The Music Critic

Sparkdog · #1 03-03-2010, 02:42 PM

I recently ran into a guy I played with decades ago and he reminded me of this story that I wanted to share on TB -

I was playing with a band in the Midwest and we had a week long booking at a club. We loaded in the first day, set up all our gear, and ran through a sound check in the afternoon to have everything ready for the show that evening.

We had finished sound check and most of the band had already left, the only folks there was the bartender and a few regulars who apparently hung around the bar all day drinking.

I pulled out my backup bass to check it out and tune it up. As I was messing with it, this old guy wobbled up to the stage and stood there watching me. I said hello, but he didn't respond, just stood there weaving back and forth in a drunken stupor.

I went back to what I was doing, popped a few harmonics and checked my intonation.

At that point, this guy starts muttering something, but his words were so slurred I couldn't understand them. I shrugged my shoulders in the universal gesture for "Huh?"

And he says (very loudly), "You sure ain't no Chet Atkins, are ya boy?!" And then stumbles away.

My keyboard player and I looked at each other and just pissed ourselves laughing. That was at least 20 years ago and to this day, if I run into that guy, those are the first words out of his mouth.

nutso42 · #2 03-03-2010, 06:53 PM

Yeah... that looks like a bass...........

lousybassplayer · #3 03-03-2010, 08:33 PM

OOOH, he got you good. SHoulda pulled out a kazoo and said "No, I'm Dizzy Gillespie!"

Sparkdog · #4 03-04-2010, 11:01 AM

Oh, that is FAR from the wierdest thing that ever happened to me with this band.

This same group used to play what's known as the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota, it's where they dig these enormous pits in the ground and mine iron ore, or what the locals call taconite.

It's another world man. These guys work outside when it's 30 below zero. When they go to the bars at night to party (it's about all there is to do there) they drink like there's no tomorrow.

One place we played had a gigantic bar that was a square, each side of the square was maybe a hundred feet long. The bartenders were supposed to cut you off if you were obviously drunk out of your mind (but not before then) but the guys would just walk around to a different side of the bar and order another brewsky.

So behind the bar they had these had big rubber stamps and stamp pads. When a customer would stumble up and say "gibbey anudda Budweezer" the bartender would grab his collar and stamp his forehead with a big red CUTOFF so he couldn't order from another bartender.

Nuts!

lousybassplayer · #5 03-04-2010, 11:13 AM

sounds like my kind of place.