• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Strangest gigs?

#141
electracoyote said:
Then there was the night I ran out into the audience for a solo, and some dude pinched me in the ass. Not my cup of tea...I never left the relative safety of the stage again after that.
Click to expand...

That reminds me of another gig I had... First some background. About 6 years ago, I was playing with a Top 40/Funk band. We played at an upscale bar on Halloween. I went as an Island Girl - grass skirt, and a coconut bra, and my sizable flabby belly stickin' out for all. It went over PHENOMENALLY. The band sounded tight, we had 3 great sets, and I got a bunch of girls' numbers. Great night.

Fast forward to the next Halloween. By then, I had moved to Colorado, and was playing with a Rock cover band. We had a Halloween gig at a dive bar. Riding on what I thought might be a repeat of last year, I wore the Coconut Bra Island Girl outfit again.

Big mistake. I had guys (who I'm nearly certain were straight) jokingly trying to cop a feel mid song - that MESSED me up. Dead stops in songs as I had to push one guy off of me. He got tossed out of the bar, but still... sucked. I even had my ass pinched by other dudes while getting off the stage for a break... UG.. Sucked so bad. I'd say "never again," but I'm plenty stupid enough to repeat my own mistakes twice. Or three times. I'm not above it. :(
 
#142
LP75 said:
While playing gigs through California with my band back in the summer of 2002, we played a gig at a place called Harbin Hot Springs Resort which is in the coastal mountains north of Napa and Sonoma valleys. The place was clothing optional, and we set up in the dark up a bumpy forest trail next to an abandoned swimming pool, away from the main part of the compound. The proprietors were all hippie / New-age / Old-age / meditation / organic Earth people, and as we played our sets of original psychedelic rock with some appropriate Grateful Dead covers sprinkled in, the freakier elements of the population there whirled and danced all over the deck and in the sloping surface of the empty swimming pool, with strings of lights hung all through the trees. It was very surreal.

They let us spend all the next day and night there, which was one of our few days off from the tour, with free access to all of the hot springs and various amenities. And for the first and last time, all of us in the band (5 guys and 2 gals) saw each other in the buff for the better part of a day.
Click to expand...


I'm from Napa. Interesting story.
 
#144
When I was 12 or 13 and just got my first bass (crummy copy), my band played at a girl's (whom we didn't know) party.
Anyways, somebody had to go to the bathroom and didn't want to wait for whomever was in the occupied one so he moved a couch that was blocking access to the master bedroom and went into that bathroom in which he found the girls mom - dead. As several of us watched from the bedroom doorway, my guitar player who was 3 years older than I, walked up to her, looked closely and touched her. He said "she's blue ... and cold". The strangest thing was the girl's reaction - which was no reaction, except some muttering about her mom being dead. Everybody freaked out and left in a hurry. We threw our gear into whomever was driving's car and passed cop cars on their way to the scene as we left.
That was maybe my first "gig" and it was very weird. I wondered what the the heck happened - like WHEN did she die and did her daughter know? And if her daughter didn't know she was dead, what the heck? Throwing a crazy party with your mom home in the bedroom? The girl was a friend of a friend of a friend ... it never got back to me.
 
#145
We might have a strange-ish gig coming up. I think we may be asked to play at the annual "Great Pyramid Race" is a festival my town has every year, where people race up walsh's pyramid.

There have been bands there every year, but we are Death metal/Deathcore; could be a but weird being a family event and all.
 
#147
The drummer in the 70's and 80's metal cover band I was in was phenomenally talented but had become increasingly erratic in his behavior (we honestly thought he had a genuine mental illness and nothing to do with drugs or alcohol which he seemed to have no interest in). During shows he would sometimes stop playing in the middle of a song and improvise a new tune (usually in complex time in a fast tempo) or sometimes take over a microphone and start telling jokes as if he were a stand up comic, except his jokes weren't even funny and they usually didn't even make sense.

One night we arrived to do a well paid show at a private party and after we'd gotten set up and it was about a half hour until show time the drummer still hadn't shown up. So the guitarist and I drove over to his house and we found the guy sitting in his underwear playing video games on his Nintendo.

We asked what was up and he said that he couldn't make the show tonight because he was "too busy". And he needed to get ready to go to his cousin's wedding. We figured that he'd finally fallen off the deep end and it was hopeless to talk to him any more so we headed back to the party which was just about ready for the music to start.

The guitar players friend happened to have a mandolin and was an accomplished musician and suggested to us that we could still salvage the night by playing all of our stuff without the drummer as if it were acoustic music and he would even play with us on mandolin and everything would be okay, just trust him.

So we ended up playing three 45 minute sets of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Metallica, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Iron Maiden and other similar stuff without drums and with a mandolin playing rhythm and the occasional solo. The crowd loved it and we actually got paid the full amount we booked for.

It was the last show we did together as a band as the drummer situation broke us apart but that was one heck of a learning experience in how "the show must go on".
 
#148
I've played plenty of strange gigs – topless barmaids, brawling bikers, culturally diverse wedding receptions, completely inappropriate band for the occasion etc etc. A few gigs stand out in my mind but one involves my intolerance for religious fundamentalism – so I won’t go there – the other involves a venue with a less than obvious source of income.

When I was about 17 (1989/90) I played in band that had a Fri-Sat night residency at a large, fairly upscale Italian restaurant. I was a good gig: we could leave our gear safely on stage during the week, we could order dinner off the menu every night and it paid well.

I was the youngster in the band and was getting $100/night initially and $125/night for the rest of our run of a year or so. $250/week was a big income for a high school student back then.

The strange thing was, the restaurant was almost never busy and it was staffed by men in their 50’s. Whenever I asked about the lack of patrons, the staff would immediately say – after you left last night it was PACKED. The boss always manned the cash register.

The same group/family also owned a considerable network of pizza delivery shops and they advertised a lot on TV. Their pizzas were good but they were so expensive no one I knew would choose to order them.

Anyway, I enjoyed the gig and I was treated very well.

Years later I played in a band with a Crown Prosecutor. He told me that the restaurant and pizza chain were a laundry for drug money. The boss rang up non-existent sales on the cash register all night and the pizza delivery database was full of pizza deliveries that never happened. They paid their tax on the income from made-up sales and - hey-presto – clean money.
 
#151
This was a long time ago, but: I remember playing in the pit orchestra for a talent recital for a dance school. The 5 year old girls were to perform a routine dancing to the song "Boogie Woogie Piggie".... They had procured a couple of piglets to be brought out and led around. To calm them down, someone had given them quite a bit of beer.... so there we were, playing this tune, perhaps having come in from a "smoke-break" if you will, and we watched as chaos broke out. I don't remember much of what happened, but I remember the pigs being disoriented, hurling, and being dragged through the muck by the cute little dancers, and there was a lot of squealing. I think I made $35 on the gig.....
 
#152
In my Cruise Ship days, two stand out - the first was with a 4 Piece Band I'd just joined - Guitar, Bass, Drums and Keys. We flew to Bremerhaven in Germany and boarded a Greek Ship where we were met on the Gangway by the Entertainment Director with a Bouzouki in his hand:

"Hi Guys, the Greek folkloric show is on Thursday night, here's a tape with the songs you'll need and, by the way, who's the Guitarist?".

The next morning we sat down with the tape (and the Bouzouki) some Waiters/Dancers and worked out way through the songs.

Of course we knew the Greek "Standards" - Zorba's Dance and Never on Sunday (or "the Boys from Piraeus" in Greek) and so on, so no problems there, but the Greek "national dance" - Kalamatianos - is in 7/4!! - and another dance - Tsamikos - changes time just about every bar from 3/4 to 5/4 IIRC (or the tune we had to learn for it did!) - needless to say, our Guitarist - now Bouzouki - player was nervous about the whole idea and we weren't too far behind him.

Getting that 7/4 to sound smooth and natural (123-12-12) was a real problem and we had to spend what seemed like a couple of hours just banging out the rhythmn until the waiters were happy with it. They of course couldn't work out what the problem was - the tune was as familiar to them as three blind mice is to us - and they were falling about laughing!!.

Anyway, it was fine on the night, the Captain got drunk and joined in the Zorba's Dance and everyone was happy!!.
 
#154
So last Wednesday, I was playing with a band at a local dive bar in St. Paul. We got there at 9:00 and started setting up to play a set at 10:00. This is a kind of folk/rock/alt-country/roots sort of band where I mostly play upright and then P-Bass on a few songs.

The stage is small and there is no AC so I'm sweating on my corner of the stage, trying to figure out where to put my basses and 4x10. I hear someone say "just a headsup: the building next door is on fire." For whatever reason, nobody really paid attention and went about their buisness. 30 seconds later, someone yells "whoever has the Audi parked out front better move it because the fire trucks are coming." At this point, the musicians and the sound guy are starting to ask "what the hell is going on?" 30 seconds after that, the bar owner is yelling at everybody to get their stuff and head out the back door.

I had my right arm wrapped around my upright and the neck of my P-Bass in my left arm. I got outside and the sky was nothing but black smoke. My car was in the lot out back so I threw my Fender in the trunk and got the upright in the car, then headed back for my amp. At this point I could see large flames coming out the back of the building next to the bar. Now there was a line of musicians running out of the building with arms full of gear. I was able to get my amp off the stage and some bar people grabbed my bass bags. Everybody got out OK with their gear.

fire.jpg

We were in the bar to the left.
fire2.jpg

Looks like they never moved the Audi.:eek:
fire3.jpg

fire4.jpg

Me on the left, my guitarist on the right.

The St. Paul Fire Dept got there in under 4 minutes. The building was abandoned but they think it was arson.

So no matter where you went, your eyes were watering and it was kind of tricky to breathe. Eventually the bar owner wanted the bands to go back in and play! Sure, a building with poor circulation right next to a building that just burned down. Sounds like a great idea. The guitarist and I went home.
 
#155
Well back in the day when I started playing bass in my brothers band we played a non paying gig at winefred stewart school for challenged students. We set up in the school gym. Being huge kiss fans we tired to emulate their stage show lol. We had homemade flash pots, homemade light setup all very cheap and cheezy. Well after the first set one of the teachers comes up to us and asks us to tone down the "light show" as some of the students were having epilectic siezures from it :eek:. oops can you say dumb ass. Man it was hard trying to emulate the "loudest rock and roll band in the world".:rollno:
 
#159
The day before yesterday playing at a bar on a beach. It had gotten dark and no one was left on the beach, only about a dozen people in this bar. We were pretty much screwing around, with our pianist plinking away at a hammered dulcimer he can't really play, our lead singer on drums etc. improvising. At some point a middle-aged woman gets up, pulls out something that looked like small black sequined bags attached to strings, and starts dancing and twiring those around. After a few minutes she lays these things down on the ground and keeps dancing for a few more minutes, then eventually winds it down. I still don't know what it was about but she's apparently a practicing shaman in an Eastern Siberian tradition.

She and her husband also requested our funkiest song. Apparently funky basslines are shamanically approved.
 
#160
I use to play in a well known Blue Grass Band. We got a call to play at a hot spot in downtown, the Rockin Rooster. As you can tell by the name of the venue it was anything but Blue Grass kind of place. I asked the guy if he was familiar with our music which he assured me he was. What a night mare, the place was packed wall to wall wtih College age people who wanted to rock. We actually pulled off the first night by lots of interacting with the crowd and lots of drinking. We opted not to play the second night.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back