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CowboyNQ

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About CowboyNQ

  • Birthday 12/18/1972

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    Adelaide, Australia

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  1. I must say I’m surprised and delighted at the volume, humour and intensity of replies to what was for me a late night vent. This thread has most certainly achieved its aim of making me feel a whole lot less mentally wound up about what occurred. The power of chatting to your mates, in action. A sincere thanks everyone, and I do mean everyone. To save time I’ll try to respond to a lot of thoughts in one hit. 1. I’m getting a vibe that it’s an issue in the States (or maybe some states), but alcohol on stage in Australia is very normal. Believe it or not, in my country it’s more culturally acceptable to drink than not to drink. 2. That said, we still should have cleared the prop. It didn’t occur to us at the time it would cause a drama. The issue wasn’t the alcohol, it was the fact that the manager thought we had bought it off premises. Definitely our error. 3. My issue is not with the being questioned (although it’s somewhat surprising). It’s with the manner in which the inquisition was conducted. The only reason the whole thing didn’t escalate into something really ugly is because we refused to be goaded into an argument and were good boys. Probably because we weren’t drinking, hehe. 4. I wouldn’t characterise West Side Story as a biographical play. It’s more of a modern musical allegory based upon Romeo and Juliet. Well worth watching and has some brilliant music and lyrics. I will warn the squeamish that it is rather intense. 5. I think it’s been lost (on some) in translation, but VH bassist Michael Anthony did consume JD on stage, and even played a JD branded bass. The prop isn’t a hill to die on, but I know If we stick with it and have the common sense to warn bar managers in advance, we’ll have zero issues. I’ll leave the decision whether or not we continue with our little bottle of trouble up to the “tea” totaller as it’s his prop. 6. No one in Australia drinks Fosters. I wouldn’t even know how to acquire it without taking a flight to the UK. To be fair though I don’t really like Jack Daniel’s either. I kind of like it more now after this chat. 7. I’m not familiar with Great White and their pyrotechnical mishaps, but I can assure all that a) we brought no flammable goods on stage (apart from incendiary guitar playing) and b) we most certainly did not behave like jerks. I’m very proud of the way our lead singer handled the situation. He is a champion of conciliatory and restrained behaviour, despite having had more than a little cause to be upset, given the manner in which he was communicated with. I’ve never understood why some people default to aggression, abuse and use of pejorative when dealing with others without first seeking to understand what is actually going on. Maybe I’ve led a charmed life, but I have found in the overwhelming majority of cases if you give people the chance to prove they’re decent human beings and have no ill intent, they come up to the mark. Unfortunately our friend on Saturday night wasn’t keen on accepting any olive branches.
  2. We are imaginatively titled Van Halen Experience and we’d love to do PM, however that dream is maybe a couple of years and a few (hopefully) successful gigs away.
  3. Not really disagreeing with myself at all there Bill! My original post stated we learned a lesson from the experience in the last paragraph. It’s always important to ask oneself “what could I have done differently to prevent this from happening?” We made the mistake of assuming that our friend would understand the context of the JD bottle given the act we were tributing. This was naive on our part. I should also mention that culturally speaking, Australians are very relaxed about alcohol, including teetotallers - one of whom happens to be my brother, the chief offender. Perhaps he’s more of a tea totaller. This makes a bar manager objecting to alcohol (fake or not) on stage very unusual. I speak from deep experience. We’ll continue to use the bottle as a prop as we believe it’s appropriate, however in future we’ll word up bar staff in advance. I know what will happen - they’ll shrug and say “whatever”, but at least we’ll prevent future flare ups. What I do most certainly disagree with is the behaviour of the bar manager. There was no call for it at all. His approach, demeanour and inferences were rude, unprofessional and unhelpful. I’m proud to say we did not return fire in kind.
  4. You played great too. Hope you didn’t chip a tooth on the bottle.
  5. Oh we have way more diseases than that… Yep very strange behaviour. A smell of the bottle would have as effectively and far less riskily revealed its contents. Not interrupting the show would have been even better. If he felt compelled to discover the contents of the bottle, he had plenty of other ways to get hold of it without tying up our lead singer mid performance.
  6. Thanks Linda - yes our inexperience with stage props caught us out here. Lesson learned.
  7. I think you’ve encapsulated my feelings succinctly. We should have cleared the prop ahead of time, and the bar manager should have been WAY less of a douche. He really was very unpleasant to us, which I’m proud to say was not reciprocated.
  8. Thanks El Lobo and no need to be sorry. I’m enjoying talking about this as it’s making me feel better. I agree that we could have been a lot smarter. I think we should have cleared the prop ahead of time. I also agree it is illegal to bring one’s own alcohol in. I would have preferred the bar manager to politely enquire about the contents of the bottle, perhaps giving us the benefit of the doubt at the outset. I would have liked this conversation and any testing of the evidence to have occurred pre-show. I would have liked the manager to not engage our lead singer in this interaction while he was performing. I would have preferred the bar manager’s behaviour and demeanour during this contretemps to have matched ours. The band is full of well-known (in our town) professional musicians who play the venue regularly. We are not the Blues Brothers turning up to steal The Good Ole Boys Gig.
  9. Thanks Ampy, I agree we should have cleared the prop ahead of time. Lesson learned as I said in my last paragraph. in terns of the appropriateness of the prop artistically these things are subjective, but the band is a VH tribute. No one was drinking on the job, and noone was pretending to get drunk. I think if we were performing West Side Story, we might bring a fake firearm on stage.
  10. Just got home from the maiden show of our Van Halen tribute. A very bizarre thing happened that I feel I need to vent about here for therapeutic reasons. We all know there are two kinds of bar staff at venues. Those who work as a team with the entertainment, and those who regard us as pond slime. This chap was most certainly in the latter category. Our bassist, who also happens to be my brother, thought it would be cool to bring a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on stage as a prop. The original contents had been replaced with tea, ain’t no way we’re swigging Jack Daniel’s neat on stage and still playing the correct notes. For a while, we had a great deal of fun drinking from the bottle during the show. The audience was enjoying our shenanigans but our friend the bar manager (let’s call him FW for the sake of brevity) was not. He accosted our lead singer DURING THE SHOW (while a guitar solo was in progress) to lecture him about how we were not allowed to bring our own alcohol on stage. Our singer tried to explain the drink was non-alcoholic but FW was having none of it. I should add his tone was aggressive, disrespectful and accusatory. Singer: “It’s tea, not Jack Daniel’s”. FW: “I don’t believe you”. Singer: “I don’t know what to tell you”. FW: “You need to hand the bottle over immediately, so I can taste the drink”. Which we did. Now FW delays the return of our singer to the stage while he futzes around trying to find a glass to pour the bottle into so he can taste it. Who knew it was so hard to find a glass in a bar? We get the bottle back (with its value as a prop ruined) without so much as an apology. I wonder how FW would have felt if we’d interrupted HIS work in full view of his customers because we thought he was breaching his compliance responsibilities? The lesson learned - next time we’ll inform bar staff in advance the contents of our bottle. Perhaps we can host a tea party.
  11. It’s always challenging to find the balance between really drilling into specific technical nuances of playing styles and choices, and also keeping the interview accessible to our very diverse global audience. As David said above - the feedback is always appreciated however. We’re constantly striving to improve the listener/viewer experience, so thanks for your honest thoughts. This being said, we’d be delighted to have your (or anyone’s) questions put directly to our guests, with credit given to you as the question formulator. This access is available via our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/keyboardchronicles
  12. Hi Chris, Thanks for highlighting this interview. David and Joe did a great job. There is a separate sub forum here where this and all the other Keyboard Chronicles interviews reside. You may enjoy checking it out. https://forums.musicplayer.com/forum/58-the-keyboard-chronicles-•-podcast/ Cheers!
  13. The original KC Nautilus thread: “How dare they not include aftertouch!” This thread: “How dare they add aftertouch!”
  14. I think you’ll find the answer in Henry V, Act IV, Scene IV.
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