So we played our two-night stand at the Bluffton American Legion, which coincides with the last two nights of the Bluffton Street Fair. (Bluffton, Indiana) Last night we were having a great night. Good crowd, everybody having fun, and we get that one guy. You know the guy. A little too drunk, and starting to be a pain in the ass. He continuously shouts out requests for us to play something by Tom Petty.
Now, I like Tom Petty. I've bought some of his records; I've seen him in concert; overall, I'd say I'm a fan. However, there is not one single song of his that I feel fits into our set list, and so we don't know one. We tried to learn "Breakdown" at one point, but it felt, oh I don't know, L-A-M-E compared to the other stuff.
This guy is very insistent, and I'm telling you, we couldn't have even faked it through one; we just DON'T KNOW ANY. So I finally end up telling him over the mic, "we're not a jukebox. We can't just play any old song you want to hear if we don't know it." He's just obnoxious. He gets this huge tray of jello shots, and starts hovering around the stage, wanting us to do some with him. I don't drink; my wife only drinks wine, and not on gig nights; our drummer usually doesn't drink at shows, and our guitar player drinks beer, and is CAREFULLY WATCHED if he starts doing shots. We video tape the shows, and we will put him in front of the tape, and say, "here's where your shots started kicking in, and you started playing REALLY BADLY." He doesn't enjoy that.
The guy is hovering right up at the edge of the stage with this tray of jello shots, swaying back and forth, and giving me the distinct impression he's about to douse a monitor, or make a nice slippery spot for me to slide to my doom in. He's the only bad apple in a pretty good crowd, and we make it through the last few songs, and start to break down.
Another guy says, "hey, you know that Tom Petty guy? He's in the back of a cop car right now!" We go outside, and since the Street Fair is over, all the cops are hanging out on the corner; about eight of them, and my guitar player is talking and laughing with them, talking about the guy. I guess he got a drunk and disorderly, or some such, from whatever he was doing after he went outside. So all these cops know the story of his requests for "Last Dance for Mary Jane," and "Free Fallin'," etc.
My wife walks right up to the cop who is getting into the driver's seat of the car the guy is in, and she goes, "hey officer, could you do me a favor?" and the cop goes, "what's that?" and she says, "when you get him downtown, could you play him some Tom Petty?"
