Tag: Joseph Higgins

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “(Won’t Letcha) Take It From Me” by G-WIZ & The Soular System

G-WIZ (aka Gene Williams) looks smooth, suave, and cut in his latest music video. But that’s not how he was feeling when he wrote the song. “‘(Won’t Letcha) Take It From Me’ was written from the standpoint of going through my own personal Hell,” he says. The song is a reminder to himself about “… finding peace in the chaos, and guarding my peace of mind vigilantly. ”

Philip Safarik of Aktiv Films shot the video at Carolina Watershed, with the assistance of Darius “Phatmak” Clayton, and shares the director credit with Williams. The idea for the video was just to show some of the beauty of the city of Memphis, and introduce the world to us and our music,” says G-WIZ. “Shout out to my amazing band, Deneka Lewis, Joseph Higgins, Jimmie Allen, Brennan Austin, and David Higgins, for helping me bring this music to fruition!”

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Music Music Features

Punky Reggae Party

Photo: Antonio Hobson

You might not expect to hear a host of original tunes at a tribute show, but David Higgins feels it’s a necessary part of the upcoming Railgarten event, Forever Loving Marley, on Saturday, February 4th.

“We incorporate our originals within the traditional Bob Marley songs. All the artists are going to be doing that at the show,” says Higgins, the guitarist for headliner Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (CCDE). Not only does he see it as being in the spirit of Marley’s creativity, he’s itching to perform the songs of the reggae band live again after several years of upheaval.

For both David and his brother Joseph, who plays keyboards in the group, the worst upheaval imaginable was losing their brother Omar in the spring of 2019, age 37, after he suffered a stroke and a staph infection. Throw in the pandemic, and it’s a miracle that CCDE made any music at all in recent years, especially given that Omar was the founder and driving force of the band. And yet they did, releasing the excellent Crew Vibez album, which marked a shift in their sound, mixing traditional reggae with hip-hop and dancehall. Still, there have been precious few live shows since Omar’s death.

Joseph and David Higgins of Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (Photo: Antonio Hobson)

“We’re gonna put our best foot forward with this music,” says Joseph. “It’s almost like we’re rebranding everything. Without Omar, we’ve had to start from scratch with a lot of stuff. This is the first official show of ours this year. What better way to kick off 2023 than with some positive, good vibes?”

And, as noted, original music. If any band has earned the right to put their own songs side by side with those of Marley, it’s CCDE. “I won’t be bought, I won’t be sold/We will decide how our story’s told,” they sing on “Dem A Callin’ (Flodgin),” and the band is deciding how their new tale will be told even now. Part of that means recapturing their initial approach to reggae.

“Crew Vibez was something nobody had ever heard from us, really,” says David. “And they loved it. We got invited to Afro Punk [Festival] and other places. So we want to continue that sound, but we’ve got to put the live instrumentation in it, too. Our sound is not going to be so digital.”

But the Higgins brothers stress that the Marley tribute is about more than CCDE; several other artists will be performing, including cameos from Kween Jasira and dancehall artist I-Sypha during CCDE’s set. And JParris from the Virgin Islands will bring his band, Carib Vibes, for some authentic Caribbean spirit. But, as David notes, the event will already have plenty of that. “When we do these Marley tributes, it doesn’t even feel like we’re in the Railgarten because we try to put that whole island aesthetic into the look, the sound, everything. From lights to palm trees and tapestries.”

Beyond that, there will be plenty of other local groups mixing Marley with their magic, including Yubu & the Ancient Youth, Black Cream, and Moses Crouch.

Meanwhile, David Higgins is deeply involved in Omar’s other musical legacy, the celebrated hardcore group known as Negro Terror. Given that their popularity once outstripped that of CCDE, carrying the torch of Negro Terror forward has been the greater burden for David, who always played guitar in the group, but now carries the extra duties of front man. But he wants people to know that Negro Terror will live on.

“People want product, product, product, and I felt like I left the fans in the dark,” David says of the time after his brother’s death. “I couldn’t respond to them because we were going through so much in the pandemic, and health-wise personally, I was going through a lot. But I never wanted to stop the band. I want all his projects to continue, especially CCDE and Negro Terror. I want them to keep growing, and I’m in the process of starting Negro Terror up again. I want to tell the fans, ‘Hey, it’s going on, guys! Calm down!’ Not only are you going to get the unreleased material; you’re going to get two new records that we’ve already started working on. With y’all’s support, we can get together and make some new memories, and keep the legacy going in a whole other way. That’s the goal, that’s the dream.”

Forever Loving Marley is at Railgarten, February 4th, 6 p.m., $20.

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Music Music Features

New Vibes, New Album for Chinese Connection Dub Embassy

The cover of Crew Vibez, the fresh album that Chinese Connection Dub Embassy drops this Friday, has a portrait of brothers Joseph and David Higgins in shades of red, gold, and green — rather appropriate, given that they are Memphis’ premiere purveyors of reggae. But among the faint letters in the background, nestled among words like “irie” and “truth,” is the name Omar. As their fans know, that’s their eldest brother, who founded the band with them (along with the hardcore punk band Negro Terror) and passed away unexpectedly in April of last year.

The fact that the brothers carried on with the project is a testament to the entire family’s love of music. “My dad was a drummer; my mother was a saxophone player,” David tells me. “And our mother was West Indian as well. We came from New York to Mississippi and Memphis. We were more about the Jamaican reggae and skinhead culture. Working class, for the people, by the people.” And some tracks on the new album reflect this directly, such as politically charged songs like “Dem A Callin’ (Flodgin’)” and “Warzone.”

Chinese Connection Dub Embassy

But this is an album full of surprises, and the biggest may be the group’s embrace of other styles beyond the classic reggae they’ve purveyed in the past. As Joseph says, “It’s a compilation of different kinds of reggae, from dancehall to straight-up roots. Some feel-good tunes. We’re even tapping into a little bit of Memphis hip-hop with some of our friends. We still pay respect to reggae as a whole, but we wanna give a Memphis vibe to it. I think this project will really open peoples’ minds.”

And while the group typically opens minds with their unique brand of consciousness-raising roots music a la Peter Tosh, this new work aims to open hearts as well. Many of the tracks, from lead single “Honey” to “Melanin Queen” or “So Grateful,” explore a sound that combines classic “lover’s rock” with drum-machine-heavy dancehall beats.

As executive producer Ryan Peel notes, the two surviving brothers are “reinventing Chinese Connection Dub Embassy. Joseph and Dave know what I do. I’m a pop producer more than anything. Usually that lands in the realm of rap and R&B. They wanted a newer element in the sound, but also someone who understood the history and the different rhythmic choices for each of those sub-genres. So that’s how we moved into it being dancehall heavy.”

Peel has known the Higgins brothers for years, and has often drummed for them in the classic roots reggae style they perfected. But this time around, he was programming beats, not playing them. “I wanted it to sound like a hip-hop record, but with the music itself being dancehall and reggae,” he says. Indeed, the album features several local rappers and R&B singers as guests. “Tia ‘Songbird’ Henderson is on one track. ‘Warzone’ has the rappers SvmDvde and Hannya Chao$, who’s really guttural and primal. And Harley Quinn, R.I.C.O. Tha Akronym, Webbstar, and Sebastian Carson are also featured.”

While David has always been the guitarist of the group, this album doesn’t feature much of that. “One song, ‘Never Gonna Break Your Heart,’ starts out with flamenco guitar,” says Peel. “And he smashed it in one take! But I don’t think David was necessarily thinking of himself as a guitarist on this record. I think he was thinking, ‘I’m a lead vocalist now.’ I was like, ‘Damn, dude! Where have you been? You should have been out here! Omar should have let you sing more!'”

For most of the songs, Peel says, “Joseph would write the chords and a basic drum part, then I’d soup it up.” Once the beats were sequenced, Joseph, a keyboardist, would flesh out the arrangements, starting with the bass. “He’s the sub-bass king! He killed it. It’s almost like Joseph said, ‘All right, what would Omar do? Let me pull out my synth-bass version of Omar on this.’ As a drummer who played with Omar for years, I feel that in my heart. It feels right. For people who knew CCDE with Omar, this isn’t going to be too alien to them.”

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Cover Feature News

Rocking the Boat: Memphis Musicians Speak Truth to Power

CREDIT: Joseph Higgins

A few weeks ago, after Memphis protesters had already been joining in the national calls for police reform and accountability, standing firm in the plaza outside of City Hall, organizers felt something extra was in order to bolster morale and keep the demonstrators motivated. That’s when Joseph Higgins’ phone rang.

“Man, it was a beautiful experience,” Higgins tells me. “Some friends of ours hit us up and said, ‘We’re doing something at City Hall and we really need some music. We asked all these different bands and we haven’t heard back from ’em.’ This was Sunday night [June 21st]. And some bands told them, ‘Man, I don’t want to mess up my look in the scene or have clubs treat us different because we’re standing up for what’s right.’ I thought, ‘Wow, that’s crazy to hear about Memphis musicians not wanting to go into the trenches.’ We were like, ‘Man, this is right up our alley.’”
David Vaughn Mason

Chinese Connection Dub Embassy protest

That would be an understatement. Joseph is one of three brothers who have wed a passion for music and a passion for justice in equal measure. Indeed, the Higgins family has been pivotal in distilling political outrage and righteousness into song. It’s a rare talent, but when done right, it’s galvanizing.

The band in question was the Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (CCDE), one of the few reggae bands in the region, and one of the most politically outspoken. “We’re all about truth and rights,” says Higgins, “and spreading the word of injustice, and trying to get some kind of solace at the end of the day for all the stuff that’s going on in the world right now — from COVID-19 to police brutality to No. 45 acting crazy.”

And it was clear that the band raised everyone’s spirits at City Hall. “I felt all the energy from the city. They were so supportive. The whole essence of ‘we’re all in this together’ really stood out. We had a little kid that jumped up in the middle of our set, couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5 years old.”

That Sunday on the plaza was the perfect time to unveil the band’s new single, “Dem A Callin (Flodgin),” released July 10th on Bandcamp. “I won’t be bought, I won’t be sold. We will decide how our story’s told … Dem a callin’!” sings guest vocalist Webbstar on the track. The words ring true in this historical moment, when deciding how the story is told is half the battle. As stories develop around any given incident, the different narratives begin to coalesce and compete. There is the story embedded in, say, a police department statement, versus the story in a live video of the incident. Indeed, the simple phrase “Black Lives Matter” itself offers a narrative in three simple words, shaming those who would terrorize Black people. It’s not surprising that the cover image for CCDE’s single is a protester wearing a #BLM face mask.

These are not the kinds of songs typically associated with the Bluff City. The weight and momentum of Memphis’ rich musical history can obscure those less-illuminated niches where, over the decades, songs that examine the social fabric, or rip it wide open, have emerged. But they are there, and with this story, the Memphis Flyer aims to honor them.
Ziggy Mack

Negro Terror

CCDE is only one example. In fact, it’s only one example from within the Higgins family. Out of that same household sprang the hardcore punk band Negro Terror, which was equally unabashed about calling for progressive change through the power of music. But the genesis of both bands has a tragic side: Their guiding light was the oldest Higgins brother, Omar, whose sudden death after a staph infection in April 2019 was mourned throughout the city.

Says brother David of the two bands: “They both were started by Omar out of his love of music and community. He wanted to start a big musical family and bring people together. And your color, race, religion, sexuality didn’t matter. And that’s how we were brought up. My mother and father were into bringing people together. Our whole family is all about truth and rights. Fighting against oppression and injustice. My mother was a member of the Urban League. So it’s in our blood. As far as Negro Terror, it’s still going! We’re actually finishing up a record, Paranoia. Omar titled it that. He’s all over the record.”

Negro Terror also lives on in the 2018 documentary of the same name by director John Rash, which culminates in a music video for their most popular song, “The Voice of Memphis.” It’s a hardcore homage to the indomitable spirit of this city rising up to be heard, but the song has a surprising provenance. “It was originally a white power anthem, and Omar completely flipped it on its head,” says David. “It was by a band called Screwdriver. The singer, Ian Stuart, was a white supremacist Nazi, and he said, ‘That’ll be the day when I hear a n*gger cover one of our songs.’ And not only did Omar cover it, he changed the lyrics around, made it Memphis, and did it better!”


Negro Terror is one inheritor of the city’s punk legacy, which has often been the source of our most politically charged music. The punk label, of course, is no guarantee of political content, but the genre did usher a new social consciousness into rock music when it sprang from the gutters in the mid-1970s. That was true in Memphis as well, though that was when punk was more of an attitude than a formulaic sound. One of the most punk moments of that decade was when roots rockers Mudboy & the Neutrons capped off an outdoor music festival with their take on “Power to the People”: “Hey hey, MHA, someone moved Downtown away,” quipped Mudboy member Jim Dickinson to the Memphis Housing Authority. “I’ve got a new way to spell Memphis, Tennessee: M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!”

That era also saw the premiere of Tav Falco, who sang Leadbelly’s “Bourgeois Blues,” then cut his guitar in two with a circular saw. With his Unapproachable Panther Burns, he would continue to dally in political waters, with songs like “Agitator Blues,” “Cuban Rebel Girl,” or even 2018’s “New World Order Blues.”

But others soon took the impulse in different directions. One of the sharpest purveyors of political pith since the 1980s has been one-time Memphian Joe Lapsley, now a college history instructor in the Chicago area.
Don Perry

Neighborhood Texture Jam

“I’m the lead singer of Neighborhood Texture Jam,” says Lapsley. “If anybody knows about having to explain progressive issues to white people in Memphis, it would be me. To be fair, Texture Jam tends to be a magnet for people that are attracted to something more liberal than what they’re accustomed to in this milieu. But there’s also people there that don’t give a shit about that stuff, you know?”

With songs like “Rush Limbaugh, Evil Blimp,” NTJ made no bones about their leftist tendencies, instincts which made some of their best material relevant to this day. “Wanna see the rebel flags, wanna go and see ’em?” Lapsley bellows in “Old South.” “They’re next to the Swastikas in a museum!” At times, Lapsley took the lyrics a step further, ripping up or burning Confederate flags in their early shows. “Listening to Texture Jam back then,” Lapsley says now, “you were getting a taste of Black Lives Matter before it even happened.

“In Oxford on beer bust night, I said, ‘Anybody that doesn’t want to celebrate the entry of James Meredith here on the 30th anniversary of his registration, well they can just get up and leave!’ These big white football player dudes and their dates all stood up from the first four or five tables. I could see the fear go through the band, so I said, ‘If they come, you’ve got guitars and basses. Just start swinging.’”

Pezz was another band from that era that carries on today with sporadic reunion shows. Their 2017 release, More Than You Can Give Us, updates the Reagan-era punk that first inspired them to today’s struggles, as captured by the album cover, which juxtaposes an image from the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike with one of protesters shutting down the I-40 bridge in 2016. Meanwhile, Pezz frontmen Ceylon Mooney and Marvin Stockwell carry on to this day as community organizers and activists.

The punk spirit lives on in countless other Memphis bands, though what punk actually is is debatable. “If you do hear a band that’s truly just punk, it’s probably kind of boring at this point,” says Natalie Hoffman of NOTS. Yet she and NOTS are usually lumped in with the tag. And while NOTS’ lyrics can often be oblique, they naturally venture into gender politics by virtue of NOTS being an all-woman band in the hyper-masculine punk scene. In that context, the alienation of “Woman Alone” is a unique social critique: “Woman alone/in a landscape/is it always the same? What’s it like/to be a subject analyzed?”


The truth is, songs of political or social critique can take many forms, and they need not wear their outrage on their sleeve. Bassist MonoNeon wrote “Breathing While Black” after seeing the first footage of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, but gave his outrage the soft-sell in this case. “While the song came from being saddened by George’s murder, the song is for every Black man and woman who has dealt with police brutality,” he says. And the mellow mood of the sparse Prince-like funk and jazzy harmonies does indeed give the track a more generalizable air of contemplation. It’s a universal song of mourning, in a way, with enough bounce to keep listeners motivated.

Some performers make the message even more palatable by taking a more subtle approach. Brandon Lewis, a new artist with David Porter’s Made In Memphis Entertainment (MIME) label, has just released a track produced in January which relates to the current Black Lives Matter movement, titled simply “Black Man.”

As Porter says, “’Black Man’ is not a protest song, it’s an inspirational song about enlightened people, about the pride that these young people feel today. Because I know you’re viewing me as a Black man, let me let you feel the pride that I have in being a Black man. That’s why that hook works.” Proffering a positive message of self-affirmation is a far cry from burning the stars and bars onstage, but may ultimately be just as effective. For at the heart of today’s protests is a demand for dignity and respect.
Matt White

John Paul Keith

Those qualities can be celebrated in unexpected ways. Americana and rock-and-roll singer/songwriter John Paul Keith recently released his song, “Take ‘Em Down,” in sympathy with the TakeEmDown901 movement, but it begins, surprisingly, with a bit of Southern pride. “You can tell I’m from the South when I open up my mouth …” he sings, before turning to the chorus, “Them statues got to go in every state across the USA.” This is no pride in whiteness, but a refashioning of what “Southern” can mean. As the song goes on, you come to understand that Keith is celebrating a new vision of Southerness that embraces our diversity. “Can you hear the Southern feet marching in the street/And someone saying on a megaphone/No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA/And we ain’t gonna rest until they’re gone.”

“The music is very much Southern,” says Keith. “That tune and those chords, you could take that and do it in a gospel way, or the way I did it, which was more country or rockabilly. It would work either way. But I was trying to repurpose that sound, and use it to say something about this thing. And it also came organically out of me like that. That’s what popped in my head ’cause that’s who I am. I liked using something that comes from the rockabilly tradition for this purpose. I liked that, the idea of refashioning this sound to say something about these old statues.” It’s a rare hybrid of blunt political observations and subtle identity politics, and it works.

Protest has been the stock-in-trade of Memphis hip-hop for decades. While it can be argued that there is political dynamite in even the most gangsta trap track out of this city, simply by virtue of its hyperrealism, there have been select lyricists who step back from the euphoric rush of the crime spree and encourage more contemplation, even as they preserve the urgency of rap’s rapid-fire flow.

Though inactive since the untimely death of group member Fathom 9, the Iron Mic Coalition (IMC) are the undisputed kings of this realm, sometimes called conscious or knowledge rap. When producer IMAKEMADBEATS first returned to Memphis, having spent most of the early aughts in New York, the first artists to really capture his attention were the Iron Mic Coalition. One of the pivotal members was Quinn McGowan, a comic book creator, tattoo artist, and visual artist whose son Quinn is now affiliated with the Unapologetic collective. Another was Fathom 9.

As IMAKEMADBEATS recalls, “In my opinion, while IMC had various talents, Fathom 9, to me, was the most left-wing. I think that’s why I gravitated towards him early on. I went to his funeral, and I heard people walk up to the mic and say, ‘Fathom was weird in a way that made us be okay with being weird.’ He had no shame. He was past the point of comfortable and cute. You’d watch him and say, ‘All right, when is he gonna change positions?’ He did it in a way to where it was daringly uncomfortable. And you know you did your job if you inspired hundreds of people.”

Don Lifted

Among those who were so inspired were the Unapologetic team themselves, who often celebrate ‘weirdness,’ and in doing so, are helping to reshape the image of hip-hop and Memphis itself. While not all Unapologetic artists have a political ax to grind, the very process itself has a political impact. Artist and producer Lawrence Matthews, aka Don Lifted, has found the collective’s embrace of the strange to be liberating, both personally and politically, when he works with them on occasion.

“I’m not necessarily making protest songs per se,” says Matthews. “But I’m talking about my Blackness, my queerness, all of these things. My anxieties and fears around religious beliefs, and the juxtapositions of being in the South and being a Black dude that doesn’t fit into those boxes. Being called a white boy over there, but I’m still Black enough to get murdered over here. But don’t get it confused, I’m still what I am.

“I’m not signed to Unapologetic, but I’m affiliated. And you being allowed to show up is a great thing. The fact that I get to sing songs about what I do is political in a city where they do not allow anybody to have a national platform if it is not soul or street music. I have heard every single way you could shoot a person, every single way you could deal drugs, every single way that you could make street music. But I don’t always hear the way that Black men feel. So I appreciate the space where people are allowed to talk about things I talk about in my music, or that PreauXX talks about or that AWFM talks about. I’m very thankful for those spaces. My voice can be as different, as loud, as odd as it wants to be. And I got a lot of that from listening to conscious hip-hop music.”

Marco Pavé

Yet, while political or cultural struggles inform nearly all hip-hop, especially hip-hop that embraces “oddness” and the interior life, not many artists have picked up conscious hip-hop’s overt politics in the way the Iron Mic Coalition once did. One exception is Marco Pavé. His 2017 debut album, Welcome to Grc Lnd, was a shot across the bow, with thought-provoking lyrics like “Bring me a coffin/’Cos they won’t accept that I am so fluorescent /they place us in darkness/I still see ancestors” capturing the same zeitgeist that inspired Pezz. Blocking the I-40 bridge in 2016 was a turning point for both public demonstrations here and the artists who were inspired by them.

Welcome to Grc Lnd might be considered a concept album of sorts, centered on those protests, but Pavé’s next move surprised many: a hip-hop opera revolving around the same concepts and tracks, redubbed Welcome to Grc Lnd 2030, with a premiere at Playhouse on the Square in 2018. It was the kind of multimedia tour de force that is all too rare in Memphis, combining music of the street with music of the salon, and a heavy dose of political critique.

Since then, the critique has moved into the streets, as apathy fades and a sense of empowerment spreads. Combining demonstrations with a band, as the organizers who invited CCDE Downtown last month were doing, may be the newest frontier in politically charged music-making. It’s a powerful combination. Music has a way of reframing old truths in a new light, and of presenting complex realities in concise, poetic form. And that can change minds.

As Joseph Higgins reflects, “It’s been a slow drip. It’s hard to educate people one by one. So with Negro Terror, the name and the concept, Omar was able to not only preach the message of unity, but to teach. And get people to not just understand, but overstand.”

And stand they will, backed by the beats and riffs and rhymes of Memphis musicians who keep one eye on the world and another on the dream.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Memphis Musicians Remember Omar Higgins

Courtesy Christopher Reyes

Omar Higgins plays the Food Not Bombs benefit show in 2009.

Omar Higgins, 37, died on April 18th, 2019 from complications related to an untreated staph infection. The Memphis music community expressed shock and grief at the unexpected passing of the bassist and bandleader of Memphis’ premiere reggae band, Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (CCDE), and the buzzed-about hardcore outfit, Negro Terror — the man everyone knew as simply Omar.

 “I’ve struggled to find the appropriate words to share with everyone about how much Omar meant to me,” says Kris Garver, DJ who has been friends with Omar since they were teenagers. “I don’t quite remember how I met Omar, in person. It might have been at Kirby High School, it may have been at the Hickory Ridge Mall or even on the front stoop at his house, a place that was Omar’s de facto headquarters for as long as I’ve known him. Our mutual friend kept talking about this friend of his, Omar, who was so fucking rad and knew how to play the bass and loved kung-fu movies and cartoons and knew about all kinds of fucking music, and just moved here from Brooklyn.”

Garver says he and Omar were “music nerds, amateur musicologists. We would talk about all the kinds of bands we wanted to form.”

Joseph Higgins, who along with his brother, David, formed the core of CCDE, says Omar was born in Memphis, but lived in Brooklyn for “a good chunk of his life. He loved it so much. That was the place where he honed his skills on punk rock. But he brought his skills back here to Memphis and we sharpened our swords like crazy.”
[pullquote-7] Omar Higgins was an Army veteran who served in the Iraq War. “He talked about it, but it was always something that he tried to keep to himself,” says Joseph Higgins. “He loved this country. Anybody ever try to talk bad about it, he would say, ‘nah, this is my home.’ We were born here. You black, white, Asian, whatever. We are all one….In Iraq, in the field, we’re all brothers, we’re all one. That’s the only way we get a chance to come home. We can’t be like, ‘I don’t protect this person, because he’s this, or I don’t protect this person, because she’s that.’ That was one thing he brought back: The whole mentality of, we are all one. He was just trying to be the best Omar he could be.”

The Higgins brothers played together in worship bands at churches such as IPC, New Beginnings. Miracle Redemption, and New Genesis. “They have done nothing but show us love and let us hone our skills,” says Joseph. “Omar talked about those churches as things that kept him centered. With all the wickedness and crazy stuff that went on the world, we all need that assurance, hope, and peace. We got that from reggae music, and the churches.”

Omar’s spiritual beliefs were as idiosyncratic as they were deeply felt. In John Rash’s award-winning 2018 documentary Negro Terror, Omar claimed a strong affiliation with Hari Krishna, and performed a blistering psych-rock chant in his name. He was a spiritual seeker, who found deep meaning in the healing and uniting power of music. “If you didn’t like him, you just don’t like good energy,” says rapper SvmDvde. “He never told anybody to harm this person because they were gay, or harm this person because they were white or black — except racists and rapists. Omar was an advocate for women. I feel like if he could catch a rapist, he would hang a rapist.”

While playing punk rock in Brooklyn, Omar became associated with Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP), which arose from the first-wave ska scene in late 1960s London. The SHARPs, who appropriated the logo of Jamaican reggae label Trojan Records as their own, are a loose-knit, anti-fascist organization who acted as a counterweight to the violent, racist skinheads who infiltrated punk rock culture in the 1980s and 90s.

When he returned to Memphis in the mid-2000s, Omar dove deep into reggae history, and started training his brothers to play the music. “I was always into hip hop and R&B and a little bit of rock,” Joseph says. “Bob Marley was a great artist, but I thought he was the only one people listened to. Omar introduced me to Gregory Issacs, Barrington Levy…I fell in love with reggae.”

Omar Higgins had a well-earned reputation as a demanding bandleader. “Anybody that we have ever featured or had join us on stage, they had to do their homework,” says Joseph.
[pullquote-6] Singer Kween Jasira of Ras Empress, who frequently sang with CCDE, says, “Omar taught me to be knowledgeable about what you’re doing. Some people play certain music, and sing certain music, but they don’t understand it. They just sing it because it sounds good. Omar had knowledge about not only reggae and rock, he had a true love of music, regardless of genre. Not only true love, true knowledge…Omar really taught me to research my craft, and let that shape me as an artist.”

CCDE drummer Donnon Johnson says, “He was really a James Brown type. He was very specific about how music should be played. One rehearsal, when I first got into the band, I watched Omar literally change instruments, teach piano and guitar parts, give a horn line, voice lines, and show me what drum pattern to play, all in one rehearsal…Nine times out of 10, he was the most skilled musician in the room. But he was the least likely to try to show somebody up, or exhibit any type of attitude. He was the most skilled and the most humble on any stage he was on. That’s his legacy.”

David Higgins says the band passed up offers from a record label in 2009. The label executive “…loved what we were doing. He had never seen anyone like [Omar] who was an American.”

But the label wanted the band, then known as the Soul Enforcers, to stop playing club shows and record with them exclusively. “Omar would never sign on the dotted line,” says David. “He was like, I want to keep playing. This guy doesn’t want us to play out. So we’re going to keep doing it under the name Chinese Connection Rhythm Selection. I came up with the Dub Embassy part…The name is funny. It was supposed to be a thing so Omar could go out and play, to minister to people, to play life music. That’s what reggae music is, life music. We wanted to get out there and keep that camaraderie going. He didn’t want to record until he was ready, until we were all mentally ready. He didn’t want to take us through a whirlwind of BS. I’m glad we did it the way we did, the underground way, the independent way. That’s what everybody’s doing now. Nobody wants to be signed to some big label. Independent is where it’s at. Omar was ahead of his time.”

At first, Omar’s version of a ministry meant playing in some of Memphis’ worst dives. Negro Terror guitarist Rico Fields met Omar at the notorious Rally Point in the University of Memphis area. “The Buccaneer was the Cotton Club compared to the Rally Point,” Fields says. “That’s where you went when you couldn’t go anywhere else.”
[pullquote-5] An early supporter was Eso Tolson of the a cappella hip hop act Artistik Approach. His series of Artistik Lounge shows featuring up-and-coming artists started out at the Rumba Room in Downtown Memphis. Tolson booked Chinese Connection Dub Embassy to play. “His charisma, his stage presence, his energy was just so compelling…That’s when I knew these guys were special. It was a rainy Sunday night. The energy was living good. There were a lot of up-and-coming musicians there. Right after the performance, it was sprinkling outside. They were putting up equipment. Donnon, on the drums, he just had his snare, and he started playing this rhythm. He’s from New Orleans, it was like a second line. Then Suavo came out with his trombone. Omar and me were outside chanting in the rain with this second-line energy. They had just played this amazing set, and here we were, on the street in the rain, chanting. It was that energy they created, and that vibe they had. Omar was the leader. He had that spirit. People trusted him. They valued his wisdom, his ideas, and his leadership. Chinese Connection traveled all over the South and the Midwest, and people were catching those vibes. But that performance was a pinnacle for me.”
[pullquote-4] From that point on, CCDE was the house band. “The Artistik Lounge is kinda like a convergence,” says rapper PreauXX, who frequently performed with the band. “Omar had this powerful energy about him that commanded your attention, but it was so thoughtful, so grateful. It was, ‘don’t bullshit me, because I’m stylin’ in your face.’ It was an honest person. I love characters like that…They brought me to one of my first festivals, the Wakka Roots festival. I didn’t have any money to my name, and they said, ‘PreauXX, get in this truck and come tour with us.’…Any time performing with them, it was always a family reunion.”

“They are completely different,” says Kween Jasira, who also began playing with the band around the same time. “The other bands I had been with, there were singers, and there were musicians, if that makes sense. CCDE are a complete package. They are the definition of one band, one sound. You don’t just have singers with the musicians playing behind them, background singers to the side. The entire band is responsible for the sound, and for the singing. It’s a self-contained thing that I hadn’t seen before. But what makes them unique from other bands is they found a way to integrate themselves with other genres of music, and other artists. They found a way to bring hip hop and reggae together, and R&B and reggae together. The way they immersed themselves in the artist community around them, and both spread their seeds and became a part of what was already there, and bringing people into reggae as well. A lot of those people didn’t know reggae, or even knew that they liked it at the time. They’ve never given it a chance. But the way CCDE moved in the artist community, they were exposing that roots reggae, and people latched onto it.”

Chris McCoy

Chinese Connection Dub Embassy playing the 2018 Beale Street Music Festival

PreauXX says, “(Omar) could hang with the hipster kids, he could hang with the grunge kids, he could hang with people who love reggae music. He could move fluidly throughout all of these communities and be appreciated. It’s a rare feat. There will never be anyone else like that.”

“Musically, that is one of the tightest bands you’ll see,” says Justin Jaggers. “It’s just fun to watch them perform, and nonverbally communicate. A look from Omar, a response from Joseph, and they just know what to do.”

Jaggers is the organizer of Musicians for LeBonheur. In 2013, he reached out to CCDE. “The quickest ‘yes’ I got was from those guys….I was just blown away by their response. They would do anything we asked them to do.”

Jaggers arranged to have CCDE play for LeBonheur patients. “There was this kid who had some kidney issues. He was 19 or 20, and just a frail, small guy. We went into the room, and he just looked miserable. These guys started playing, and they were interacting so well with each other. The kid kinda lifts up his arm and starts dancing with the only body parts he could move. You know that kinda had to hurt a little bit, but he wanted so badly to be a part of this music.”

CCDE’s reputation and fan base grew with their 2013 album The Firm Foundation, named for an earlier incarnation of the group. But the ever-restless Omar continued to branch out. Omar sat in on bass with cowpunks Jocephus and the George Jonestown Massacre. “We had another underground project called the Cotton Pickers,” says David. “We used to work for Mr. [George] Klein for Elvis Radio. We had another project called Ten Foot Ganja Plants, and another called John Brown’s Body. We had a studio thing, and a live thing. We were going to drop this thing called Slave vs. Master. We intend to put that out in the future as a tribute to Omar.”
[pullquote-3] CCDE had a minor hit with their grooved-up cover of A-Ha’s synth-pop classic “Take On Me,” Joseph says, “That was Omar’s thing. For the longest, he wouldn’t do a Bob Marley song, because he didn’t want to be a cover band. But we were like, this is Memphis. People love Bob Marley. So he said, ‘OK, but if we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it Chinese Connection Dub Embassy way.’ Every time, if you heard a cover we did, it’s not like the original song. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it our way.”

I first met the Higgins brothers backstage at the David Bowie tribute concert at Minglewood Hall organized by Memphis musicians after the legend’s 2016 death. I had seen them play before, but up close, the 300-pound Omar’s energy was intense and unmistakable. Five months later, I watched them steal the show at the Prince tribute with Omar’s stunning arrangement of “How Come You Don’t Call Me?” The next time I saw them play at the Hi-Tone, Omar greeted me as soon as I walked in the door. Offhand, I asked if he knew “Heathen” by Bob Marley. The band then opened their set with a barn burning version of the song.

Omar was cooking up a fresh surprise. He recruited his old friend Rico Fields and drummer Ra’id to get back to his hardcore punk roots. “When he hit me up about the idea, all I knew was I wanted to be involved with it,” Fields says. “I didn’t know nothing about skinhead subculture, nothing. I knew enough about punk to have a conversation, but I wasn’t a sub-genre guy: American, oi, this punk, that punk, whatever. I was like, there’s more than one? He was an encyclopedia. He drilled us hard for a year. We didn’t do any shows. All we did was practice.”
Courtesy Christopher Reyes

Omar Higgins plays with Negro Terror at the 2019 Black Lodge Halloween Ritual

[pullquote-1] The band would become the controversial Negro Terror. “We knew to get the message out, it had to be crazy,” Fields says. “There were five or six other band names that came before Negro Terror. Some of them were like, you should never, ever say those two words together ever again. That’s going to get us arrested.”

Negro Terror’s mission was to challenge the assumption that punk is an exclusively white genre. “Growing up in the 80s, 90s, that’s what they told you: You’re black, so you have to be gospel, hip hop, or R&B. You gotta stay in your church. Folks like me and Omar, we love black music. If you could put a color on popular music in America, it would be black. I’m never one of those people who says certain colors need to stay in certain genres of music. And Omar was the same way.”

Negro Terror instantly made a big impression. “People were very confused at first,” says Fields. “They were used to seeing Omar play reggae, because that’s what he was known for…When we did our first show at the Hi Tone, we kinda decided to fuck with the crowd, and play reggae first. Then, all the sudden, I turn that distortion on, and people were just like, ‘whoah, shit. It’s about to go down.’ Then he started singing, and people were like, is that Omar’s twin brother? Who is that?”
[pullquote-2] One of Negro Terror’s earliest coups was a cover of “Invasion” by the infamous English racist band Skrewdriver. Fields says Omar was determined to do it better than the fascists. “Literally the only negative reactions we got were from racists. We even had a white supremacist on YouTube comment on ‘Invasion’ who actually showed respect. He said, ‘I may not agree with you ideologically, but you know what? You did really good on this song and I really like it.’ I’m the dude who handles the social media, and I was like, ‘Thank you? I think?’”

One of Negro Terror’s most notorious gigs was playing in front of City Hall during the protests surrounding the Madison Hotel’s (now Hu’s) forced eviction of artist and Live From Memphis founder Christopher Reyes from his home at 1 S. Main. “I didn’t know him all that well,” says Reyes. “However, he was part of the Live From Memphis scene, always doing something. What stands out in my mind mostly is how he supported my family in our time of need.”

Chris McCoy

Rico Fields performs with Negro Terror in front of Memphis City Hall during a protest in April, 2018.

Negro Terror was the subject of a documentary by Mississippi director John Rash. The film included incendiary performance footage and intimate interviews with the band members. In the film, Omar revealed that he had a wife who was killed in a car accident. “I’m surprised he put that out there,” says Joseph.

The documentary Negro Terror premiered in November, 2018 at Playhouse on the Square during the Indie Memphis Film Festival, with the band providing a live soundtrack to the packed house. It would go on to win the festival’s Soul of Southern Film Award.

This spring, Omar was hard at work preparing the release of Negro Terror’s debut album Paranoia. “He had back problems,” says Fields. “Last summer, at one of these little funky-ass festivals, he fell through some stairs and fucked up his leg real bad…He was getting better. He just got back in the gym. He was already down 30 pounds. We were about to hit the road hard, and he was ready for it.”

In mid-April, he hit a wall. “His back was hurting,” says Joseph. “We usually play three church services on Sunday. We played one and he was like, man, I feel bad. I don’t think I can make it.”

Omar returned to the family home to get some rest. His brothers later discovered him laying on the floor. “He said he felt like he had a pinched nerve in his side. I asked if he needed to go to the hospital, and he said nah, he’d had this before. It was something that would die down quick. After a couple of days, he still wasn’t feeling well. He was still in the same spot, it looked like. Then we were like, nah man, we gotta get an ambulance.”
[pullquote-8] An untreated sore on Omar’s back had led to a staph infection which spread quickly. In the hospital, he suffered a stroke and ended up in the ICU. As his condition deteriorated, word spread that Omar was in trouble. CCDE had fought to get Kween Jasira and Ras Empress included on a show they were opening with Jamaican dub musician Jah9. They eventually arranged to give their protégées half of their set. “When Omar fell ill, we had to open up the whole show,” says Jasira. “I was calling and checking in every day. I think the thing that made it the toughest, the night we played the Jah9 show, word was he was turning the corner. He was out of ICU, and the breathing tube had been removed. I was not ready for it to turn the other way the next day.”

Joseph says, “While he was in the hospital, he did nothing but crack jokes. We were watching TV and praying, just being as positive as possible. It was a time when you would think he would be depressed, he was trying to stay positive about everything…I want to say the day before we passed, he was on the phone with Donnon, our drummer. He said, ‘When I get out of this bed, we’re going to start working on the Chinese Connection Dub Embassy record. It’s way overdue. People are waiting on it’…He said, ‘This happened for a reason. It’s telling me that we need to keep on what I’m doing, but we need to bring light to the dark times. That was what inspired him. He wanted to get it out to the masses. We said, we’re with you for the long haul.”
[pullquote-9] Omar Higgins died on Thursday night, April 18. “We were with him until he passed,” says Joseph.

As the news leaked out over the weekend, there was an anguished outpouring of love from Memphis musicians and admirers on social media. “Omar was the powerful voice who stood up for you, even when you couldn’t stand up for yourself,” says PreauXX. “That’s something I’m always going to carry in my heart, and I think everyone who knew Omar knew that about him.”

“For a couple of days, I couldn’t wrap my head around the why,” says Kween Jasira. “Now, I’m just trying to accept it and be there for his family. I want to make Omar proud. They say death isn’t final. As long as you speak their name, and talk about them, they’re never truly dead. That’s what we can do to keep Omar alive, with the music that he loved, and to carry the same Omar spirit along with that.”
[pullquote-10] “I’m still processing it,” says Donnon Johnson. “I love Omar so much, as a man, and what he brought out in me as a musician, that my heart is going to have to find a new way to break.”
Chris McCoy

Omar Higgins plays the Green Room at Crosstown Concourse in March, 2019. It would be one of his last shows.

“I told somebody today, ‘God sent him to me,’” says SvmDvde. “I had to meet him and learn from him in order for me to get where I needed to be. He opened my mind completely. I could talk to him about anything. He guided me spiritually, musically, everything.”

Fields says Negro Terror cannot continue without Omar. “Negro Terror has died and been reborn. Look at what’s going on in pop culture. The Lil Nas X kid? He’s Negro Terror…The idea of Negro Terror isn’t even to be a cool punk band with a cool logo. It was showing black kids that they could do anything they wanted to without worrying about it being a white space. There ain’t no such thing as a white space.”
[pullquote-12] “Not only did he have the skill and the talent, it was not in vain. He was using his talent to inspire and build community. He was giving of himself, sometimes not to his advantage. He was skilled, and humble,” says Eso Tolson. “That spirit, what he was about, his music, will carry on. Those who didn’t know him will come to know him with the stories that will be shared.”

Fields says he got to say goodbye to Omar. “He came to me in a dream. He looked kinda down, so I gave him a hug. ‘I got you,’ I said. He said, ‘No no no. I got YOU, forever.’ I hadn’t had a dream since.”

Omar Higgins


A memorial for Omar Higgins will begin with a Beale Street parade at 10:30 AM on Tuesday, April 30, followed by a reception at I Am A Man Plaza at 11:00 and funeral services at Clayborn Temple at noon.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Worst Gig Ever! Memphis musicians share the worst nights of their career.

Music is Memphis’ greatest export. But for the musicians, taking it on the road means long drives, long nights, and a lot of weirdness. It can be a hard life, full of ups and downs, but it sure makes for good stories. So we asked some of Memphis’ finest musicians to tell us about their Worst Gigs Ever.   

Amy LaVere

I think it was the Memphis Queen. It was this new concept for a river voyage: A group of cyclists boarded for what was supposed to be a three-day cycling/boating adventure down to New Orleans. They were to port in Memphis in the early mid-morning, then they would depart the boat to go on a 40-mile bike ride. Then they would get back on the boat and have dinner, and we would be the after-dinner entertainment for their cruise.

Then they were going to stop in Tunica, where we would disembark with our gear and get ourselves back to Memphis. So the gig required us driving our van to Tunica with someone following us to bring us back to Memphis.

We get on the boat and waited around for everyone to finish a Cajun buffet dinner that had beignets and etouffee and French bread and alcohol, after they’d finished a 40-mile bike ride. They’re pretty much done. So about two-thirds of the audience goes to bed.

So right before we play, the promoter wants to introduce the band. We’re all on stage, and he gets up there in front of us and proceeds to give a speech to the audience that takes 15 minutes. It included such things as how to operate the toilets in their cabins. And we’re just standing there, wondering what the hell is going on. And then we play, and we put everyone to sleep, and it’s so sad. There were literally people with their arms folded, dozing.

When we get to Tunica to disembark, they had not reserved a docking spot for the riverboat, and the dock was full. There’s no place to dock. There’s a rocky cliff that goes up to a sidewalk/boardwalk along the Mississippi. I’m in a dress and heels, mind you. So what they did was, they basically reversed the boat, trying to stay stationary. But it was still moving down the river! It was going, like, five MPH. They lowered a plank, and I get handed down to a deck hand onto a rocky cliff that I then have to climb up barefoot with my dress up to the top. They were helping us get our gear off, but they were still moving, so by the time they got it all off, we were like a quarter mile strung out down the sidewalk.

By this point, we have a more interested audience watching us disembark than were interested at all in hearing us play. Then we had to walk our gear, piece by piece, all the way back up to the parking place at the dock. I think we made $400 on that gig, in total. Certainly the most comical and worst gig of my life.

Eric Oblivian,
True Sons of Thunder

I’ve played in bands around the world. I’ve played in squats in Slovenia. I’ve played in Croatia where they had no money to give us. But the worst show I’ve ever done was right here in Memphis with True Sons of Thunder. At one point, we had a goal of playing every club in town, which included the Rally Point. We booked a show with some emo band from somewhere. We show up, and the place is dimly lit — no microphones. It was so dark, we couldn’t tell if the turd that was on stage was human or canine. The show went on, and we did the show without vocals. We just sang into the air. We did our set, got out of there, and to my knowledge, the turd was still there while the other band played.

Alicja Trout, Rich Crook, and
John Garland, the Lost Sounds/Sweet Knives

AT: There was one that was just an epic night of bad things happening. The Vibrators wanted to get on our show in Detroit at the Old Miami club. We were playing with the Piranhas and Guilty Pleasures. The Vibrators were playing down the street, and they had this promoter named Lacy, and he says, “We’re playing down the street, and there’s nobody at our show. Can we come down and play with you guys?” And we said, “No, we’ve already got three bands . . .”

RC: We eventually said yes, but we weren’t going to share any money. And the Vibrators were HORRIBLE that night.

AT: I had this Peavy amp that had a phaser built in. I asked the guy if he wanted me to show him how to use the amp, because he was borrowing my stuff, rudely enough.

RC: … and he was like, “I think I’ve played enough amps!”

AT: So the phaser was turned all the way up, because we had ended the set with this big noise thing. And he played the whole show going “wheew … wheew . . . wheew…” He never figured it out. Then, one of the funniest things Jay [Reatard] ever said in his life…

RC: Dude said a lot of funny things.

AT: He said the dude from the Vibrators looked like Jimmy Page’s nutsack. He was balding and like had really wiry, black hair.

RC: Phil Spector-ish.

AT: It ended with this giant bar fight. The promoter walks in with a giant block of concrete. The cops come, and I kept saying, “Yeah, the puff-mullet. You know those guys with the puff mullets?” And everyone was like, what is she talking about?

RC: Turned out the guy had a goiter on his neck with hair growing out of it.

AT: I thought it was a mullet.

RC: I was outside the whole time. I walked in, it was like a saloon piano was playing. John got slid across the bar.

JG: I saw Alicja get punched, so I went in.

AT: Oh yeah. I got punched right in the face. The bartender came up to me, and this dude’s fist was coming right at me. He grabbed me. ‘You gotta get out of here! You’re gonna get killed!” He was carrying me out, and I was like, “Where the hell am I going?” Jay comes out of the bathroom. He’s been doing coke with this guy from the other band. They looked around and realized, “Gahh! We’re enemies!” They started going at it.  

Chris Davis, Papa Top’s West Coast Turnaround

This would have been sometime in the late 1990s. We had just played a gig at Kudzu’s, and we had a little liquor in us. The only piece of parental advice (guitarist) John Stiver’s father ever gave him was, “Stay away from Harpo’s Lounge. You’ll get killed.” So we decided we would see if they would let us play for beer. This is a self-inflicted gig. It was our own fault.

Let me first say that Harpo’s has reopened, and it’s nice. They’ve gentrified it. Back then, they self-described it as the most redneck place on Earth. It was infamous for finding dead hookers out behind it.

The minute we walked in, we could see that there were more people than teeth here. It was all rebel flags and unfinished plywood. There was a lot of drug dealing, a lot of meth. So there were a lot of working ladies. They made it clear we were different and unwelcome.

I had on a sequined, knock-off Nudie suit jacket. There was a guy following me around saying, “I’m gonna go home with that jacket!” There was a working girl who looked like Grandma from the Addams Family. She was saying I looked like Elvis, and she was going home with me.

John Whittemore was playing pedal steel, and he had a woman who was reaching around him with one hand on the hand he was picking with, and the other hand he’s barring with. Grandma would walk around behind me, and when I would be singing, and my hands occupied with the guitar, she would reach up between my legs and start squeezing my business. It got a lot easier to hit those high notes.

Was this a bad gig? I guess it depends on how you define gig. We just sort of showed up. They didn’t want us. But by the time it was over, there were people calling out requests. We did our usual set, and played Elvis’ “Little Sister.” That was when the guy who was going to knock me in the head and steal my jacket decided we were okay. He wasn’t going to knock me in the head, but he was still probably going to take my jacket.

Marcella Simien,
Marcella and Her Lovers

We were playing this outdoor festival, and I was handed a note in the middle of a song asking me to announce that a 6-year-old boy was missing and had been for over an hour. They made it sound like this kid just took off — a little renegade. I smiled to myself at first, thinking “Okay, the kid is probably off doing things 6-year-olds do.” Then it started to sink in.

I’ve gotten notes on stage with song requests, marriage proposals, birthday requests. But a missing persons report? This was a first, real “Stop the presses!” kind of stuff. So I made the announcement, and the stage manager motioned for us to continue, to keep playing. So we did. But the whole time there was this feeling, this undertone of … missing kid … impossible to ignore. I mean, how can you not be concerned?   

Several songs later the kid still hadn’t shown up, and no one was any the wiser as to where he might have been. Someone from the sheriff’s department got onstage and made another announcement as the band and I helplessly looked at each other, eyes all big. This person makes the announcement sounding like the conductor of a train and then hands the mic back to me. Somehow we finished the set, packed up, and headed out. But not before leaving behind a suitcase full of our merchandise. Thankfully we got word on the drive home that the child had been found. He pedaled his Big Wheel back on up to the house like nothing had happened.

Steve Selvidge

Big Ass Truck was playing at a fraternity down in Oxford. They paid well. That show would finance a whole tour. And people usually had a good time. It was in our contract that you were hiring us to be us. We weren’t going to play Dave Matthews or Phish. We’re playing outside at this crawfish boil. It’s an all-day thing. People were getting drunk. Some kid thought it would be funny while we’re playing to flip the breakers. So we’re playing, and the power cuts. That happened all the time — it’s no big deal — you just have to sit there and wait for it to come back on. So we start playing again, and the kid flips the breakers again. Power goes off. It keeps happening!

Finally, the sound guy figures what’s going on. “There’s a kid flipping the breaker. We dealt with it.” But it messed up the P.A. The monitors went out, and we couldn’t play. With a DJ, we needed the monitors, because we’re playing to him.

People didn’t understand why we wouldn’t play, and they were getting restless. This entitled little fuck frat kid hops up on stage, grabs the mic, and says “Big Ass Truck sucks!” I was livid. I got up and I was just like, “Get the fuck off my stage you little shit.” Then the monitors come back on, and I’m like, “Hey, sorry about that! Let me tell you what was going on. We’re here to play and have fun. It’s gonna be a good time. But that little fuck who was flipping the breaker on and off, your mother [string of shocking expletives deleted].” Should have taken the high road. But I didn’t. Then we just light into the set. We were furious. It was fun. Next thing you know, there’s a bunch of people who want to kick my ass. I’m looking at guys in the crowd mouthing, “I’m going to kill you!”

Joseph Higgins, Chinese Connection Dub Embassy

The worst gig was one of the first gigs we played out of town. It was just a trip to Nashville. Everything was going great, then 30 minutes out of Nashville, our front tire pops off and drags the car a quarter mile down the expressway.
So we get the tow truck to come and get us, and then we find out we have to go to the nearest place to get it fixed before we can do anything. So our bass player, Omar, and Paul, our guitarist at the time, and my brother David head to the Walmart to change the tire out. This is in the middle of summer, and it’s got to be 105 degrees. Two of us are in the tow truck, and the other three are in the car.

We finally get to Walmart after driving around everywhere looking for it. We’re desperate to get to Nashville to play the gig. This was on a Saturday, and all of the places to get a tire fixed are closed. Then we find out we need over $800 worth of work on the car before we can do anything. We had to call some friends and family to see if we can find anyone to take us to the gig. The guitarist called his family to come and get us. He was so angry at the whole thing, he just wanted to go home. We were like, “No man, we should at least go to Nashville, play the gig, and make some money to pay for the car!” But he was all flustered. “We can’t do this. Let’s just go.”

After we come back to Memphis, we find out later that night that the venue we were playing — it was called Nash Bash — had over a thousand people at the show. We did know it at the time, but we were one of the headliners. We find out there was a big crowd waiting to see us, because there was no reggae on the bill. Then we find out the promoter for the show lives in Franklin. He could have picked us up and taken us to the show and brought us back. It literally could have all been fixed if we had had the promoter’s number on hand. Since then we have a backup plan for everything. 

Jonathan Kiersky, Club Owner
Without naming names, this was the worst: It was a Brooklyn four-piece — three synthesizers and a drummer. They had a bunch of press and a strong booking agent, so I booked them. Not sure how they had so much professional support, except it was the heyday of the indie pop scene in Brooklyn. One of them may have been a model.  

Early on, we realized this show would be a mess, since it was their first tour, and set up and soundcheck were a disaster. Show starts, and the vibe on stage is complete fear. Finally during the third song, the lead singer/synth player just yells “Stop, stop, stop!” and starts weeping on stage. We hoped she would pull it together and the show would go on but that was not the case. They just walked off stage, packed their shit up, and left. My jaw had never been closer to the floor.

Chris Milam
Friday night in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The bar was packed, the crowd homogenous: male, bearded, titanically drunk. Picture the cast of Perfect Storm meets the cast of Jersey Shore. And I was scheduled to play for two hours, solo acoustic.

Somehow, they liked me — too much. A mosh pit formed — onstage. One guy insisted on “freestyling to his lady.”  Another swiped at my guitar mid-song, “helping” me play. The night got later, the crowd drunker, would-be fights started popping up around me. It was a farce; a mostly-improvised, slightly-violent farce.  
When I finished, I hustled my gear out to my car. I came back to find a waitress literally stiff-arming a man away from my night’s pay. Come to think of it: I made it out in one piece, my guitar made it out in one piece, and I got paid in full. I’ve had worse gigs.

Brennan Villines
I was playing with my trio years ago at my uncle’s house for a pool party in Arlington, which is as amazing as it sounds. My music doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a backyard full of Gen X white people who have musical tastes spanning from George Strait to Kenny Chesney. We were asked — yelled at — to play a certain song, the name of which I cannot recall at the moment. I remember being disgusted at the request coming from the drunkest person at the party.

I said I didn’t know the song and continued with my set. He called me a queer and threw a wet towel at my face from about 25 feet away. The towel smacked me surprisingly hard … in mid song. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed with his throwing ability, given the distance factored with his blood alcohol content. But, this was definitely a low point in my career. Just as I was feeling defeated, my uncle pushed him in the pool, and we all had a good laugh.

Andria Lisle, Music Journalist
The worst gig I ever attended was one I knew would be awful going in. I expected, and got, the worst on November 16, 1991, when I walked through the doors of Antenna to see G.G. Allin and the Murder Junkies.
It was the pre-internet age, so what I knew of G.G. Allin was gleaned from the pages of MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL and via first-hand stories from friends who had caught Allin on the road in other cities. Self-billed as “the last true rock and roller,” Allin would take Ex-Lax before his gig, then defecate on stage. When the Memphis stop on his fall 1991 tour was announced, I should’ve wondered “Who on Earth would want to attend something like this?” Instead, I thought, “Who would want to miss it?”

I paid my $5 and cautiously took a post in the back of the room, close enough to the door that I could escape if necessary. I can’t remember who opened or what songs were on the Murder Junkies’ setlist. Allin wore a black hoodie, his pale ass gleaming under the lights. He paced the stage, drinking beers and throwing the bottles into the audience. He had the frightening intensity of Charles Manson — I recall being too afraid to meet his gaze. At some point, the microphone he ranted into went up his ass. Later, Allin leapt off the stage and began antagonizing the audience at close range. Most of us ran out of the door of the club.

He’d chase us outside, then stop at the corner of Madison and Avalon while we raced to the relative safety of the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. For some reason, that happened more than once. I have no idea why I didn’t just leave at that point, but I kept going back in for more. Finally, Allin chased us out again, and one audience member ran to Murphy’s and came back with a knife. She began chasing G.G., and that was too much for me. I went home, took a long shower, and questioned every decision I’d made in life.

Chris Shaw, Ex-Cult, Goggs
Every time a band goes on tour there are shows that inevitably get highlighted for various reasons — you’re playing with friends, you like the venue, the gig pays well, or there’s promise that someone who “needs to see your band” will be there. Ex-Cult had just released a new record, and so we were working with a new publicist who had promised to gather all her industry friends for a show at Mercury Lounge, the Manhattan venue that is known for being a “music industry hotspot,” whatever that means.

This show was on my radar from the beginning of the tour. We performed in Baltimore the night before, but because of a sound ordinance, we had to soundcheck at some ridiculous time, like 2 p.m. the day of the Mercury Lounge show.

We left Baltimore on time, but to make sure all goes according to plan, I decided to drive into Manhattan. I was driving like a bat out of hell, impressed with my band mates that we are all up and moving, hangover-free and ready to hit New York City. Then my phone starts going off. Repeatedly. I’m driving so I can’t look at my texts. Then our booking agent called,  annoyed I haven’t been answering the phone.

What comes next is something I’ve never heard happen to any other band: A pipe burst in front of the venue, and a rather large sinkhole formed outside of Katz Deli, literally next door to the Mercury Lounge. The show was cancelled. Best of all, the publicist with all her industry contacts has gone AWOL. I don’t hear from her again for the duration of our time in New York City. Maybe she fell in the sinkhole?

Do you remember the scene in Ferris Buellers Day Off when Bueller’s buddy Cameron screams as the camera pulls out to show all of Chicago? That’s how I felt. The show eventually got removed to a lovely little club called Fontanas, but as you have probably guessed, no one came. What doesn’t break you makes you stronger, so when this exact same scenario happened to us a year later in San Diego, all we could do was laugh.