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The Oddest gig EVER! (short)

robbotbass

robbotbass

Apr 11, 2009
560
7
Casper Wyoming USA
#1
My band have been playing shows together now for over 5 years. We have played some weird shows, I cancer Relay, A gazebo in the middle of small town Wyoming. But by far the oddest was a few months ago.
We where approached by a Pastor to play a furnal. Now we have played some weird stuff but nothing like this we thought sure. Our sound is very much Rock and I guess the family had heard us play many times before.
Not wanting to turn down gigs we said Sure thats cool no prob. Well, turns out it was for a baby who choked to death in his sleep. WOWWOWOWOWOW wait one second we are playing what? yeah. So we played the songs requested with a little more somber stage precence, packed our gear and headed for the door.
I think that wins first prize for the oddest gig I'll ever play EVER!
 
#7
Ha we played one of our own song call the last note rings. A Pearl Jam Cover Black. And then we played another one of ours called Be Still. I thought I was going to get struck by a bolt of lightning. But the Family seemed to like it so thats that. On a brighter note there wasn't a Coffin. Im sure that would be Rock Folk lore if there where. Even Ozzy hasn't played a Babys celebration on life service. Ohh and needless to stay we didn't stay for the refreshments afterward. Little finger foods would have not made up for the pure okwardness that just happened.
 
#12
Downunderwonder said:
I played some funky jazz at my Dad's funeral with my bro on sax. It went down just right.
Click to expand...

Stan Laurel said:
My family is my band; we play Christian and classic rock. So it seemed natural for us to play at my daughter's and my wife's funerals. It was the music they loved.
Click to expand...

playing at a family member's funeral is one thing. This was a bit off, ok- more than a bit
 
#14
A couple years ago I answered an ad from a singer/songwriter who was looking for a bassist to do a couple paying festival gigs during the Summer. I met with him, we played through a bunch of his songs, very easy, folkish type stuff. It sounds cool, he seems like a nice guy. He gives me a CD-R of his demos, songsheets with chord changes etc. We agree then to have a full band rehearsal prior to the first show at my place. He shows up with this drummer who was absolutely bizarre. I had both an acoustic and electronic kit in my practice room,and told him it was his call which one he wanted to use. He said he'd like to try the electronic kit. So we get the instrument and vocal volume all set with the electronic kit, start playing a song, and midway through he gets up and switches to the acoustic kit, which is way too loud for the volume we're playing at. Not only that, but he'd start off a song pretty good, then maybe get bored or something, and start playing a thrash beat !

One of the tunes was a reggae song, and he was playing some beat that had no relationship to reggae, so I sat at the e-kit, while he was on the acoustic kit and showed him the correct beat for this tune, which he seemed to get. But then when we all played, he switched beats to thrash again at one point.

Then this awful guitar player shows up. His guitar is so out of tune (intonation problem between the two guitarists mainly) and he just solos loud and inappropriately throughout every song. It's total chaos, and this is going to be THE ONLY rehearsal for this show.

The show, a week later was of course just as much of a trainwreck as the rehearsal. I was so embarassed to be playing with these guys, but I collected a paycheck. Thankfully not too many people saw it.
 
#17
I played at a funeral once. He was the old bassist at church. I didn't know him personally as at the time I was only at the church for about 2 months. That was kinda my first gig on bass so it was a lot of pressure since there was a ton of musicians in the room. We played "amazing grace (my chains are gone)".
 
#18
MY two oddest gigs were no wherenear playing a funeral.

1. I subbed for a friends band. In fact he and I were building a group until he played a BOTB @ his HS with some classmates. They decided to tke him and kick me curbside since they"had a bssplayer". Anyway I step in to help out for this show at a local swim club. We were to play for a couple of hours but they didn't have the material to doit. ontop of that the singer couldn't remeber the song lyrics for any of the songs including his own, and only wnted to hang out with his girlfriend in the sun. It ended with my buddy and I basically making up music (bass and drums) for about a half hour until the owner decided that we had filled the time slot. He did pay us nicely.

2. Second weird gig was actually a practice. We were playing in a BOTB at my JR college and reserved the stage to practice before the week of shows. While we're rehearsing a guy comes up and asks it we can play for a charity event that they were doing(run/walkathon). We set up on the 50 yrd. line of the football field and played for the participants. Seemed to go pretty good but it was a hot day and we had no cover. My amp's power cord nearly melted. It was serioulsy close to having the coating stick to your hands when touched and had no rigidity left it it. We had to run around quickly an find towels and blankets to cover everything with so the sun didn't cook it. Still took nearly an hour for the gear to cool down in the shade when were were done.
 

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