Perry Farrell

Stranger Than Fiction Friday: Worst Gigs Ever

Thirteen years spent as a music journalist and you’ve probably heard it all. But it took Jon Niccum to compile stories about artists’ worst gigs and put it online at worstgig.com. Niccum breaks down the stories into eight categories: Dangerous Malfunctions, Wrong Venue, Insane Fans, Ill Communication, Violence, Mother Nature’s Wrath, Oops!, and It’s All Good. Some of the highlights include Kansas describing playing a nudist colony. Perry Farrell talks about faking a heart attack to get out of a gig, Laurie Anderson relates the dangers of performing while using the Nicoderm patch, while George Winston finds out what the altitude in Denver can do to a normally spot-on brain. Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny imparts what it was like to play the largest soccer stadium in Sicily to a quarter-full crowd, and while heavy metal and alcohol may be tolerated in Utah, Drowning Pool cautions against mentioning Satan on a Sunday night. Rush tells about getting booed off the stage, while John Scofield relates getting upstaged and ejected by an audience member. But that’s probably not as bad as Joe Satriani being rushed off the stage in Malaysia by machine gun-toting military forces. Tool talks about what it feels like to have your music incorrectly and violently interpreted. Find out what it takes to get Juliana Hatfield to pour a beer over someone’s head or for Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano to put her cat in the fridge. Good stuff!! -Court