The Worst Gig

by Jon Niccum

  It was our first time to Poland. We had played through Scandinavia. We did a show in Sweden. The next day we took a ferryboat to the north of Poland to a town called Pila. It was a really good gig. People were dancing together. It was sort of like playing in a discotheque. There was a nice energy.

  The next night we played a university in Warsaw. Very nice people were putting the show on. They were college kids. We got there and it was a beautiful room, filled with wood—which is always a very positive thing for sound in our book. We soundchecked. We were in good spirits. They had prepared a dinner for us down at a dorm house about two blocks away on the campus. We had a rented van from Holland with us, and we took that down and parked it behind the building. We had all our worldly possessions in the van, so we were very keen to keep our eye on it at all times. In Poland and other Eastern European countries, there had been a lot of reports of van theft, so we were nervous about it.

  We met a bunch of university students. Some of them spoke English, which was great because we spoke no Polish. We were grateful for their ability to communicate with us. They made dinner for us. Everything was nice. At some point I thought, “I’m going to have a nap.” Before showtime I like to stretch out for ten minutes.

  Later, I heard talking outside the room, and one of the band members came in and said, “The promoters just came down and said we’ve got a problem with some skinheads. You guys stay here. Don’t come to the venue until we come get you.”

  We decided to stay there. It was not that unusual, so I went back to my nap. Skinheads were sort of the bane of our existence in the late 80s and early 90s. They caused a lot of problems in all countries. I was a little surprised to hear about Polish skinheads. This was shortly after [Poland] had left the Soviet bloc. But when you think about it, it makes sense. Skinheads tended to be very right-wing people, and that was a very hard push to the right when the socialist governments started to retreat.

  About five minutes later there was even more of a stir. Someone came in and said, “They want us at the venue right now. Get up. We need to get up there!”

  I got up and started getting our stuff together, and suddenly I heard the roar of a crowd coming down the street—the sound of yelling and windows breaking. Basically, the students had gotten into a fight with the skinheads because the students said, “You can’t come to the gig.” Then the skinheads attacked. But, really, skinheads were only there to attack anyway. There were apparently about a hundred of them that night.

  This was still in the late afternoon before the doors to the venue had opened. The students came running at us, chased by this army of skinheads. They ran into the house, and then it was just a full-on assault against the house. My brother Alec was on the front porch when he saw the skinheads come running up. One of the skinheads jumped up on a porch railing and kicked my brother in the face and almost put his head through a window.

  At this point all the Polish students were hysterically running around. No one had time to speak English with us, so we couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. I understand it now. But at the time all I knew was that the windows were breaking and there was an army of skinheads out front attacking the building. The students bolted all the doors and jammed them up with chairs, and skinheads were trying to kick their way inside. My thinking was, “We need to get out of here, and we need to get the van out of here.”

  If the van was destroyed, we were ruined. Our tours generally were many, many shows in row and that meant a lot of driving. If you were to miss one show, it would really screw you up, because you were suddenly twelve to fifteen hours away from somewhere instead of eight hours away.

  And we were in Poland. Who knew if the van could even be fixed? Also, there would be nothing to fix if the van was burned to the ground.

  We all got together and crawled out a window. Everybody got in the van but me. We could hear the fighting going on out front, and we didn’t want to risk going back out in the street. Behind these dorms there were grassy lawns, so the van drove with its lights off through the lawns behind the houses and toward the venue. I would run up to the edge of the buildings and look around the gaps, then wave the van through.

  Then we got up to the venue, where we had all the gear, so we weren’t going to just leave it. A few of us got out and said to the van, “Just go.” So they headed to central Warsaw and just drove around. At this point there were busloads of military police with white batons and gloves and helmets. The fighting was down the street at this point, but it was making its way back. We went into the venue, and I remember there were people on the floor with their teeth knocked out. There were all these terribly injured people lying all around. It looked like a casualty ward.

  The police finally got everybody settled down and the fighting stopped. Then there was the discussion like, “Is this gig going to happen?” Our position was, “We came to play music. We’re not interested in skinheads deciding that we can’t, but ultimately it’s your venue and your situation.”

  They wanted to do the gig.

  The show started, and there was a handful of skinhead kids who were still trying to come into the gig. They weren’t the ones in the middle of the fray, but they were connected, and the promoters wouldn’t let them in. Finally the promoters said, “If you come in and start any trouble, then we’ll have you arrested. But to make sure you don’t, you have to leave your ID papers with us.”

  In Poland you had to always carry ID. So the skinheads agreed.

  The show itself was pretty great. There was a lot of anger because people were very frustrated about the situation. A lot of times people got on the mic and would yell stuff. But I felt like, “That’s the point of music. That’s why we’re here. We’re not going to let violence derail that.”

  Unbeknownst to all of us, the promoters were busily photocopying all the IDs while the show was on. They used those photocopies to put together a class-action lawsuit and took all those kids to court.

  It was an epic gig, I have to say. Coming up with punk rock, through the American punk hardcore scene, then with Fugazi, dealing with the thug repercussions of that explosive moment, I’ve seen an awful lot of fighting, really insane stuff. But I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything on that scale…

  I think it was even more underscored by the fact we weren’t able to communicate. My strongest power is my ability to communicate. I’ve waded into so many crazy situations just talking to people. I don’t have any problem with that. I have walked twelve to fifteen white-power skinheads out of a venue and given them all their money back, discussing and arguing with them all the way. But I can’t discuss or argue with people whose language I don’t speak and whose grievance I don’t understand or know about.

  I was just taking a nap.

  Chapter

  -8-

  It’s All Good

  Even when things fall apart, performers can find something positive in the experience.

  Tori Amos

  Poised somewhere between vulnerable debutante and femme fatale, Tori Amos is an odd mosaic. Her records are entangled, diverse offerings of highly skilled piano and studio wizardry that have managed to deposit some of the most unusual material (“God,” “Cornflake Girl”) ever on commercial radio. Her concerts often just feature Amos solo, perched as a terra-cotta-haired torch singer whose intellect is as promising as her libido. Amos has generated a devout fan base, fueled in part by her mesmerizing, intimate live shows.

  • • •

  “It was during the taping of my MTV Unplugged performance [in 1996]…What happened was I just couldn’t harness the energy. And I got really mad at myself because I couldn’t harness it. And I do this every night and I can usually harness something, and I couldn’t understand why. What was wrong? What was I missing here? So I walked off [crying].

  “It was the best thing I could have done because what I did was I acknowledged what the truth was—and the
truth was I wasn’t harnessing it; for whatever reason it wasn’t happening. Because I acknowledged it, it gave me power. It gave me my strength back again. It’s funny that in that moment of ‘this is a mess,’ you begin to kind of find the pearls.

  “So when I walked offstage I went down to the dressing room and just was pacing.

  “My tour manager said, ‘So I guess that’s it then. Should we order some food? Should we book a restaurant?’

  “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  “He said, ‘That’s it then. You’ve obviously finished for the night.’

  “I said, ‘Not necessarily. I’m just pacing right now.’

  “He said, ‘OK. I’ll pace with you.’

  “We started pacing beneath the MTV thing.

  “Then my soundman came in and said, ‘What’s going on? It sounds fucking great out there…I’m telling you, it sounds better than most of your shows.’

  “Then my [lighting director] came down and said, ‘Something just doesn’t feel right. I can’t put my finger on it.’

  “Then my tour manager looked at my LD and they looked back at each other. And they go, ‘Hang on a minute. Give us five seconds.’

  “They walked outside the room and came back in smiling and said, ‘The lights are up. We’re going to bring the lights down.’

  “For seven hundred shows over the five years [prior to that], I’d played with the lights down. So all the lights were up to catch the audience, and I felt like somebody was watching me take a shower. So they dimmed the lights, and I felt better. By that point because I’d made the choice to stop it and make some changes, I felt like I began again. And I turned the whole show around.”

  —Tori Amos

  Incubus

  Contrived in 1991 while merely scruffy high school students, Incubus has gone from a commonplace funk-metal outfit to one of the more ambitious rock acts to achieve radio dominance. With multi-Platinum albums to its credit that feature perennial singles such as “Nice to Know You,” “Wish You Were Here” and “Drive,” the Los Angeles five-piece (powered by founding singer Brandon Boyd, guitarist Mike Einziger and drummer José Pasillas) incorporates heavy guitar riffs and turntable club sounds when putting a new spin on a weathered style.

  • • •

  “The worst show that we’ve ever played was probably in a snowboard park on a piece of plywood. That was probably the worst show we’ve ever played, and we’ve played a few really bad ones…[That was] in 1993…and nobody cared that we were there. We were playing on a piece of plywood with no PA. Our singer Brandon [Boyd] had to sing out of a bass amp. It was funny. We were told there was going to be a stage and a PA and we were going to get paid and all this stuff. We didn’t get paid, but we got free burritos and we thought that was cool.”

  —Mike Einziger, Incubus

  The Wallflowers

  The Wallflowers’ frontman Jakob Dylan is, of course, the son of legendary troubadour Bob Dylan. Since 1992, the younger Dylan has issued nearly as many albums of fresh material as his father, occasionally outselling the elder songwriter. (The Wallflowers’ 1996 effort Bringing Down the Horse moved four million copies.) Dylan’s Los Angeles quartet is known for a radio-friendly blend of alternative roots rock, characterized by the Grammy-winning single “One Headlight.”

  • • •

  “It takes all kinds as they say. The shows where there isn’t anybody there, it just doesn’t get worse than that. So as long as people are there, any type of fiasco that goes wrong, it’s all part of it. I’ve played at every type of show possible. I’ve played with some horrible people, like as an opener. When we were younger you got times when you look back and wish you weren’t in the place that you were. I did fall on my back in Osaka, Japan, once. Thankfully, it was the end of the show and I just happened to fall back and step over a monitor. It was a great finale, and thankfully I couldn’t read the papers to read about it so I wasn’t embarrassed.”

  —Jakob Dylan, The Wallflowers

  That 1 Guy

  Credit: Olivier Oswald

  Despite the stage name That 1 Guy, Mike Silverman is proud that he utilizes as much gear onstage as an entire band. Silverman is best known for performing on a gigantic steel instrument of his own design that he affectionately calls the magic pipe, which is shaped like a harp that Dr. Seuss might envision. Each pipe has its own string: One is pitched high, the other low, and both are played in a percussive manner—oh, and smoke billows out the top. A classically trained upright bass player, Silverman paid his dues in the California jazz scene before reinventing himself as That 1 Guy. He has since expanded his skills to include bizarre instruments known as the magic boot and the magic saw. In 2008, he released a collaborative CD under the name The Frankenstein Brothers with avant-garde guitarist Buckethead.

  • • •

  “I played at this country-western bar for this country-western radio station in Florida. The guy had seen me at another gig and thought I’d be great for this thing. It was a welcome-home party for this big country star who was going to be the new morning DJ. It was a party for all the listeners, so it was packed with country-music fans. And I’ve got nothing against country music. I just showed up and thought, ‘I’m so out of my element here.’ Not a single person had any idea who I was. I didn’t think anybody knew what to expect. I got up there to play, and it was the first time I was really scared. They were all staring at me like, ‘What the hell is this guy doing? Who is this dude? Where is he from? He ain’t from around here, that’s for sure.’ It was a little, weird town, too—a funny little city that was not even on the map. It was packed and I was scared to death. But by the end, they were really, really friendly. It was a great lesson for me. It made me realize that people just want to check out and see good music. And if you can play all right and kind of get to them, then they’re gonna dig it. It doesn’t really matter geographically. If you’re playing from your heart, it’s gonna reach folks.”

  —Mike Silverman, That 1 Guy

  Aimee Mann

  Singer-songwriter Aimee Mann first had to fight to free herself from the glossy image of her post-new-wave band ’Til Tuesday, which won MTV’s Best New Artist Award in 1985 on the strength of its hit “Voices Carry.” Then she was tied up in court for years by a bankrupt record label that prevented her from releasing solo records. But the musician persevered, crafting a string of records that earned her both Grammy and Oscar nominations along the way, most notably for her work on the Paul Thomas Anderson epic Magnolia.

  • • •

  “I remember playing a show at the Troubadour [in Los Angeles], where there was something wrong with the monitors and I kept hearing a really loud, weird rumbling noise onstage. I felt like I was singing so poorly that I offered to reimburse the audience. It was kind of a fun show, and people in the audience were like, ‘No. It was a great show.’ But the onstage sound was so weird. Nobody took me up on the offer…I almost like when stuff goes bad because it gives you something to work with. It may give you the opportunity for comedy or to just goof around—to do something that’s not just playing a set. I can’t really think of a time where I was totally miserable. I’ve played shows where I was sick. But audiences are just very supportive if you come out and try your best.”

  —Aimee Mann

  The Presidents of the United States of America

  While the 1990s were politically synonymous with Bill Clinton, the decade’s music scene was equally receptive to The Presidents of the United States of America. The multi-Platinum band racked up quirky rock hits such as “Lump,” “Peaches” and “Kitty,” and it provided the version of “Cleveland Rocks” that served as the theme song to TV’s The Drew Carey Show. The Seattle trio (bassist-vocalist Chris Ballew, drummer Jason Finn and newish guitarist Andrew McKeag) is equally remembered for its witty, ninja-filled videos that ruled MTV.

  • • •

  “Ther
e was a show at a hockey rink in Medford, Oregon, where we got there and the guys putting on the show were like out of a movie. They were just trying to get in and make a quick buck in the concert promotions business. They didn’t have any resources or anything. They were literally there to grab the money and run away—which they did. So we were left with this dark, leaky skate rink with a really angry manager and hundreds of kids who had just been ripped off. So we basically played a benefit that night. That was a Spinal Tap moment. But as far as bad shows musically, it doesn’t happen. We’re too good for that. When things go wrong, like equipment or tuning, that makes the show stronger. We excel at going off-map, off-script. It’s easy with a three-piece band and to have a guy like Chris [Ballew] in front who’s brilliant when he just starts winging it. That’s why there is never a dull moment at a Presidents’ show.”

  —Jason Finn, The Presidents of the United States of America

  Chely Wright

  Credit: Laura Crosta

  Kansas native Chely Wright first earned her place in Nashville’s elite after being named Best New Female Vocalist in 1994 by the Academy of Country Music. She followed up on her early promise in 1999 with the number-one country hit “Single White Female.” In 2001, she even landed on People magazine’s list “50 Most Beautiful People.” But she made national headlines recently when she came out as a lesbian—a declaration that caused major ripples within the country-music industry and the world of pop culture. The announcement coincided with the release of a 2011 memoir titled Like Me.

  • • •

  “Before I had a record deal, when I had a band called County Line when I still lived in Wellsville [Kansas], I played a show in Greeley, Kansas. The total number of people who showed up was zero. Nobody. It was at a venue with a restaurant on one side and a dance hall on the other. No one showed up, so we talked the owner into opening the door and letting people come in for free. It ended up being amazing. People stayed all night and drank a lot. What they sold in beer alone ended up paying for what we cost. But the first couple of sets were pretty miserable. So that was a bad beginning and a good end. But I’ve got this optimistic thing in me where I try to block out the bad.”