In 1983, our band played at Chino DES Hall, it was a real fiasco.(Strangely enough, I’ve seen this place before in a dream, even though I’ve never been here before).  This gig was supposed to be advertised on the radio, but luckily it wasn’t; only a few of the band’s friends showed up to this large hall that could have easily held hundreds of people.  The house P.A. was a joke, so we used the band P.A. which was good for practicing in the garage, but not a big place like this.  We subsequently blew the horns out in the speakers, so the sound went bad.  The club owner was mad more people didn’t show up even though it was his own fault.  He offered us the promised $100 on the condition that we never play there again, or we could play for free and have the honor of “playing there again later for pay.”  I wanted to take the money and run but everyone else wanted a chance to play there again.  Of course, we never were invited to play there again.

There was this one place/pub our band was playing at once.

We accepted a low fee since the place had its own PA and it was very central with the potential of having lots of people.

Coming over I soon realized that the so called PA was a joke and that both speakers were making some crackeling noice. One of our guys had to take the van and head over to our place and collect our own PA system. That took over 2 hours!

During the two days we performed I counted at most 12 guests at any given time. At one time we performed for only two guests and when they went to the bathroom we didn't know if we should stop playing until they came out or just continue.

Some time during the show I was singing "When September Ends" and in the middle of the song got caught in an laughing attack that lasted about 10 minutes. I had to run of the stage and have the band do some backup songs while I was recovering.

During that show I stepped on the lead guitarists pedals (very small stage!!!) and ripped the cords and altered his settings during a song. After some quick rescue attempt we started the same song and suddenly the bass didn't sound anymore. When I stepped on the guitarists stuff it seems that I also stepped on the bass players cord and ripped the jack on the bass. It took 15 minutes to fix...

When it was time to pack our stuff into the van we got a ticket by the police since they didn't approve where we parked the car outside an loading entrance!

Oh, and we had to pay the full menu price for the food and beer and no compenstation for us having to get our own PA.

Needless to say - We never came back! Since then we ALWAYS bring our own PA, even if the owner insist they have their own PA, and we always use that since we know that it will sound great compared to so-called inhouse-PA systems.

Another time when we encountered some hickup was when we played at some private birthday party.

We were supposed to play for 100+ guests. For some reason the guests went home early due to miscommunication - 50% of the guests didn't even know there was a dinner and went home early!

When it was time to play there were only 7 guests left but we preformed anyway, being the professionals we are. I can tell it's very good practice to play for a very small crowd since it's very difficult to do...