Coolest random thing from one of your gigs?

[Chad Michael]

Sun Banks Resort (Grand Coulee WA).

It's a camping / festival site with a big covered stage (about 50' by 40' @ 5 feet high). There were lots of families at the resort that weekend, as we started playing they were migrating out to hear us play. The crowd got bigger and bigger, people started dancing, & our mix / PA sounded fantastic outdoors (borrowed bigger subs for that show).

It was such a treat to have families out enjoying live music together.... mom, dad, brother, sister, toddler, teenager etc. They would roar with cheer and applause after each song. They made us feel like total rock stars and we enjoyed giving them a night of entertainment that they'll probably never forget .

 

[thehangingmist]

i was on a tour a week back. the second gig there were these bunch of kids, mostly girls like all around 10years old maybe? screaming out like crazy all out through the first gig!
it was like Beatlesmania only 100000 times lesser maybe. but damn! those kids were super charged and they loved every bit of the gig

 

[edbass]

Was playing a local club one Saturday night, last set, look on the dance floor and see this envelope being kicked around the dance floor by oblivious dancers. It would scoot from one side to the other, no one really noticing this large stuffed envelope in thier "Play that funky music" dance frenzy. I kept watching, finally, it gets kicked right in front of me, I reach down, pick it up, and deposit it on my amp. We finally finish our set, I put my bass away, check the envelope, there's around $1,100 in it!!!There were two deposit slips from a couple of the local strip bars in there as well, but being a broke musician, I didn't pursue trying to return the money to a strip club owner. I still have some twinges of guilt over that, but knowing those clubs, and the guys that owned them, "Vinny from Boston" types, I never felt too bad over it all.

So... sometimes stealing is OK?

If there were deposit slips with the cash, it would seem pretty obvious who's money it was; "finders keepers" probably doesn't apply in that scenario.
Just by reading your post, there's one thing I'm sure you knew.
Who's money it wasn't.

"Broke musician" or not, IMO that's some pretty bad karma.

 

[phatbass]

This sounds unbelievable, but I swear it's true. Playing a private show about a year ago for a guy who is, shall we say, not short of a dollar. The three piece I was playing with were getting paid 1200 for the night (trust me; those gigs don't come along every week!). There were two bands on the gig - it was one of those one-band stops-the-other-kicks-off things.

The host loved our stuff and during one song came up on stage and shoved a $100 bill in everybody's pocket (He didn't do this for the other band). At the end of the night he's writing out the check, then says "nah; you guys were worth more than that", scrubs out the 1200 and writes 2500!!!! I was just stunned and I could definitely handle more gigs like that.

Musically the coolest would be a tie between having Dave Hole get up and play a song with us at the Perth Blues Club a few months ago, and me getting to play a set with Mal Eastick (you older Aussies would know of the guy) at the Goulburn Blues Festival at the beginning of the year.

 

[sonic assassin]

i think the most interesting show ive played was likely one of our worst. it was some lame battle of the bands at a library in the middle of nowhere, west cincinnati. i recall getting lost 5 or 6 times on the way up there.

prior to the show, one of the people running it asks me to fill out some paper, i turn my bass around to my back, start writing, and my strap knob fails and my ONLY bass falls OFF, i repeat OFF, the stage. crowd is silent. i likely said something to the effect of "F*CK!". picked it up, completely unscathed. tuned it, played the show.

oh but it gets better. somewhere in the middle of the set, the drummer's cymbal stand starts to creep its way down and fall into the kit, and he STOPS playing, and fixes it. he had another crash.. but he stops playing. theres a reason hes the ex drummer.

our guitarist apparently missed a channel switching cue because he "saw a boob".

i am primarily a finger player, but when the song calls for it, i have a pick tucked in my pickguard. it was a great big yellow ernie ball pick. halfway through the song, it snaps in half! i look back to see the piece fly off as i meet someone from another bands eyes giving me the silent "holy sh*t thats the baddest thing ive ever seen". i DID have a backup pick and only missed a couple notes.

to top it all off, we still came in third! we didnt win much, but we made a lot of friends that day, and all-in-all, it was worth it

 

[helly]

Played a show the other day at Lake Station Eagles Club, in Indiana for Halloween. It's a little crappy venue in the basement of a bar, no stage or anything. I'm a relatively new bassist, a guitarist that switched over and I'm loving every minute of it. Anyway, this was a 2 night Halloween festival with tons of metal bands, and we were one of the 'headliners' of the second night (headliners meaning we got a 30 minute set instead of 15). We're all getting crazy into it, being as we pretty much had to start our own pit, easy enough with no stage. I got down real low during one of our breakdowns, and apparently our lead guitarist bumped into our rhythm guitarist, who then landed right on my back. Absolutely leveled me down to my knees, then came down next to me on his knees, both of us still playing. Got HUGE response for that, the pictures were fantastic.

Then, the other night, we co-headlined the Doubledoor here in Chicago and after getting off stage, some guy told me I was his second favorite metal bassist ever, which was absolutely awesome to hear.