Last updated on April 13th, 2021

The Worst Gig of My Life is the antithesis of Instagram life. It’s an embodiment of our pandemic selves. Rough around the edges. Raw. Unfiltered in the same sweatpants four days straight… certainly unscripted.

The Worst Gig of My Life is a good show.

It has the seeds of a great show. Growing out of the rich fecal landscape that was 2020. A year we will begin to refer to with a collective audible “ugh.” That vomit burp of a year.

Whatever.

Joe Lucas hosts the show from his little studio in Australia. When I first heard the show I assumed it was remote. After discovering it was in Australia I delighted in knowing the host and guest were in the same room.

Safely. Distanced. But together. It made me wistful. And so the Worst Gig of My Life was off on a good foot already. But what was it that Lucas is delivering in these forty minute chunks?

The Best Premise

The idea of the show is that we’ll get a bunch of comedians and musicians together and reminisce about the worst gig of their lives. You don’t have to be either of those things to appreciate what it is to be vulnerable and then get shut down. Hard.

Shut down with all the subtlety, tact, and grace of a drunk toddler.

That’s the premise. Some people, some situations and some experiences are rough. They’re the fucking worst. But, with enough time, they make the best stories. Those crap experiences are the foundation for the stories you end up telling later.

Success isn’t relatable. A success story isn’t reciprocal. Nobody cares outside business school how big your draw is, because nobody cares how monetizable you are. After the year we’ve all had, we can all relate to the stories the artists on Lucas’s couch share.

The Redemptive Format

The Worst Gig of My Life is still a young show. Having only put its first episode in the can in November of 2020, the format still feels well established. At least applied to the premise.

It’s simple and feels exactly like what we should have been doing during quarantine all along. Just, with microphones present.

Lucas invites one guest on each episode (all recorded during COVID after all — safety first) to talk about their worst gig. It differs slightly if the guest is a musician, comedian, or some other type of performer, but the gist is the same.

Less an interview than it is a free flowing conversation orbiting the worst gig that guest has ever had. I say loose because sticking to just the one “worst” gig is a tough ask. It’s either difficult to tell which was worse, or, more often than not, there’s just a plethora of horrendous gigs.

As a result the shows tend to feature a few tales of woe that allow the guest to warm up and divulge more. Which is nice since so many of these stories happened in the absence of the ubiquity of smartphones.

At the end of each conversation, the artist who bared their soul is offered a chance at performative redemption. This part of the show feels the most familiar to the talk show format.

Cathartic conversation and set. What more could you want by way of pandemic entertainment?

What Works About The Worst Gig of My Life

As I mentioned earlier, this is a newer podcast, but it already has the makings of a great podcast. One that should hold up long after the pandemic is over, and we’re back to packing into bars and ruining new gigs.

Episode 4 with Kerryn Fields is an excellent example of what makes this show endearing.

Her stories may not be, strictly speaking, universal, but the themes are. You may not have lit up a joint in front of a cop in a foreign country, but you know the instant shock that lets you know you crossed the mistake threshold.

But the stories are light-hearted. They’re the worst gigs ever. Not the worst diagnosis ever. They’re the worst, mortifying, instances of failure for a person who has found their passion. That’s not awful.

A healthy dose of perspective buffer The stories on The Worst Gig of My Life. Devastating at the time, I’m sure, but empowering now that these artists have come out the other side.

And then, if you’re still feeling sorry for them, don’t worry, the live performances at the end will give you all the feels. After the year we’ve all had, it’s nice to live with someone who has got knocked down and gotten back up. If we’re only living like that for a half an hour at a time.

What doesn’t work

There isn’t much that doesn’t work about the show, but the sample size is still pretty small. It still feels like a show that is finding its legs and it plays like a show that is a very small operation. That could be a product of its production during COVID where a barebones operation is a necessity. 

The conversation is loose to a degree that may not work with another genre of guest. Guests aren’t there to promote anything specific and it doesn’t feel like there’s any kind of outline.

Lucas mentions during various interviews that “these things usually last” for 20 or so minutes. Guests question the boundaries of the conversation at times that make it feel unprepared.

The only stated structure of the show is right in the title, so it might do with a bit of guest prep ahead of time.

It works because you’re dealing with entertainers of various stripes and a large part of their job is entertaining on the fly. After all, if you don’t have a large capacity for spontaneity, you don’t end up with a few discrete stories of bad gigs.

No, that means you’re a bad entertainer. Not fully formed. You need to work more on your craft.

And so the premise of the show actually saves this from even approaching an actual problem. But I could see the odd guest not being up to the task of keeping the conversational ball in the air.

Where it Goes From Here

The Worst Gig of My Life was one of my favorite late pandemic finds. It’s a comfort that, even on the other side of the planet, the stories are visceral and relatable.

It feels spontaneous and natural. A conversation you’d have with wood under your elbows at the local bar if such places were open.

They’re actively producing episodes at present though the show has yet to pick up much polish from the earliest episodes. I do hope this one sticks around post pandemic. Because it is a pleasure to escape to Australia for 45 minutes. To know that I wasn’t the only one to light up in front of a cop or spend the night on the cold floor of a stranger’s shed.

I felt warmer when I took the earbuds out of my ears.

See kids, pick up a guitar. That’s what you have to look forward to. Until you can get sweaty in a bar again, take a listen to The Worst Gig of My Life.

(Editor’s note: This article was edited on 4/13/2021 to remove the name of a co-host who is no longer present on the podcast to respect their anonymity.)

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