Strangest gig I have ever done or seen

[Lowbrow]

My band played a wedding rehearsal dinner at an old west ghost town/amusement park on top of a mountain. http://www.ghosttowninthesky.com/

Believe it or not, we played on stage in the saloon. The workers there took us into their costume room and made us put on vests and cowboy hats. We then went out and played rb/funk/jazz. Pretty interesting.

Of all the freakin' luck - I LOVE those old western-town parks!

OK – this settles it… I’m going to sit down for a month-long think, then write a book of war stories. But here’s one more:

On a two-month van tour of the US Midwest and South, circa 1995, Wilmington, KY… I think… maybe Wilmington, NC? (If you’ve done a low-rent van tour you’ll relate to my confusion). We played a “punk-rock festival” in this big club in a strip mall. The mighty headliner was the mightily overrated Fear, fronted by the mightily obnoxious Lee Ving.

In the true workingman’s spirit of punk, Mr. Ving sequesters himself in a private mirrored dressing room, while the other 5 bands cram into a small greenroom off the side of the stage. The promoter promised free drinks and food – which amounted to two cases of Bud and a heap of spaghetti that the promoter’s wife made. A huge pot-full of pasta and another pot of sauce were a-boiling on a double hotplate in the shared prep room.

So the night goes on and we’re all drinking and bitching about Lee Ving and what a pampered prima donna he’s being (like bands will naturally do). We all do our sets, and then FEAR comes on, much to the lukewarm delight of the 50 or so punk rock fanatics in Wilmington (KY or NC).

Fear had a huge backline of hired Marshalls and SVTs. As I’m weaving drunkenly in front of the stage about 3 songs into the show, a big glob of cold, sticky, dry spaghetti comes sailing over the Marshalls out of the little shared dressing room, and whaps Lee Ving right in the side of the head! It actually wraps around his face like that thing in Alien for a few seconds before sliding off. Perfect! Lee throws down his guitar, his bassist throws down his bass, and both go running behind the backline to confront the pasta pitcher only to find … a vacant room, and a big pot of cold pasta.

I think it was our roadie – but she’d only smile and never admit anything. I love rock and roll.

 

[jschall84]

Of all the freakin' luck - I LOVE those old western-town parks!

OK – this settles it… I’m going to sit down for a month-long think, then write a book of war stories. But here’s one more:

On a two-month van tour of the US Midwest and South, circa 1995, Wilmington, KY… I think… maybe Wilmington, NC? (If you’ve done a low-rent van tour you’ll relate to my confusion). We played a “punk-rock festival” in this big club in a strip mall. The mighty headliner was the mightily overrated Fear, fronted by the mightily obnoxious Lee Ving.

In the true workingman’s spirit of punk, Mr. Ving sequesters himself in a private mirrored dressing room, while the other 5 bands cram into a small greenroom off the side of the stage. The promoter promised free drinks and food – which amounted to two cases of Bud and a heap of spaghetti that the promoter’s wife made. A huge pot-full of pasta and another pot of sauce were a-boiling on a double hotplate in the shared prep room.

So the night goes on and we’re all drinking and bitching about Lee Ving and what a pampered prima donna he’s being (like bands will naturally do). We all do our sets, and then FEAR comes on, much to the lukewarm delight of the 50 or so punk rock fanatics in Wilmington (KY or NC).

Fear had a huge backline of hired Marshalls and SVTs. As I’m weaving drunkenly in front of the stage about 3 songs into the show, a big glob of cold, sticky, dry spaghetti comes sailing over the Marshalls out of the little shared dressing room, and whaps Lee Ving right in the side of the head! It actually wraps around his face like that thing in Alien for a few seconds before sliding off. Perfect! Lee throws down his guitar, his bassist throws down his bass, and both go running behind the backline to confront the pasta pitcher only to find … a vacant room, and a big pot of cold pasta.

I think it was our roadie – but she’d only smile and never admit anything. I love rock and roll.

that story kicks so much arse. you should deff start writing a book.

 

[realbadgroove]

I've done that gig. It was a "Walk for Life" It's a fundraiser for cancer victims. It was a long hard haul to the stage and we did a short set, but as I've had family involvement with cancer? It was on me and the band, gladly. As it played out? it was a beautiful eerie night, low lying fog over a track behind a large High School. they had lit candelaria round the track for people who had passed and they were just below the kneehigh fog bank with people walking slowly around the track.....very moving sight. You got paid?

This was something like that and yes we got paid.

 

[martyman5000]

Some funny stories...I liked Big Old Hairy's story the best so far

 

[FissioN]

I actually remember playing in one venue about a year ago...it was in the summer, at an old high school, with random people coming to watch about 8 bands play their hearts out. So, after my band does my set, I go back into the back to hang out with the lights guy. Then I look up on stage, and next thing I know...a ten year old with a green mohawk is being carried in on a throat while wearing a glossy black trenchcoat. I was so outrageously confused, It seemed very surreal to me. Then, it got weirder: One of the guys carrying him in accidentally drops the throne, so the thing ends up diagonal, in the air. The other throne bearer puts his side down, and the kid gets up and starts to walk...towards the mic. This ten year old kid was the lead singer for a heavy metal band. Jeez, life is strange sometimes.

 

[BassyBill]

Strange gigs? Okay.

I played to an audience of two people once at a local arts centre. The band set up in one room and there was a sale of paintings going on in another room across the corridor. I went in and invited two rather elegant ladies to come and watch the band. They did, we played well and it turned out to be a fun gig. I even won one of the paintings from the sale as a raffle prize.

Another gig we did at a new and rather upmarket bar in my city just after this place opened. Tuesday night - uh oh. When we started the set there was us and the bar guy in the place. About half way through, these three Dutch people - two guys and a girl - came in, business people on a working trip here. One of the guys comes over with a round of beers for the band and then just stands in front of the band dancing with a great big smile on his face for about 40 minutes and clapping really wildly after every number. Then he thanked us, got us another round and left with his two colleagues.

And twenty years back I played in a big band at a dance for deaf people - they loved it. I guess the intonation was good enough for them to live with.

I could go on... enough.

 

[Trevorus]

Well, I've had a couple of odd experiences to share, but none so jaw dropping as what's already been shared...

Well, first one, I'm 17 and I'm in a band called 12 ways from Sunday. Some talent there, but we had that big headed singer syndrome going on. Anyways, we are scheduled to play a gig at a punk bar in Chicago. My (now) wife's godmother lives there, so we go up early to hang, and stay after to visit. Anyways, the day of the gig, my car is loaded to the brim with speaker cabinets and such. It was my first gig outside of home base. Let me stop to say, I HATE DRIVING IN BIG CITIES!!!. This was before GPS and all that.

Anyways, I'm kind of in the southern areas of Chicago, trying to find my way with some awful directions. I come to an intersection to get on the interstate, and I have the arrow to turn left. So I go, and a car flies through the intersection and my front left corner scrapes the entire side of his car. Of course I pull around and stop to assess the damage and such. He comes flying out of his car and is freaking out and yelling and banging on the hood of his car. Needless to say, I'm scare crapless... Well, he calms down and we exchange info and go our separate ways (I later had a nightmare trying to find the right precinct office to report the accident in).

I finally find my way to the gig, and I meet the rest of the band there to load in. The bar owner gets a look at me and immediately takes the singer aside to ask how old I am. He of course tells him 17, and I am pretty much summarily kicked out except to play. So, I now have an hour and a half to kill. I go across the street to a pizza/sandwich shop and eat and watch CNN or something on TV. NOBODY else in the band (even the Mormon guitarist who didn't drink) left the bar to come hang out with me. I sit in the shop alone except for a delivery boy going in and out, and the guy behind the counter. Neither was much of a conversationalist.

Well, eventually, it's time to play, and we set up. The only people there are the other band that played that night, and the "regulars" at the bar and a few other random people. The regulars are probably 40+, having no interest in what we were doing, and the other random people came for/with the first band. We play an OK set, then I get my butt kicked out at the end of the set (the age thing again). Well, we load all the crap back in my car, and I have to find my way back to where I was staying. It takes me 3 hours to find my way over a 20 minute trip. My wife's godmother is trying to navigate me, and she even has her sister call me to help... Eventually I get there, and I pass out in about 12 minutes, thankful the night was over.

More recently, I played in a family entertainment group. It's a group of 5 sisters that sing and dance for kids. They were doing canned music backing for quite a while, but wanted to venture into the world of live music. It started with the using the church band I was in at the time. The guitarist's wife met them at the hotel she worked at, since they were moving to the area and didn't have a home yet. Eventually, after some practices, drama starts bubbling about the two guitarists. One plays solos for days, and the other is very blues/country styled, which wasn't working all that well. After much discussion and drama, they are let go, and I switch to guitar. I end up bringing in two friends, one on bass, and another on lead guitar.

We end up doing a couple little things around home, then we are off to NY to do fair touring. We are a grounds act, so that's 3-4 half hour sets a day, load in/out every day. The first week, it's full band. After that, we weeded through a lot of BS and mis-communication and the lead and bass are on their way home. The drummer and I have to fill the rest of the 6 weeks alone. I end up figuring out how to fake a thud sound out fo my guitar effects to "fake" a bass. The drama surrounding all this pretty much cost me a good relationship I had with both the guitarist and bassist. The drummer and I were told one thing, and the bassist and guitarist were told basically nothing and that made me look like a KING a-hole to the other guys. All the while, we have the brooding motherly presence of the girls mom with us the whole way.

During all the rest of the 6 weeks, I have to run sound while playing with the mom as a "spotter" in the crowd. Throughout, we have all sorts of difficulties. Broken speakers, over-taxed electrical systems, contending with generators for fair rides, the works. Then near the end of the trip, we have a "meeting" with some executive/marketing guy with Bacardi, whom earlier had offered us to go to an Eddie Money concert, which we later found out was some sort of upscale party, which the very conservative family group didn't like. (BTW, the are pretty conservative Catholics, and a very tight unit, so there is some strong protectionism going on there...) Well, we meet the guy in a nicer restaurant and I decide, it's the end, I need to drink. I order whatever sounds strong... I have 3, and we don't end up leaving this place until about 12:00 at night. At about 3:30 everyone is tired, and they want to stop.

I decide to volunteer to drive, because I am just ready to get the hell home. I end up driving pretty much all the way to my house, but somewhere in eastern Ohio, we get to some heavy rain. We're driving a newer Chevy 3500 and a 23 foot trailer. We stop at a gas station, and I load up with the caffeine for the remainder of the trip. The mom is meanwhile calling everyone she knows to check the status of the rain... As we are pulling out of the gas station she asks if I'll stop if the rain gets too bad. I'm kind of distracted checking my mirrors, and she freaks out that I didn't answer and starts yelling. I don't take well to this, and fight to calmly reply and assure her that we will stop if it gets too bad. Meanwhile, in my mind, I am ready to leave my thousands of dollars of gear, and hitchhike my butt home. We end up driving through some bad rain, but nothing bad enough to stop for. At about 8:30 in the morning, we pull into my neighborhood, and We load out most of my stuff, minus some PA cables and such. They then take the drummer home, and we take a long break.

Eventually, we do another little gig in town for their church spaghetti night, and then record a 2 song demo with a new guitarist, and me back on bass. It was supposed to be a one day thing, and the drummer and I lay tracks in a few hours. The guitarist takes up the next 8, and about 4 the next day. It was supposed to be low budget, but behind a real studio to get some better quality. One song is one we had practiced once before, and the other I can't even remember. By the time the drummer and I hear the demo, the guitarist has changed the entire song with layering and different leads. The drummer and I sound like idiots that can't follow changes at all.

That was 2 years ago. This past year, during the summer, the drummer and I get text messages asking if we are available for a Chicago gig 3 days before. We both are tied up with work, and of course say no. Come to find out, they found people to play with. Then they play a gig at a festival in town, within 4 minutes drive of my house, and don't bother to tell us, or ask us to play. Most of the old band members are there in the crowd to see just what is going on... They have an entirely different band! Now they recently played for the local news morning show and they still have the one guitarist that did the studio work and a changing rotation of a drummer and bassist. Needless to say, I've been a bit miffed by the way these things have all went down, but it turns out to be a blessing in disguise. I couldn't handle all that junk for that long without going insane.

There are a lot of details I left out, but I don't think anyone would read anymore than I have already typed. If anyone wants to know who the second band was, I can PM you a link to their myspace, but I didn't want to plaster it here semi-publicly. (BTW, I was just going to reply with "subscribed" to read all the crazy stories, but it turns out I have a couple of my own)

 

[DawnOfNone]

One of my first gigs ever was at a wedding, playing with a pop band. 2 female singers, a lot of piano ballads, mostly originals, nothing too upsetting for the occasion. We adjust sound levels to the audience, quiet enough to hear the audience engage in conversation, but what do you expect at a wedding, right.
As a starter bass player with not too much confidence, I stand at the side of the stage, until some drunk elder lady (an aunt of the bride) pulls me back on my arm and starts yelling in my ear: "Stop making all that noise, and play something by <insert local Engelbert Humperdinck sound-a-like here>." While continuing to play, I apologise and say that my hands are basically tied. Shortly after, somebody from the family steps on the stage and escorts her back to her seat.

The next one you'll find hard to believe, but it's absolutely true.
About 2 years ago, I was playing in a Death Metal band, and our singer landed us a job together with an unknown Brazillian band that are on tour in Europe, playing some bigger festivals (Wacken amongst others). As usual, I try to find some online promotion for this gig, to post it on some forums and on our website, etc. I find nothing. The singer is unable to give us the exact address where this show will take place, until the day of the show, where I get a text message with an address.
I put the adress in the GPS, and drive alone to the gig. The region consists mostly of wheat and corn fields with small towns in between. I expect to be playing in one of the local bars. Surrounded by corn, not a house in sight, the GPS says I have reached my destination. I double check, and call the singer to say what's going on. He tells me there's a small driveway in between two fields going downhill. I maneuvre my way down, and end up at a house that was hidden behind the fields. It turns out to be a private birthday party, and our audience is more than a wee bit drunk, and the better part of them is passing around joints. In the living room, I see people watching porn, while some kids (I'm guessing 10 year old) are running around. At the back of the house there's a tent, where we will be playing. The stage consists of a couple of floorboards thrown in the dirt. These boards are barely big enough to put our drummer's 5-piece kit on. So the guitarists and I spend some time trying to find a spot on the ground that is even enough to set up our gear without having our amps falling off the cabinets. We start playing, and off course the drunk and stoned metalheads are getting into it. During our set, it starts raining. The audience (of about 20) gets pretty wild, so we keep playing. After a while, I see mud seeping in from under the tent, and a small stream of muddy water starts flowing under my cabinet. Shortly after we end the gig. We are kindly invited to participate in all activities. But fearing the state I could end up in, I decide to head home instead.

 

[DawnOfNone]

Another story from this metal band occurs when we were co-headliner on a local outdoor fest. We had just released our first demo, and had some T-shirts for sale as well. As this was really the home base for our drummer, almost all of his many friends had come up and bought a T-shirt. By the time we got on stage, almost 40% of the audience was sporting our logo, including some 8 year olds, whose T-shirts were WAY oversized, but it was the smallest size we had. A pretty cute, and cool, sight.
The sound guy, whom I suspect to be 80% deaf judging by the volume he used for the other bands, was pretty impressed by this, and decided to put us extra loud. There's a video of this gig where we were playing Damage Inc by Metallica (we play 1 cover each show) on YouTube, that is basically the camera speaker oversteering all the way through.

Afterwards we heard that during our set an old lady living nearby had to hide in the basement from our music. She has a pacemaker, and the loud and fast bass drums were making it go berserk. We nearly killed an innocent lady with our music.

 

[Paulie Jay]

I suppose this is more "gig from hell", but here goes...

A couple of years ago and I'm doing some regular sideman work for a covers band in Sydney. They call me and ask me if I'm interested in playing an Octoberfest gig in the sleepy country town of Parkes. I love a good beer, but as Parkes is a good 350 km (220 mile) drive and not exactly the world's hub of excitement I'm fairly hesitant. Ok, what the heck, book me in.

The first alarm bell rang when we arrived at the venue and the club manager greets us with "You're the band from Sydney? We haven't sold many tickets". Ok, not a friendly greeting. But come on mate, it's your Octoberfest celebration - how much promotion have you done? None, as it turns out. And really, why book a rock band for a German beer drinking festival in the first place...?

The second alarm bell rings when we enter the auditorium. Actually, "hangar" would be a better word for it. My god, it was huge - room for at least 1,500 I reckon, with room for pets. This is in a town with a regional population of about 15,000 keep in mind, and ranks as one of the most flagrant examples of over optimism I have ever seen.

The third alarm bell rings when the support act arrives, already in costume: lederhosen, tambourines and piano accordian. Yes, our support act is an oompah band. The band leader casts a critical eye over us and asks "do you play any oompah music? They won't dance if you don't play the oompah". You know Jimmy, with no tickets sold and the biggest, emptiest room this side of the Great Dividing Range engulfing us, people not dancing is not going to be our biggest concern.

Anyway, we set up and retire to our hotel room to pass the time. We arrive back at the venue to find the oompah band in full swing and lo and behold, people are dancing. Both of them. We hit the stage for what feels like three of the longest sets of music I have ever performed (to the sound of four hands clapping), we say good night, offer the two girls their money back, and that's that. Nothing to do but pack up - and here's the kicker: as we pack up we have to listen to the sounds of a very bad cover band kicking absolute ass in the pub across the road to a crowd of what sounds like 800 people. Arrrrrgh!

Next day we have to spend the entire morning chasing the promoter around town for our money. Finally we get it and decide to stop off at the nearest store for some orange juice for the trip home. Out the front of the store are two teenaged girls who approach us: "Hey, can you guys go in and buy us some cigarettes? They won't sell them to us because they know we're too young". Sigh. Time to teach this town a lesson.

"Ok" I say. They hand over the cash and we just walk back to the truck and drive the 200 odd miles home (those cigarettes will kill ya anyway). We never mention Parkes by name out loud anymore. Parkes is now Voldemort.

 

[Jools4001]

Posted this in another thread a while back

I played in a rocky type of Ceilidh band for about 5 years. Raucous celtic tunes with a loud rock rythm section and great fun - especially since I had a free hand at what bass line to play.

Anyway, we were in popular demand for ceilidh dances and built up a small local reputation as a band that provided a rumbustious night out...

We were booked to play for an engagement party in a small town called Harpenden just North of London and turned up to play at a hall on Harpenden Common. Since the gig was for a couple who were both Junior Doctors, the audience consisted of other Junior Doctors, Nurses and assorted healthcare folks. Now I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world, but in the UK, Junior Doctors tend to alleviate the stress of the 'life and death' scenarios they encounter daily by partying....hard...and this party was in fancy dress.

All went well, with the crowd flinging themselves enthusiastically into the dancing as we played, but then as the evening wore on and the drinking took on an epic scale somebody, somewhere, knocked someones drink over them/made a pass at someone's partner/got over enthusiastic in their attempts to french kiss an unwilling conquest or whatever...and a fight broke out....in fancy dress.

The band stopped playing and watched the ensuing fracas. A few brave souls made futile attempts to calm things but eventually the police were called - leading to my abiding memory of the police chasing the front end of a pantomime horse across Harpenden Common.

Same band, and we were booked for a wedding reception. The bride and groom had come along to several gigs to check us out before booking us. Remember, this isn't a nice polite barn dance band...it's a loud, rocky band playing wild jigs and reels for people to launch themselves round the dancefloor, interspersed with songs (while people take a breather) that are usually songs about hard drinking, wild women and promiscuous behaviour. We turned up at the gig and found that we were indeed booked to play after the wedding, but IMMEDIATELY after the wedding...in the church!!! (not a place often frequented by our band members). All of the wedding guests turned out to be very upright, very austere religious people and after the first tune, we were asked to turn down, so we did (customer is always right etc etc). We were asked to turn down again after the second tune, and the third and the fourth and so on until (and I'm not joking here) I could almost hear more sound from my Ric acoustically than I could from my Trace Elliot rig. The PA was turned down to such an extent that all the singers in the band were louder unamplified. Then the next problem, nobody in the band was particularly religious but we were respectful of other people's beliefs - at least enough to know that singing songs about drunken debauchery and fornication was not appropriate in front of a devout crowd of worshippers in the house of God. Too late to change the set to sing "Koombaya" instead, so we 'bleeped' out all the profanity using a suitable 'bleep' sound on one of the keyboards. Needless to say, we didn't go down well at all.

All we could ask ourselves is why the Bride and Groom booked us having been to our gigs to check us out - WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!!!!

 

[bassman1185]

I've mentioned this before, but a couple of years ago, my old band played for a bat mitzvah. Yes, like a bar mitzvah, but for a girl.

I should mention that we were not shy about being a "Christian" band.

I guess I should also mention that we were a very heavy, drop-C playing metalcore band.

It was pretty cool, though, because she was actually a friend of the band, and she was 17, so it's not like we were playing a 12 year old's birthday party. There were a ton of kids there, and we were playing in this GORGEOUS Jewish community center with unbelievable acoustics.

 

[bebop1]

In my 20 years of gigging, I've been in tons of strange shows (empty venues, rock band in a redneck country bar, wild fights, etc.). My most unnerving was just a few months ago. One of the bands I work with is a very talented classic rock cover band (and I mean "cover" - to the last note). The lead singer is in her mid 30's and the backing of trio are guys in our 40's.

We were booked to open for a Papa Roach concert and the stage setup was enormous. Very cool. The thing is, the band were the oldest people there and this was a big crowd - most of the audience were 20 or less. When we started, the crowd frowned, checked us out for a tune, and then erupted, danced, and had a great time. I guess they got into the music (Doors, Zeppelin, Joplin, etc.) as a retro thing. But, it could easily have become hostile as we were anything but a conventional warm up for Papa Roach! We haven't used that Agent since.

 

[Jeff Martinez]

A few years back, I was in a goth/metal trio that consisted of female vocals, a guitarist, me, and prerecorded drums/backing tracks (on an mp3 player). We signed up to play one of those major label showcases. You know, the ones where they send a handful of A&R reps and each band pays a fee to play a 15-minute set for them. This event was held at the SLC location of a big-name music-themed chain of restauraunts. In our rush to get loaded up and out the door for the 10-hour drive to Utah, we almost forgot to load our set onto the mp3 player. After a quick file transfer, we were out the door.

Fast forward to the moment of truth. Almost a hundred other bands watching, and a table full of reps from various labels in the center of the room. We get into our 2nd song, and something sounds different. We sound somehow bigger than normal. At first, I think think "Wow, the sound system must be amazing!!!" At that moment, our singer turns around and gives the guitarist and me a look that could freeze the sun. He and I had put the wrong files on the mp3 player!!! We loaded the full versions of the last 2 songs, not just the backing tracks!!! Never before had it been more important that we played exactly like the recording. Our singer amazed me that day. She matched her recorded track perfectly.

What made it worse was the fact that this occurred about a month after the Ashlee Simpson/SNL lip-sync scandal. Luckily, no one in the entire venue caught on to what happened.

 

[OtterOnBass]

Here's one from a Christian band in which I was the lead guitarist. I never did really memorize those songs, but we did originals written by a bit of a musical genius and weren't half-bad (except maybe my solos Faster Faster!). The gig? True Love Waits, a pro-abstinence gathering that included a speaker, set of dramas and a concert. We played at the beginning, during a thoughtful section and at the end. Our songwriter even wrote a song for the event. I had my 200-watt peavey 4x12 sitting sideways on the pew that the choir used and blasted it. If you've heard of Nouveax, it was their home church.

Anyhow, we were included in one of the dramas. At the time, Surge was a new drink on the market and had a ton of commercials where people all raced/fought to get the bottle from the top of a hill of mud. For our skit the speaker holds up a modified bottle of Surge, yells "SEX!" and all of us guys in the back race to get it first. In order to make it more interesting we have two sofas blocking the aisle. We were college guys and took this serious. I got shoved down and knee-dropped after the first sofa, then hurdled the second, landing on someone else who broke/sprained an ankle. I didn't win. We had a ton of fun (even the injured guy) and the singer ended up dating the coordinator.

 

[JKT]

So many to choose from...


Okay, a smooth jazz gig in the upstairs cafe of a Wegmans supermarket.

Or,


The same smooth jazz trip... at a polka festival.


What do I win?

 

[jschall84]

and the singer ended up dating the coordinator.

Gotta ask, did she um, "stick to her guns"?

 

[Joel S.]

Played a fund raiser for a local school with a cover band I play with from time to time. Crowd were all parents and such.

The theme of the night was casino night, so prior to us actually playing, we were asked to play "name that tune." It was pretty much me, the singer, and the lead guitarist playing licks, and lines from songs we knew. Was pretty odd, but there was one dude who knew pretty much everything we played, with the exception of the lead guitarist. He learned the most obscure 80s rock riffs than no one knew. The singer and I had a good laugh at the "contestants" blank stares.

This same gig some guy accused me of punching him in the back when he was trying to sing in the mic during a song and proceeded to call me all kinds of names and bitch to the rest of the band. He got REAMED by his wife, and later apologized to me. I also had a lady bug me about giving lessons, IN THE MIDDLE OF A SONG, then leave before we finished our set.

We did get paid, very well. So well the drummer felt bad.

Oh, one of the lines I played was the slap riff to Thank You. The contestants all thought they were slick when they started banging on the buzzers. Smart guy above said "Play that Funky Music".

 

[metronome_jones]

{I originally posted this elsewhere but deleted it there & posted it here as this thread is more appropriate}

Tho I come from a Zeppelin/Rush school o' bass, one of my 1st bands w/ me on bass was a punk band. The guitarist, dye-in-the-wool punker that he was, could barely play & what chords he could were b/c I taught them to him. Anyway, he said he "knew people" and could get us some gigs. His method, tho, consisted of us showing up to punk shows & passively asking the gig organizer if he could let us on the bill. Usually that resulted in going on AFTER all the listed bands had played, and we played for whoever stuck around after the headliner had played.

Anyway, one time we got added to play this place that was an old, tiny garage that had been converted into a place where skateboarders could try out their boards after buying them from the owner of the place. Consequentially the place was basically a giant ramp like at the end of Tom Petty's Freefallin' video, with space at one end of the shack for bands. Set to go on late, my guitarist decides to disappear, unannounced, for an hour or so, only to come back drunk & eager to get involved in a fight out in the street between 2 guys he didn't know. Once we went on I'm the only member 100% sober. THe guitarist is still drunk & my drummer apparently did a line of coke before going on. To make matters interesting, after our 1st "song" the drummer runs off the stage without us noticing. The "wall" behind the drumset was a garage door & it was openned to reveal a makeshift dump behind the place. He apparently ran out that door without any notice.

THe guitarist & I start playing & hear no drums. We turn to see him gone & when I turn back forward I get hit with a skateboard that came flying off the ramp. Then a big bunch of the people who'd been watching us surge forward and start mobbing my guitarist (1 or 2 even started to strangle him). I think we did one more "song" & then tore out of there. My only concern by that point was getting my gear out of there intact!

Found the drummer outside, btw, coming down from a surge of adrenaline he got from doing that line of coke.

I think I quit a week later...

 

[JackANSI]

We do something like that every year.. Relay for Life.

'cept its outdoors.

Should have saw the looks on the one organizer's face when we started to play 'suck my kiss' and she thought she heard 'suck my d***'

Still we already got booked for it again this year