Instant ***hole, just add microphone

[Big B.]

I'm thinking about enforcing the Erudite Rule: "Do you know what erudite means? No? Then you can't use my mic." I know it's a losing battle, brothers and sisters, but someone has to put a stop to this menace.

This is priceless. I bet that will get 'em most everytime. I used to play at a club in town that was known for having the biggest bouncers around. All over 6'6" and BROAD. Those guys were my favorite. Whenever someone came on the bouncers would literally pick them up and drop them outside the front door, male or female. The bigger they were the funnier it got. One of the most entertaining moments of my adult life was watching a star football player from the University of Alabama get thrown out bodily with 4 guys bigger than him holding holding each arm or leg.

 

[The Owl]

Oddly enough, never had this happen while I was on stage (yet), but have witnessed some real jerry's kid drunken stupidity by others, such as these 2 examples by the same person:

1) First incident involving the same person, who has a nasty habit of pounding down NINE or TEN consecutive shots of Tequila on a regular basis. One time, this dumba$$ bought his trombone to a bassist friend's gig, and in his completely hammered state, somehow puts his horn together, jumps up onstage and proceeds to blow this horrific atonal noise with ZERO cognition of anything going on around him. My buddy was quite ticked and managed to eject him from the stage. This moron kept insisting that he was playing "counterpoint" in the music. Of course the next day (after sleeping it off at my buddy's house), "jerry's kid" there had little to ZERO recollection of what happened the previous night. And luckily enough, it was captured on a camcorder for all to see. The evidence was damning.

2) On a visit to my same bass playing friend's place in Orange County CA, he, his girlfriend at the time and this jerry's kid (who promised to behave himself, YET snuck in 10 shots of Tequila by stealing it from my buddy's cupboard. My buddy only had Tequila to mix Margaritas with, NOT for consumption like that) all went out to see a couple different folks perform, first a set by a killer jazz vocalist and her piano trio, "jerry's kid" there starts trying to hit on her and anything that crosses his path. Next, we're off to see another friend's rock cover band at an Irish pub. Not even an hour passes when "jerry's kid" first hops up onstage and grabs the mic from band's singer in the middle of "For Your Love" and of course totally botches it. To cap it all off, he then gets with some chick who's nearly as drunk as he is and they're practically doing it on one of the tables, then he goes tripping and bumbling and nearly takes out a whole table full of people. My my buddy and his GF grabbed this dumba$$ and got him out of the place before the bouncers did, lucky for him. I was so mad that I actually WANTED the bouncers to beat the crap out of him.

In any case, we got him back to my buddy's house to sleep it off. Of course, he remembers NOTHING of the previous night and takes WEEKS to muster up a phony NON-apology for his actions and acts like its a big joke and everyone's just supposed to laugh along with it. Well, I for one cursed out this moron up one side and down the other and told him to NEVER contact me OR my buddy ever again, and how offended I was not only at his trainwreck behavior but the fact he showed ZERO remorse at all and thought it was all a big joke.

Sad thing is, we were friends with this guy in the early 80's, he was a bit of a party animal and such but somehow fun to be around and a lot of laughs. (He USED to play some pretty smoking trombone too, but now he completely SUCKS!). Now, he's just a middle age poster child for arrested development and out-of-control alcoholism and stupidity. Sad.

 

[walker rosewood]

My problem is that it's my own drummer who is always this guy. We have to give him a mic because he sings, but in between songs he won't shut up. Mostly incoherent rambling that gets worse with alcohol. He doesn't seem to get that while his two friends in the audience think the inside jokes are funny, the other 150 people there (including the band) are literally saying "shut up and play some music."

Maybe I should put this in the band management section.

 

[HeadyVan Halen]

Yeah, it's our 'hype-man'...long-time friend of mine lost his job a while back and helps move equipment in and out. He's also funny as sh!t. (Think of Cedric the Entertainer, that can dance like James Brown)

Anyhow, he thought he was helping when he's actually taking away from the show when he grabs the mike and takes it into the crowd and starts conducting interviews
It goes like this:

Q: "Hey ma'am, what's happening? How are you liking the band?
A: '(shyly) 'Their great'
Q: "Why did you choose to wear that outfit tonight? You know big people shouldn't wear yellow...


*MUTE*

A good church cussin' ensued in roughly 17 minutes.

 

[RNV]

Oddly enough, Rodney Anonymous of the Dead Milkmen mentioned a very similar thing in one of his "Bitchin' Camaro" intro diatribes.



Skip to 2:00 if you want to get right to the pertinent part.

I stopped reading when I saw this. A Dead Milkmen reference? Really? Freaking Awesome!!!!

 

[BananaKing]

My band was doing an open rehearsal at our university before a rather large show (for us) and since more and more people started to show up, it ended up getting to about 75 people so we just decided to turn it into a full-on show outside.

One of the other students (who is basically alienating by his very presence) decides to smoke some pot and drink a bit. He used to be into drugs very heavily before he got back into school at 30 so any real useage these days tends to send him back into a very "questionable" state of mind for an extended period.

We were in the middle of an 8 minute long song with a fairly complex 11/8 groove and unison lines when this particular gentleman decides to just get onstage with us and start rapping about 2012 and the coming of aliens as he calls it.

He was up there for about 20 seconds before we decided that we were tired of him. When we went to stop him, he grabs the wireless mic and proceeds to leave the stage and run about 20 feet away. Then, he starts yelling through the mic, talking about conspiracies and government mind control and various other fun things.

We eventually just stopped playing and turned all the power off. People eventually chased him down and grabbed the mic from him and then scared him off. Shortly after that, we decided to do another two songs and then call it quits for the day.

He decided to come back halfway through the second song and try to grab the mic again.... I swear, I have never seen someone from the audience throw a shoe quite that hard in my life.

He didn't come back to the school for another week. We had a good set other than that, though.

Here is the what the music was like, btw:
Link Removed

 

[MakiSupaStar]

I think every band has a drunk magnet. The player all the drunks just gravitate to. Sometimes this role changes, but for a good while it was me. For some reason a lot of these drunks insisted on putting their hands on my fretboard while I'm playing. I remember one dude in particular. He crept off the dancefloor and started doing air guitar moves at me. It looked like he was having a stroke. Then he'd nod at me like he wanted to take my bass and play it, and I'd just shake my head. Next thing I know, he's coming up to me and saying 'dude, just let me play it a little bit." This is all mid song by the way. We were in the middle of Cissy Strut and jamming into a transition into a cover of Velvet Underground's Rock and Roll Velvet. We were playing well and I could tell the transition was going to be smooth and dazzling (if I don't mind patting ourselves on the back ). Well that was all ruined when this dolt literally tried to take the bass from me. First thing he does is put his hands on my fretboard and try to wrench the bass from me. He instantly kills my sound. I respond with a foot to the chest and push him off. Now he's pissed and he comes back. I told him. "Don't touch my bass." He makes a weird mocking imitation of me, and then slowly reaches out and tries to put his hand on my fretboard again. So I did a quick turn and smacked him in the face with my head stock.

Well needless to say this caused him to bleed, and now he's pissed. He's trying to fight me. He jumps up on stage while we're all still trying to play. The singer in my band had resorted to stepping off the mike during the jam and was playing his mandolin. He sees the dude and calmly walks over and literally kicked him hard. Right in the @$$. So now this guy is pissed. He's turning around trying to put my singer in a head lock. The guitarist jumps in now. He just starts kicking him while still playing his guitar. He does it repeatedly. We're still trying to play, but as you can imagine the jam is suffering. Suddenly our drummer stands up. The music stops and he walks over to the guy with his sticks in hand and proceeds to whack him across the face with his stick. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. It was like the dude just woke up. He suddenly composed himself. Realized where he was and tried to take a mock bow. Everyone is staring at this guy. The dancefloor is full of people and they've all stopped moving and it's awkwardly silent. Then from out of nowhere this full cup of beer comes flying and hits the guy on top of the head. He kind of teeters for a moment and then just does this slow motion dive off the stage and head first into the ground. He was out cold. It all happened so fast. It took two bouncers to come over and clean him up off the floor. After all that was done. My singer walks up and says "That's gonna leave a mark."

 

[Burlington]

Maki, rad story!!! Thanks for sharing

 

[Flogger59]

I was subbing at an acoustic gig where the frontman is all about audience participation. To that end he has a bag full of shakers and tambourines that gets handed out to the crowd. "Nice touch" I thought, until I lean in for a back vox line, and there is no mic on the stand (it was a tune that I didn't play a lot, and was watching for the changes).***? At the same time an oddly arrhythmic pounding is coming from the PA. At the tune's end a patron hands me his lemon shaped shaker, and my now Pacman shaped SM58 from being beaten with said fruit shaker. "Did you REALLY think that was a good idea?"

 

[Depth_Charge]

Not only did I often get people singing into or pulling my mic down to use, they also used to sing or say stupid things into the Zoom recorder as well. Those made for some hilarious listens though..

Drunk A: "Hey what is this."
Drunk B: "Its a video camera".
A: "Naah man, there's no lens, its not a camera"
B: "It must be, its pointed at the band"
A: "Naah I think its a sound conditioner or something"
B: "Hey, the red light has Rec on it, Does it recondition sound?"
A: "It's a recorder. (Yells) Woohoo you guys suck yeah yeah Living on a PRayer"...

Yeah. Good times.

OT: One time at a 3-night gig I forgot to switch the zoom off, and recorded the security staff ragging the band while it was quiet, so we dumped it to PC, mixed it around a bit and added music, put the remix on an iPod, and the next night, we played some of the musical rap type ragging we created through FOH before we started playing. The staff thought it was hilarious

 

[GregC]

I think every band has a drunk magnet. The player all the drunks just gravitate to. Sometimes this role changes, but for a good while it was me. For some reason a lot of these drunks insisted on putting their hands on my fretboard while I'm playing. I remember one dude in particular. He crept off the dancefloor and started doing air guitar moves at me. It looked like he was having a stroke. Then he'd nod at me like he wanted to take my bass and play it, and I'd just shake my head. Next thing I know, he's coming up to me and saying 'dude, just let me play it a little bit." This is all mid song by the way. We were in the middle of Cissy Strut and jamming into a transition into a cover of Velvet Underground's Rock and Roll Velvet. We were playing well and I could tell the transition was going to be smooth and dazzling (if I don't mind patting ourselves on the back ). Well that was all ruined when this dolt literally tried to take the bass from me. First thing he does is put his hands on my fretboard and try to wrench the bass from me. He instantly kills my sound. I respond with a foot to the chest and push him off. Now he's pissed and he comes back. I told him. "Don't touch my bass." He makes a weird mocking imitation of me, and then slowly reaches out and tries to put his hand on my fretboard again. So I did a quick turn and smacked him in the face with my head stock.

Well needless to say this caused him to bleed, and now he's pissed. He's trying to fight me. He jumps up on stage while we're all still trying to play. The singer in my band had resorted to stepping off the mike during the jam and was playing his mandolin. He sees the dude and calmly walks over and literally kicked him hard. Right in the @$$. So now this guy is pissed. He's turning around trying to put my singer in a head lock. The guitarist jumps in now. He just starts kicking him while still playing his guitar. He does it repeatedly. We're still trying to play, but as you can imagine the jam is suffering. Suddenly our drummer stands up. The music stops and he walks over to the guy with his sticks in hand and proceeds to whack him across the face with his stick. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. It was like the dude just woke up. He suddenly composed himself. Realized where he was and tried to take a mock bow. Everyone is staring at this guy. The dancefloor is full of people and they've all stopped moving and it's awkwardly silent. Then from out of nowhere this full cup of beer comes flying and hits the guy on top of the head. He kind of teeters for a moment and then just does this slow motion dive off the stage and head first into the ground. He was out cold. It all happened so fast. It took two bouncers to come over and clean him up off the floor. After all that was done. My singer walks up and says "That's gonna leave a mark."

This is utterly fantastic.

 

[Passinwind]

Share your stories, if you've fought off a mic zombie.

I ran open mikes for years, I've had plenty.

So I invite some friends who are very professional to come jam with the house band, and we do a sweet bossa nova medley morphing into God Save The Queen, which my friends don't know at all. My ex-GF's brother has a local in tow as a date, and she comes up and threatens to shoot me for wrecking her special moment with the Pistols tune. Funny thing is, it's the only time we have ever played a jazz tune on this gig.

This, on mic in front of maybe 120 people, which is a full house pretty much. As she gets escorted out literally yelling and screaming at me, we fire up You Stupid A******, which our young punk guitarist delivers flawlessly. Big fun!

 

[Stan Laurel]

This one does not involve a drunk. I was playing a wedding. The service hadn't started yet and I was playing quiet organ (1959 Hammond RT2) as people were being seated. A little girl about 7 years old got up on the platform and started grabbing the lighted candles and other stuff. Her mother followed her around occasionally telling her "no, don't touch" but doing nothing at all to stop her. Then she came over to the organ and started grabbing the drawbars totally messing up my settings. I grabbed her hand and withdrew it, then had to redo the settings. Mom finally got her to sit down but in the middle of the service she started having a fit. Finally mom had to drag her out of the room kicking and screaming so we could finish the ceremony.

 

[poorbassist15]

This one does not involve a drunk. I was playing a wedding. The service hadn't started yet and I was playing quiet organ (1959 Hammond RT2) as people were being seated. A little girl about 7 years old got up on the platform and started grabbing the lighted candles and other stuff. Her mother followed her around occasionally telling her "no, don't touch" but doing nothing at all to stop her. Then she came over to the organ and started grabbing the drawbars totally messing up my settings. I grabbed her hand and withdrew it, then had to redo the settings. Mom finally got her to sit down but in the middle of the service she started having a fit. Finally mom had to drag her out of the room kicking and screaming so we could finish the ceremony.

I hate when someone screws with my drawbar settings, I never remember them. Maybe I should start writing them down.

 

[Medford Bassman]

Oddly enough, never had this happen while I was on stage (yet), but have witnessed some real jerry's kid drunken stupidity by others, such as these 2 examples by the same person:

1) First incident involving the same person, who has a nasty habit of pounding down NINE or TEN consecutive shots of Tequila on a regular basis. One time, this dumba$$ bought his trombone to a bassist friend's gig, and in his completely hammered state, somehow puts his horn together, jumps up onstage and proceeds to blow this horrific atonal noise with ZERO cognition of anything going on around him. My buddy was quite ticked and managed to eject him from the stage. This moron kept insisting that he was playing "counterpoint" in the music. Of course the next day (after sleeping it off at my buddy's house), "jerry's kid" there had little to ZERO recollection of what happened the previous night. And luckily enough, it was captured on a camcorder for all to see. The evidence was damning.

2) On a visit to my same bass playing friend's place in Orange County CA, he, his girlfriend at the time and this jerry's kid (who promised to behave himself, YET snuck in 10 shots of Tequila by stealing it from my buddy's cupboard. My buddy only had Tequila to mix Margaritas with, NOT for consumption like that) all went out to see a couple different folks perform, first a set by a killer jazz vocalist and her piano trio, "jerry's kid" there starts trying to hit on her and anything that crosses his path. Next, we're off to see another friend's rock cover band at an Irish pub. Not even an hour passes when "jerry's kid" first hops up onstage and grabs the mic from band's singer in the middle of "For Your Love" and of course totally botches it. To cap it all off, he then gets with some chick who's nearly as drunk as he is and they're practically doing it on one of the tables, then he goes tripping and bumbling and nearly takes out a whole table full of people. My my buddy and his GF grabbed this dumba$$ and got him out of the place before the bouncers did, lucky for him. I was so mad that I actually WANTED the bouncers to beat the crap out of him.

In any case, we got him back to my buddy's house to sleep it off. Of course, he remembers NOTHING of the previous night and takes WEEKS to muster up a phony NON-apology for his actions and acts like its a big joke and everyone's just supposed to laugh along with it. Well, I for one cursed out this moron up one side and down the other and told him to NEVER contact me OR my buddy ever again, and how offended I was not only at his trainwreck behavior but the fact he showed ZERO remorse at all and thought it was all a big joke.

Sad thing is, we were friends with this guy in the early 80's, he was a bit of a party animal and such but somehow fun to be around and a lot of laughs. (He USED to play some pretty smoking trombone too, but now he completely SUCKS!). Now, he's just a middle age poster child for arrested development and out-of-control alcoholism and stupidity. Sad.

I thought Chris Farley passed away in 1998? Seriously, though what a knob!