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Strangest gigs?

#221
I played a butcher/meat shop on Halloween once. My weirdest is a gig I told about before on TB.
Quick story it was to play a big family reunion for the drummers family. He said the family wanted us to play and were really looking forward to us being there. BTW, there was no pay but plenty of good food and beer.
It was held in a barn like structure an hour drive from home. This big family reunion was held in a hot, sweaty, and stinking barn.
The place was full of hot, grumpy, and sweaty people who acted like "why the hell are you here." The good food was out in the open on tables and flies were covering the food...which people ate... did not stop them.
One of the restrooms had a toilet back up and the place smelled like ...well the flies were really happy now. They had one small fan in the place and a bunch of kids were fighting over to cool off.

They hated our band since we were holding up the big open family raffle (drummer forgot to tell us about) We were asked to stop playing so they could do the raffle which took over an hour. Once the raffle was over 95% of the people high tailed it to their cars, most were complaining about the raffle loudly and tore out in a cloud of dust.
We were asked to start playing while a few folks tore down the whole mess, still eating some of the fly covered food, as we fumbled thru a few more songs. It was a horrible mess of a gig.
 
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#222
We were touring the country with our punk band and after a string of crappy venues, this dude hooks us up with his cousin that will book us a gig at some kind of club in the woods. We get there and there's a definite neo-nazi skinhead vibe. We thought it would be funny to play Nazi Punks F-off. They weren't too happy about that but they liked the rest of our set. After the set we went back to the green room to get our stuff and it was all moved into the hallway. The chick in the band left her cell phone in the room and even though they told us not to go in, I went in to grab the phone. Boy I wish I hadn't. There was a girl on the floor with a knife sticking out of her head. I was pretty sure she was dead. What follows is a life and death fight to get out of that club. I think it had to be our strangest gig ever.



















Or, the plot to the movie Green Room - lol. Just watched the movie, it had Patrick Steward and Imogen Poots so I thought how bad could it be? It was pretty good but it would take the prize as strangest/worst gig ever if real.
 
#225
bassman1185 said:
The general sentiment that I've heard about nudists is that they tend to be the people that you want least to see naked.
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Frankly, they are not any different than what you have in normal society. But clothes hide a multitude of sins.

I used to be in a wedding band that did a half Jewish, half Japanese wedding. Both sides were very conservative, but by the end we had both grandmothers leading the conga line for "The Locomotion".

Ahh, liquor.
 
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#226
Touring with a rowdy roots / Americana band about seven years ago.

Played a few shows in the bay area. We are a bunch of (mostly) punk rockers with a female singer doing our take on acoustic music.

Played a show in Berkeley. Some sort of house party. Very spaced out crowd into a Very Specific scene of artsy noise rock. Our frenetic Americana was way too basic for their tastes and the evening devolved into a series of passive aggressive sniping.

As an aside: I HATE house parties.

At a bar or venue, you can always just sit at the bar, maybe watch television if it isn't your scene. Been to a few house parties to support friends (or played) and I don't like the vibe of being in someone else's private home with a bunch of strangers outside your circle.
 
#227
Another one from the same tour:

In Portland we were supposed to play last at a venue. Except after the opener, the No. 2 band was nowhere to be found and we collectively decided to just go ahead and play early. This place didn't have a sound guy, so it took a little longer for the mandolin player to sound check us. About when we were ready, the other band showed up, very late, very drunk, and very angry since we were now playing in their slot.

They were talking trash through most of our set. We ended up cutting it short rather than prolong their wrath.

I'm not an especially spiteful or vengeful person. But when they were setting up on stage I made a point of going to the mixer and scrambling it as best I could.

They lasted only two songs in one of the most hilarious displays of drunken incompetence I have ever witnessed. They loaded up and left in haste, hitting a parked car in the process. I snapped a picture of their license plate and forwarded the info to the car owner.
 
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#229
Probably about 1992 we played a couple of times at a club called The Beat that used to be in Port Chester, NY. I can't separate the two times in my head, so I'll describe it as one event. We got to the club about 7 and were moving our gear from our cars to the club when, seemingly out of nowhere, a short parade appeared and passed by. Just as quickly it was gone. In the club, the "stage" (really just a space on the floor with no tables) had only one outlet for the band to plug into. While we were setting up, one of the clubgoers came over and asked if we could give him guitar picks, drum sticks, any mementos at all, explaining he does that for all the bands that play there. Our drummer says to him, "everyone needs a hobby!"

The band we were sharing the gig with shows up, finds out we were based out of New London, CT, and excitedly tells us they share rehearsal space with Sonic Youth, and Thurston Moore told them that New London was going to be "the next Seattle." We looked at each other and laughed. (When the grunge scene was fading in Seattle, everyone was trying to figure out where the next big scene was. New London actually could have been a possibility, if there were to have been a next big scene.)

During our set, a couple was slow-dancing during one of our more uptempo songs. Then someone ran in from outside yelling "there's a drunk pissing on cars outside!" Everyone ran out. We pretty much finished the set to an empty room.

Despite all that, we enjoyed the club and the town. It had a sort of David Lynchian feel to it. (This sort of stuff happened to us all the time.)
 
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#231
We played a doom-fest some time ago, but our lead guitarist couldn't make it.
So we decided to have fun with the idea, we made a big life-size cardboard cut out of him and put it on stage. We told everyone about it whilst up on stage, jokes and had fun by taking the piss out of him.
So later on, our "guitarist" stage dives into the tourists from Estonia out the front, who loved it and took it onto themselves that our guitarist must be the life of the show. It was freakin hilarious! These Estonian's were very funny fellaz.
Almost the whole place was giggling and we had so many people congratulate us on being creative. The promotor, who was originally pissed that our guitarist couldn't make it for a 12 band fest-event, was now pretty happy we pulled it off.
 
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#232
Once joined a band with a large-ish local presence, and fans in other states as well. Rehearsed with the band for a few days, and then got in a van with them and drove for 14 hours to a different state for a gig at a half Asian Restaurant, half full on bar, separated by a curtain down the middle. Fun for sure.

Also played a block party once as a 2 piece with a drummer friend of a friend- we didn't know any songs together, and mainly jammed and made noise for a bit until the headliner came out. It was a puppet show.
 
#233
I swear this is true: Early 70's I was in a three piece rock n roll band, we played the local clubs and occasionally played for bikers. One night a club which better stay anonymous asked us to come down to their club house and play a party for them. We agreed and went down and set up and started playing and playing. It started getting late so we said we were getting tired and started making noises like we wanted to go home etc. so all of a sudden one of them comes over with a bag of white stuff and puts a buck knife into the bag and holds it up to our noses. We're going ahh, no thanks I have a gig tomorrow and we gotta get some sleep, etc, so we begged off doing the meth, but they insisted we keep playing so we do until it's really late, finally at about 3 or 4 am, we had evidently fallen asleep because one of the bikers had our drummer and soundman at the end of a rifle saying "What do you want me to do with them? I caught them trying to sneak out!" We mumbled something like "Oh that's alright, let them go, we'll deal with them later" and he did, whew! The next thing I remember is getting dumped off for our outdoor gig at 11 am the next day at some high school completely exhausted, I don't think we played very good that day.
 
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#236
Our band landed a gig on the bill for a 175th anniversary of a local high school...not one of the band members attended that school...how we got the gig I'll never know...
Didn't ask questions...went and laid down a smoking 25 min set...
The emcee was let in on the gaff just before we went on and spun us as the band from detention...when we were asked our graduating year...(as all acts were)...we all said 2018...all band members are 35+
Got a good chuckle..
 
#238
IconBasser said:
How'd that go? Sounds like my kinda good time!
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Pretty well actually! By the time we arrived the venue had stopped serving Tacos, but was still a bar. The people who came were really into it, and the sound guy was good.

The only crappy thing was my fault: I ended up leaving my bass at the venue, and my guitarist his pedalboard. Usually I'm better at this stuff. As a kid I always packed my hockey equipment and never forgot anything, and as a musician I'm always finding my bandmates gear before we leave. This must be karma for posting my perfect streak on a thread about forgetting gear at venues.

Edit: I found a buddy coming to my area from the other town who was able to bring both the next day.
 
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