nice little gig in hell..........

[Joe Nerve]

ahhh yes, i learn once again never to be too sure the worst is behind you.

as soon as i walk into last night's gig, i see some guy in my guitarist's face about something. he wasn't yelling, but i got a bad vibe the way he was talking to him. he wanted to borrow his amp, and randy (my guitarist) didn't want to give it to him. 2 guys from this guys band hadn't shown yet, we were the second band, the club owner told us to set up - we'd go on our scheduled time. If the other bands 2 guys showed up they'd go on last. The other 2 guys show, they tell us to get our stuff off, i say no, they don't like that either - AND THEN - i notice they're all skinheads. and the club begins filling up with skinheads. i rephrase my "no" and tell them it isn't up to us, talk to club owner. there's a little bit of a commotion, people are getting very hot and bothered and some guy grabs me to talk to me. he tells me, "don't worry about anything, everything is cool, if anyone gives you a problem send them to me." somehow that made me feel even less safe.

our set opens with a cover of "war". we're not ones to let any group of people dictate what we're gonna do, but i was getting more than a little nervous because by the time we were set to go - we were outnumbered i'd say 40 skinheads, to the 3 of us. worst part of it all is randy hadn't realized yet these guys were very off, he thought they were just yer average drunken tough guys.

near the end of our set we do a song that can easily be misconstrued as being anti American. it begins with a bastardation of the pledge of allegience.... goes something like "i pledge adherence, to the flag, of the untied states of america, and to the republicans ..... with liberty, and justice, for some. i'm the guy who says it, but at this point i didn't think it was such a great idea. randy decides he's doing it and begins reciting it - loud and clear. i prayed. my prayers worked because they were yelling so loudly "shut the f*** up," and they were so wasted they didn't really catch what he was saying.

we finish, real ugly vibe in the club - somehow they talk randy into borrowing his amp for the second band. their bass amp craps out. they wanna use mine - i give the guy a bunch of rules if he's gonna use it, he seems cool enough, i say alright. they start, i get ready to kiss my amp goodbye. they're unfathomably wasted, violent, beliggerent..... this sucked. the bouncer then tells me all the bands are gonna want to use our stuff we gotta get it out of there. not offering any assistance of course. i pray again - it works.

i'm outside with randy (a jew, by the way) and one of the king skins starts talking to us as if to be our friends. "so where you guys from?" blah, blah, blah... oh, you're italian? born here? that's cool." randy knew enough by this time to walk away. this guy was totally looking for trouble. i talked to him for a while and we happened to have a few things in common, he then walked away and whispered some stuff to his buddies that looked like "leave em alone, they're alright."

1st band finishes, second band plugs into my amp before the 1st even got off. i went up to the stage said "sorry dude, we gotta go" uplugged it rolled it out in about 14 seconds flat and we got the hell out of there.

it's nice to be home.

[Microbass]

ouch. sounds like a hellish night, at leats no one got hurt, and nothing got broken.

Hey - did ya'll get paid?

[Cobweb Strange]

Man, that sounds like a frightening gig! I'm glad to hear everything ended relatively well.
-Wade

[Mike N]

Glad you made it home ok, Joe.

Kinda similar story......
Get a call to play a club owner's son-in-law's B-day party. We show up and the place is wall to wall bikers, most with "Hells Angels" on the back of their leathers. We werent told this ahead of time, either.

Great, were gonna die.

Guy(whose B-day it was and who was roughly the size of a refrigerator) comes up to me and asks....
"What do you guys play?"
I answer "Pearl Jam, Goo Goo Dolls, Iron Maiden"
Guy looks at me and says(with a negative tone in his voice)....
"You guys dont play any 3 Doors Down, do you?"
I(thinking death is nearby)answer(slowly)..."Yes, we do."

Guy looks at me, pauses, and says..."Great. Im gonna love you guys tonight, and if anyone gives you a hard time, come find me."

Played the show, got some negative comments and funny looks from some very drunk bikers that wanted to hear Southern Rock, but made it home in one piece, with all my gear.

[Stinsok]

Been there for the Biker deal. I don't have anything against them, but they like to play a little too rough for me. You can always redeem yourself by playing the obligitory "Born to be wild." If they don't like you it's scary and if they do like you it's scary as well! Once your on their good side they would kill someone for you if you asked.

[Amethska]

Wow man, I'm glad I'm only 16 and don't have to worry about playing any biker bars any time soon...

[soundoholic]

My band is nearly a biker band. I have never taken a ride on a motorcycle in my life. I'm 19. The cool part is that we don't get the "bad bikers" too much. Just the cool ones who want to rock.

One song that will never fail. North, South, East, West. It doesn't matter anymore. Sweet Home Alabama.

That skin head thing scares me. Gangs freak me out. I don't want to die or get beat up. Skin heads really really scare me. It reminds me of the KKK or the post natzi revival.

[Funkster]

I feel for ya Joe, I have had some real brutal gigs lately and man I'm hoping that this weekends gigs go much better.

Here's my gig from hell that happened last weekend that I wrote in anothere thread.



Oh man what a brutal gig! We played this Harley ralley in Webster MA, It was Horrible after We were threatened and scared we were going to
be beat up if we didn't play certain songs. The first person we come across wanted to start a fight with our guitar player just for telling him what time we started, they wouldn't even let us in when
we got there, Then we find out we are playing outside, It didn't get much past 55 degree's all day and we played from 4 to 6, to a bunch of hammered bikers, There highlight of the day was to pull there Harley's in front of the stage to see if there drag pipes were louder than the band, that went on the whole time we played.
Nobody watched the band they all went inside because they were freezing It was just plain
awful!! My fingers were dry, cut, cracked, you name it. Just Brutal! we got paid though.
The best part is they set us up on a tow truck yeah a flatbed tow truck, 8 feet front to back. Our drummer almost fell three times. It was a tough gig.

[Joe Nerve]

Originally posted by Amethska
Wow man, I'm glad I'm only 16 and don't have to worry about playing any biker bars any time soon...

the place this took place was a stonesthrow away from you, and it's only 16 to enter . Dock Street. you're not as safe as you think.

biker types can be intimidating also, i seem to fair a lot better with them though. they seem somwhat reasonable, and like someone else kinda said - if you win one over, you ain't got much to worry about. i always think of the stones when i see biker crowds. they loved jagger - didn't listen much to what he had to say, but they loved him none the less. i think if you show them you're cool, they're pretty much cool with you. lets hope i don't eat these words.

skinheads have that blind, billigerent hatred that frightens me. i get the feeling they thrive off of violence more than the bikers. from my experience the hardcore bikers only want you to respect them. i don't think they pound on you for no reason whatsoever - it's not what they're about.

[vegaas]

I agree with you Joe, much rather play to a group of bikers instead of skinheads.
Bikers are partiers who can be rough, skinheads are hatemongers who live for confrontation.

[Garrett Mireles]

Originally posted by vegaas
Bikers are partiers who can be rough, skinheads are hatemongers who live for confrontation.

Skinheads shaved their heads because they are in a group, gang related, whatever.

Bikers are just motorcycle fans who travel in groups and like to rock.

[Mike N]

We had no idea our crowd that night was going to be bikers, or we would have brushed up on some Skynyrd or ZZ Top.

[FLOYDtheBARBER]

this dude Randy being a Jew wouldn't mean anything to a lot of skins; 'cause a lot of them are "sharp" (Skinheads Against Racial Predjuduce".)
skinheads originally started as mods, and they shaved their heads so they wouldn't have to worry about getting their hair pulled in fights. that's how the whole skinhead thing began. nothing to do with being a hatemonger. unfortunetly, neo-nazis and the like gave ALL skinheads a bad name, and that's really too bad. read this comic

[Mike Money]

I played a gig once...

And my drummer got the crap beat out of him by some kids because we played an old blink182 tune ("Boring" i think)

They said they would hurt one of us if we played any "pop punk crap" (They were just so hardcore)

We played it anyways, because the drummer and I both have very screw-you attitudes and we play what we want to play... the guitarist just follows our lead.

He ended up in the hospital, so me and the guitarist jumped those guys the next day... scared them more than we hurt them... we made our point, though.

Good thing I was just dreaming...

[jcadmus]

This is why I don't do that anymore.