Every muso knows that gigs can be a slog. Sure, there’s nothing quite like playing to a sold-out hometown crowd, but for every perfect, heart-pumping set there’s a few that we’d rather forget.
Despite their glorious rock ‘n’ roll veneer, even RACKETT have played their share of tough gigs. Whether it was the crowd, the venue or the vibe of the room, sometimes things just conspire against you. All you can do then is make it your own, something RACKETT could do with their eyes closed.
Ahead of their VB Hard Yards show with Cosmic Psychos, Shearin’ and Mini Skirt, we caught up with vocalist and guitarist Rebecca Callander to find out exactly what a hard gig was, RACKETT style. Take it away, Bec.
From shattered glass to broken costumes, RACKETT have seen their fair share of tough gigs. But what makes the list of their hardest ever?
Glass Ass
On our last tour we played at Penny Black in Melbourne. Somehow some glass broke onstage, right under Ally (bass), as we struck the first chord (it was mysterious as none us brought glass on stage, we didn’t see anyone throw it, it just appeared).
Ally had to play the whole show in a pool of broken glass and then she fell over mid song and her bass strap came off. She kept playing on the floor in the glass as I sang through Paranoid by Black Sabbath with a mic in one hand, whilst putting her bass strap back on and lifting her up with the other. She didn’t get cut once, the crowd went crazy!
G rated RACKETT
We were playing a family friendly festival at lunchtime in Melbourne, with mostly kids in the audience. As usual, we were throwing our hips around, being bad mannered and we caught one lady covering her kid’s eyes and ears.
As the set progressed I noticed the kids were loving it but some parents were taking their kids away in disgust. I had to modify the rest of set, so by the time we got Ready or Not I was singing, “Give me some that fairy floss”.
Left in the Dark
Another time we opened for The Darkness on a national tour and the crowd were so die hard for The Darkness it took three shows to get one smile from a fan that followed the entire tour. I have one song that I hold hands with the audience and for the first two shows she refused me, by the last show she let me kiss her.
This was the fan:
Bye Bye Barbie
That time we played at Electric Lady, first up on the bill and I shaved my head onstage in front of about 30ppl. I didn’t tell anyone, even the band didn’t know, so I’d say there was a lot of squirming from them and the crowd, still they played a very good show.
Merry Cringemas
One year we were hired to put on a Christmas special. We turned it into Cringemas, we dressed up as elves and played the recorder and gave out rolls of toilet paper to the audience from a Santa sack onstage.
The venue managers wanted to cut the show as the crowd turned it into a toilet paper festival and the whole venue got covered in toilet paper. We had to stay back till the venue closed and scrub the floors and walls.
Stonecold
We were touring with Stonefield. We were playing at this bistro style venue in regional Victoria. The place was dead, but we had this massive dance floor to ourselves and a stage we could easily jump off so we just all got on the dance floor and played the set doing the limbo and conga while a few confused people watched.
Festival of the Bum
We were playing Festival of The Sun and decided to make space suits out of car visers. We had hot glue gunned these bob tubes and skirts together out of reflector material and spray painted our shoes silver.
We didn’t test drive the suits and at different points in the show the suits started to fall apart. The stage crew kept jumping up on stage with tape to try and put our space suits back together as some of us ended up in just our underwear.
Snubbed for a snag
We played this lunchtime show for the students at Melbourne University. We started to play and all these students turned up to fill this massive lunchhall and we thought people had come out to see our show.
Then we saw them all form in a massive lineup that doubled back on itself in front of the stage for a ‘free sausage’.
Grouplove
Trying to fit eight people on stage and not get knocked at The Brighton Up Bar, Sydney, when we had guest horns play for our Ready or Not single launch.
The VB Hard Yards finals will be taking place on Wednesday November 22 at The Landsdowne Hotel in Sydney. We’re giving away a few double passes – jump over here to enter.
