Some audiences deserve a chain saw across the jugular...

[Haderian]

... I just have to spew out my extreme disregard for drunken audiences!!! Did you ever have some bad-smelling wino character screaming in your ear for some "Sweet Home Alabama" while you´re trying to sing and play a complicated tune at the same time? And with the wino bad-breath bastard knocking your mike into your front teeth, making your lyrics sheets fall to the floor, and banging his filthy hands on your strings in the middle of a song? While the amplification isn´t working right and the guitarist looks at you with strange bulging bloodshot eyes from having some grass between sets, and suddenly deciding to change into some strange new key in the middle of a song?

You jazz and symphony guys live an easy life! With us URB players down in the hard world of sleazy bars, it´s a f***ing world war for every song! But that´s how Paul McCartney got his teeth cut on the Reeperbahn back in the early 60´s, playing 12 hours a day, 8 days a week in front of drunks and pimps and hookers. Well, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all anyway!!!

[toman]

heh. Drunken symphony players are just as common, and just about as obnoxious.

[Steve Killingsworth]

It's not always the audience that causes a little distraction.

Back in September, we were playing at a small bluegrass festival wwwwaaaayyyy out in the middle of nowhere. The stage was enclosed on three sides with cedar posts supporting the roof--one of the posts was located in the middle of the stage. In an effort to maintain a rustic look this particular post was not smooth but had about 6 inch long limbs protruding all around it. In the middle of our first set, it began to rain and things paused while the sound man moved his equipment up onto the stage and set it up behind the post--by the way, the sound man was approximately 98 years old.

We started playing when a squadron of hornets appeared and began buzzing around the front of the stage. The next thing I knew, the soundman pushed by me and began flailing away at the hornets with his cap--we continued playing all the while. After a few minutes of this, two more guys appeared with insect spray and added their anti-aircraft fire to the effort. I backed up to attempt an escape but was trapped against the limby post--and the guitarist/singer is still wailing away. Eventually, the hornets were all shot down and the monitors mike stands and almost everything else was dripping but the whole ensemble did get a standing ovation from the crowd.

[Haderian]

Hey Steve, thanks for sharing the hornet experience! Something like that happened to me too while I was still playing electric bass...

It was way up in northern Sweden where there are lots of mosquitos, and we played outdoors at a biker party. I kept running all over the stage during the whole set, whipping the bass around to chase the mosquitos off (without much success). Afterwards I got tons of praise about my awesome rock-star-groove-monster stage presence. All I wanted to do was avoid getting all my blood sucked out.

After our set I was totally exhausted and itching all over from hundreds of mosquito bites. But my involuntary antics got us some more gigs and those insects taught me I should put on more of a show, physically, than I used to do before. Which I still try to do. Call me Bug Brain if you want. But how do you run around the stage with an upright?

(Come to think of it, I think I saw Rod Stewart´s bassist do that on TV 20 years ago, a tiny Japanese guy with a URB, standing on top of it and rolling around under it, playing all the time, but I may have dreamed it... anyone else remember that?)

[P. Aaron]

Originally posted by Haderian
[...Well, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all anyway!!!

A saying I heard once: "...there are no bad gigs, just bad audiences".