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Trading war stories - live shows that went so wrong

At a recent Christmas show we are about to start and the fire alarm starts blaring. It's one of those bars that is also an apartment building. Apparently someone burned something in an apartment and the whole buidling's alarm kicked off. We tried playing Jingle Bells to try and distract but it was just way too loud. We just did a blues jam for a few minutes until it stopped. Quite the start to a show I have to say.
 
Wondering if there are any stories that involved a gunfight or at least a fist fight. I have been to shows where that happened, but they were not in the US. I was in the audience.
I used to play at a strip club called The Branding Iron in Arlington in the 70's. A lot of the local military came there and there were fights there regularly. I can't remember the last time there has been a bar fight while I was playing, but in the 70's it was a regular occurrence.

One time I was playing the Button in Florida, right on the beach and we were hanging out in front of the club. This tough looking guy walks past and there's some skinny guy stand about 10 feet away from us. I guess he was looking at the tough guy so the tough guy says, "What are you looking at?" The skinny guy says, "I can look where I want." The tough guy walks up and one punch knocks him flat and just keeps walking like it was the most normal thing in the world. I turned to the light man and said, "I guess you can't look wherever you want."
 
At a recent Christmas show we are about to start and the fire alarm starts blaring. It's one of those bars that is also an apartment building. Apparently someone burned something in an apartment and the whole buidling's alarm kicked off. We tried playing Jingle Bells to try and distract but it was just way too loud. We just did a blues jam for a few minutes until it stopped. Quite the start to a show I have to say.

Maybe you actually should have left the building?
 
I remember about 22 years ago maybe we played in a pub and they didn't want to pay us
we'd played there a couple of months before and had a good night and they got us back.... but this time there were only about 6 people in the place.... the bar manager kept on telling us to turn down - to the point where we were playing quieter than rehearsals....
We played 1 set, and 1 song into second set the manager comes over and the pulls the plug and she said 'that's it'
We packed down loaded everything into the van / cars, then guitarist comes out and said they only want to pay us $50 (we were due $400 - $100 each).
Just then guitarists friend turns up - he's 6"2 huge stocky unshaven man and looks a little like ex WWF wrestler Andre The Giant..... guitarist said to his friend "Hey you couldn't do us a favour? - they've kicked us out and are refusing to pay us.... we're owed $400 - can you talk to them" his friend said "Sure no problem"

To this day I don't know what the guitarists friend did or said to the bar manager, but 5 minutes later he came back with $400 :bassist:
 
I remember about 22 years ago maybe we played in a pub and they didn't want to pay us
we'd played there a couple of months before and had a good night and they got us back.... but this time there were only about 6 people in the place.... the bar manager kept on telling us to turn down - to the point where we were playing quieter than rehearsals....
We played 1 set, and 1 song into second set the manager comes over and the pulls the plug and she said 'that's it'
We packed down loaded everything into the van / cars, then guitarist comes out and said they only want to pay us $50 (we were due $400 - $100 each).
Just then guitarists friend turns up - he's 6"2 huge stocky unshaven man and looks a little like ex WWF wrestler Andre The Giant..... guitarist said to his friend "Hey you couldn't do us a favour? - they've kicked us out and are refusing to pay us.... we're owed $400 - can you talk to them" his friend said "Sure no problem"

To this day I don't know what the guitarists friend did or said to the bar manager, but 5 minutes later he came back with $400 :bassist:

I hope you stood your mate to a pint or five. :thumbsup:
 
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