Crazy concert stories

[thrashzilla]

I want to hear your craziest concert stories. Riots, venues on fire, seats being ripped out, successful heckling etc.

I'll go first.

I will not name the band because of people getting butt-hurt. At Metalllica's Saint Anger tour, Los Angeles Collisseum.
Me, my brother and his friends went. We showed up late, so we missed Mudvayne (Slipknot may have been there too) and by the time we got in Linkin Park was onstage. I hate rap so I was booing and yelling you suck their whole set. I'm sure I just looked like an asshole because everyone else seemed to love them. So I was completely unsuccessful heckling Linkin Park but then the next band comes out. I will not say who it is but they were the biggest Numetal band. People were moshing etc. I was towards the back of the floor booing and yelling you suck with people dancing around us. My brother and his friends thought it was funny so they joined in. About 2 or 3 songs go by and then other people around us started booing too. If you've ever seen the '"wave" at a baseball game, exactly like that, we started it in the back and then everyone was doing it, and the booing was moving towards the front. The mosh pit completely disappeared and now it seems that those who were moshing and jumping around in the front were all copying me. The singer could not stand it, he did a fake lunge at someone in the front like if he was going to attack him, obviously to act tough. It didn't work at all. In fact it backfired on him. The entire crowd saw the singer try to bully a fan on the jumbotron (the big screen). Someone threw a plastic cup onstage and it hit the bass player in the strings. As it bounced off the strings ice went everywhere. The singer tried to finish the song unsuccessfully and they were booed offstage by the whole Collisseum.They didn't even finish half of their set. Afterwards Metallica came out and played all the old stuff. Show is over.
On that tour the next few days the same band was booed off the stage in Chicago and in another big city. We were first in LA. That band broke up very shortly afterwards and just became uncool for the masses overnight. This was the biggest band in the world from around 99 through the early 2000s. I really feel responsible for it. I mean I despise that band but wrecking their careers was not my intent. I just was tired of horrible bills like a good headliner with atrocious trendy openers.

What's even funnier is that everyone seemed to like that band until I came along. Crowds just seem like easily led idiots. I'm sure there were a few old thrashers there who felt like I did but no way it was the majority of people there. Thousands of people all joined in on the booing.

I'm not a heckler, I only go to see bands I like but I have heckled a few times. But this was the absolute greatest success I had at it

Do any of you have any crazy concert stories?

 

[thrashzilla]

I've never been cool. I'm a dork. Do you have any funny/weird concert stories?

I actually feel bad for the singer of that band too.

I'll tell you another one where I sound like a complete loser. I broke my leg at a Ministry gig back in 04 and had to have surgery. That one wasn't so cool. I got a bunch of these.

 

[Bloopy]

It's funny you dropped enough facts for us to check which band supporting (on Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003) broke up a few years later.

I've seen plenty of weird gigs. Really bizarre acts playing to near-empty rooms. Generator gigs in pedestrian tunnels - one was a 320km drive away for me on a Wednesday morning, next to a Burger King car park and those who inadvertently showed up included a woman with a pram, a couple of kids skipping school and the cops.

Not many involved violence/injuries. A girl's tooth got chipped by a crowdsurfer's boot at Dragonforce, and a guy got knocked out moshing to the first band at a local show when he went headfirst into a wooden bench. Here's a few others:

A frontman of a local punk band punched an intellectually disabled guy who kept getting on the stage to shake his hand.

Someone heckled a horror punk band by saying "you haven't had sex since you were fourteen". The guitarist hastily put down his guitar which he'd just gotten for his birthday and landed a few punches with help from a couple of others.

A metal drummer had a practice space in a shed in an industrial area and held a gig there. Apparently after we were all gone, he was out getting food with someone when some attendees realised they'd forgotten a jersey or something and came back and bashed dents in the massive roller door just to try and get their clothing item back.

A punk/ska gig turned into a fight (apparently over which band should play second to last versus which fans had to wait). I was going to the toilet at the time and when I came out the fight was over. A guy I knew had blood on his face and a window was broken. The venue didn't employ a bouncer at the time so they'd just called the cops to shut it down. One guy tried to hide from the cops by going into the women's toilets, so they sent a female cop to go in and get him.

At the same venue I once got knocked on the face and sent flying and my nose started squirting blood like a sprinkler. I was worried about how much blood I was losing so I fought my way through the crowd to the bar first, only for the bartender to be no help whatsoever. I'd contained the blood with a handkerchief up to this point but probably should've used a beer glass. I went to the toilets and the cubicle that was free had no toilet paper so I had to wait. I was quite drunk, sore and frustrated and the end result was that I got blood all over the restroom floor while trying to clean myself up.

 

[CiG]

wow your so metal

Shouldn't you be somewhere eating cum and drinking bottled piss?

 

[Slammed]

Shouldn't you be somewhere eating cum and drinking bottled piss?

And researching about how cool and harmless drugs are!

In the same week (back in the mid 90's) that Gene Simmons lit himself up by standing too close to a pyro on stage the KISS cover band I was working with set a uni roof on fire with pryos. No one ended up in hospital at our gig, unlike Gene, but three quarters of the roof smouldered away before the fireries could get in there and stop the fire. The following week we set a warehouse wall on fire testing out the rig to make sure we didn't have a repeat performance.

 

[Bloopy]

When the Dwarves were gonna play here, local radio station 95bFM refused to put it on their gig listings or promote it. They probably wrote it off as not their thing, ie. not hipster enough for their audience. Yet on the night of the concert, right after the Dwarves finished their set, one of the presenters from 95bFM hobbled into the venue on a cast and crutches (having broken her leg) and made a beeline for Dwarves frontman Blag Dahlia, successfully offering him the chance to take a cripple back to his hotel for a fuck.

 

[Slammed]

We did a several Chrissie parties for a prominent outlaw MC twenty odd years ago. They were the kind of gigs where if the band played what the group wanted and didn't fuck around with their nose in things they shouldn't the band would be paid and paid pretty darn well. We'd arrive Friday night and whether there was one or more bands booked there was someone on stage the entire time until Sunday arvo when everyone would head back to the city. There were certain members of "gentlemen's" magazines invited, tattooists, fortune tellers, and just about any weird arse side show you can think of and providing the music played no one gave a shit.

We woke up one Sunday morning with the sun (about 4:30am), hung over, spaced out and generally fucked from who knows what substances There was also the collective thoughts that we needed to get the music started again and that we had a 6 hour drive home that afternoon. The sun might have been rising in the east but there was many a lily white moon starring up at us from the paddock as arses that spent most of their time covered in denim or leather pumped up and down at different speeds. How so many of them had enough energy to be fucking in the field after a day and a half of drinking and whatever else was beyond me but it gave us a rhythm to belt out the songs too.

 

[loves guitars]

there was the time when Molly Hatchet was playing locally and as we were walking into the club, Molly Hatchet came running out the door and took us all out. They did stop and help us up and then proceeded to take off running again. At the time it wasn;t near as funny then as it is now...

 

[Bloopy]

Sadly not one I witnessed, but a friend of mine has a 70 year old friend who's into both heavy metal and orgies/gang bangs and they attend concerts together sometimes. Apparently the guy once held out his phone to show his metal event ticket to the promoter at the door but accidentally ended up showing a photo from his other activities instead. I'm still laughing out loud a week after hearing about it. It's like if someone tried to use the LemonParty image, or @Blurry_Dreams tried to use one of his toe sucking videos to enter a concert.

The promoter is a great guy who's probably more used to dealing with weirdos - eg. apparently a certain German band he brought over once decided it was convenient to urinate on the stage of a small venue because it had no backstage area.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

apparently a certain German band he brought over once decided it was convenient to urinate on the stage of a small venue because it had no backstage area.

to me this is just as fucking funny as the first part because of a "concert-venue" that "has-no-back-stage-area"
in America, a concert-venue having a-stage-but-no-backstage-area would pretty-fucking-frequently be a place with a floor-plan where there are bathrooms that are really-really-fucking-close to the stage, this is actually specifically so that the band-members/stand-up-comedians who are going-on-stage have a toilet that's really-fucking-close to the stage, where the band members could actually piss in an actual urinal in-between-songs
in some places this specific close-to-the-stage toilet-room would actually be a kind-of-substitute for a back-stage-area, where only the people that are going-up-on-stage can use the toilets that are right-up-next-to the stage, where everyone else uses a totally different bathroom that's way-the-fuck-farther-away from the stage
so for me, hearing about a band pissing onstage is fucking hilarious

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

i have a crazy concert story

i went to see Insane Clown Posse when their Bang Pow Boom tour came to Dallas

Bang! Pow! Boom! - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

i was twacked (cuz who the fuck goes to a concert sober?? asks the alcoholic next to me)
i was wearing a super-expensive-dry-clean-only trench-coat (back when i had sugar-mamas dressing me)
they sprayed the audience with Faygo (like every-freaking-other ICP concert)
but instead of taking off the dry-clean-only coat and stuffing it in the back with all the other dry-clean-only coats
i just weaved myself around the liquid shooting out across the audience (insert ejaculation joke here)
when the concert was over, and everyone had to leave the concert venue
it was 2 AM, the air outdoors was super-freezing cold
and i was the only concert-goer that was dry
everyone else was completely drenched in every flavor of Faygo, and shivering like crazy
and i was completely dry and kinda comfortable despite the cold air because i was still wearing my still-dry puffy-fluffy dry-clean-only-winter-trench-coat

 

[Bloopy]

to me this is just as fucking funny as the first part because of a "concert-venue" that "has-no-back-stage-area"
in America, a concert-venue having a-stage-but-no-backstage-area would pretty-fucking-frequently be a place with a floor-plan where there are bathrooms that are really-really-fucking-close to the stage, this is actually specifically so that the band-members/stand-up-comedians who are going-on-stage have a toilet that's really-fucking-close to the stage, where the band members could actually piss in an actual urinal in-between-songs
in some places this specific close-to-the-stage toilet-room would actually be a kind-of-substitute for a back-stage-area, where only the people that are going-up-on-stage can use the toilets that are right-up-next-to the stage, where everyone else uses a totally different bathroom that's way-the-fuck-farther-away from the stage
so for me, hearing about a band pissing onstage is fucking hilarious

New Zealand is just smaller. Many bands that play to 1000 people in North America would play to more like 150 people here, so most of our venues fit that size of show. Some of the smallest venues only have one set of toilets for the public and I'm guessing in some cases just 1 staff toilet that the bands get to share. Sometimes there's a room for the bands but it's somewhere through a doorway at the opposite side of the room to the stage, so not actually 'backstage'. The buildings can be like mazes. One time while a friend's band was playing Whammy Bar, some Asian people just popped out of the side door and onto the stage, like they'd gotten lost in the building (which hosts multiple venues) and accidentally ended up in a band area.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

Many bands that play to 1000 people in North America would play to more like 150 people here,.

i was describing the venues here where the audience is only 150 people
you ever hear the phrase "Texas is bigger than France"?? America is so huge that here we have what's called "local bands" where they'll be onstage every saturday of the whole fucking year, but they'll live in Metroplex areas (multiple cities with no unincorporated space in between them) where they'll never play a gig where they can't drive back and go to sleep in their own fucking houses the same night (or maybe sometimes the next night)
to give a visual of what i'm describing here

here's a map of the place the local people call "the metroplex"

Dallas-Fort-Worth-Metroplex · Texas, USA

Texas, USA

www.google.com

in this map
the white space in the middle is cities with no unincorperated space in between
where you're walking around in a city and you walk across the busy street and you're in a different city with really nothing but a sign showing where one city changes into the next one

in a metroplex place like this (in USA)
a venue-with-no-back-stage would have the back-edge of the stage right-up against the actual outer wall of the venue with a small "stage-performers-only" bathroom that's really actually right-up-against-the-edge of the stage, with the audience being only 150 people, where the person on-stage would have to walk to the other side of the audience-area to get to the bathrooms that the audience uses, so having seen a huge amount of venues built like this, the idea of band members pissing on the stage seems more like part of a Gwar show, than the band members being too impatient to walk all the way to a toilet to piss

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

New Zealand is just smaller. Many bands that play to 1000 people in North America would play to more like 150 people here, so most of our venues fit that size of show. Some of the smallest venues only have one set of toilets for the public and I'm guessing in some cases just 1 staff toilet that the bands get to share. Sometimes there's a room for the bands but it's somewhere through a doorway at the opposite side of the room to the stage, so not actually 'backstage'. The buildings can be like mazes. One time while a friend's band was playing Whammy Bar, some Asian people just popped out of the side door and onto the stage, like they'd gotten lost in the building (which hosts multiple venues) and accidentally ended up in a band area.

also
the difference might just be plumbing codes and fire-safety codes
a venue in america has to have a certain number of toilets based on the amount of people in the audience, the number of staff members, the square footage of audience-area floor-space, and the total number of square-feet of floor-space for the entire building
also the "stage-performers-only-toilets" thing is also part of the plumbing-code for building a venue-with-a-stage,
where a venue with a huge back-stage-area would have bathrooms back there, where the venue makes absolutely sure those backstage toilets are super-clean and working perfect, (even when the audience bathrooms are molded and broken) to make sure they don't piss off the big-name musicians who are doing a national tour