Oi Vey! Bad band experiences!

In the early 80's I joined a hard rock band and played dives. We were playing a biker bar and a group of bikers called the Pegans took residence there. Our booking agent insisted that we play Beat It by Michael Jackson. We refused and he threatened to cancel all future dates. So we had to play Beat It to a club full of bikers.They would rush the stage and scream BEAT THIS! They were for a time swinging chains and getting rather close to us. I was lucky to get out of there.

In 1978 I was travelling with a band that covered prog. We performed Watcher Of the Skies, a variety of Jethro Tull songs etc; We played some interesting places and Happy The Man were on the circuit at this time. Our agent basically told us straight up one night that the new CARS song was on our agenda. Some people in the band refused to play this style of music but it was the end of an era so I could now see that my future was at hand. Happy The Man disappeared and Renaissance carried on playing small venues.

In 81' I came in touch with this club circuit again. Steve Hackett was booked one week ahead of us. We opened for Dixie Dregs, Ian Hunter, The Doc Severson Band, Rosington Collins band etc; So mainstream acts and prog acts were playing the same venues. A bit like the old days when ELP headlined Cal. Jam except these artists were considered by the industry at large as has beens. Steve Hackett retreated back to England and prog became less and less popular to a point where audiences began to loose interest. To witness most of this in a hands on fashion was the worst experience I ever had. This experience was worse than any band's bad experience on the road or whatever.

Not a band but in high school I was sent to some competitions for group singing.  Well, the rehearsals went fine but in the actual performance, everybody sang in the wrong key. I was painfully aware of this but it's a group so I couldn't very well sing correctly and followed suit!   Small wonder we lost!

As a sound engineer I've never worked on stage with multiple musicians but here's a story for you...
I was mixing for a Heart type cover band. Chick singer with four backing musicians. She was a bit of a pill popping Jack Daniels swigging gal trying to revive a career that was long over, The keyboard player was an ex Metro Toronto cop who had been fired for totalling too many cruisers. The guitar player was a space cadet from the east coast, the bass player was a skinny glam kid, but it was the drummer that was the real treat. he used to do acid at 4 or 5 in the afternoon and he hated the singer because he thought she was a bitch. So one night, after he and she had had some words, the band was on stage playing and during a cymbal shot (front centre crash) he let his stick fly. Sailed right past her head. It didn't hit her but he let her know he was back there. That was on a Saturday night (tear down night). The next day we discovered that he had gotten up early in the morning, broken into the truck, taken all his gear and a sum of cash from the gig and flew back to Ontario (we were in Alberta at the time). I left the band a week later. Probably the best thing I ever did.

Road stories...there's a million of them, and they're all great stories. I should do a book.

^  I didn't get to see The Gun Club until about 1990 when Kid Congo was on guitar but I found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t3FncCgwuU. Is that Jim? Love the guitar solo!

Easy Money wrote: ...The Gun Club...

In 1978 I was playing with a band in a crazy rock club. A guy walked right up to the stage and squeezed and broke a glass in his hand. We ended the song and blood was all over my guitar.

In 1983 I was playing at THE TALLY HO in Delaware? Our singer who always wore a blond wig, tried dancing close to me while I played a solo. Her wig became tangled around my tuning pegs. I tried to un-tangle the wig with my picking hand but it wasn't working. Every slight move that I made caused the wig to unfold from her head. There were 3 agents and 2 managers at the front table and they just laughed through the whole thing.

In 1981 I played celebrity clubs. We were sleeping in Holiday Inn's. I woke up the next morning after the gig and the band lifted me out of bed and carried me down to a swimming pool in below zero weather and tossed me in.

In 1983 I played in a travelling band which had 3 girls for the frontline. Myself and the drummer had to go out and buy their meals and basically play daddy the whole time we were on the road, because every club we played guys in the audience would hound these girls relentlessly.

In 1983 we played Birdland by Weather Report to a drunk and dancing crowd in Wildwood, N.J. The crowd gaves the most outstanding ovation. The club owner told us that if we ever played a song like that again he would blackball us for good.

In 1984  we were on stage playing Asia. The female vocalist had been in the parking lot smoking pot, during our last break. She stared into space and  repeated the chours 10 times too many until the drummer screamed Willlll you stop!

^ I don't know about brave or popular, I think we were just young jerks, ha ha. Anyway, I don't mean to milk this, I'm suprised anyone was interested. I feel like an old man telling war stories, ha ha.

^ there had to be a set up to get lots of people in the place, it helped that my friends were in trendy bands, we knew that if we put together this fake 'all-star' band all these trendy types would show up in the 'place to be' for some 'entertainment'. Instead they got sucker punched with confrontation. A friend of mine said people were buying beers just to throw at us. A rare moment where everything clicked, it would be hard to duplicate.

Epignosis wrote: I'm not sure I got half of what you said there, but how about a story regarding a bad crowd? This one particular bar was in the back of a liquor store.  It was that bad.  Over midway through the four hour set, a Hispanic guy, drunk as ever, staggered on stage and grabbed the mic and began singing a Capella in Spanish (or what I assume was Spanish) and slobbering.

Oh snap. Well, not quite.

Basically the guy coming on stage and f**king up our set bit happened to me as well. You see, a big mistake by the bar is that they had us playing in one half and karaoke in the other, and lo and behold, a guy from karaoke predictably thought it would be a wise idea to come into the live music room, hop on my piano stool right next to me, and playing his own little piano accompaniment part to Stevie Wonder's "Superstition". Lovely. And of course, the crowd started booing US because they were so pissed up that they couldn't distinguish the drunken fool from the band and thought he was part of the act.

It all ended up in an good old fashioned English pub brawl.

We didn't get paid that night because we were blamed for damage and were told we provoked the fight.

Bad times.

I used to play in a band with a bassist who somehow couldn't resist playing funky bass lines all the time while also (though they are related) being obsessed with slap bass.
He basically ruined all my piano solos/intros (especially the slow, melancholic ones) .

Then there's the guitarist in another band I used to play in: didn't allow anyone to improve/alter his (mediocre) compositions. Even the slightest suggestion was out of the question. It's just impossible to work with someone like that.

I've also never been able to agree on the musical direction within a band, but that might just be because of my own stubbornness.

After all these disappointments I decided to just focus on solo piano/synth and guitar, purely as a hobbyist.
I may join another band again but not for a year at least...





Edited by Zebedee - August 26 2009 at 18:05