What was the strangest NYE gig you ever did?

[joinercape]

About fifteen years ago I got a last minute call to do a NYE with some great local players, at a very posh country club. Same old story, big name band from Boston got a better offer and cancelled two weeks before New Years. I had worked there many times before doing weddings and functions but had not done a New Years Eve there. It's one of those places where someone has to die before you can get a membership. So we set up by 7:30, played a cocktail set until 8:30, then got served a great lobster dinner (in the kitchen of course), and went back on for dancing at 9:00pm. After a quick look around the room, I noticed the average age of the members must have been near 70. At 10:00pm one of them came up to us and asked us to play the last dance and a New Years toast! He handed the bandleader an envelope which had our pay in cash ($250 each as I remember) and a $50.00 tip for each of us. We played the tune, toasted the New Year, and were on the road by 10:30! After being used to playing until at least midnight, usually 1:00am, it was a nice surprise. Wish that happened more often! Any great stories out there?

[kesslari]

Best for me - I was playing in an Arabic band, with some great bellydancers on the bill performing with us. There was a huge storm in town, and it knocked all the power out to downtown. We all played acoustic instruments, so the place set up candles and we played acoustically. Show went on, and it was packed because everyplace else in town was pretty much SOL with no power.
Great gig, playing acoustically, fantastic ambience, appreciative crowd and other performers.
oh, I know, no pics, no dancers - here me performing with one who was on the bill that night.

[Lazylion]

Nearly 30 years ago I played NYE on board the Queen Mary in the harbor at Long Beach CA. We were one of several bands playing in different rooms around the ship.
We boarded near the bow, but our room was way back toward the stern. Luckily, there was plenty of staff and flatbed carts to help us load in.
The room wasn't real full, and the crowd was rather sedate. We were a high-energy country-rock band, we weren't used to that! But we forged ahead, and finally got to midnight.
Most of them were gone by 12:15, but enough stayed so that we had to play on til 1:30. At that time the rest of them vanished, and we began to pack up.

Eventually we were ready to load out, and guess what? We couldn't find any staff members, or any of the carts we'd used to come in! We found one hand truck, and that was it. That was all we had to load all our equipment out the length of the ship (and it's a long one!) and out into the parking lot.

That remains to this day the longest and most annoying load-out I've ever been a part of. It took us, in our slightly inebriated state, about 2 1/2 hours. I didn't get home til after dawn, and I lived in Costa Mesa!

I managed to avoid any subsequent gigs on the Queen Mary.

[busmandan]

I played a private party in a newly-finished airplane hanger. It had no heat and it was near freezing outside - we played in parkas.

The worst part? The concrete floor hadn't been sealed yet - which meant that every piece of gear we had wound up with a nice coat of concrete dust on it. We hauled that dust around for months afterward.

[ogrossman]

These guys I met in collage (early 70's) were putting together a band for the house gig at a new bar opening up out in the boonies. The lead singer's father in-law was part owner of the bar and our audition for the gig was going to be NYE at the local country club. We knew we were going to be playing for old fogies so we put together four whole sets of old standards (Red Sails In the Sunset, Moonlight In Vermont, etc).

Of course they ate it up and we got the house gig at the bar to start when construction was finished the following spring. By the time the bar opened we had transformed ourselves into a top 40 cover band. The owners never said anything about our reincarnation and we drew good crowds for them so everyone was happy.

[elgecko]

I played a similar one years ago. It was a NYE party for a senior citizen tour group at the Doubletree in Orange, CA. The seniors were from another time zone so we did the countdown at 11pm after which those who made it that far, immediately retreated to their rooms. We were home in time to celebrate with friends!

[SMILEYSIXX]

I'm playing a drum-bass techno/electronica/grindcore rave gig tomorrow. I already know this is gonna be a trip to remember.