If I could do it all over again....

[Zoffy]

I'm 53 and every now and again my wife or a friend will ask me, "Remember when we did (this thing)?" or "Remember when we went to (that place)?" and I have no idea what they are referring to. The way they describe it sounded fun - I hope I had a good time!

 

[Milo Spleen]

I remember this exact night in 1982, who took the photo, and the room that we were playing.

 

[skygzr]

I remember this exact night in 1982, who took the photo, and the room that we were playing.View attachment 4101542

i like how you're using your skinny tie as a mute. I did the same thing.

 

[Milo Spleen]

i like how you're using your skinny tie as a mute. I did the same thing.

hahaha. I would do anything for a laugh. Didn't hurt my mediocre playing one bit!

 

[ejaggers]

Oh, the stories I could tell....I actually remember every gig, but it's not like I was a full-timer. But the ones where the crazy stuff happened seem to stick in your head. Like the time we played an after hours club that was above a jewelry store. The dancing vibrated the floor and set off the burglar alarm. The cops showed up and shut us down.

Another time we played a wedding and the cops showed up and tried to arrest our sound man for breaking into a pharmacy next door. Apparently someone tried to sledgehammer their way through a concrete block wall. Despite having three hundred witnesses that he was behind the board all night, and he was on crutches and casted from a recent knee surgery, the cops still tried to pin it on him.

I could go on, but I won't. C'mon guys, let's hear your wacky stories. Maybe we should start a separate thread?

I retired from the road years ago and been way more successful with a 9 to 5.
I regret not having pictures from my many adventures.
My wackies story is:

The guitar player got a VD from a girl while we were far, far from home.
They get into a fight and he takes money from her purse for a penicillin shot.
She comes to the gig and shoots at him 6 times with a 22 pistol,
basically missing him except for three flesh wounds.

She's mad at the whole band and cuts up the tires on two of the three vehicles,
but she didn't find the one I was in.
Now we are miles from home with only one working car.
The sad part is, nobody in the band liked the guitar player either,
he was only there until we found a suitable replacement.

I caught the finest woman in the club and convinced her to come home with me.
She was beautiful, with the sweetest personality I'd ever seen.
We get back to my home state and the very next night she starts the biggest argument over nothing.
Later in life I found out she was bipolar which I knew nothing about back then.

So, the sweetest woman ended up being the craziest and meanest I ever had,
But since I took her across state lines, I felt like I was stuck with her.
That, and oh yeah, did I mention she was beautiful?

057912

 

[Deleted member 165050]

I have a gig diary of dates after I was 40 but nothing before and I never wrote down the interesting details... like the Stonehenge gig where the crew kept the generator going by draining my fuel tank as it didn't have a lock... the little Devon village gig when we noticed Chris Martin from Coldplay sitting two rows in... the festival backstage jam with someone from Steppenwolf... it's all in there but not tied to any dates. I have no problem remembering the exact number of profitable gigs though - none!

 

[RicoTheBassMan]

My drummer, who I've been playing with since 1984, used to tape all of our gigs on an old tape deck. If we were outdoors, he'd hang it in a tree and tell some drunken idiot to flip the tape every 30 minutes or 45 minutes. It depended upon the length tape he bought. We still listen to them! We have old set lists that we will run through once a summer. But we didn't keep everything. I live in NY and last weekend my wife and I had to run errands all over our area. As we are driving, I would say "Here is another bizarre place that we gigged...." There were places that used to be bars, parks, parking lots, etc. There was one place we played that we passed that is now a full blown housing development. We were hired to attract people off the road by playing really loud! We set up on the front lawn of a model home and cranked it! We didn't think it was a great marketing strategy, but we got paid and were given a poopie load of really awesome beer. Do what you can to record the memories. The stories will keep you smiling!

 

[sawzalot]

I love the idea of a gig diary. I wish I had kept one. Oh the stories that diary would tell.

 

[57pbass]

Side note, just watched a great documentary on the Apollo theater, the stage or booking manager kept gig notes starting back in the 30s or something, super cool to see the handwritten notes on pay, short gig review and audience etc.

Maybe some TBers were at some of those early Apollo gigs?

Where did you watch this. I would be interested in watching it. Thank you

 

[SOUTH PAW]

I recently heard someone tired of hearing about the good old days, define nostalgia as, " a great imagination combined with a bad memory".

About five years ago, a good friend that's also a drummer i was in a band with back in 1981-83, gave me a CD he made from a bunch of old cassette tape recordings from back then. I remembered that he would always record every time we rehearsed, and he was able to find enough complete songs (15) that he kept all those years to put on a disc. I'm so glad he did that, to preserve what I would have barely remembered and certainly faded away even more with time. Listening to it brought back a lot of good memories even beyond the music itself. I was in my early twenties at the time, and the reality of hearing us playing a variety of original and cover songs was at least as good as I remembered (see quote above is not always true ). Even impressed my wife when she heard it.

 

[brianrost]

My drummer, who I've been playing with since 1984, used to tape all of our gigs on an old tape deck.

A guitarist friend has piles of gig tapes from the 1980s. He's still at it with a memory-based recorder.

Sometime around 2000 I bought a MiniDisc recorder and started recording my gigs, switching to a memory-based recorder some year later. One that I'm glad I captured because otherwise it would seem like it was just a dream was the gig where the bandleader hired drummer Dave Mattacks as a sub. He had no idea who Dave was, just some guy he bumped into at a studio one day.

 

[Mike JV]

There are a few gigs and rehearsals I wished I had videoed.

Oh gosh, yeah! Some of the auditions we held were hilarious! I'll never forget this one "singer" we tried out. He was so bad that my buddies parents upstairs couldn't stop laughing for hours afterwards. As far as gigs, some of the bar fights should have been taped for anyone to believe. Of course I don't have to tell you guys about some of the strange people who wander into clubs who should have been video taped.

About a year ago a friend of mine sent me a picture at a backyard party we played at sometime around 1977. I couldn't even begin to remember where it was at or who threw the party. Just another one of those times that's long forgotten as so many other gigging moments.