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Strangest gigs?

#121
Well, as I thought about what the "wierd" gigs that I had were, two stood out: The one at the nudist resort, and the one at a "sex" art show that later turned out to be a full-on orgy. Both went very well, very smoothly, and the orgy didn't pick up at the latter show until well after we were done and packed up.

As such, I think my personal "weird" gig goes to a gig that I had in a small Colorado town about 6 or 7 years ago with a country-rock cover band at a bowling alley. A wildfire had spread to the canyon just over from town. The place was PACKED with stranded travelers, as they shut down the interstate. We had kids, grandparents, everyone as captive audiences. The fire then spread, so we all got evacuated. The weirdness that ensued was far too long to tell about here, but here's some high points of the evening:

1. Getting shafted by the bar (even though the place was packed and the bar did phenomenally well) since we got evacuated early and didn't play our third set.
2. Everyone else in the band leaving before me and the guitarist - the singer never made it due to a road closure and the back road would have taken about 6+ hours, the other guitarist leaving early to help fight the fire since he was a sherrif, and the drummer leaving immediately after playing so he could take the backroad home to catch a flight in the morning.
3. The guitarist and I closing the bar since everyone else had left the bar from the evacuation - we replaced the lost revenue for the bar with several cases of beer!
4. Eventually finding a biker "afterparty" at a trailer park, where the owner explained that his bathroom was broken, so just go out side and "don't **** on the basketball, please."
5. A biker named "Ghost" tried to feed us pills of some sort. We pretended to eat them and then spit 'em right out as not to offend his 'generous offer' of some pill-form drug.

So many other little weirdnesses that night...
 
#122
Tom Servo said:
The other was the final night for a venue that had been condemned. In fact, it had been condemned several days before and wasn't even supposed to be occupied. Pieces of plaster from the ceiling were falling on us while we played.
Click to expand...

God... that reminds me of a gig I had back in college. My friend's parents had bought a property with the intention of tearing down the old house and rebuilding. So, about a week before the wrecking crew came, we threw a MASSIVE, hedonistic party. Drunk people with large blunt objects and power tools were tearing the house down as we played. Things got so out of hand, that the strippers that someone had got to go to the party ran out the back door with their bouncers since they didn't feel safe around the crazed crowd who kept demanding more and more bizarre sex acts. That was a crazy one!
 
#123
A gig that stands out in memory was the one we played at a Christmas party thrown by the local Bankers' Association. Everything was high-toned: expensive restaurant booked for the evening, excellent food, cognacs and Cohibas for the asking, etc. The pay was good and the ballroom we were to play in had skylights offering a view of the stars. Dream gig, right?

It didn't quite turn out that way. We were not the right kind of band for the occasion. Here were these long tables full of loaded guys expecting us to entertain them, but they didn't know any of our songs. The band only played original material, and we did do our normal, full set, about one and a half hour's worth of music. They were just sitting there drinking, almost ignoring us. When we quit there was some tentative applause, so we went on for an encore, and now one or two couples came out jiving in front. Three more songs, and that was it. The party was over when as far as the bankers were concerned it had hardly begun. There was a murmur of angry confusion in the room.

The girl who had booked us, a friend of our singer, got fired over this debacle. We did no wrong, played well and got paid. It was just a mismatch.
 
#126
I don't believe I've shared this here yet.

In the 80s I played trumpet in a cover band called "Fifty and Change" - think purple shirts, black pants and vests - because the lead singer's name was John Fifty.

We played a bunch of clubs north of Boston into southern NH that summer, and the one I recall most vividly was a place called The Checkmate Club, which was on the old Rte. 1, in Peabody, MA, IIRC.

Anyway, it turned out to be a strip club. There were two rooms of strippers upstairs, and a dance hall downstairs. Needless to say, no customers ever entered the dance hall. The girls would come down and listen to us during their breaks, maybe dance a little with each other, and we'd go up to watch them during our breaks. We played there for 2 weeks, Wed through Sat. The pay, for the era, was acceptable.

And no, we didn't get any. They were pros, and the place was rumored to be run by the Boston Family of Something-or-Other....

That was a VERY strange gig.
 
#127
Played with my mother and sister at a retirement home that my aunt worked at. Christmas day I believe. One lady was yelling rather loudly, "How come they can't even play the same song?" and, "Why don't they play in the same key?". We were fairly disturbed, later my aunt told us that the lady was DEAF!
 
#129
I've had a few with my stoner rock band.
1) Played a show at a small bar/grill that usually books acoustic country acts. Didn't tell the owner or manager how big my small rig really is(200W+2 15's). It took up more space on the stage than I did. In the middle of the show, the manager was waving at me like a madman, but I couldn't hear him, so we just kept playing. After the show, I went to him to get my pay, which I thought would be pretty decent, considering we packed the place with only our fans. The guy tells me that he was trying to get me to turn down the entire show because I was shaking the deep fat fryers. He stiffed us on pay. Never playing there again. Then again, they probably won't want us, although the owner is a family friend of the guitar player in my band.

2) Through facebook, we found out we were scheduled to play a house party on the other side of town. They never actually contacted us, and I called them to find more about it. We were playing with a death metal band that used a laptop for drums and only did instrumentals. Okay, that's fine, soldier on. Then, when we showed up, we found that we were gonna play outside on their patio, so we moved all our gear out there. It immediately starts raining, so we move it inside to the second story of the house. Still, not that bad. Then, when the show is about to start, the death metal band asks to use my bass amp to power their drummer. Ugh, okay, so I turned down the low frequencies to not blow out my speakers. Then, the death metal band plays for an hour and ten minutes. Now, if this were a real band, okay, maybe that would be fine, but I had to listen to an a hour of the same sweep picking arpeggio over and over again, with a ten minute break in their set for no reason besides some jocko jerkhole to freestyle rap while his buddy got on my drummer's set without permission. So, by the time their six song (!) set was over, I was ready to explode. My band played our usual amount of songs, but due to sheer tension and aggression our set was ten minutes shorter than usual. Everyone at the party, who had remained seated the whole time the death metal band was playing, immediately got up and destroyed the poor guys second story in a mosh pit that put even the band into danger. After the show, we were to find that we would not be remotely reimbursed in any way, even a couple of sodas or something. But, we slayed.
 
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#131
A guy got kicked out of a local recital of mine for watching pRon on the coffee shops free WiFi. The cops were called, small children saw things they shouldnt have, no more details needed to figure it out.

But the show went on, of course.
 
#132
My old band played a show at a former strip club turned sex-toy store in Wisconsin. The stage was tiny, and the police had installed video cameras on the sidewalk outside the entrance so they could "keep the crime down." Much merriment was had by all. I don't think we got any money, but we did get a bunch of free sex toys and adult magazines for our effort. Talk about fun! We made our way over to a bar next door before and after the show with the openers and some fans where we proceeded to get stupendously drunk. The singer/guitar player from the other band got so wasted, he passed out on the sidewalk right in front of the police cameras. We felt this was a potentially bad situation, so we woke him up to try and move him, which was not a well-received gesture. He got extremely belligerent, and it took several of us to physically force him into the backseat of a car for the ride back over to Minnesota. Good times.
 
#133
Last year I played a benefit gig for a Catholic religious retreat center. The lead guitarist is jewish by heritage, although not in practice, and I don't ascribe to any religion. Not sure about the singer--never asked.

We had kind of a summertime theme--songs about the beach, sunny days, blue skys, etc.., and it absolutely poured rain the entire time we were on stage (outdoors, under a leaky awning).

The next act to come on after us was about 30 nuns, singing along with one guitar. As soon as they hit the stage the sun came out, the clouds cleared, and it was a beautiful day.

I just found out recently that we probably won't be invited back this year, because "Sister Gloria" found some of our lyrics inappropriate. The only song we can figure out might have offended her was Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," which is loosely based on the life of the biblical King David. He seduced a married woman, got her pregnant, then arranged to have husband killed so he could marry her. So what's the problem?

Ed
 
#136
My very first professional performance in a small club in the 'burbs. I was the new guy in an established and popular band. I think they picked a small place in case I froze up or threw up or something. Ten minutes before first set, the place gets raided. Everyone against the wall, radioing in I.D.s, checking for outstanding warrants, one arrest, the place was hotter than hell and no one would come back in. Manager later decides to go ahead and re-open. We start our first set at 10 PM. People begin to trickle in. We notice everyone drinking, no one leaving. By midnight the place is packed, wall-to-wall, SRO. Last set ends at 2AM, everyone in the place has a lighter up stadium-style. Freaky. We leave three encores later. From the pits to the soaring heights, all in one night. Weird, but I was bitten by the music biz bug that night and I have never gotten it out of my system.
 
#138
My last gig, I was going nuts and jumping on and off stage, the crowd was going nuts (bunch of emo kids doing their emo dance) and they were all having the time of their lives. That or they were all high, I dunno.

Anyhow, some fat kid must have been getting out some latent anger, cause when I hopped down to do a little groove bit with our vocalist, this fat go does his raging emo dance bit and roundhouses me right in the side of my head.

Luckily, I was playing on my backup bass, so I didn't care so much when it hit the deck, but I only missed a couple measures. Security bounced the kid, and an hour later after our set, i went out for a smoke and he tipped me a 20 spot for the trouble.
 

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