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#445635 - 10/27/07 12:51 AM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: DontFeartheRingo]
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Schmenk
Gold Member
Registered: 01/04/01
Posts: 956
Loc: Orangelandia
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You know, as you guys were bringing up Vincent Van Go Go's it seemed vaguely familiar to me. Then you mentioned Bubba and it all came flooding back. We were touring with the 'Fibbers, driving into Mobile from New Orleans. As we got into the city we accidentally changed lanes into a lane already occupied by another car. He demonstrated his displeasure by pulling along side our van, screaming and waving his arms and then pulling a big ass handgun and pointing it at us for a half mile or so. Welcome to Mobile, AL.
We pull into the club parking lot and give a collective "uh oh" We load in and meet Bubba. He's everything you can imagine in a cliched Blues Brothers Alabama road house sorta way, belly covered by a stained white t-shirt and all. It so happened that that day was my birthday so the Fiskers and Fibbers were all going to buy me any dinner I wanted. I joked that what I really wanted was some Indian food. Bubba, who had been standing somewhere behind us bellowed "up tha hill, turn right, half mile on yer right. We asked if he was serious. He just gave us a look.
So we leave the bar and follow his directions. Somehow, in half a mile we go from Deliverance-ville to an amazing high end Indian restaurant were I had the best, most elaborate Indian meal of my life. The contrast between the club and the restaurant was almost too much for all of us to handle.
Sure enough, though, when we went back to play we ended up playing to the same six people you probably played to and they didn't seem to come alive until load out. Some girl OD'd in the parking lot on what seemed to be a bottle of pills that had everything and anything in it. No one seemed to know what it was but they all wanted some.
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#445693 - 10/27/07 07:08 AM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: Schmenk]
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theofeelios
Silver Member
Registered: 10/11/06
Posts: 281
Loc: meeting a stranger in the alps
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I just got home, rather drunk from an early halloween party. I'm typing this as Kenny Rogers, throat sore from Islands in the Stream and the Gambler...
For a while our soundguy/tour manager/audio company owner tried to get us to up our production value with some streamer cannons. We tried them out one night, one on each side of the stage. At the climax of our biggest hit, he hit the trigger, and since the seal had been compromised on one of the cannons, only half the audience was grudgingly covered in streamers. We protested, but he swore he'd get it right.
The next night, both cannons fire simultaneously, but had been aimed too high and shoot directly into the lighting truss at the front of the stage, so we play the remainder of the night through a stupid looking grass skirt of streamers... I feel like Derek Smalls in the stuck pod, but somehow the soundguy pleads his case and promises that the third time will be the charm. I love the guy and give him one last chance.
The next night, once again at the climax of our biggest hit, which we had arranged to be a stop-vocal break-cheer-music back in "kaboom" sequence, the cannons went off and I opened my eyes after singing the vocal money shot... just in time to see a streamer unfurling in either direction, one: over the screaming capacity crowd, and the other: right through my open mouth and down my throat. So, I'm standing there choking on a streamer that's still unfurling itself 10 feet over the crowd in the air so thick with the other streamers that nobody's sure why I'm not singing the rest of the song. Truth is, I'm choking to death. I motion to my guitar tech who's looking at me quizzically. I try to pull the streamer out of my lung and of course it breaks off at my lips, leaving the remainder down my throat, still choking me, and at this point I'm about to pass out and everyone's looking at me like, 'what's going on?'
I manage to spit out some, and swallow most of this inky thick construction paper streamer and croak out the rest of the song. I cut the set short and go upstairs to barf the rest of the streamer into the dressing room toilet. I hear a timid knock on the door, it's the soundguy saying quietly, "Um, maybe those were a bad idea, sorry."
My wife, (who right now is dressed as an irresistably hot, young Dolly Parton) loves to recount this story whenever I get too big for my britches.
Love Darren and Ringo's worst ever stories. Whatever doesn't kill us, eh?
_________________________
...the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories. F.Cohen
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#446479 - 10/29/07 05:46 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: DontFeartheRingo]
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DontFeartheRingo
Silver Member
Registered: 12/12/06
Posts: 408
Loc: the buckle of the Pop Belt
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We pulled into the Bayou in Baton Rouge knowing that it probably wasn't going to be a stellar night. That whole club had always felt like it was just a hair too close to the water table- kind of damp and clammy in a green baseboards kind of way...
but this night was special. The club's regular soundman had taken a gig up the block at The Varsity Theatre that night, and the club owner had decided that he was perfectly competent to run sound on his own. How hard can it be, right?
We pulled in our customary 45 or so minutes late for soundcheck. (They didn't call us "Five-Late" for nothing.) We set our equipment up in as expeditious manner as possible. I used to be a vegetarian back in the day (didn't have my own van, though, nor a double-kickdrum) and I would get hypoglycemic in a hot minute if I waited too long to eat, so we liked to get through soundcheck as fast as possible so I didn't get dizzy, cranky, irritable and/or (worst case scenario) violent.
The owner of the Bayou was a cranky, marginally communicative drunk, who was setting up the PA with the sort of contemplative and methodical pace one might expect from a domestic duck asked to do the same job. We hadn't really sussed what was up yet, until we started trying to get sounds. The guy had approached routine maintenance on the sound system the same way he approached his personnel issues, which is to say, if it came down to a decision between spending money or not, well...
The regular sound man had been able to milk marginal performances out of the heap of shit PA for some time, but for a drunk tyro with no prior knowledge of sound reinforcement, it was rapidly becoming apparent to us that, um, something was afoot.
Finally, he told me (in the most belligerent way possible) "You're just going to have to play drums more quietly, because your drums are louder than the vocals in the PA."
At this point, I was just beginning to turn the corner on irritability and said "That fucking pinball machine is louder than the vocals coming out of the PA, DOOD." The sodden, dreadlocked, weedaddled old fucker didn't take this little piece of constructive criticism very well.
A battle of wills began between Five-Eight and this crusty old turd. The lines were roughly drawn thusly:
Him: "You guys play too loud, and I can't get the vocals loud enough to be heard over your guitars/drums/the rainbow of feedback flavors shrieking from your monitors."
Us: "You're a fucking moron. Joke's over, ok? WHERE'S THE SOUNDMAN?"
He dug in hard, too. Sean got on the phone and called every engineer we knew between Lafayette and New Orleans and said "Look, just get here. We'll find a way to pay you."
Their responses were uniformly "I've got another gig tonight, and fuck that place anyway. The owner's psychotic."
"He's running sound," Sean told them.
"HA HA HA HA HA.... no shit? HA HA HA HA HA!!"
After an hour and 45 minutes/two hours of this, I stood up and announced "This is not getting any better. Good bye. I need to go to the Chimes and get some etouffe before I start shooting."
Oddly, this enraged Natty Deadlock even more. I had to push my way past the old whiskey rag to get off the stage.
MUCH LATER: We sat backstage a few minutes before gig time and decided to just play the show and see what happened. What else were we going to do? The club was filling up and we'd been getting loads of airplay on KLSU...
The first three songs were a nightmare. We had nothing in the monitors but 60 cycle hum and the hoot and squeal of sine waves at play. The look on the faces of the crowd told us everything we needed to know about the house mix. Mike finally said "Hey, doude. Just put vocals in the PA and NOTHING ELSE. These guitars are filling up this room just fine."
No response from Douchenozzle at the soundboard. We play another song with the same chicken-on-a-turntable sound through the mains. Mike takes off his guitar, steps off the stage and walks back to the soundboard. Dan, who has always been possessed of a need to try and make every tense situation funny and also a very broad, vaudeville influenced sense of humor, walks to the mic and begins to narrate what it appears Mike is doing, but he uses the voice of a man calling a horse race at the Preakness.
"And Mike rounds the last table of people having a COCKtail before disappearing behind the sound board! There's some tension back there! Mike's waving what appears to be a twenty dollah bill in the face of the owner of the club... He's turning down everything in the mix but the vocals, ladies and gentleman. He's turning up the vocals and ONLY the vocals.... You should be hearing me get louder ladies and gentlemen... OH YES...... LISTEN TO THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... I AM SO LOUD! Mike's coming back to the stage, folks, he's putting on his guitar... there should be some More Rock here momentarily..."
Mike walked up to the mic, checkonetwoooo'ed it, then said "Look, bub. You can keep this $20 bill..." he waves the twenty in the air again "IF you don't touch that fucking board again before the end of the night. Got me? Yeah? GOOD."
And I count in the next song. And goddamn if the Bayou Booze Bucket doesn't go back to randomly sliding faders to no good effect. After that, we just give up on making a good impression on ANYONE and unleash a torrent of verbal abuse on this guy between every song. Oddly, the audience eats this up, and they start to get REALLY into the show. The kids start to shout at this guy. We start to really dig in and play a good, hard show, as if there's nothing wrong.
Well, Twenty Dollar Bill finally decides he's finally had enough. The PA goes completely dead. We keep playing. Figuring the audience couldn't hear the vocals anyway, we start playing Led Zeppelin covers and holding the dead microphones out for them to scream along. It becomes angry skater kid karaoke.
Suddenly, I realized that dood is on stage with us, rolling up cables. He's packing the PA up around us as we play. Astonishing! We press on, because the crowd is now at capacity(!!) and at least the front third of the crowd is hip to what's up and they're having a BLAST.
Finally, we run out of Zeppelin covers and we play the song that's been played on KLSU for weeks. The kids go nuts. In the verses, the band goes down to just hi-hat and palm-muted bass while Mike and three hundred of his closest friends sing the verse, then we ROAR into the chorus and the kids are jumping up and down and singing the words, their faces flushed with beer and joy and their middle fingers raised to Marcel Douche-champ as he prissily rolls up his mic cables and folds his mic stands.
He finally abandons the stage in the middle of the ten minute extended guitar solo that's standing in for a bridge in the song. The kids start screaming like and pounding on each other while jumping up and down. I've never seen an audience that wound up in my life.
We leave the stage smoking. What a show!
The door guy comes sidling up to us backstage and says "You guys need to pack up and go NOW. The owner's in his office on the phone with his lawyer trying to think of ANY reason to have you guys arrested."
"Ah..." we say.
"Yes," he says. "OH, here's every penny I took at the door tonight," and he hands us a roll of bills that would choke a mule.
Then he turns around to the throng of kids still standing around and says "OK guys, everyone grab a guitar, an amp or a drum and get Five-Eight's gear out of here. LET'S GO!" and all of the kids lovingly cradle our gear in their arms and race to our van. Fastest loadout in history.
We're at the van packing up, still sweaty and wide-eyed when the owner appears silhouetted in the doorway and he says "IS ALL OF YOUR EQUIPMENT OUT OF *MY* CLUB??"
"Yeah, man. Sure."
"BECAUSE YOU'RE NEVER COMING IN HERE AGAIN, YOU UNDERSTAND?"
"Sure, dood. Boo hoo. I think we're done in there."
"YOU'RE NEVER COMING IN MY CLUB AGAIN, YOU UNDERSTAND?"
"Habla ingles, Seor Doooosh? I think we're good. Thanks for asking, 'k?"
and then he slams the door so hard it makes that *ping* sound metal doors make when they're approaching melting temperature. I guess he needed his big moment.
So we all run over and start knocking on the door, and banging on it, and shouting "Um, sir?? Can I come in? I have to pee!! I think I forgot my wallet! SIR?? SIRRRR???"
The next time we came into town, we played at another club, and the Sheriff's department met us with a warrant for a "stolen" SM-58, which he claimed we had absconded with. We ended up almost going to jail. I'll tell that story some other time.
By the way, some time later, somebody shot the guy. He was running for Mayor and was out campaigning and someone walked up on him and popped him right in the gut.
I don't know anything about that, btw.
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#446500 - 10/29/07 06:03 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: DontFeartheRingo]
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christsmasher
Diamond Member
Registered: 05/26/00
Posts: 10559
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Omg. That fucking streamer story is the best thing I've read all day. Throat streamer..BAD! lmao.
To those who live in Toronto or Canada or on tour and at the El Mocambo during the late 90's and early 00's, I'll mention one name and all will be apparent.
Dan Burke.
Helluva guy, helluva storyteller, hell, even helluva promoter. But you know if you hear those magic words "WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?" after trying to collect a guarantee...well, you know you've just had the worst gig ever, lol.
Although, watching him pull it on the Mooney Suzuki? Best thing ever, lol.
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#446678 - 10/29/07 11:34 PM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: christsmasher]
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loggedout
Platinum Member
Registered: 11/16/02
Posts: 1658
Loc: Miami, Fl
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ringo - please keep em coming. Just consider us your writer's workshop - without the annoying jehovah's witness who only writes about his conversion
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#446693 - 10/30/07 12:20 AM
Re: And, The Worst Gig You've Ever Played
[Re: loggedout]
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JerichoMaxim
Bronze Member
Registered: 06/09/03
Posts: 179
Loc: The D.
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this is my all-time favourite thread here at the Rope. More, please!!!
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"We bludgeon one another with facts gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers." - Henry Miller
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