Your scariest band story.

[RABid]

I was still a teenager playing in my first decent band. Rural county, private club out in the woods, alcohol sales against the law, with a BYOBBHIFTL policy. (Bring your own bottle but hide it from the law.) Every now and then while we were on break the owner would rush up shouting Start playing. Start playing. There was a big fight outside. The ambulance is on the way and we need to get everyone back inside.

 

Well, on this night we are playing and see a scuffle break out in the crowd. Someone asked the wrong girl for a dance and her husband pulled a gun. The singer knew both young men so he ran off of the stage and jumped between them urging the one with the gun to put it away. It was scary. The personalities of the different band members really came through that night by the comments on the stage.

 

Bassist: Did you see run out the back door? The big wuss.

Me: What if he gets shot?

Drummer: Hell. How are we going to find another singer by tomorrow night?

 

A few minutes later it was over, the singer comes back on stage, and we finally get the guitarist to come inside and finish the set. That night the drummer and I insisted that the band vote on whether to play there again. We were out voted 3-2. It was a really good paying job.

[J. Dan]

I played a lesbian bar once. They weren't lipstick lesbians.

[KenElevenShadows]

A loooong time ago, my band played Al's Bar in downtown LA, a rough part of town. We carpooled in a couple of cars, parking a block or so away. After the gig, we walked back to the car. A couple of rough looking characters walked up to us and said, "Hey, wanna buy a car battery?" We said, "No, no thanks" and continued walking to our car. The band member tried to start his car, but no dice. Outside the window, those same two walked up again and said, "Hey, wanna buy a car battery?"

[StevenS]

Very long time ago my band had a gig and unfortunately the audience where all drunk heavy metal guys. They had some opinions about our (at that time) Elton John sounding tunes. -We escaped alive

 

[JpScoey]

Bassist: Did you see run out the back door? The big wuss.

Me: What if he gets shot?

Drummer: Hell. How are we going to find another singer by tomorrow night?

 

Great story, & I can't quite match that, but one early gig I did, about 1980,

 

was when there were riots on the streets in (Margaret) 'Thatcher's Britain'.

 

The gig we were playing was in centre of town on a road called 'Princes Street' -

 

the main riots (people petrol-bombing shops etc) were a couple of miles away on 'Princess Road'.

 

As a result, folks thought the venue we were playing was in the 'riot area'.

 

There were more Police in attendance at the gig than punters !

 

 

[yannis D]

Bassist: Did you see run out the back door? The big wuss.

Me: What if he gets shot?

Drummer: Hell. How are we going to find another singer by tomorrow night?

 

Great story, & I can't quite match that, but one early gig I did, about 1980,

 

was when there were riots on the streets in (Margaret) 'Thatcher's Britain'.

 

The gig we were playing was in centre of town on a road called 'Princes Street' -

 

the main riots (people petrol-bombing shops etc) were a couple of miles away on 'Princess Road'.

 

As a result, folks thought the venue we were playing was in the 'riot area'.

 

There were more Police in attendance at the gig than punters !

 

 

So, you're lucky enough to have lived in the Thatcher years

[JpScoey]

So, you're lucky enough to have lived in the Thatcher years

 

I wouldn't call it 'lucky'

[CEB]

Most of my scariest stories involve organs.

 

We played a gig at a state prison once. It wasn't scary we had a lot of guards. It took forever to get through gate security. But the lady singer in our band was terrified. The audience loved cheering for her.

[tarkus]

too many bar fights to count.

 

1st bad one: the Madison Inn (lawrence Harbor NJ)

Packed house. Guy decides he wants to be "guest singer".

Grabs mic from our singer. Our singer pushes him away. Brawl ensues.

Our singer was pretty bad-ass. dropped the guy with a shot to the nose. friends jump in, bouncers seperate the crowd and toss people.

Many death threats waiting outside.

 

We take a break and re-group. Bar owner says "you guys aren't done playin."

 

we played a shortened third set and waited in the bar until the cops showed uo to keep us from getting shivved during the pack-up.

 

2nd: Played Jammer's in Avenel. Used to play there a lot.

There was a pool table about 10 paces and to the right of the band. Someone didn't have a good game that night and decided to swing his cue around. broken - sharp end of pool cue misses my face by about an inch. 'Good Night Avenel! I'm outta here!"

 

3rd: playing at Oliver's in Colonia - they loved us there. A friend of mine had driven over an hour to come see us. He was a mixed-up, but harmeless guy that just liked music and didn't drink since he was 'recovering'. A simple guy.

In between songs I walk out to greet him and he mumbles about some guys giving him a hard time.

I inform the bouncer and ID the three douchbags that had too much too soon.

Within a few bars of the next tune I see my firend get cold-cocked - broke his jaw. I stop playing and the bouncers go to work. I decide turnabout is fair-play and belt the guy while the bouncers restrained him. No Jail for me, but I couldn't get back in the bar to get my gear.

 

4th: Some chithole in Keyport. Great gig good time until some guy runs out of the bathroom with a 5 inch gash in his head and another guy trying to tackle him right in front of us.

No Gear was Harmed during the incident.

 

See - I payed my dues and then some.

 

 

[iLaw]

Several lives ago I was playing in a band that got booked into "the Stone Toad", a biker bar in Pekin Illinois.

 

A biker walks in and announces that it's his birthday and he's buying a round for the entire bar (band included). The bill would have been substantial, as there were more than 100 people in the bar at the time.

 

About a half-hour later a new bunch of bikers comes in and everybody's telling them that they should have been there a half-hour ago because that guy over there (the birthday boy) bought a round for the whole bar.

 

The newcomers go ever to the birthday boy and say "how about a round for us?" He apologizes that the bill came to more than he expected and he can't afford to pay for any more drinks.

 

So they knife him to death. Right there at the bar.

 

How do I know the details if I was up on stage? From the subsequent criminal trial.

 

Larry.

 

[tarkus]

^^^^ winner

[SMcD]

Several lives ago I was playing in a band that got booked into "the Stone Toad", a biker bar in Pekin Illinois.

 

A biker walks in and announces that it's his birthday and he's buying a round for the entire bar (band included). The bill would have been substantial, as there were more than 100 people in the bar at the time.

 

About a half-hour later a new bunch of bikers comes in and everybody's telling them that they should have been there a half-hour ago because that guy over there (the birthday boy) bought a round for the whole bar.

 

The newcomers go ever to the birthday boy and say "how about a round for us?" He apologizes that the bill came to more than he expected and he can't afford to pay for any more drinks.

 

So they knife him to death. Right there at the bar.

 

How do I know the details if I was up on stage? From the subsequent criminal trial.

 

Larry.

 

Can't say I've ever watched a man die on a gig. But I can only imagine how traumatic it would be for you. I think I'd have a hard time getting back on stage again after something like that.

[B3bluesman59]

Back in the 60s I played a regular roadhouse gig....this place was famous for its wild crowds and fights. They had a great bouncer but sometimes even he could not control it. One night a fight starts...we keep on playing...6 guys going at it on the dance floor....bouncer trying to stop it...another guy jumps on stage and grabs the mic...music stops. Our drummer who was a talented semi-pro boxer stand ups and tells the dude to get off the stage...dude makes big mistake and throws a punch at the drummer...punch misses....drummer does not. Guy is literally knocked off the stage out cold. Bouncer finally breaks up fight, hauls away the guy who is still out cold...music and dancing resume. Just another Friday night at the roadhouse.

[Eric Iverson]

I don't consider myself a sissy.. but I think for now I'll continue to play in churches instead of roadhouses.

Not that there aren't FIGHTS sometimes.. but usually nobody gets killed... we never have to put up chicken wire around the stage to protect us from flying beer bottles!

[iLaw]

But I can only imagine how traumatic it would be for you. I think I'd have a hard time getting back on stage again after something like that.

Not so traumatic, because we were on stage when the trouble started. We only found out the next morning that the birthday boy had died.

 

That's when we told Blytham no more gigs at the Stone Toad.

 

Larry.

 

[tarkus]

 

[mate stubb]

A polar bear fell on me.

 

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rzrL2FsbXfg/0.jpg

 

[iLaw]

OK, here's another one. I'll try to keep it short.

 

It was my first gig with the same band as my previous post. Prog rock, with about half originals. I had joined them on Monday and it was now Friday night, four days later. I was barely hanging on by my fingers, with four sets of mostly new music.

 

Half-way through the second set, the crowd is screaming for rock 'n' roll, so the lead singer calls an audible; Quicksilver Messenger Service's "Fresh Air" (you'll know in a minute how I remember the song) when, out of nowhere, the bass player starts thrashing around the stage and making the most terrifying, demonic sounds you've ever heard. The whole place freezes. His girlfriend stands up in the audience and starts screaming "OMG, he's dying! he's dying!"

 

The lead singer (some might say sent by God to be at that precise place at that precise moment) has the presence of mind to remember that we had driven by a hospital, just a block away, on our way in. He flags an audience guy down and the two of them take the bass player under each armpit out the front door and run him down to the emergency entrance.

 

The lead singer comes back about 45 minutes later and explains that the bass player, who sometimes plays with a pick, sometimes with his fingers, routinely kept his badly-chewed-up pick in his mouth when he wasn't using it, and had huffed it down his windpipe. An emergency tracheotomy in OR saved his life.

 

That's when the club owner came up and reminded us that we still owed him at least one more set. We explained the circumstances and he replied "no set, no pay." So we threw a mike on the lower rotor of one of my Leslies and unplugged the motor. I played left-hand bass for the rest of the night on top of everything else.

 

Larry.

[acidolem]

I was playing Rhodes in a Jazz/fusion/rock trio in the 70's. two weeks before I was to start attending college to study music the band informed me that the decision was made for the three of us to hop a train to NY to break in the music scene. I was scared. I never hoped a train before and could not visualize doing it with a Rhodes piano. I declined and was branded by the band as not serious about music. I never heard from my band mates until 2 years later. I was gigging in a house band 6 nights a week and was excited to hear of their NY adventures.

It turned out they selected the wrong train to hop and ended up in Alabama. They washed dishes for a year and a half, saved enough to buy a car and drive back up to Minnesota.

[mate stubb]

It turned out they selected the wrong train to hop and ended up in Alabama. They washed dishes for a year and a half, saved enough to buy a car and drive back up to Minnesota.

 

Just think - if you had gone with them, you would have had the privilege of selling your Rhodes to bail everyone out. Yay!

[Ken Beaumont]

From Minnesota to Alabama eh, that had to be a culture shock don't cha know!

[mcgoo]

great stories here. Can't top 'em, but I'll share one (although I may have told this before- if so, sorry)...

 

Almost got electrocuted at a gig in a toilet of a bar. I must've become ground when I happened to grab a mic while holding onto my bass (the one & only band I ever played bass in). My hand contracts & I have a death grip on the mic. I'm screaming bloody murder as I see sparks coming out of my hand and finally fell off the stage (which probably saved my life since by doing so I "disconnected").

 

As I'm lying on the floor wondering what just happened, I hear the bar owner yell from the other side of the room "if y'all are gonna fight, take it outside".

 

My date took me to ER. I lived.

 

 

[DaveMcM]

Many, many years ago the four piece band I was in had a wedding reception gig. That right there is scary enough I suppose, but... The bride-to-be gave us entirely wrong directions and we ended up arriving a few minutes after we were supposed to start. The other guys started hauling equipment in while I explained to the father of the bride that we would play straight threw without any breaks since the total time of three 15 minute breaks will be used for setting up. It wasn't our fault that we were late, but I figured it couldn't hurt to make the offer. He seemed fine with that. As we started to set up someone from the hall (VFW or similar) came over and said we couldn't set up there (the only open area) because that's where the food tables were going. When I asked where we were to set up, she point at a little balcony above the bar-in-a-wall. How do we get there, I asked. She walked us through the kitchen to a ladder, yes a ladder, that led up to this small protrusion in the wall about 15 feet off the floor. The PA except for the mixer and one boom stand and mic, Hammond M3 and Leslie 145, all of the drums except snare and high hat, keyboard amp and guitar amp went back to the van. We did the gig, over three hours non-stop, with the guitar, Wurlitzer EP, bass guitar and a single microphone all running through the bass players Ampeg B-15. At the end of the night I found the father of the bride to get paid. He said that since we started over an hour late, he was docking us a 1/4 of our agreed upon fee. We were fairly young and didn't really know how to handle a situation like this, plus we were exhausted from the equipment up and down the ladder fiasco, so we just took what the guy gave us and got out of there. If someone were to do that to me today, I can think of a better place to put the mic stand rather than back in the van.

[RABid]

A different kind of scared...

 

Back in the late 70's my small town got it's first fast food restaurant, a Burger Queen. We were paid to play for the grand opening and set up across the road where traveling carnivals usually set up. They brought in a big flatbed trailer for us to use as a stage. We set up and start doing the sound check and the trailer starts moving. A friend of the band who worked with coal trucks grabbed a big rock and braced a tire so it would stop. It only moved a few inches, and very slowly, but it felt like more and threw us into a panic.

[retrokeys]

Don't know about a "scary band story" but I scared a band once. Had been commuting 25 miles a night to work with a band in another town but found another gig closer to home and quit the first. Unbeknownst to me, in the other town one of the club's customers, who worked in a funeral home, claimed to the band that "your former keyboard guy came in as a client. Motorcycle wreck." Odd, as I have never owned one, but in any case I had a night off a while later and figured I'd drive up and see everybody. Place got real quiet when I walked in and the bass player actually started crying. Got things sorted out over beers. Scary.... :0

[yannis D]

So, you're lucky enough to have lived in the Thatcher years

 

I wouldn't call it 'lucky'

 

I know - that's why i added the smily policeman... I remember TV those days. Really sad images.

(Sorry for highjacking the thread)

[allan_evett]

Great thread... Have a few contributions:

 

1) Winter, 1992: south suburban Chicago bar, packed to the limit. Playing with a popular 4 piece local rock band. We're on our second encore, and I notice - about mid song - that my Roland FP-8 is beginning to 'levitate' - the keybed is quickly rising and lifting my hands. I step back, and it's then that I see two guys fighting on the stage floor right beneath my rig. They were wedged against the front edge of my Apex stand and causing the keyboards to lift up and back. My quick thinking lead singer stepped over and we turned the rig sideways. The two guys quickly tumbled past and rolled up onto the drum riser, beginning to knock down drums and hardware. The drummer wasted no time in jumping over his rig, and proceeding to start kicking. One of the guys jumped off of the stage and flew out one of the side exits. The other guy stupidly tried to head for the front door; within seconds the bouncer and club owner both had him pinned up against the wall.

That band witnessed its' share of fights over the years; that one was the first to go interactive.

 

2) Same band, different gig: a west suburban summer festival. I was on break and talking to a few friends that had come out to the gig, when out of the corner of my eye a fast moving blur turns into a guy who tackles me at full speed; we both go flying into a bale of hay, the beer in my hand launched about twenty feet. As I get to my feet, the guy says," Oops, wrong one; so sorry"; then proceeds to jump on a fellow close by (who bore a resemblance to me) and begins pounding on him instead.

 

3) Labor day weekend, 2000; playing the last evening set at a fest near Kankakee, IL. Mid set the west wind kicked up, to put it mildly. I was set up sideways to the audience, stage right, with my rack/keyboard amp to my left. The first indication of trouble was when the wind picked up the 35 lb. keyboard amp from atop my rack and blew it into my left side. The lead singer announced an abrupt end to the set, and the band hastily tore down. I remember the stage canopy ripping loose and sailing east into the park during that load out. Shortly after that we found out that the severe thunderstorm warning had been bumped up to a tornado warning, as funnel clouds had been sighted several miles to the west....

[LX88]

This really happened -

 

My mother died Feb. 12 2010. That day was a Friday, and I had a gig booked the night. It was about 6 P. M when I finished at the hospital. It was very sudden but the good part of that was that she had a peaceful exit from this world.

 

So I decided that it was way too late in the day to find a sub.... I elected to play the gig I had booked.

 

I remember thinking "Mom ...if you can see or hear me, please take note of what I deal with on a typical night".

 

It was actually pretty busy at the club when I got there . I told the band what had happened, hoping they would take it easy on me. Of course, it was anything but that. The guitarist was bent on making an impression in this club and the music had an agressive quality.

 

20 minutes into the set, there was a domestic squabble at the table right in front of the bandstand. I saw a man throw a beer into the face of a woman at the table.

 

Then he grabbed another woman at the table, and forced her outside.

 

About 30 seconds later I heard a loud pop. The man who threw the beer and grabbed the woman was now SHOOTING people.

 

He was a good shot. It turned out he was an off duty police officer with a public weapon. He shot 3 women that night and then himself. None of them survived.

 

The hardest part was that I was unable to go home that night, as I lived 60 miles away and my car was parked at at a crime scene. In other words, I was unable to have access to it. I managed to get a motel, but it was really really hard spending that night alone with all that had happened.

 

I used to think that "worst gig" stories were great material for humor, but I doubt anyone would be able to top this nightmare.

[CrimsonianKing]

OK, this topic truly scares me...

[Ginger]

We are an unusual band and we are not the kind of people you'd expect to be well tolerated in a small Pacific NW logging town. (See the URL in my profile, and read the very bottom of the home page, then continue the story).

 

We've been amazingly well received there for many years with 300 people usually passing through the doors of the small bars we play in a night.

 

One night, after our 3 sets came to a close, we were sitting on the edge of the stage taking a breath and a burly, bald, tattooed, mean looking man swaggers up to the stage and he plants himself right in front of us. Out of his mouth comes "I just got out of prison". Every one of us stops breathing and we glance sideways at each other and look for the nearest exit. But the next thing he says is "You ladies have got a lot of balls doing what you do. Thanks for a night of great music." Ahhhhhh...hearts resume beating.

 

The really scary incident was in the same town, different bar, in a turn of the century building. The entire floor of the bar was built on a couple original beams with little support in the middle of the beams, about 10' between them, and long, thick floor boards across them. During our last set, the crowd was getting pretty wild and pogo-ing and we could see the floor sink several inches and trampoline them back up with every beat. The floor was bending so badly that the front edge of the stage was dipping down and all of us backed away from the edge for fear of going down into the basement with the rest of the crowd when the floor collapsed. Somehow it survived the rest of the night and the few other times we played that year.

 

(The next year we came back to play again. We asked about the floor and the manager said the building had been inspected and the structure improved with with a couple tree trunks. I thought he simply meant some sturdy wood. But I went downstairs and there were literally some 10" diameter tree trunks that had been stripped, cleaned, carefully cut, and set on hefty screw jacks to hold up the beams. Muuuuuch better...)