What weird gigs have you had?

[Notes_Norton]

Anybody who has done this for a while has had some unusual gigs.

 

I'll start.

 

Mrs.Notes and I were hired for a grand opening of a woman's beauty salon. We were to play for 3 hours during a walk-through of potential clients.

 

There was no place for us to set up, so we set up against the wall with mirrors to our back and a hair washing sink between us. It went well, we had fun (we almost always have fun gigging). Ever since then we tell the story and joked that we played with "In SInk" (N-Sync).

 

Notes

[area51recording]

Played a retirement party.....for a show horse. In the horse's barn in Lousiville, KY. I was picking straw out of my cord bag for weeks afterwards....

[KuruPrionz]

When I was 16, my Mom spoke with the Father at the Catholic church across the field from our home and convinced him to have a Rock Mass with the band I was in.

I was on bass for the most part and we did some songs we knew but we also learned In The Court Of the Crimson King because the church had a pipe organ. Our lead guitarist was also good on keys and the Father allowed us to use the organ.

 

I switched to lead guitar, our singer went from rhythm guitar to bass and we played that song at Mass, with the goofy pipe organ break in the middle. Surrealer than real!!!!

[Anderton]

We played a gig at a sort of hospital for children with various physical or psychological challenges. (Yes, music is healing.) When we arrived, we were met by someone in his late teens who helped show us where to get set up, sources of electrical power, location of the various facilities, and so on. He asked us if we needed any more assistance, and if so, just to let him know.

 

Then someone else from the hospital came, and wanted to show us where to set up etc. We were puzzled...turned out the kid was one of the patients. He sure didn't seem too challenged to me, he was efficient and smart...actually, more so than the "official" people who helped us out.

 

But that was the only part that was weird. The gig itself was great, you could really feel a connection through music to the people.

[Mike Rivers]

[This was an old time string band, in the 1960s, the Foggy Bottom Stump Jumpers] - we were hired to play for a convention of forest fighters and were told that they liked folk music, so we dug out a few Kingston Trio songs that we could do old time style. During the dinner break (these folks know how to eat, and share their food with the hired help) one of the women there asked if we could sing the Smokey The Bear song. Of course we didn't know it, but our fiddle player asked if she could sing a bit of it. She did, and wrote down some words, and by the time we finished dessert, we had a fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and banjo arrangement of Smokey The Bear to play for opening our second set.

[zeronyne]

Back in the late eighties, I was visiting the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. There was a guy there with a 21 space rack full of synths and samplers, and he was playing ambient space music. I was not super engaged by the music, but I was impressed by him finding this gig. The very next weekend, I ran into the guy performing at a charity event, and I struck up a conversation. We were talking sample libraries, and I mentioned that I had been performing with just a Roland AX1 and a rack run by an Alesis MIDIdisk, but I was having trouble lining up gigs beyond opening for other bar bands (which paid zero). We exchanged contact info because I wanted to exchange samples with him.

 

Fast forward a few months later, and this guy calls me and says that he"s had this weekly Sunday night gig, and could I play covers solo, because the venue is tiny and he"s getting ready to call it quits. I took the offer.

 

So for the next 2 years, I was the house band every Sunday at an impromptu strip joint in the back of a liquor store in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago. The money was incredible, and I learned a LOT of Minneapolis R&B. I"m not exactly urban hip looking, but all I could wonder is how the original guy even got this gig. He would have stuck out like Santa at a NWA show. The girls and the patrons were AWESOME, and I only stopped because I finished college.

[Notes_Norton]

I was called to play a Halloween party at a nudist camp.

 

I asked if we were required to be nude, and the entertainment purchaser said most of the bands don't play nude and that's OK, but it's my choice.

 

Then I asked her if the people come in costume, and she said some of them will, but by the end of the night, most won't still have them on.

 

So I had Mrs.Notes dye a pair of skivvies and a t-shirt to match my skin tone, and she wore a flesh colored unitard. Then we cut out black rectangles and pinned them over our 'sensitive' parts and also taped an elastic band on another rectangle, so we could put them over our eyes (with peep holes). We went as "censored nudes". It was a hit with the audience, and we ended up playing the nudist camp 2-3 times a year until COVID-19 came around.

 

Contrary to what you might think, it's not really all that sexy, The people act so normal that after a while it seems normal.

 

Notes

[KuruPrionz]

The band in Fresno would play senior centers gratis as a way to give back to the community. One afternoon we showed up as a trio to a convalescent home. The stage was in the corner, the back end of the room. The staff had arranged all the beds, wheelchairs etc. in a semi circular pattern with 3 or 4 "rings", the place was full. We played for them, some folk, some country and some gospel tunes. Our lead singer knew all the gospel tunes off of old Elvis records so we had quite selection.

 

The audience was happily absorbed in the music we were giving them and it was going very well. We started "I'll Fly Away". The chorus goes:

"I'll fly away, Lord Lord,

I'll fly away.

When I die, in the sweet bye and bye,

I'll fly away"

 

As we started in, I looked out the window to my right. The way it was angled only the band could see out of it, not the audience. I saw an ambulance back slowly up to the front door. Shortly after that, medics quietly rolled a gurney down the hall behind the residents. They were unaware and I forced myself not to look at the back of the room, stealing brief glances here and there.

The singer saw what was happening and extended the song. A little later, the medics rolled the gurney back out, a white sheet was covering a figure. They made it back to ambulance, loaded up and quietly drove off. We finished the song.

 

It was really tough to pretend we hadn't seen anything but I think we pulled it off. We played some more songs, packed up and left. The residents were joyful and grateful, it always made me happy to bring that light to them but this was not our usual sort of gig at all.

[Mike Rivers]

A local bluegrass band had a charity gig playing at a mental hospital (or whatever they call them now - this was in the 1960s). As they were unpacking their instruments, someone said to them "don't bring anything shiny in there."

[BenWaB3]

Back in my Long Island years (early to mid 70's) my band was hired to play at one of the race tracks - I can't remember which one. We couldn't play during the races or the warmups because it would spook the horses so we would do 10-15 minutes tops, stop playing, hit up the food stands (free eats was part of the contract) and hang out in the furnished trailer for a half hour or so while they went through the warmup, race routine again, repeating until all the races were done. It ended up being a total of 3 to 4 hours during which we played about the equivalent of one set, and it payed well.

 

The band I was in prior to that got hired to be kind of the "break band" for Lester Lanin for a few jobs. He probably achieved his peak fame during the 50's & was known for his "smooth" medleys (read: Lawrence Welk-like). He would play the debutante balls on LI. Of course the deb-aged kids were bored as hell with all this so when he took a break they would have us, the rock band, play. After we had done 2 tunes at most Lester would come back on & start his band for another 50 minutes to an hour, much to the kids dismay. That one payed well too. Kind of ironic comparing these two jobs to the long hours for chump change that would describe most of our other jobs back then.

[Notes_Norton]

Mrs.Notes and I (The Sophisticats) played at a club near the stables of the Palm Beach Polo club in Wellington FL.

 

The horses were tended mostly by men from Argentina. On the weekend they would literally get fall-down drunk. If someone fell down, someone else would give up his bar stool, they would pick up the fallen guy and sit him on the stool so that he could continue drinking. The guys would put a wad of cash on the bar, and the bartender knew when the drink was empty he would refill it and take the money out of the pile of cash -- unless the patron put a cocktail napkin on top of the glass. That meant he was done.

 

Fortunately there were never any fights. We learned a couple of tangos for them, but we learned most of them just wanted to hear regular pop music. At closing time they would stagger back to their quarters, fortunately they were all close enough so they didn't have to drive. They spoke Spanish but with an Italian accent, later I did some research to find out why.

 

Here's the weird part. The stage in the lounge was small, and for a duo, we are gear intensive (I played sax, wind synth, flute and keyboards on the gig back then, and Mrs.Notes played synth and guitar - these days I leave the keyboard home and take a guitar). The lounge was separated from the dining room by a porch rail. The lounge was decorated in dark wood colors and the dining room in bright beige. I played in the dining room, Leilani played in the lounge, with what looked like a porch rail in between us. She was on a small riser, I was on the floor of the dining room. She had a stage light I had none. I guess we played in different rooms together. A simulcast.

 

The gig paid well, and we worked it for a couple of months until they decided to go with singles because they needed the table they took out of the dining room so I could fit.

[ToddP]

My first (maybe last?) paid gig was a couple old country dudes that needed a bass player. I was maybe 16? It was at the Oakland Zoo, and I don't even remember why they called me. They played old school country. I said ok.

I didn't know any of the songs, maybe heard a couple once? I just watched what they were playing and played quarter notes. They gave me a couple hundred bucks and were very happy with the result. The chimpanzees didn't even throw poo at me on load-out! (they monkey/ ape cage was a very dangerous place at the Oakland Zoo back then, and was close to the venue)

[nursers]

I have danced in a leopard skin top as a busty blonde in an award winning movie featuring Rachel Griffiths, Ben Mendelssohn and Bryan Brown.

 

[video:youtube]

[Notes_Norton]

When I was 19 years old, I played in a strip club. This was before they started using pre-recorded music. Fortunately the band played sitting down

 

At the time 18 was old enough to play in a bar, but we couldn't drink until we were 21 so on breaks we went backstage with the girls.

 

They were working girls, mostly nice, and they let us know what they liked to dance to. There was a bit of playful flirting backstage but none of us ever hooked up with any of the dancers.

 

One of the girls was an old-school stripper, billed as a gal with a million dollar wardrobe. She went on with something different every time and left with nothing on every time. She liked the song "Night Train" which I still occasionally play when the audience is appropriate for it. Sometimes it makes me remember that gig.

[analogika]

I landed a regular gig in 2019 playing keys in what is probably the oldest Rammstein tribute band in existence. My job mostly consists of managing the stage machines and the programming (including for pyro/flamethrowers), but I also play the live parts on a MainStage machine and play the show part that Flake plays â including getting dragged off the keyboard riser on a leash, beaten down into a steel tub, and having flames poured on me. And sitting in a giant cooking pot and getting roasted by a huge flame-thrower.

 

Every show is the most absurd fucking thing I've ever done on stage.

 

[video:youtube]

 

Utterly stupid. But SO much fun.

[David R]

Got both of these gigs through my alma mater's gig office.

 

- Two day solo piano contract in the east end of town. I show up and the theatre is set up in a beauty pageant style. Turns out, it was for "Miss Quebec" (and also "Monsieur Quebec" and "Miss Teen Quebec"). I was hired to play background music while the contestants walked down the staircase and introduced themselves. It was completely bizarre. After the first day, the organizer comes up to me and says, "Don't you play classic?" I was young and not from Quebec, so I was like, "You hired a jazz pianist. If you wanted classical, you should have asked for a classical pianist. I don't really do that." He was like, "You can't play the Beatles? Roy Orbison, Pretty Woman?" Ohhhhhhhh.... classic rock... that I can do. Still friggin' weird. I must say, kudos to the Monsieur Quebec who went ass-over-teakettle down the stairs and still wound up winning.

 

- Put together a Latin jazz band for a corporate gig. Had no idea who the client was when we got there. Turns out it was the International Cement Chemist's Convention â I had no idea that this was a thing. I guess it's like the Cement Chemistry Olympics or something, it's every four years and different countries bid to host it. The two finalists were China and Spain. They had hired a "Latin band" to please the Spanish contingent but apparently the planner didn't understand that Spanish music and Cuban music are not the same. If I had "Bamboleo" in my back pocket it would have been cool.

[Notes_Norton]

Leilani (Mrs.Notes) and I like to take a vacation every year. Travel is one of our delights. We've been to 6 out of the 7 continents and a lot of independent islands too, plus all over the US, Canada and Mexico.

 

Usually it's independent travel but when we went to China, there is no way I could learn to read the bus/train schedules and/or road signs in Chinese characters, so we took a small group tour (our first and last tour so far). This was in 1996. We zigzagged from the Great Wall in the north and exiting through (then) British Hong Kong in the south.

 

The tour included 4 days on the Yangtze river. The crew found out we were entertainers, and invited us to play one night. I told them I didn't bring my saxophone, and the person on the ship said, "We get saxophone for you". They were so enthusiastic and encouraging we couldn't say "no".

 

So there we were, going through the karaoke recordings for songs we knew. Mostly US/European pop music. They brought up a saxophone that belonged to one of the waitresses. (The waitresses doubled as safety people, the band that played while we boarded, and who knows what else). It was a Chinese horn with a lot of Chinese writing on it and one English word on the bell, "Lark". It had a plastic mouthpiece and a reed that had lipstick on it. This was before SARS and a lot of pandemic diseases and I wasn't as careful about these things as I am now. It played nicely, had decent intonation, and nice tone (not as nice as my sliver plated King, but nicer than a lot of others).

 

So Leilani and I played a set of music.

 

It wasn't a real gig because other than drinks and a lot of attention by the crew, we weren't paid. However, we can put on our resume, "The Sophisticats are the only local band to play 'by invitation' in the People's Republic of China," That's technically correct

 

But playing US/European music on a ship built in the USSR (complete with Russian writing on the dishes, glassware and all over the ship), in the People's Republic of China with passengers from over a dozen different countries, using karaoke tapes, playing an alto sax (I mostly play tenor) in music keys that I'm not used to playing those songs in, was definitely a weird gig, even if we didn't get paid. It was fun.

 

BTW we became minor celebrities for the next few days.

 

I loved the Chinese people and had a great time. Leilani learned enough baby-talk Mandarin to get us by and when that didn't work, creative sign language did fine. All in all it was a great vacation.

 

Notes

[pinkfloydcramer]

As a member of a Willie Nelson tribute band, performing for the DEA. Explicit instructions were to not cull any songs. Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die was one of the highlights of the evening.

[KuruPrionz]

i now remember a couple more goodies.

 

We played every Thursday at a smaller club for a couple of years. At one point, the Owner's brother started putting a jar of homemade pickled eggs on the back bar - 2 for $1.

One night I showed up without dinner and bought a couple of eggs, which I ate on stage during the first set. Our lead singer was a 400+ pound gentleman and a "food voyeur" - he like to watch people eat.

After seeing me eat eggs, he announced that all eggs were on the band and asked who could eat the most eggs. These were extra-large eggs. Quite a few folks had a start, one of our friends ate 8 eggs and a big to-do was made over his "accomplishment."

 

This got around town and there were several of our friends who claimed they could easily eat way more than 8 eggs. And somehow, that got around and the Owner took the eggs away, fearful that somebody would come to harm if they ate too many eggs.

 

Not to be deterred from our mission, I went to the Smart and Final Iris store and bought a large jar of pickled eggs. I took a Super-8 movie camera and film, determined to make a documentary for a class I was taking.The Owner never hung out on Thursday nights and Linda, the bartender didn't care who ate what. So we started in with our sets of music and the pickled egg eating contest. This time, people were serious. One contestant ate 18 eggs, went around to the side of the building and regurgitated all of them next the dumpster behind the Chinese food place. The alley cats commenced to consume this delightful treat, I tried to film it but it was too dark. Still, in honor of the cats eating his egg puke, our drunken contestant picked up a chunk of egg and tossed it back in his mouth. Sadly, no footage survives of that moment.

 

Meanwhile, another contestant ate 18 eggs and did not regurgitate them. He won the contest, which had no prize other than glory. A friend of ours went over to the jar of eggs, took a closer look at it and noted that the expiration date was within 3 days of being 10 years ago!!!!!

 

The winning contestant wanted to kill all of us but he was too queasy and drunk and could not risk a punch in the stomach at that point without losing his first place position.

 

And that is the story of Those Egg Eating Men. Class ended before I could show my documentary, sad.

[KuruPrionz]

Next up, our percussionist was hanging out with a couple of lovely ladies who came to our shows, danced in front of the band and flirted, mostly with me.

The husband of the biggest flirt never came to our shows but he wanted to hire us for his annual Company Christmas Party. Good paying gig, up to 4 sets, dinner, snacks and drinks.

 

So there we were, playing the first set. Nice place with a nice stage, lots of happy people, the dinner and speeches were over, drinks were flowing and dancing commenced. Just as it should be.

At break, the boss's wife went with us out into the parking lot to have a puff or two before the second set. She was wearing a slinky, form fitting black dress and looked awesome. No coat despite rather brisk weather. We are in a circle well away from the building, doing our thing. I'm staying more or less next to her.

 

All of a sudden, she announces "This dress keeps falling off of my boobs, anyway they aren't that big." and with a sort of s shrug move, the dress drops to her waist, providing a delightful view for all of us.

She pulled her dress back up, we went back inside and somebody must have seen it and told hubby about it because there was a dark cloud of gloom and doom inside the building. Hubby took wife by the arm and led her away. They did not come back. The Vice President tried to get the party going again, dancing with his wife, who was the other partner in crime at our gigs. VP's wife kept trying to dance/shrug her dress off too but VP kept that from happening. The room sort of quietly emptied out, an assistant came up to us and gave us the check and told us we were free to go home.

 

So we started packing out. As is often the case, at that point the caterers ask if we want any of the food since they have way too much and another gig tomorrow and will just toss it all in the garbage. So we took home steaks, wine and other goodies and had our own little party later.

[The Real MC]

In the early 1980s our town used to have Wiffleball Tournaments. This was back when the drinking age was still 18 in NYS and DWI awareness was not yet the calling card of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The Wiffleball Tournament was an annual four day festive event with lots and lots of beer and late night partying, with a few wiffleball games thrown in for good measure. It rained almost every day. Since I didn't drink or do drugs it could be argued I was the only one sober the entire time (wuss). It was the only sport you ever saw where you swung a bat at a ball with one hand while holding a beer in the other then run around the bases while still holding the beer. Music was blasted all day from either tapes or from local bands over a large PA system (certainly not the caliber of outdoor concerts).

 

About the worst thing to happen was a few girls not complaining about missing their upper garments. Our band was the headlining group at the end of the night, and the perpetually drunk audience never failed to entertain. Did I mention that it rained almost every day? The park was in a rural area with distant neighbors, although the noise from the music carried well enough in the valley to earn some visits from the "volume police" holding a dB meter. Since they were at the opposite end of the park away from the PA system (cops have no concept of the inverse square law), the dB level wasn't high enough to warrant any action. After the tournament was over the park stank of beer (and puke) and was littered with hundreds of white plastic beer cups. No one ever got hurt and a grand time was held by all (if they remembered it). We'll never see the likes of those days again.

[The Real MC]

My band from the early 1980s played this bar out in the sticks. It was a good night, and as we were packing up we saw the staff in the kitchen washing the plastic drink cups for re-use.

 

Shortly after that, county health shut them down. We are grateful that we only ever played there once.

[Notes_Norton]

I was playing in a bar in Lantana Florida near a mobile home park where retired folks without much money lived. It was a once per week gig and we met a lot of nice people there.

 

One day a nice looking retired lady got on the bar and did a strip tease (only from the waist up). This got contagious. One of the guys told us to keep it going until he got back. He went home to get his nicest underwear so he could strip to his skivvies.

 

Although the first gal still had a nice figure, IMO most of them looked better in their clothes (I was about 40 years old then). But they were having harmless fun and that's all that matters.

 

Notes

[ToddP]

Did Y'all watch Cool Hand Luke later that night?

i now remember a couple more goodies.

 

We played every Thursday at a smaller club for a couple of years. At one point, the Owner's brother started putting a jar of homemade pickled eggs on the back bar - 2 for $1.

One night I showed up without dinner and bought a couple of eggs, which I ate on stage during the first set. Our lead singer was a 400+ pound gentleman and a "food voyeur" - he like to watch people eat.

After seeing me eat eggs, he announced that all eggs were on the band and asked who could eat the most eggs. These were extra-large eggs. Quite a few folks had a start, one of our friends ate 8 eggs and a big to-do was made over his "accomplishment."

 

This got around town and there were several of our friends who claimed they could easily eat way more than 8 eggs. And somehow, that got around and the Owner took the eggs away, fearful that somebody would come to harm if they ate too many eggs.

 

Not to be deterred from our mission, I went to the Smart and Final Iris store and bought a large jar of pickled eggs. I took a Super-8 movie camera and film, determined to make a documentary for a class I was taking.The Owner never hung out on Thursday nights and Linda, the bartender didn't care who ate what. So we started in with our sets of music and the pickled egg eating contest. This time, people were serious. One contestant ate 18 eggs, went around to the side of the building and regurgitated all of them next the dumpster behind the Chinese food place. The alley cats commenced to consume this delightful treat, I tried to film it but it was too dark. Still, in honor of the cats eating his egg puke, our drunken contestant picked up a chunk of egg and tossed it back in his mouth. Sadly, no footage survives of that moment.

 

Meanwhile, another contestant ate 18 eggs and did not regurgitate them. He won the contest, which had no prize other than glory. A friend of ours went over to the jar of eggs, took a closer look at it and noted that the expiration date was within 3 days of being 10 years ago!!!!!

 

The winning contestant wanted to kill all of us but he was too queasy and drunk and could not risk a punch in the stomach at that point without losing his first place position.

 

And that is the story of Those Egg Eating Men. Class ended before I could show my documentary, sad.

 

Did y'all watch Cool Hand Luke later that night?

[Strays Dave]

I played a few times in a memory care facility. People with dementia an such. It's nice when you see them react pleasantly to a song they remember from decades ago.

[RABid]

Not weird, but I really felt out of place...

 

I DJ'ed a New Years Eve benefit party that the Horse something Association in the Bluegrass, nestled between to of the BIG horse farms. This was a RICH crowd. I started to get a Pepsi and it was $5 for a little plastic cup. I backed out. A girl saw it and felt sorry for me. She brought me a Pepsi to my DJ table and told me not to worry about it because her parents had plenty of money. Every hour she had a fresh Pepsi sent to my table and some snacks. Who knows how much they cost. One of the horse people got drunk and he wanted to talk on the mic all night. I finally told him that I had dropped the mic and it no longer worked. The people in charge were very happy. When I was tearing down they told me that I handled things very well, they wanted me back next year, and there was a little tip in the envelope for me. The little tip was $200. Sadly, I had not booked the gig, I was covering for a friend who double booked on New Years Eve. I made the mistake of telling him about the tip and the next year he took the job for himself. I wonder what happened to that rich girl that was so nice to me.

[Notes_Norton]

We were booked for a club in West Palm Beach for New Year's Eve. When we got there, we found out it was an AA party, and there would no alcohol on the premises. Since we don't drink on the job, that didn't bother me, but I immediately told the guy who relayed that to me, "There goes our competitive edge." He laughed and I knew this would be OK.

 

The crowd was one of the most mixed audiences I ever played for. Alcoholism does not discriminate by age, gender, race, ethnicity, social status, or income bracket. There were people in tuxes and evening gowns conversing comfortably with people in torn blue jeans and t-shirts.

 

There was a lot of coffee, tea, and soft drinks, plus fried chicken, pizza, and desserts. The dance floor was full all night, and it seemed these people were out to prove that they could have a good time without their personal demons. And they succeeded.

 

At the stroke of midnight, we played "Auld Lang Syne", the crowd dispersed, the crew cleaned up, and we went home knowing that there were at least a huge group of people who weren't driving home drunk.

 

It was a weird gig, but a good one.

 

Notes

[Chip McDonald]

I've had so many I think I'm literally going to write a book.

 

Gunfire,

nudity,

clowns,

O.J. Simpson,

psychotic audience members,

Wiccan strangeness,

Klingon bikers,

angry rugby teams,

MMA contestants breaking my wah,

statistically impossible Matrix-defying events,

confusion about stolen guitars,

called to sub for a guitar player and arriving to find the entire band passed out on stage in front of 200 people,

subbing for a guitar player and the guy quitting the band after I play 1 song,

singing "I turned to look but it was gone" from Comfortably Numb only to find the girl in front of me in the front row buttoning up her shirt, having just tried to flash me and then having to sing "I cannot put my finger on it now" and the band having to stop playing from laughing,

that time doing the acoustic-new-age-ambient loop gig at the bookstore, and the guy telling me "I've been watching your fingers and I know you're not really playing"... and apparently he told *every single person in the building* the same thing....

having a gig where one by one almost every piece of gear stopped working one at a time until we didn't have enough gear to keep going,

the guy selling guns out of the trunk of his car in the back of the club, and watching his customers come in, go out back, come back in and leave,

the time the jukebox at random picked the last song we finished our set with to play, when it was plugged back in, and everyone in the bar stopping to look at each other like "WTF????",

the time when the place was so packed there were people crowd surfing behind me on stage and out the front door,

the time the guest singer tried to smoke the fog machine,

the time the label lawyer came to the show to see the band but the bass player decided it was time to quit because he was above it all,

the time the Really Big Historic Band lawyer pulled me aside and asked for a CD from me and I didn't have one,

the drunk golfer during Masters Week tipping $50 to hear "Brown Eyed Girl" but we played "Ice Nine" by Joe Satriani instead, but the guy danced to it anyway and was scream-singing 'BROWWWWN EYED GURRRRRRRL" as if he was hearing a completely different song at 102 db, the time the ...

the time Local Rock Keyboard Singer Guy had a non-stop hallucinogenic conversation with a wall during the whole show, and people were waiting between songs to hear what he was "discussing" with the wall

the .... well...

 

anyhow.. ..I could elaborate and it would be funny, and there's a whole lot more, but... yeah.

[Notes_Norton]

^^^ That all sounds pretty normal to me, Chip.

 

And when that weirdness becomes our normal, it says a lot about our business.

 

They think the band is the show, and we think the audience is the 'floor show'.

 

I once played on the roof of a gas station. It was a grand opening, it was summer, it was hot, and I must have lost a pound of sweat. Thankfully, that band didn't have a B-3 player int it Being the sax player, I was always willing, able, and cursed with helping move all the heavy gear.

 

Notes

[hard truth]

My band in the 1980s devolved into a free improv group that did multi-media performances. We did a series called A Tribute to the Seven Deadly Sins. When we did the Lust show the bass player got a strange growth near his mouth. When we did the Greed show the drummer cut open his hand with a broken beer bottle.while working as a bartender. When we did the Envy show on Halloween the venue burned down.

 

The fire was not caused by our performance, it happened in a residential section of the facility. We stood around outside for a couple of hours expecting to find our gear in ashes. Meanwhile people in sexy costumes were walking past as they made their way to the Exotic Erotic Ball. The good news was that most of our gear survived after we spent that night using hair dryers to get everything dry. The bad news was that our friends at the venue lost most of their video editing gear and their archives. The good news is that the venue moved to a new location and is still serving the community. We sold copies of the recording of the aborted performance at a benefit for the facility. That version of the band never played out live again although we continued to play together in the studio.

 

From the venue's website:

"On the fire: There was a noise band playing at ATA [Artists Television Acess] on Halloween night who were particularly grating and noxious; most of the audience were chased away. The band was grinding and screeching away and had a tape machine going to document their concert. Though I wasn't at the show, I got a chance to hear the tape later. In the midst of the "music", John Martin runs up to the band , yelling "Get out of here!, there is a fire"... and then you hear the band making a hasty exit. After a minute you hear the flames crackling like a loud barbecue. How often do you hear a building burning from the inside? Chunks of ceiling coming down could be heard hitting the drum set. One of the most haunting parts is hearing the fire engine down the street just like you always do but from the perspective of the building being burnt.

 

The tape kept rolling even though everyone was evacuated. Next you hear the firemen chopping everything with axes, and the sound of extinguishers and hoses. After the fire is under control (one assumes) one of the fireman comes up to the band area and can be heard doing an impromptu drum solo. I was there the next day and Marshall gave me a tour. We swatted around broken glass like hockey pucks amidst the black ash and inches of water. He showing me a stack of videotapes that were fused by the heat into a human head shape and said "these were all my videos, all my work...". It's not often one's lifework gets condensed down into one convienient sculpture." http://www.atasite.org/History/started1.html