you dont know urine soaked bathrooms until youve seen this place my dad played a few months ago.... there were literally 1-3 cm deep puddles in some spots.....

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Favorite bands:

Melvins
The Jesus Lizard
Cows
Big Business
R***man
Minutemen
Flight
Minor Threat
Big Black
Shellac
Karp
Scratch Acid
Wipers
Pixies

Our band traveled around the South for a year or so. We were at Anderson Air Force Base in central Louisianna. I mean this is out there. We played our job and we were housed in some billiting area. We had a 2 day gig. After the first nights show I was hungry. It's 2 in the morning and I decide to drive off base to try and find an Awfull House or something. I had hair down over my shoulders back then.
Okay- I didn't know my way around down there and it took me maybe 10 minutes and I was lost. Here I am. It's after 2 AM , it's pitch black except for my headlights, I'm in the middle of Louisianna way out in the sticks. Nobody and no houses around, I look like a Hippy , there are no street or road signs. Not much going for me right then.

I look in my mirror and I see some headlights coming up behind me. The car is coming up kind of fast. I figure I'll turn and get back to being lost and he'll just keep going straight. Nope - he turns behind me. His lights look like they're on bright. It's a pick up truck. He comes up close and I speed up. He speeds up. I see a road and I turn. He turns too. I speed up , he speeds up. I see another road and I turn- he turns, I speed up, so does he, I turn , he turns. Faster, turn, turn- He's still right behind me!!!! I'm turning really fast and he's right on my $@!. My heart is pounding. I'm a dead man. It kept going like that and I'm thinking" Well- this is it." So I get mad and I see another place to turn. It's a house! I turn in and slam on the brakes! He's right behind me! I open my door, I get out, and I can't see anything but killer bright lights. I yell "CAN I HELP YOU?". (HA!) I hear a thick Deliverance kind of voice and he says "Yeh, would you mind gittin' outa' my way? Your in my driveway.

I pulled off to the side, he drove up to the house, I backed out and continued on.


Oh man!!!!- for all I know it was real dumb to get out and confront the pickup that way. It could have been a big mistake. I didn't know what else to do. I just took my chances. Whatever happens- happens.
I don't remember how I found my way back to the base. When I did get back on base I was swarmed by the Military Police -2 or 3 cars with red beacons, guns drawn (rifles). I was glad . Hey they're cops !!! They thought I was bringing drugs on base. Fortunately one of the MP's recognized me as being in the band and they let me go. A very interesting experiance all in all.

I was going to tell about another one, but this is a family friendly forum.

It involved a gig at a umm...brothel.

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

jamesvroy could probably tell some good ones too me thinks...

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

I got a ride with a buddy that I did not know real well to go see Ozzy on the Diary Of a Madman tour. It was the first concert of the tour and ... of all things ... Halloween night. Anyway, there were four of us ... and I barely knew the other three guys I was with. We went early to the show ... and one of the guys brought half of a real pig's head. And not some little pig, but a huge pig's half of a head, sliced right down the middle. He got it from a butcher. He also brought a huge stick. So while waiting to get in, he puts the pig head on the stick to hold it up. But between being heavy, and the warm sun, and goo coming out of thing, the rest of us don't want to hold the thing. Well, he decides he does not want to hold it either. So he takes the head (about the size of a basketball) and throws it into the crowd. You guessed it ... it hit someone who was none too happy, so the thing gets thrown back. The next thing you know, we are having a pig-head fight back and forth. Pig-head crap flying everywhere. That whole ordeal is completely unforgettable ...

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

bu.... i..... wh.....

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Favorite bands:

Melvins
The Jesus Lizard
Cows
Big Business
R***man
Minutemen
Flight
Minor Threat
Big Black
Shellac
Karp
Scratch Acid
Wipers
Pixies

Not during a gig,but...
In 1972 I lived south of Atlanta and we did a weekend gig in Huntsville Al.,Fri & Sat. nights,on the way home,dead tired and in a rainstorm around 3:30 am Sun. somewhere near Rome Ga. we were traveling in two cars loaded down with gear,and we were carrying something that was and still is illegal on all of our persons two Ga. State troopers pulled over the first car and another pulled us over,well this is it we thought.
They made us get out and open the trunks,then they said we were pulled over because we were riding low and they thought we were hauling moonshine,then satisfied they let us go on our way.
Who needed moonshine? we thought do people still haul that stuff around? guess so

I was traveling somewhere in the south- I can't remember where ( which is typical now)- going to Huston to play. I had a CB radio but I really didn't talk on it much. I hook up on the "back door" of a big truck and I'm what they call a "hitch-hiker" (following a big truck in a four wheeler ) . He would have to slow down for big hills etc. so I would go around him and on the down side he would come around me. This went on for quite a while untill he got tired of it and ran me off the road. Right off the road into the grass at about 60 mph in a Chevy van with 2 SVT cabinets, head, and all my stuff etc in the back. I got it stopped after quite a bit of fast work trying not to get killed. I'm sitting there just trying to calm down and a voice comes over the CB- " You done a real fine job keepin' it together there boy". OH MAN - I was so extremely agitated by that. I used every cuss word I had at him. I hung way back after that and made it to Huston in one piece.

HUSTON ................... had to join the Musicians Union. Same one ZZ Top was in.

haha did three of them in my first band, for a local gangster. Sixteen and playing one of three brothels on a weekly rotation.

Had a fight onstage with the other guitarist in one of my bands. Mid set, full blown, rolling around the floor, throwing chairs and bottles, scrap.
Playing a very famous place in Leeds, the same guitarist rolls up blind drunk just as were about to start the first song. I think 'well atleast he hasn't got his guitar with him'. Then I spot the tramp he's been sitting swigging methylated spirits with, all afternoon, carrying his guitar onstage for him.
Playing that same venue a couple of years later. We arrive ontime, except for the previous mentioned guitarist. We're well used to his antics by this time. So we go onstage without him (again). Expecting him to roll up at any minute. Just as we hit the last chord of the last song, he bursts in with a very upset look on his face. Apparently we should have all waited for him.
Same guitarist sold his underpants after a gig to some young art student.
Playing out in Croatia to a load of communist skinheads (yeah weird), some nazi skinhead rolls up and starts zeich heil'ing. The crowd rapidly exited, taking the nazi with em. He was found a couple of weeks later in the woods.
Playing in Italy the Friday that pope john paul went into a coma. The lights and power all went out all the crowd chanting 'the pope is dead'. Dunno how I feel about that.
That night we were driven back to the hotel, five drunk brits and one petit Italian girl crammed into a fiat uno. As drunken Englishmen do, we're engaging in song. Next thing the car pulls over and theres machine guns poking in the windows at us. We were arrested for killing the pope. Despite him still being alive and us lot being at the other end of the country.

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No no and no

Wow- things sound pretty "hard core" over in Europe. I've never seen a fight on stage between two guys in the same band. The night is still young though.

My wife tells me that life with me has never been boring. Case in point : Last Night 2/19/11. We played at a downtown Hotel in the Ballroom for a private wedding. We're not really a wedding band but what the heck- we get paid. A plush set up, very expensive and kind of stuffy at first.
At 6 oclock we're playing loud heavy Rock etc on 1. They weren't impressed. Niether were we. The load in was a pain as was the load out. So we did the job and made it out of there before midnight. The Hotel charges $250 if you're not out of there by 12 oclock!
We had to park our cars a block away in a multi level garage. We get our equiptment down to the dock and the keyboard player and I walk to the garage to get our cars. We get there and we can't figure out where we parked. So we decide to go up to the next level and look up there.
Being the lazy people we are (not realy) we get on the elevator and push the button for the next level, the door closes and all of a sudden the elevator goes up really fast for about one second-- and then nothing. Boom. Over. Out of service light is blinking. We are stuck in an elevator. The call box doesn't work. Nothing. HA!!!!! We just laughed our $@! off. This was way too funny for a couple old geezer musicians.
We did have a cell phone. We called the singer. Who else would you call? He came over and had no luck with the buttons so he called the Fire Dept. About 5 minutes later I hear the sirens. They came and got us out. It was funny . They had 5 units on the scene. We were in there about a half hour or so. It was a "first" for me.
The fun never ends...................................

I'm surprised more people didn't post.

Me too.

_________________
Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

OKAY- I have another one.
A friend of ours wanted to sit in with our band for "just one song man". He'd been asking us for weeks maybe months. So finally we said okay.
He got out his Gibson LP (of which he had only been learning guitar on for just a few years) and got up on stage.

1, 2, 3, 4, and away we go....... pretty soon I notice it doesn't sound right. I look over as we are playing and I notice he IS NOT playing the same song we are playing. He loved Judas Priest so he is playing "Living After Midnight". We were playing "Gimme Three Steps" by Lynrd Skynrd.
This guy played the whole song and did not have a clue. It was the most stupid thing I had ever experianced in my life! The complete and unabashed dumbness was hard to handle. I was speechless. Our drummer wanted to kick his $@!. The guy thought he did a great job! He did not know we were doing a different song. He did look kind of confused when we ended our song differently than he ended his!!! I'll never forget that as long as I live. How could I?????


A guitar can be a dangerous thing in the hands of an untrained operator.

Kudos to all of you for some great stories. They have run an interesting gamut, from Oedipus the king of the dance floor, to ivan ilyich last wedding reception . I have only one good story (no one was injured ) from a dinner theater play I was in called "The Sopranos Last Supper". At a very swank country club in the western suburbs, I think it may have been the village of Crystal lake, the show is booked to perform for 300 people. For us that's a lot because it means 30 tables with 10 people at each table and we find out that the company oversold the show so they have added 2 more tables. The cast walks in to the venue and it is huge with a massive stage about 4 feet tall which is the part that we liked because we were 14 of the biggest hams this side of the Mississippi, the dressing room/accommodations are a little tight but the staff made us feel at home. The director and sound crew set up opposite the stage so they are directly in front of us but 30 yards away. This show is 95/ticket so we are all getting a 25 dollar bump, we were happy about that too. For those of you familiar with the cable TV series 'The Sopranos" you know that it was about a mafia families' antics in New Jersey. Our show was a comedy spoof of it with all of the cable series main characters played by the 14 of us, 8 mafioso, and 6 lovely mafiettas. The first act sets the tone for the show. At about 30 minutes into it all of the guys are sitting at a large table on the stage ( ala the last supper) doing silly italian jokes and general dialogue when the character playing Silvio ( Tony Sopranos consigliere) and I ( Johnny Sak, Tony Sopranos friend a New York mob boss) get into a scuffle while behind the table and the other cast members pull us apart. Up to this point in the show the crowd is really with us, laughing at all the right places and cheering us on when Tony (the bro playing Sivio) and I start to fight and we fall off the back of the stage 4 feet to the floor ( management didn't tell us about the empty space behind the stage because there was a floor to ceiling curtain along the back wall which covered an all glass window looking out onto the golf course). The crowd went silent you could literally have heard a pin drop when Tony and I disappeared from the stage, the other cast members were stunned and our director told us later that he was frightened thinking we got hurt in the fall. Tony and I landed on our feet, looked at each other and immediately pulled ourselves up onto the stage to begin the act again and the crowd roared, they loved what they probably thought was part of the play. Being a country club the food was great so the audience definitely got their money's worth acts 2 and 3 went off without a hitch and "The Sopranos Last Supper" went on for another year or 2. When the cable series ended so did we but from 2004 to 2008 we made some people laugh

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

When I was fronting a band in northern Minnesota in the mid 90s we frequently played a strip club called Teddy's in Wahpeton, ND. The place was an old theater - we played on the stage where the screen had been and people danced in front of us, way down in the old orchestra pit with lights like swimming pools have in the walls.

The bar and pool tables were on the first floor. The strippers were in the balcony behind a big rippling wall of Plexi-Glass. Unfortunately, from our stage we could only see the top four feet of the brass poles and an occasional hand on the pole. Sad.

Wahpeton was a wonderful cultural mix - 3M headquarters, so you had the white collar guys, the sugar beet processing center of the world, so you had the rednecks, and right on the edge of an Indian reservation, so you had, well... Indians! Now stand those three groups three deep around three big pool tables and what do you get? Total mayhem, every night! We played there dozens of times (Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights) and I'll bet we only made it through the first set a few times before a major brawl broke out by the pool tables.

We're talking flying bodies, smashing pool cues, knives (never guns, thank heaven) and plenty of blood on the walls and floor. Teddy had six big former college football players as bouncers and they really seemed to enjoy their work. My son was 16 when he started playing bass for me and he really, really liked going to Teddy's. No, he never made it upstairs... though one time the drummer paid one of the strippers to perform a "glass" dance against the Plexi...

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Dennis in CR
Rockin' since 1963