Unusual occurrences at gigs

P Gleespen · Post by **P Gleespen** » 22 Mar 2002 4:05 am

I saw a couple guys get into a fight once.

Hey, I think I was at that show too!

Quesney Gibbs · Post by **Quesney Gibbs** » 22 Mar 2002 5:03 am

Once at the well known Fun House in New Orleans in the early seventies a guy was intently watching me play and finally started turning my keys while asking what they were for.

I called the bouncer over and had him removed back to his table and got out my turner and started repairing the damage.

Paul Graupp · Post by **Paul Graupp** » 22 Mar 2002 5:47 am

One New Year's Eve at the Wagon Wheel in Warner Robins, GA. as we finished Auld Ang Syne (sp??) I saw a large firecracker rolling across the floor towards my position on the stage. Yes it was lit and I had just enough time to put my hands over my ears as it exploded right in front of me. The stage had stopped it from going under my pedal board. I suppose you could say some wanted to see the old year go out with a bang !!

Regards, Paul

Jason Odd · Post by **Jason Odd** » 22 Mar 2002 7:07 am

At a biker festival a fight broke out in the middle of the crowd, everyone backed up real fast except me and a friend as we were feeling no pain and a little slow to notice as these two massive bikers were really slugging it out. The fight broke up and the band kept going.. later another friend rushed up and pointed out groups of guys from both the brawlers' gangs were wandering off with knives and chains, I said we might want to ignore that if a body turned up!

There was the time we saw a performance band and another audience member turned to me and said, boy that was hot!
At the time the lead singer had been breathing fire.. as I turned to look at her I noticed a massive hole right through the front of her clothes, burnt right through!

The time I spent New Years Eve in a valley with a couple of friends bar bands playing to a stoned out feral farm boy crowd, the gully was so steep that several cars couldn't get back out and we slid the gear down and had to winch some of it back out.
Then some uninvited bikers gatecrashed it so we danced with them.

The lead singer from one of those bands was once found on the roof of a hotel they played, screaming his head off and throwing records (which we never found out where he got them) at the crowd as they left the venue.

One time a band I was roadie for blew all the electricity and we were kcked out. Another time I got so drunk that the bass player (who was quite drunk and driving) left me on the side of the road and came and got me later, after I had woken up and walked totally lost for three hours, and I still made the gig. (I did lose that job though)

The time the bass player fell asleep, veered off the road, crashed through a fence and drove through several fields before making it back onto the road. Made that gig too.

The nude gig....... nuff said.

A lot of fights, my fave of which was the night when one huge guy fell into the foldbacks and got his butt stuck, and on the same night a groom-to-be who was chained to a real ball, started chasing everyone in the venue by swinging it around. He lost his balance, dropped it and the weight yanked his legs away. In a desperate attempt for balance he grabbed the nearest thing, which was the blinds for the massive front windows, which he brought tumbling down. Great gig.

From here on in.. the stories get less classy, so I'll stop.

[This message was edited by Jason Odd on 22 March 2002 at 07:14 AM.]

Ron Shepard · Post by **Ron Shepard** » 22 Mar 2002 7:11 am

About a year ago I was playing a gig in Connecticut when this really drunk guy tried to be funny and pulled his pants down
to his knees, the place was packed, I couldn't believe he did it. A few minutes later he had a heart attack, they called the ambulance.

Billy Woo · Post by **Billy Woo** » 22 Mar 2002 7:37 am

I was playing at the infamous "Hong Kong Cafe" in Chinatown when some gal in the audience came up and grabbed me by my (you know what) and all of a sudden my girlfriend came up behind the frisky gal pulled her by the head and yanked her across the dance floor by the hair...boy waz she pissed off??

CrowBear Schmitt · Post by **CrowBear Schmitt** » 22 Mar 2002 9:44 am

Remember Lee Morgan, the trumpet player, who was shot by his (ex?)girlfriend while playin' a gig ?
Steel nuts 'bout this thread...

Bill Sampler · Post by **Bill Sampler** » 22 Mar 2002 10:13 am

Like Bill Crook, when I was younger and played drums, I played at a dive that had chicken wire around the stage from floor to ceiling. It was sort of a biker bar ( I still don't know how our country band got that gig!) and I saw a guy get stabbed over messing with someone elses girl. We stopped playing when that happened... there was some silence... then they hauled the stabbed guy out and someone hollered for us to keep playing, so we did. Weird gig!

------------------
Bill Sampler
Mullen SD12 Universal 7/5

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 22 Mar 2002 10:13 am

I played the 37th annual Strip Tease Convention in Victorville. The strippers ranged in age from 25 to 72 and it was, for the most part, pretty wholesome.

I played at Burning Man 2000 in several venues ending up in the "Opera". After the opera, there was a Reggae/ World Music/ R&B group that I sat in with, while the entire stage was filled with naked people dancing for a few hours. I really didn't want that one to end.

Bill Fall · Post by **Bill Fall** » 22 Mar 2002 11:32 am

All the above, any given night, in any given club in Boston's infamous Combat Zone during the 60s!

Chris DeBarge · Post by **Chris DeBarge** » 22 Mar 2002 11:57 am

I wish the Combat Zone was still there, I'm too young to have enjoyed it at its peak. Still like to go to Jack's Joke Shop though!

Best I can do for this thread (besides the usual fights and glass smashings): A Three-Stooges style cream pie fight at a gig. Another band did it to us, it was quite hilarious. We got 'em back a few months later with a dozen eggs (the club was REAL happy about that!). There are still whipped cream stains on my amp.

Winnie Winston · Post by **Winnie Winston** » 22 Mar 2002 7:38 pm

Well... I got two....

1. Old guy up on the dancefloor. He was having a great time. Then his teeth fall out. He reaches down, picks them up, brushes them off on his sleeve, and pops them back in his mouth. His wife then rushes onto the floor, gives his a whack on the side of the head and drags him out the door.

2. Big guy making a real pain in ass of himself wants to get up and sing a song with the band. We put him off, but he is very insistant. We finally let him up. He says, "Cold cold heart in A" We kick it off. God knows what key he began in. Nothing sounded familiar. So there we were, struggling to even find the TIME he was singing in, when I looked out and the table where all the "wives" of the band were sitting-- they are all trying to stifle a laugh and finally they all get up and shaking with laughter run for the ladie's room.
Seems like our very fat and drink guest was also unzipped and wide open-- dangling out of his red boxer shorts. Pink on red!
Wish I had seen it!

Winnie

Frank Parish · Post by **Frank Parish** » 22 Mar 2002 8:14 pm

Here's another one. It was 1981 in Jeffersonville, Indiana at The Hilton Hotel and Martha Raye was staying there for a short time while they redecorated her suite at the sister hotel. She was doing a play for about a month. She came in with a group of folks and got up to sing with the band. She did Girl From Impanema and sang it in French and took her teeth out and plopped them in the organ players scotch and water. A true entertainer.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 22 Mar 2002 8:20 pm

Such class.

Michael Johnstone · Post by **Michael Johnstone** » 22 Mar 2002 9:19 pm

OK here's another one.One time in about 1969 I was playing guitar in a sort of psychodelic blues band and one joint in Portsmouth,Virginia that I frequently played at called "The Lighthouse" installed these four strobe lights above each corner of the dance floor that flashed sequentially.It made it look like four guitar necks in your hand and depending on what you were smoking,you may or may not know how to play(or tune)any of them.I used to dread it when those strobes would come on - inevitably during an extended guitar solo. Well,one night the club owner ate some mushrooms and decided to ride his leaking,smoking Triumph 750 in the back door and up thru the middle of the joint.So while I'm up there tryin to make a buck,here's this maniac doing donuts around the dance floor on his bike with a muffler louder than my Dual Showman - all around and in between a bunch of stoned out,oblivious hippie dancers while the strobes are making it look like there's four of everything.All I could do was shut my eyes and play the blues...... -MJ-

Steve Miller · Post by **Steve Miller** » 22 Mar 2002 10:41 pm

OK I've got one too. About a year ago I played a gig at a trailer park bar. Everything went fine, people were dancin' and havin' a good time except one older guy who kept hounding the guitar player to turn down. On break after the first set the drummer and I noticed the old guy being obnoxious and ranting at the guitar player. We could see the guitarist was about to explode so we decided to intervene. As we were confronting the older guy a friend of his joined in the argument and was threatening us. I took a step back and prepared for a nasty situation. Almost simultaniously I saw the two guys lunged for the guitartist, another guy streak by toward him at full speed and the guitarist lifting his beer bottle in the air to bust over someone's head! I grabbed the two guys by the back of their shirt collars pulled them off the stage and threw them down across the dance floor. Then I looked up and saw everyone at the bar, 15 or 20 people, charging the stage! I grabbed a folding chair and started swinging it to hold them off and yelled "back off, everybody off the dance floor RIGHT NOW!

They all stopped and hesitated and then slowly began to advance again. Then streaking through the crowd and straight at me came a girl! I decided to bluff with the chair and she stopped dead. At the same time I saw out of the corner of my eye a big muscle bound guy coming at me from the side. I pretended not to see him and stepped out of the way at the last second and he went sprawling on the floor. When he got up the chair was already pressing into his chest. Then the drummer appeared and took hold of the chair with me. For some reason the guy just backed off and when he did so did everyone else! Amazingly the only injury I know of was I spranged my little finger swingin' that chair around. Luckily all this was caught on tape. The bouncer had done nothing to stop the crowd from attacking us so when the owner showed up a few minutes later she apologized, paid us in full (we had only played one set)and got security to escort us out of the park!
On the way home the drummer looked at me sitting shotgun and said "NOW THAT'S LIVIN". We laughed our a$$e$$ off the whole way home!

I'm way too old for this sort of thing. Fortunately, so were most of them.

Derby SD10
and one folding chair!

Tony Davis · Post by **Tony Davis** » 23 Mar 2002 1:43 am

My first permanent gig of four nights a week was in a knock 'em down drag 'em out pub in Brisbane...frequented by lots af Aborigines,
Bikers, kind of not so nice whites etc...but Hey..it was a job and over a year it bought me a new Emmons and a new Peavy Amp!
Saw a stabbing....at least one fight every night.....we had about four big Abbos that used to come stand infront of the band during a brawl...."You are our band and our friends.....go get a beer...we'll look after your gear"..and they did.
I never actually saw any one 'do it' but I saw some funny things go on under the table.
I walked down during a break and an large Aborigine Lady.....one of the ones who was pretty nice..but this night had one too many......grabbed me by the head...gave me a huge kiss and said "Tony ..I love your playing on that steel and I love you....lets go somewhere and @#$%& !!!"
And I saw a white guy accuse a big Aborigine Lady of steeling his wallet........
she said "Look !....I aint got know where to hide it!" and that lifted here top.....and that is all she was wearing!!!!!!
Every Gig was fun.....
Oh yeh!!....beside the small bandstand was a huge pedestal fan....going flat out as it was pretty hot in there.....one night this Abbo Bird threw an empty beer jug the length of the room and hit this fan...during a brawl.....the jug shatered like shapnel...i thing I hit the floor under my steel!!!
I had a head come through my pedal rods one night......my pointy toed cowboot fixed that
Tony

John Lacey · Post by **John Lacey** » 23 Mar 2002 6:07 am

I've mentioned this one before, but it deserves retelling. Back in the early eighties, the singer used to do a Boy George impression, complete with overcoat, makeup and snake-hat. We were wailing away one nite at our house gig doing "Carmen Cameleon" when glasses started raining down on stage. There was a group of rowdy guys off to our right whom we thought were the culprits so the fiddle player waved his bow at them and the bouncers ran to throw them out. Well, the glasses kept on coming so we looked a little harder and saw it was a man and his wife sitting on the opposite site of the club. The bouncers ran over to that side and proceeded to throw them out the back door. We all stop playing and went out the other back door to see "Boy George", who was part owner of the club, laying a thumping on the glass-thrower guy.

Winnie Winston · Post by **Winnie Winston** » 24 Mar 2002 5:24 pm

Well... I didn't see this one. Maybe Herb Steiner can verify or not...
Someone told me that he was at a gig with Jewrry Jeff Walker at the Amadillo Ballroom in Austin. There was one guy, right up front that was being very loud. He got up to go to the men's room.
When he was out of sight, Jerry reached down, took his beer pitcher, unzipped himself and topped the pitcher up with real piss.
Zipped himself, and put the pitcher down on the table. Everyone watching what will happen when the guy comes back and pours himself another warm one....
If it ain't true it should be!

Winnie

Bill C. Buntin · Post by **Bill C. Buntin** » 24 Mar 2002 6:25 pm

And You know this one time, At Band Camp.....

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 24 Mar 2002 8:56 pm

In the mid 80's we were doing our usual weekend gig when a lady well into her cups came on to the bandstand to bother the band. As I was sitting down playing keys, she got behind me and pressed her more than ample hooters against each ear. Did I remain calm and keep playing? Uh, no. I even forgot what key we were in.

After shooing her off, she remained on the dance floor, eventually pulling up her blouse to show the hooters in living color. The owner rushed and threw her out, only to complain later he had a hard time with it because he kept getting hit in the face with those things.

The owner was an ex-boxer, with registered hands. He never made it in the boxing profession and that night we could see why. He kept leading with his chin.

Barbara Hennerman · Post by **Barbara Hennerman** » 24 Mar 2002 11:30 pm

These are both kind of "you hadda be there", but one time we were playing in the mountains here in Colorado, really gettin down and a deer waltzed in and caused quite a ruckus.
Also, we were playing a club in Denver one night and I was playing my little heart out when the drums got kinda quieter than usual. We looked back and the drummer was on the floor. All we could see was his drum sticks and hands. Pretty funny at the time.

Tony Glassman · Post by **Tony Glassman** » 24 Feb 2005 12:01 am

CrowBear Schmitt:

I hate to dredge this old thread up, but I just stumbled accross this post by CrowBear which begins.."Way back when i was a roadie for the Crazy World of Arthur Brown during a show in Detroit...."

I was at that show in Detroit. It's been 25+ years since I've thought about "The Crazy World of Arthur Brown". What an act, fire and all.

Crowbar, The chaos surrounding that particular show has always remained a mystery to me, until being enlightened by your post.

Also...your reference to Lee Morgan caught my eye. What a killer trumpet player. I have a lot of those old Blue Note and Prestige jazz sides. I still till throw on Lee's "Sidewinder" album from time-to-time.

With the possible exception of Joe Goldmark, I never thought I'd discuss both Arthur Brown and Lee Morgan w/ another steeler[This message was edited by Tony Glassman on 24 February 2005 at 12:02 AM.][This message was edited by Tony Glassman on 24 February 2005 at 12:04 AM.]

Roual Ranes · Post by **Roual Ranes** » 24 Feb 2005 5:12 am

1958. Chicken wire cage in a big Red Barn. East of Oklahoma City, to the best of my memory.

Willis Vanderberg · Post by **Willis Vanderberg** » 24 Feb 2005 5:47 am

We were doing two shows on Sunday for the Kellogg Co in Battle Creek Michigan.We did the one o'clock show and had some time to kill before the seven pm show. We went out to a local club called the Flamingo.
I knew the band and the invited me to sit in. We were doing a fast polka. I looked up and a older , over weight. gentleman had asked my wife to dance. They were really gettin down and the guy fell over dead.I never let her forget that one.