Once one starts doing shows, there are good shows and bad shows. I could almost write a blog about bad shows or something (approximately a third of my blogs about bad or weird shows, that’s me being a real live wire). For every time I’ve showed up to a show and had no microphone, a horrible drunk crowd of hecklers or an owner who knew less about funny than Josef Stalin, it still usually beats booking shows that go off the rails. You have no one to blame but the big dummy in the mirror. Here’s the worst of the issues I’ve ran into.
I had a comic promise me a booked gig, so I did the ol’ backscratch and booked him. He was hungover at 5 pm on a Sunday when I picked him up and drove to Zanesville. He was so hungover that he did 5 minutes instead of 20 and I was so dumb when I started, I paid him the full amount. He then lost to me in the finals of a comedy contest, tried to fight the staff at the Funny Bone and quit comedy. I never got my show from him.
I had a comic and heckler go at it, but I never cleared with the owner whether I could toss the guy. Add to it, he was a roid freak and I probably couldn’t have removed him from the bar with a baseball bat and I had to watch seven minutes of two guys calling each other losers while 20% of crowd left the room. “You’re a loser.” “No, you are!” “You suck!” “No, you do!” Repeat for seven minutes while I lighted the comic and told meathead to zip it while waiting to be punched.
I had a show cancel on me…without telling me. My sound guy went to set up and the place was closed. If he hadn’t taken the time to set up early, I would have had over 100 people show up and it would’ve been my fault, even though they forgot to do a small thing, like renew their liquor license.
I ran an open mic for two years and they forgot to set the sound equipment up about 20 times. Keep in mind I have the audio equipment knowledge of your Grandma. “Did you plug it in? Yes? Well, show’s cancelled, I got nothing.”
Amazingly, no comic ever had to back out without a good reason on me, but I did have a guy beg me to be on my show for months. The day before, I asked why he wasn’t helping promote the show, since his pay was determined by the guests he brought. He said he was busy, but would do it. The ironic thing? The day before I messaged him, he put two posts up in one day promoting an open mic he was going to. An unpaid open mic, which apparently, he ended up no showing to that show after asking someone to sign him up. Promote longer set where I can get paid and booker openly asked me to? Nah. Promote an open mic that I’m not even on and wasn’t asked to help hype? ON IT BRUH.