What weird gigs have you had?

[RABid]

Not a weird gig, but a weird stage. We were hired to play the grand opening of a Dairy Queen around 1979. They brought in a big flat bed trailer and placed it across the road in a gravel lot next to the river. Things were okay as we set up, but as soon as we got on stage to play the trailer started rolling, very slowly, towards the river. This was a time when the coal business was booming. There was a lot of truckers and truck repairmen in the area. One young man knew exactly what to do and was quick to respond. He grabbed a big rock and put it against the slowly moving wheel. Whew, we stopped rolling. In all my years of playing that is the only time a stage tried to take off on us.

[analogika]

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

 

That's quite the review! :-D

[Greg Mein]

It seems like every gig has an element of "weirdness" to it, most often due to people in attendance but I can't think of any particular gig that stands out for being particularly strange. The one that was quite different for me was playing with the symphony. I got invited to play keys for a "Rock Hits" show at a venue attached to the Casino on the Mississippi River in Dubuque. This is a show where a rock band plays classic rock/pop hits accompanied by the symphony.

 

I started attending rehearsals one night a week with the rock group that had been assembled. It's over an hour drive away on a weeknight but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. We'd go over the songs and I kept wondering how it was going to fit in with the symphony until one night when the conductor showed up. He used his charts mostly to sync up the timing, beginnings and endings but also to go over some of the finer points. There was never an actual rehearsal where the rock band and the whole symphony were present.

 

It was a two night gig, Friday & Saturday, paid real well and what a blast it was to fill a full to capacity auditorium with such a wealth of great sound!

[Chip McDonald]

Not a weird gig, but a weird stage. We were hired to play the grand opening of a Dairy Queen around 1979. They brought in a big flat bed trailer and placed it across the road in.

 

 

It would sometimes be useful to know, on a 100+ degree day at an outdoor festival, if the flatbed trailer "stage" your band is playing on was hauling manure the day before.

[Notes_Norton]

We played in a gambling casino. Not in a lounge, but on the floor in the middle of a sea of slot machines. They cleared out a little area, set up a few tables and chairs, and a few of the spouses that didn't gamble but took their better halves there sat and were entertained. I think the most was about 12 people and the least was one.

 

And all around us flashing lights, ringing bells, electronic voices, and people with their heads focused on their machines. It was like playing inside a pingpong machine.

 

But it paid extremely well, the casino employees helped us bring the gear in and out, and when we were done, they treated us to a steak dinner - actually, anything on the menu was OK to order. No charge, no tip accepted.

 

We did that once a week for a couple of months, and then it was someone else's turn.