Your oddest combo?

[Don Higdon]

For one reason or another, we've all ended up in whacked-out combinations.
For some reason I had a 52-year flashback today to the oddest combo I've ever played:
2 trombones, bass, and bongos.
What's yours?

[Freddels]

Off the top of my head . . . guitar, mandolin, flute (flute player also sang), & bass.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Probably the current bass/clarinet duo thing I've been working on for the past year. It feels like home now, but at first, I had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

[fingers]

Lotsa free **** in Chicago.

Let's see...

DB, some Middle Eastern double reed snake charmer thing, voice (free jazz remember) , old person's walker strung with springs and played with a bow (amplified with a contact mic), percussion.

[Marcus Johnson]

Peanut butter and dill pickles on rye.

[Sam Sherry]

Marc, man, that's pretty out. It is challenging to top "walker with springs.'

My shot: DB & trombone duo, no amp in a subway station.

Second shot: I played in a band (soprano sax, electric mandolin, guitar & DB, which is definitely some out FWIW) which was so out we got sent home before we played a note one time.

[jlilley]

Two double basses and an accordion. I also did a version of We Three Kings at a Christmas concert with three double basses and a fretless electric. Good Fun!
John

[Don Higdon]

Originally Posted by jlilley

Two double basses and an accordion.

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

[Mike Goodbar]

Originally Posted by jlilley

I also did a version of We Three Kings at a Christmas concert with three double basses and a fretless electric. Good Fun!
John

Cool. Did they let you leave your instruments there until the next Christmas?

(Sorry, modified punchline of an old joke -- couldn't resist).

[emilio g]

Bass, drumset, vibes, and steel pans. Really fun group.

Then there were a few "combos" that consisted of bass, spoken word, and interpretive dance. Also really fun, but not as easily digestible.

[Paul Warburton]

B3, bass, drums and a stripper. Seriously.......

[Treyzer]

Originally Posted by Paul Warburton

B3, bass, drums and a stripper. Seriously.......

What did the stripper sound like? How do you tune a stripper?

[Eric Swanson]

Played a bit with a really wonderful jazz bassoonist in the early eighties; bass, drums, bassoon, sometimes guitar. Maybe the oddest, though, was just playing solo or duo bass (with an equally demented pal) on the street, as a yout.

The most surreal, odd gigs (maybe another thread?) include playing an Amway convention in L.A. once on New Year's eve, or my brief stint with an Italian wedding band (accordian, drums, keyboard, 400 lb. male singer (with an amazing voice and horrific acne).

[joel kelsey]

I played duet with a diggeri-doo (sp?) player. The music was basically "free". He wasn't a musician, just some guy who went to Australia. His pitch was really flat. I think you have put a lot of air into those things....

[bejoyous]

Way back when I was briefly a tuba player in Halifax, I was invited to play a bizarre concert at The Centre for Art Tapes. This was a group of artists who created musical pieces by recording various things then spliced them together to make a musical collage.

So the piece I was in, the composer recorded various ocean and harbour sounds (being in Halifax that's not hard to do). I played foghorn signals on my tuba, a uillean piper played several Irish tunes at intervals, an alto sax interjected some jazz riffs here and there and a percussionist added the occasional clang. At the climax of the piece we all took a big chunk of dry ice and put it in a barrel of hot water and we disappeared in the resulting fog!

[klem.gote]

Originally Posted by Treyzer

What did the stripper sound like? How do you tune a stripper?

Tuning a stripper isn't easy, but it has to be done. Nothing worse than a stripper who's flat.

[Paul Warburton]

Originally Posted by Eric Swanson

(with an amazing voice and horrific acne).

Same deal with my stripper.......

[Mark Perna]

Mine aren't that astonishing compared to you guys. None of these are in any way avante garde. 1) Upright bass and voice; I was scared of this one. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull off a 4 hour standards gig with bass and singer but it worked; quite well actually. 2) Bass and spoken word. 3) A good one was spoken word, bass, harmonica and percussion.

As an aside, the harmonica player in that group was insanely good. I met him at an open stage in Pittsburgh in the early '90s. My ex-wife, who was both an exceptional singer and poet, and I would sometimes go to open stages which were pretty ubiquitous in Pittsburgh in the early '90's and sing a couple of songs (well, she sang, I just accompanied; NO ONE wanted to hear me sing). Anyway, we were about 13th on the list to go on and were hanging out listening to the amateur strummery (where just everybody comes up and plays American Pie with the wrong chords) and I'm losing my mind because I'm a music lover and, really, there wasn't much of what you'd call actual music happening. Not that I expected a lot, it was an open stage after all. About the 10th act in, the MC announces that Danny Kaplan was going to play unaccompanied harmonica. At this point, I thought I had entered a lower ring of Hell. Solo harmonica?!? Good god. Could it get ANY worse?

He comes up, sits down and starts to play and the clouds parted and the sun shined through, choirs of heavenly angels start singing etc. He was just amazing. A true virtuoso. He wasn't a jazz guy but he had the same mindset and chops of a jazz guy. On harmonica.

mark

[Wally Malone]

On the "Doctors" tv show this past week they stated that pickle juice is a good cure for a hangover!

Originally Posted by Marcus Johnson

Peanut butter and dill pickles on rye.

Wally

[davidAaronCarte]

I keep getting calls to do these free gigs - but they're with a painter