half. I said, let me speak to the manager. Not there. I said I'd be back on Monday to collect from the manager, let her know.
I am friends with some bikers. After we left around 20 bikers showed up. Where's the band? Apparently things did not go so well for the bar that night. The money was handed to me with no problem on Monday.
early on I did. Once was at wallaces, a famous NJ jazz club. I played a real smooth demo tape of a band I knew to get us in. We were in our teens and playing more punk rock energy than blues but we thought felt it blue. One of my best friends was connected with the mob and worked out of a bus garage they owned. He would get a big bus and round up all the crazy locals from the worst part of town. they dug our stuff. They all had prison records, carried guns, etc. We kicked off our first set at deafening levels. The bartender called the owner who came down, paid us in full and said he would rather not have any music than the shit we played. We left throught the liquor store enterance. It had a club enterance and a liqour store up front. We stole a bunch of bottles and threw rocks off the club daring them to come out. It was stupid but such was I back then....... I was back there over thanksgiving. Star taveren is across the street from wallaces. they make the best pie in NJ. I bought a bunch and walked over to wallaces. It is now a chinese restraunt. I asked them about the club. All they kept saying was "good food here". Then there was the time in Ghent Belguim when we were stoned with coblestones torn out of the street. We started a riot with a few thousand people. Some drunk harp player came up onstage and started playing. My wife went up to him and took it away. It was a nice chromatic. Soon I heard my wife screaming. His girfriend was beating Judy to all hell. I proceeded to beat the hell out of that woman in front of the crowd. They took to throwning the coblestones at us. We fled to a metal trailer. cobblestones were bouncing off it and the promoter insisted we finish our set or no money. With a line of security in front of us we proceeded to play for 30 minutes in complete out of tune, beat, tones to hell, worst set of music I ever heard, smiling the whole time. We got our money and cut out of that town. They close all the streets and people get drunk for a couple weeks. I am lucky to still be alive. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
No, but I've seen people wince, in a small club, as I hit a clinker or two (off key notes) while I sang. Nobody in our band could sing, so we all took turns singing badly. I quit singing in public shortly after, and left the bad singing to the rest of guys in the band.
The closest I've come was once when I was opening for the Rocky Horror picture show in a movie thester. I'd been working this gig with piano player and we'd been doing campy tunes like "Beauty School Dropout." But he decided to take a night off and go to a soccer game (Gee, thanks!)
So I fell back on the solo vocal-and-blues-harp act, which I'd fine with in that theater before, but on this night the crowd was not digging it. As I walked up the aisle after finishing my set, a guy sitting the aisle told me, "You've got a lot of nerve!" For some reason that really made me smile. I kind of wish I'd done more to provoke that reaction.
I saw poor John Hammond get disrespected during his set opening for Janis Joplin. People kept yelling Janis,Janis. This with Big Brother. I saw her six months before she made it as a star at the same venue. Totally different crowd.
Oh yeah haven't been yet but you never know. ---------- Emile "Diggs" D'Amico a Legend In His Own Mind How you doin'
I've never been boo'ed off stage. Although I have played to many unreceptive audiences over the years. It's just part of playing live that you have to deal with now and then. The best bad/good moment I can remember was when I played in Fleetwood many, many years ago and we had a big bruiser of a guy heckling us all through the first set. Anyway later in the night the drummer had a problem with his kit, so the band asked me to do a solo (unaccompanied) harp number. The heckler heard this and said "Yeah c'mon let's hear how good you are!". So I leant forward and whispered to him "Oh I'm absolutely crap!". Then I proceeded to play a piece. Well at the end of it this guy jumps up and starts hugging me and shouting out "You'll do for me lad, fantastic stuff!" After that he was our biggest fan everytime we played that particular venue.
there have been times i've wished it was that simple. we played as an opener for a trash disco dj where the crowd was glues to their seats until we were barely off stage and the dj took over. that hurt. there was a country club gig where the brat kids asked us if we played any disco or punk or whatever, of course we didn't. Gregg brought this memory back big time, they would ignore us during our sets and then the barkeep would blast the huge house stereo on hip hop on our breaks. they made a point to stand in the way as we were loading out and saying stuff like "if you run into me with that my dad will SUE YOUR ASS", etc etc. it would have been better to have been cancelled or even gotten booed rather than the sideways kind of hostility i saw on those nights.
so no, never been booed off, but it may have been a better alternative to the torture i have endured a few times.
that was some badass house band, backing a gal who was so bad the crowd egged her!! ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
When I was in big band [trombone] we played a corporate 'do' [could have been Christmas] for Argos at Cranfield. we played all the 1940s numbers and in out break they had a disco. Most of the audience were youngsters [my age!] and they all got up and danced to stuff that had less beat/rythm than we had been playing. the organiser told us 'If I let you go back on I'll get lynched' so he paid us the full fee and we packed up and went home. ---------- "Come on Brackett let's get changed"
Never got booe'd off the stage,but have played to hostile crowds,and have gotten paid to go away,wrong venue for the band type stuff.
Most of the time I have seen bands get boo'ed off the stage it has been at a multi band show,and usually the victims were not anywhere near the same genre as the other bands or the headliner.
Worst I ever saw was a band that got boo'ed off the stage called the Pousette dark band,they were touring with Yes,they were kind of prog rock/fusion with a little folk in them,not a real far cry from what the headliner was.I saw them open open for Yes in Atlanta,they made it through 3 songs maybe.I then saw them on the same tour in Philadelphia,and the Johhny Walker Red bottles started flying at the stage,they didn't even finish their first song.
When I first moved to the UK and started playing there I took a duo gig at a workingman's club having no clue what the culture or usual form was. Normally they had a "guest ar-tee-st", in this case we "opened" for a organ/drum duo who played popular standards of the day. We were doing blues and rock and roll.
We got one song in, some Buddy Holly as I recall, when I see this guy in the wings waving his arms and motioning me over. We started the 2nd song and he got frantic enough that I figured I better go see what he wanted. Maybe the place was on fire or something. He says to me, "Come with me. We're going to see the Chairman. These clubs are run by The Committee overseen by The Chairman.
The crowd, there were a couple of hundred, started making rumblings but I couldn't quite catch what they were about and I was pretty baffled as to what was happening anyway.
We go downstairs to the the Chairman's office and this guy proceeds to say we were awful and he had to pull us off before the crowd got unruly. I was stunned. Not only had we received a decent crowd response on the Buddy Holly, but as I said to the Chairman, we'd only done one number when he decided to pull us which was hardly enough to know if we were good, bad, or indifferent. The Chairman decides to go along with the Secretary because he hadn't heard us and not only that but we weren't going to get paid. Nothing I said made a damn bit of difference. I was spitting nails. The guitarist with me never said a word.
We go back upstairs to get our gear, it was my PA, to find the room in near riot. The crowd wanted us to stay! They were calling for us, shouting, clapping, swearing at the idiot who took us off, chucking pint glasses at him, the lot.
By the time we got to the stage the organ/drum duo had shown up. I went to the mic and told the crowd, "Sorry, they refuse to pay us and we're out of here but thanks for the support." At which point the bloody organ player says, "Can you leave the PA mate?" My reply was not suitable for women and children. ---------- LSC
Last Edited by on Feb 12, 2012 3:46 PM
Interesting to read everyone's experiences. I've never been booed off, but like so many others here, I've played to disinterested crowds - even ended up playing to one bloke and his dog after the audience gradually bailed.
I've also been paid off early - a new agent, got us a new year gig playing to what turned out to be a room of retired, elderly couples. We were a 70s rock cover band. The event manager panicked and paid us off after 3 numbers - we packed up and the crowd came to tell politely say how much they'd enjoyed our 'rock and roll' music. All very civilised, not quite the same as LSC's near riot which made me chuckle. (To anyone unfamiliar with the British Working Men's Club circuit, it has to be experienced to be believed. I swear Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights is a documentary!)
Anyway SonnyD, that really sucks. Don't take it personally though. It might be time for a little critical self-evaluation. Were you playing to the right crowd for your music? or are you perhaps not quite ready to play live? You might want to record yourself or even video yourselves playing to see and hear things from the audiences perspective. Be honest and realistic with yourselves. Don't be afraid to say "we did that badly" as long as you are prepared to correct it. Learn from the experience, channel the negative experience into positive drive and above all get back on the horse.
yeah that does bring one to mind where we got paid off early. it was on the only floating restaurant in the area, a barge on the river here. which has since sunk. we had a gig for good $$, just the 2 of us, and it was in maybe september. still hot but not impossibly so. BUT this restaurant was open to the river and had big "swamper" fans to cool the deck/dining area. know what happens to a wood guitar when thew humidity changes drastically. we didn't at the time. so we set up, she tuned up, we played a song or 2- and the guitar would not stay in tune, or even tune up at all by the 6th or 7th song. so we were both freaking out and we took a break. i was struggling to tune the dam thing when the manager comes by and asks me to the bar. he writes a check and tells me that the party which is about to show up has their own dj with them so he has to cut us loose, but here is pay for the whole night. we were out of there in a hurry, wondering if her only guitar was a total loss. next day it came out of the case- and was almost perfectly in tune! once it was taken out of the humidity it recovered nicely. when i figured it out later we made about $25 a song for that one set! much better than the tip gigs we did early on for a beer, a fries, and $2 to $6 in tips! ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
@SonnyD4885, my heart breaks for you. People can be cruel.
As I read everything above, I recalled a keyboard player that said, "the most important thing you can have is repertoire' "
If you are playing the tunes the audience wants to hear, they can be very forgiving. If you think all they need to hear is some "real music played right", you may have a short engagement.
---------- HarmoniCollege March 24, 2012 theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
@Jim Very good advice in some ways We have a local band called "Jukebox" Great name and that is exactly what they are,human jukeboxes. Yell out just about any old popular hit and Bamm you got it(or at least a reasonable facsimle of it.) They are booked out solid for months ahead and make a good living from their 'success. But to me and a lot of musicians i know that would be a living hell. Some of us just want/need to play Blues and of course that is going to cause problems oftentimes but it is what it is.
One time in my hometown Huey Lewis & News were playing right after he had released his Sport's album.There was 4 or 5 songs on the radio playlist he was hot.I went to the show to see the opening act wich after about 10 minutes they were booing him and cheering for Huey.I was so embarassed.The opener was Stevie ray Vaughn.true story
yea it was a younger crowd and i was playing heat of gold which i did perfectly with the guitar man but the crowd was all liquored up and wanted to hear more recent stuff but we don't do that it was bad
A bad gig is always a bummer. It can eat away at you if you let it. You'll always encounter crowds or individuals like that sooner or later at gigs. It's how you deal with it that counts. Just dust yourself off and get back out there. Don't let it deter you from your path, keep on going. You'll get where you want to be if you keep going.
The great thing about getting more and more gig experience is you learn to pick your gigs. I started out and plowed through 20 years of doing just about any gig under the sun. It taught me a lot. Now I know what to ask for in pay and the setup. If it isn't going to be an interactive gig I will say no regardless of what it pays. I think today it is much harder to regularly find gigs where people come specifically to hear and interact with music. This use to be pretty normal back in my day. I estimate 70% of my gigs were good ones where as today I say no to 70%+ of them because the set up is all wrong for interactive music to happen. I am glad I had my days in the sun when I did. Now the listening/interactive gigs are getting more and more specific to the big name draws. By big name I mean much bigger than most names mentioned here. I wonder how many crap gigs the big names of the blues regularly mentioned here endure nowadays? Also they play a lot less than back 20-30 years ago. Maybe that means 80-100 gigs a year instead of 200 but 70-90 of them are good ones? I don't know. I am way out of that loop. Check out all aspects of a gig before you take it unless you are like I was- a crazy fool who needed to be onstage most every night :-) Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
I once sat in with a band for Blues in Schools (San Diego) for an after-school program. There were maybe 20 kids in the room to start, but they weren't required to stay. They all just left within like 15-minutes, leaving maybe 2-3-kids. They didn't boo, but it felt pretty bad on that stage. ---------- 12gagedan's YouTube Channel
fwiw, one of the jason ricci shows on archive.org was played to a crowd of maybe 3 people: the taper who recorded it and two people at another table. the band still brought it, hard, as they should. like a former bandmate of mine used to say, "Every show like The Garden".
This is a phenomenon to me...Maybe it's because I coincidentally find myself in polite crowds or something, but I have never seen anyone booed offstage, or hardly even booed at all. I've been to some stinker shows, too.
I don't know what's worse for the performer-having a big crowd boo you, or having no boos, just everyone hauls ass and leaves you there on stage alone. ---------- Todd L. Greene
I,ve never been boo,ed off but have played for some un-interested folks before,once booked for a wedding reception and told the bride and groom,or explained to them prior to the reception "I know you guys really like us and we do very much appreciate it but are you sure that your guests want to hear songs of heart ache and despair"as I call it and they said sure they,re going to love you guys.Well anyway it was held in a very large parcel of land somewhere in the pine barrons of N.J. and 85 % of the approx. 150 people sat off to the side about 200 ft away from the stage and were not enjoying the music at all.I kidded with the guys and requested we should do Ronnie Milsaps,Stranger In My House and maybe that will get them going,we didn,t but we did walk away with $1200. for 3 hrs of enjoyable misery.The story about SRV with HLN,s is something else,people are strange eh?I saw E.Clapton in 76 at a place in Jersey City called Roosevelt Stadium.It was right after he got out of rehab and recorded 431 Ocean Blvd.(excuse me if I have the #,s mixed up)Anyway he had his killer band at the time with Freddy King and was doing material of course from his new record and a few a-holes started calling for Cream tunes after approx. 3 or 4 songs,followed with a few bottles being tossed up at the stage.Eric said F U you bloody assholes and walked off,end of show.Its a shame as they, say a few bad apples can spoil the whole bunch.I was really looking forward to seeing that one,Oh Well.Sonny D As for your experience,don,t let it get you down and "Keep On Harpin" and playing the music that makes you feel good,no matter what others think.Maybe you may want to book a place that has a little more of an older crowd,folks who appreciate that style of music.
Take it as a challenge to play your best. I've never been boo'd exactly but I did play a gig with my band and at the end someone yelled out "play something better" I took all the money in my pocket and put it on the edge of the stage and said, if we don't play something better you can have this. We improvised what was easily the best song of the night of the night and no one touched my money. Derision, heckles, boos etc aren't nearly as hard as disinterest. I played to coffee shop recently that was so busy talking to each other, they didn't even notice when one song started and another ended. That hurt.
Stevie Ray was bood on his dvd" Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985". They were booked to play at the festival on an all accoustic day and it was not a reseptive crowd. It happend to one of the best guitar players ever, so I guess we are all fair game under certain circumstances.
Yes. Back in 1987 at the Liberty Lunch in Austin with Treat Her Right and we finished our set and the boys decided I should do my Sonny Terry solo number (Mountain Blues). I didn't get very far before this guy up front just starts booing and calling it crap white boy blues. And yelling for me to get the hell off the stage. I hate to admit it but I did cut the tune a bit short, and it took the rest of the band coming out and playing another number to shut the guy up. I should have learned my lesson because we tried opening with that song in 1988 at and AIDS benefit at the Boston Garden. That didn't go over well either, we were following this hard rock band called Farenheit, and were the last act before the band Boston. So it really was a poor a song choice. I will never forget those boos coming down from the balcony of the old Boston Garden. true story.
we were jamming open mic at a chicken wing type joint. we did champagne and reefer and it was all YAYYYYY! followed by victoria spivey dope head blues (an anti drug song) the guitarist sniffed the mic for an effect. when we finished, not a sound! the owner approached us and asked us to leave.
