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We got thrown out of one dive two weeks in a row (too loud). Now you tell me - when you book a band called "Guttersnipes," what, exactly, are you expecting?
Originally Posted by Sam Sherry
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10-11-2019 05:48 PM
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Chainsaws, Klansmen, Outlaw Bikers....what a thread!
My story involves Exxon Executives, perhaps not a different bunch than Klansmen, Outlaw Bikers or other groups where a moral compass might get in the way, but perhaps this is not the place to discuss that.
I was hired by an agent to provide a jazz quartet to play a private event for some of Exxon's top brass. The venue was a hilltop estate in Big Sur, California. We were met in Carmel, CA by some folks who took us and our gear on a very long drive in a van to the venue. This estate was on a hilltop and the dirt road that got us to the top took about 45 minutes. Once there we saw a huge mansion and a large outdoor tent. We were told that we would be performing outside as the Exxon execs were being helicoptered in (after a Day of playing golf in Pebble Beach) and then we would move into the tent where dinner would be served.Well as soon as the first Helicopter approached, I saw that the wind would blow away us (and our gear) and I instructed my crew to take cover and protect their gear. We all made it to safety. The tent was blown down. Apparently the folks planning this "grand entrance" failed to consider the wind generated by helicopters. It took awhile and the tent was rebuilt and the event happened, albeit a bit later than expected (our overtime was quite generous and none of us were hurt and our gear suffered no damage).
At the time it seemed like a Twilight zone episode, but now it makes for a good story. Still it is hard to follow posts about Chainsaws, Klansmen and Outlaw Bikers....Last edited by Stringswinger; 10-12-2019 at 12:01 PM.
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The only real story I can remember was I played with a very large jazz orchestra and after awhile the leader was getting pretty crazy. He just was pushy and completely nasty looking out for his own interest. I would always have my guitar case next to me to keep the guitar in it when not playing........no stands for me. Well the leader at this place decided he did not like that and it made things look bad. I said I need the case within a short distance did not want my guitar getting crunched. He then got nasty and said wonder why I was special the brass did not have any problems and ect....
I told him my guitar goes in the case between breaks period and he said no........otherwise hit the road.......and I did left right there never to return. I told him the gig paid almost nothing considering time and hassel factor. I the end he caused so much friction the band broke up under him........I just stood up to him and no one really did.
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I also keep my guitar in the case during breaks. Unless it is a solo or trio gig. Never had an issue. Originally Posted by deacon Mark
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this is a true story.....
in 1971 I was eighteen and playing in a top 40 band traveling around the south eastern US; one of the clubs we frequented was a topless bar in Gainesville Fla, named Dub's Steer Room. It was a large venue holding 500-600 folks IIRC. Dub was an ex body builder who was about 5'2" and was almost as square as Sponge Bob. Every Thursday night he held an amateur strip contest that was extremely popular. The young women contestants got about $50 for participating and there was a regular cast of about a half a dozen supplemented by the occasional adventurous college girl. None of the girls got to the full monty as Dub had two rules for the contest that he announced weekly: "no skin no win and too much skin put Dub in the pen". The placed would be cram packed with people sitting on and under the tables. Every single time there would be a huge fight that resulted in Dub leading the bouncers though the place, throwing people over his shoulders. It was so bad our two roadies sat on the stage with us holding spare mic stands.
We played five sets, around eighty tunes, every night. That particular Thursday we were playing Santana's "Black Magic Woman" and I was playing my gold top LP though a Bandmaster stack when one of the regulars came up, a large black lady named Betty. All the regulars had a gimmick or shtick; Betty's was humping. Sometimes the floor, sometimes another contestant but aways with the humping. That night she humped my Bandmaster. At the end of my solo, while she was humping, the amp burst into flame with a lot of grey smoke. All the band and most in the audience were completely amazed, as was Betty. The band limped on, but never stopped. I can't remember if there was a fight that night.
Mitch
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This was in the late 1960s when I was still in high school. Somehow I got a gig for a rock n' roll trio to play for the kids of the adults at a major business convention.
I was playing bass, and I got a couple of friends for guitar and drums.
We were told to play in a large room on one of the lower floors of a very tall hotel. We got set up and started to play. They were an easy crowd to please.
After a while I called "Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida" even though we didn't have an organ player. The kids loved it. At one point, right after the drum solo started, the guitar player and I put down our instruments and decided to go up to the 35th floor for a cup of coffee, which we did for about 15 minutes. When we got back down to the gig room the drummer was still playing the solo. He gave us a nasty look but we started playing the main lick out. We got a big round of applause, and even got a bonus for keeping the kids so well entertained.
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I love these kinds of stories! I went to Hot Springs,Ar. today to have pickups removed from my recent 335 so they can be rebuilt. This town prides itself on a gangster loving past. They have a Gangster Museum even. On the big lake is a multi-million dollar house that was built by and for Al Capone,the original Scarface. There is a statue of him on Main St. in front of the Ohio club which still has live classic rock music bar. Al never got to live in his large beautiful lakeside home though, the Feds had other plans for his last residence and Ive seen it too. Its in a place called Alcatraz Bay Area not quite so plush but well deserved! Well how the music ties in is that there was a room namedThe Vapors which had national acts and probably backroom gambling. About 40 years ago I got to see the Very,Very Funny Phillis Diller do her stand up show and it was Great! Very Pro and fast paced. She brought a pianist conductor and used local musicians who could read the charts for the show similar to the O Jays method of cutting costs but still a good sound.At the end of the run one week she was so pleased with the quality of the musicians work that she bought the band several cases of beer! She was really a Class Act!!!
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I do remember another event more in the correct spirit of the thread There was an after hours rock club and they had weird between the bands set acts. This act was a man and a woman.They had a large box kinda like a coffin with holes cut out for the mans arms. The woman was very scantily dressed kind of like belly dancer in a bikini. She would lie down on this box and writhe around like she was aroused while he would hold his arms which is all you could see of him about six inchs over her body Love Zones shall we say? And they had weird snake charmer music playing while they did it. It was about a ten minute show.It was also in Hot Springs at the Black OrchidLounge. I have been afraid to play over in Hot Springs at night for a long time because it is a 60 mile drive back to my home on a two way 4 lane highway and I am afraid a drunk driver might kill me since it is a 24 hour a day gambling lakeside party city. Its popular for the hot mineral water bathes also known as the Spa City and they are proud Bill Clinton grew up there. One music store has a life size wooden cutout of Wild Bill with his shades and sax! Former home of the Rock N RollPresident!
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In 1987 my band was asked to play in the bar of a venue called Jamie's On Seven, during a Maynard Ferguson concert. Maynard's band played two sets and we played between them. His band members all loved our sound and sat in with us on their break, and Maynard called me the next morning to offer me the job in his band.
When I went to Jamie's to get paid for the previous night, the owner refused to give us our money - 100.00 total for four guys - because he said we "weren't very good." I said, "Maynard tried to hire me this morning, so I guess he doesn't agree."
Another gig, this one in about 1985 in Windsor, Ontario, was with a band I had just joined, a quintet led by a trombonist/flutist. On one of the originals, in Dm, the guitar solo wound up to a high register, ending on the highest D note, then segued into a drum solo. I worked my way up the neck, hit the high note, then looked up to see an older man heading for the restroom next to the stage; he fell flat on his face and died from a heart attack. The music stopped, the medics arrived, and a hush fell over the room. The keyboard player sidled up next to me and said quietly, "You know... you just killed that guy with your solo."
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It's hard to top a German with a chainsaw dealing with rejection. Any number of slasher movies come to mind.
Last edited by Stevebol; 01-15-2021 at 05:02 PM.
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Around 23 years ago I was in a band backing a "singer/songwriter" hippie type chick. We were playing a birthday-going away party for a girl at a local small theatre.
Midway through the party I see a police officer enter, we lower the volume of the music but keep jamming and the singer says to him, "Hello officer... are we too loud?" The officer replies, "You're not loud enough!" and tears off his shirt!
(Someone hired a stripper for the birthday girl, lol. I had no clue and thought we were going to get shut down for the loudness..)
As soon as he tore off the shirt I laughed and switched on the wah pedal, appropriate music ensued. We all had a good time that night and I ended up making out with the b-day girl later.
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The most fun I ever had with gigs was doing breakdance shows back in the 80's. A drummer doing community service put together a rhythm section. It was really easy and we only played about 6 songs. No vocals. Teens from different neighborhoods would compete. We'd be onstage laughing at these acrobatic kids.
The best one looked straight out of Village of the Damned.
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Originally Posted by nobozo
"Inna Gadda Davida...." We had a drummer who used to play that drum solo just out of the blue. Audiences loved it, the band just considered it a bonus break. Win-win! 
Last edited by citizenk74; 01-20-2021 at 03:39 PM. Reason: clarity
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Maybe you noticed that EarlBrother's post got me reminiscing. Mid '70s I was in a Latin/Fusion/Jazz group that grew out of an early '70s free jazz experiment. Somehow we got booked for a wedding on a farm somewhere near Hillsboro Or. It was a very bad booking. Total mismatch. We were in some sort of open shed with no stage and bales of hay. In the middle of the day. Not us at all.
We did something like Manha de Carnival or Sometime Ago. Pretty innocuous tune until the soprano sax solo. He enjoyed a tone and approach born from Coltrane,Ayler,Shepp and Sanders. No applause whatsoever. This huge guy in overalls and some sort of straw hat walks right up to the sax guy. Towering over him: "You play that thang one mo' time an I'ma gonna shove it right down yo throat". He didn't so much as touch it again.
Not as wild as some of these stories, but I'm sure there was a chainsaw or 2 on the property...
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I was working a six-week engagement with a wedding band in the early '80s at a suburban club that was a pickup spot for people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. It was a strange place (!), with a private room off to one side that was dimly lit. I wandered in there after closing time one night and I can't even describe the smell...
Anyway, I was using a bright red ES-335 through a Deluxe Reverb (1979 model 335, so it was a bright cherry color) and, during the first set of the first night, the owner came up to yell at me to turn it down. I knew I was the quietest member of the band, so I wondered if he was reacting to the color of the guitar.
Over the course of the run, he constantly yelled at me to turn down, but after the first set that first night, I unplugged my guitar, turned off my amp, and played acoustically. After the first night I took my amp home and showed up with just my guitar, but for six weeks he said I was too loud...
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Remembered another: We played the first Fat Tuesday in Seattle. We had the final spot on closing night and had a packed venue. We had one of our best gigs until it was time to stop. They didn't want it to end. There was no way off the stage. They started throwing bottles. We hid behind the equipment until some cops came and made way for us to get out. First and only time I've ever been happy to see the man. So far.
I've had the pleasure on another occasion to have my amp unplugged by someone who didn't appreciate my playing. I see that one as more of a badge of honour.
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At a wedding gig I had a Twin and it was pointed low. Too big an amp and I should have had it pointed at me. At the end of the night an old guy comes up and starts kicking my amp. I was laughing. A couple people said, you're not mad?
I said no. Look at him.
We're all standing there laughing at him.
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Great stories here!
I was 17 and we were booked to play a gig at a local hall. A week or so before the gig, I fell off my Honda 125cc motorcycle at 60mph or so and sustained some pretty severe abrasions on my right hand, leg and even the side of my face. Needless to say, the gig went ahead and I played the set with right hand literally bandaged, limping on my right leg and with scrapes on face covered by liquid foundation provided by GF. Real teen-hero stuff!
Anyway, the gig actually went down a storm and our roadie told us we had sold around 500 tickets at the door, though I'd had a few shots of "something" to kill the pain (the hand bandage had turned an eerie kind of red halfway through) and didn't really notice. I got paid 25 pounds.
A few days later I was lying in bed and suddenly curled up into foetal position as I heard a car go past my house just as I was falling asleep. Delayed shock. Gotta love the teens.
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"Bad Gigs," by Tuck Andress (Used to be on the Tuck and Patti website but isn't anymore. Punctuation unchanged from original.)
Borrowed guitar, different string spacing, bridge or nut sliding during string bending or vibrato, wrong strap length or strap breaking during solo, unwound guitar string used as backup strap gradually cutting through shirt and shoulder, sleeve snagging on bridge suddenly locking up hand, wrong pick, dropped pick, broken pick, no pick, pick stuck between strings, finger caught between strings, wrong strings, dead strings, sticky strings, blood on strings, broken strings, no extra strings, jar of honey spilled all over strings, vintage L-5's gig bag shoulder strap breaking immediately before album release concert for 5,000 people causing guitar to fall on concrete and creating crack from tailpiece to neck which gradually splits apart during performance with action getting higher and higher, amp too far away, amp too close, amp broken so play through bass amp or P.A., tone all wrong, overdrive bypass switch broken, cymbal in ear, band too loud, audience too loud, band downstairs too loud, bad monitors, no monitors, in-ear monitors broken so Patti is heard acoustically but Tuck is heard only through house PA 50 yards away resulting in Tuck being unavoidably out of sync with Patti by 1/6 second for whole show, guitar buzz, RF from nearby transmitter louder than the music itself, brownouts making organ pitch fluctuate randomly over an octave range, power outage, equipment plugged into 230 volts immediately before show, earthquake during show in high-rise, outdoor desert performance at 131 degrees with sand-blasting winds, sub-freezing outdoor mountaintop performance with snow storms and 40 mph winds, high altitude dizziness, no sleep, no food, too much food, wrong food, food poisoning, fever, locked bathrooms, way too many liquids before long show, nagging suspicion that zipper is down, contact lens falling out during moment of peak concentration, compromised hand position due to repeatedly sliding full width of stage while trying to keep playing but not collide with Patti on yacht in rough Finnish Gulf of Bothnia, charts blown away by wind, charts on thermal fax paper, charts in wrong key, charts without bar lines, charts with bar lines all displaced by two beats, charts in bass clef or C clef, chord charts with do/re/mi instead of C/D/E and everything else in Portuguese, realization that Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Pass, George Benson, Chaka Khan, Bobby McFerrin or Steve Gadd just walked in, drunks falling on stage, drunks disrobing on stage, drunks grabbing instruments or band members, band members falling asleep during song, pigs frolicking in sawdust-covered frat house knocking over band equipment, thinly veiled animosity between bride's and groom's families erupting into violence during heartfelt version of My Romance, nightly juggling of playing and operating the lighting console/footswitches and talking to audience members and trying to reign in tempos and egos of various fellow top-40 band members, arrival at duo gig with unbelievably loud, aggressive fuzz-wah hard rock bass player to discover that assignment is to back up elderly white-haired and white-suited gentleman singing unfamiliar country songs to unforgiving patrons, crowded upscale happy hour dance floor unraveling into pandemonium as normal-looking customers all collapse to the floor and writhe around on each other while astonished saxophone-playing duo partner walks out leaving helpless solo guitarist playing The Hustle for 25 minutes, funk bass player imprisoned in lounge band insisting on popping strings throughout sensitive ballads, accidental imprisonment of Patti in wine cellar out of earshot during guitar instrumentals, onstage and on-instrument living creatures with varying numbers of legs, belligerent drunken bowling alley lounge customer demanding that funk band play Debussy's Clair de Lune while remainder of band looks expectantly at guitarist, drummer watching ball game on portable TV with headphones throughout performance, guest singer repeatedly changing keys at random moments, realization that the people who have just boldly picked up instruments and are unexpectedly sitting in are Herbie Hancock and Wah Wah Watson, guns drawn at rehearsals to settle disputes about form of song, marginally famous singer resorting to the dreaded "Do you know who I am" line, drummer and delusional would-be front man jumping off the drums in the middle of a song and mistakenly chanting "we don't need no drummer to keep that funky beat" to a dance floor packed with suddenly hostile former dancers, unstable band member deciding that it is his responsibility to educate the audience over the microphone, bass player playing random notes and rhythms because he is not a bass player at all but nonetheless booked the gig, drummer announcing that he killed somebody just before the show, swimming pool party turning into orgy with splashing on inexperienced solo electric guitarist sitting beside pool doing his first solo gig and fielding endless requests for the same song he had just played yet again, bride's and groom's special song evaporating from mortified solo musician's mind at the crucial moment, band member disappearing suddenly when his chair falls backwards off riser, unstable enormous man peaking on LSD brandishing artificial limb removed from his companion at audience and threatening band to "sing with this", mirrors on back wall of club causing introspective young guitarist to question meaning of his life at early stage in career.
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So did he do any good gigs at all?
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Sounds pretty run-of-the-mill to me.
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Playing at a big roadhouse out in the sticks during a bad thunderstorm, next to a big open door. I told the band leader “let’s take a break until this blows over”. He basically called me a pussy and continued with the set. The lightning hit the metal roof about 10 feet above us. It did not sound like thunder but rather like a shotgun going off next to your ear. We felt the electricity.
We took a long break. None of us felt very good for a while.
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There has been someone grabbing a cowbell and joining the band while dancing up front on a dance floor. Loud cowbell solo for the entire tune. Usually a women, alcohol was a factor.
Hide the cowbell.
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Don't get me started on drunken frat boys and harm - onicas.... Originally Posted by fep
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Reading about wedding gigs gone wrong reminded me of one. Throughout the 80s I played in a wedding band that worked fairly regularly. But in a slow month the leader booked us a low paying gig sans the usual showcase, etc. Word was, after we got there, that it was a "shotgun wedding." So we take the stage and the audience was lined up on either side of the room, dead silence, no mingling, all us, a really tense setting. After a couple of tunes from our usual set, it was clear that Spyro-Gyra and Lionel Ritchie wouldn't cut it. Some one asked if we knew any country music. We must've played Rawhide a dozen times that night! The power of music (not to mention the alcohol) brought people together. As a footnote, the bandleader went on to be a drum major for the USAF!
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