What's the worst place you ever played?

[cozmik_cowboy]

I'll have to disagree, Rich; Slawie's is impressive, but Nick had his freakin' amp   shot!!!!!!  Damn.  I've seen firearms at a gig, but (am glad to say) never heard them.
 
Peter

[afrobeat_fool]

I never intended this to be a one-up's manship thing. In my early day's of playing there were gun's at every show. I started playing cowboy music in Wyoming and we did trail ride sing alongs every day, and dances a couple times a week. Very different from what I grew up with in Cincinnati. Then having moved to PDX, I wanted nothing to do with Cowboy tunes and started playing Jazz.  
  Slawie has my vote. Playing biker events must have been interesting. I lived a block from the Gypsy Jokers hangout for a few years and I wouldn't go anywhere near their parties. Rough.

[slawie]

I don't think it is a case of one upmanship either.  
In all seriousness, there are so many people on this planet going through
really horrible things in their lives at the moment, in the past and unfortunately in the future  
that my episode would be a welcome relief to their reality.  
I escaped unscathed although and now, upon reflection
it does make for a riveting yarn.
 
Anyhow Nick, you got mt vote. Holy Smoking Gun Barrels.
I can't even imagine what it was like to have a bullet pass by you and smack into your amp!
 
Fortunately for me my main protagonist didn't get his gun out.  
 
slawie
 
(Message edited by slawie on October 24, 2010)

[edwin]

Slawie, you are so right about what goes on out there. I'm a research assistant at school for my criminal law teacher and we're working on a death penalty project, which means I read every DP case in Oregon and Louisiana from 2001-2009. Before I started this project, I had no idea what people are capable of doing and was staunchly anti-death penalty. Each one of those people left a world of hurt in their wake.
 
I've had some really crazy gigs, but I'm not going to repeat what happened. I doubt any of the parties involved want to what went done aired in public. Luckily no flying bullets (although up in the mountains I've played parties where there were guns with live ammunition and plenty of holes in the buildings from past escapades).

[afrobeat_fool]

I remember, I was playing thru a RB 400 at the time. I thought the three band EQ was T!T$. And I was packing around a 70' Fender Bassman 4/12 cab. It just Farted at high volume. For a long time after I would think, how the heck did a round hit that tiny amp and miss the cabinet completely?

[jacko]

Terry..
We in the UK are far more choosy when it comes to gigs LOL..I have never played any rough places so I have been lucky.  
 
You should come up to Scotland sometime. On our first outing as a wedding band, we were playing at a 5 star hotel in Glasgow. Around 3 songs from the end of the first set, the room emptied and we figured they must have opened the buffet early. As it happens, the Best man had started beating up the bride's younger brother upon which the Bride's father had thrown the best man down a short flight of stairs and through the windscreen of an Audi TT.  This was when all hell broke loose as apparently there was no love lost between the families. Kind of Romeo and Juliet without the final death scene. By the time we finished the first set the police had arrived and calmed everyone down. We were getting a bit concerned about how we were going to get our gear past the angry mob when the bride and groom came and asked (very politely) if we wouldn't mind carrying on. Being consumate professionals, we couldn't refuse (it had nothing to do with the large angry Glaswegians standing behind the couple.... Honest).
 
Having said all that, the worst gig we ever played was one Sunday evening in Kirkcaldy. The only audience was the barmaid and she kept sloping off for a break. Talk about a paid rehearsal.
 
Graeme

[dannobasso]

Here go! Paterson NJ, 1981. Talk of the Town go go by day and most evenings. Bands every now and them. I was in a 3 pc with a frontman sit playing covers, Rush, Priest, Focus Crimson, Zep  ., 60;s, 70;s and whatever else was the flavor of the day and days gone by. After doing the 2nd side of 2112 and finishing up with Green Manalishi a scream rang out as we got the end of the riff. A bad deal went down and a man was knifed to death in the doorway of the place. The killer ran past us, through the kitchen and out of the joint. We still played another set after that. Guitarist had an Electra ES type and I had my Ripper. The singer needed a few shots of brandy to settle his nerves after the police left. Neil Diamond's Coming to America was on the jukebox. Quite a baptism for an 18 year old kid. The Polish American Democratic Society Hall in Fairview NJ 1979 wasn't great either. Baseball bats and Cadoos. Wait, why do we continue after these experiences?

[jet_powers]

why do we continue after these experiences?
 
To see what's next?

[svlilioukalani]

These are great stories. So I thought I would add one of my own.  I was gigging with this Blues Band Sly Slick and Wicked out of Columbia Mo. in the late 80?s. There was this small club AJR?s Lounge; just outside of the housing projects. This bar taught me the reason why you say no to the girl that say?s, ?want to fool around, my husband is in jail.?
 
My sax player had a side job as an armature pharmacist. Between sets there was a dispute between him and one of his clients out behind the bar. His client, upset about the deal, shot him 5 times with a 25caliber pistol. My sax player was quite pissed by this. He calmly walked over to the guy, took the gun out of his hand and beat him to death. Then calmly walked into the bathroom and passed out. He passed out against the door. The rest of the band was unaware this happened.
 
About half way through our set we were wondering where the sax man was. The bartender wondered why the bathroom door wouldn?t open. As our set was ending, we saw the medic?s haling the 2 away; A bloody mess.
 
It turns out a 25 has very small bullets. He was back gigging with us 3 weeks later.  
 
 It?s the small country bars or road houses that are really dangerous. Say what you want but I have never had trouble in a biker bar.

[hydrargyrum]

I'm sitting in Columbia Missouri planning gigs, so needless to say I'm getting a good laugh from Gary's story.  I played some real dives in Joplin Missouri in High School, but nothing to compare to these stories.  The most I can brag about are the people who were asking us if we had seen their crack rocks in the couch we were sitting on while we were waiting to play.

[jet_powers]

Biker bashes are the best gigs...at least in my experience. They can handle their liquor and police themselves.
 
Once, at a biker bash, we asked if someone could bring the band a beer. A few minutes later a keg was placed on the stage!

[5stringfreak]

My trio in '96 played what we were told was a frat party, when we got to the address it was a bake sale full of older folks in their 70s-80s. Well, we're allready here, so let's play! We set up anyways and played a toned down set. They liked it and paid us in strawberry shortcake. Unexciting but memorable.

[bigredbass]

I was playing a steady gig in Texas when the place was 'adopted' for a while by a local chapter of a nationwide, notorious, well-known MC.  We weren't real sure what to do.  They'd come in, drink, basically acted like anyone else, but folks did give them a wide berth.  
 
You kind of get to know the regulars after a while, and eventually their lieutenant said they liked us as we treated them like normal folks, liked our music.  Whew . . . .  
 
Used to be an old fella we called Uncle Bill would take the cab from the retirement home out to the joint every Saturday night.  Always dressed up: Shined up cowboy boots, Western suit, bolo tie, white dress shirt, little dress Stetson hat, and a gold-topped cane.  He'd take a drink or two, and we'd get him up and play his favorite Western Swing tunes for him to sing.  'Take Me Back to Tulsa', that kind of Bob Wills, Moon Mullican stuff.  The crowd would eat it up, and we just loved him.  The whole crowd adopted him as 'their' Uncle Bill.
 
Anyway, he gets off stage, and on his way back to his table, some punk bumps into him, almost knocked him down, and told him to 'watch out, you old *****' and a few more things equally aggravating.  Bill wasn't having it and wacked him good in the head with that cane and the punk falls down.  When he comes back off the floor, he's facing Bill . . . . and a dozen bikers !
 
Till the fellas moved on as bikes always do, Bill never had to take the cab back and forth every Saturday night, and he really dug it as he said he 'got more women (at age 80!!) since he started riding on the back of that murdersickle'!
 
Ya just can't make this stuff up ! !
 
J o e y

[gtrguy]

Well, last year I saw Joe Cocker live at a packed casino arena in Oregon and right in the middle of him crooning out You are soooo Beautiful (which is one of the most surpy cloyingly sweet tune you never want to hear) two guys in their 60's sitting right in front of me start bashing each others brains out until security tossed them outside into the cold. What were they thinking? At least it got me through having to listen to the song.
 
Dave

[smuprof]

Couldn't pass this up . . . Probably 1977, the drummer and I were still juniors in high school, and the band leader books us into Uncle Sam's club somewhere in South Georgia.  This place is a cinder block building painted all the way around in three broad bands . . . you guessed it Red, White and Blue.  
 
Outside it was surrounded by jacked up pick-up trucks - pretty common site in South Georgia.  Inside the building was divided in half with a pool hall/bar on one side and dance hall on the other.  We played for whatever came through the door.  The stage was surrounded by what else - chicken wire.  Unfortunately it turned out we wouldn't need it.
 
This was about an hour away from our hometown, and the band policy was two guys would drive their cars/trucks with the gear and each would get an extra $10 for gas.  I drove my mom's station wagon  
 
We got there and discovered someone forgot to pack the bass drum pedal - you can work around a lot of things, but hard to play without a bass drum pedal . . . so the drummer and the other guitarist made a 2 hour round trip to get the bass drum pedal.  
 
We played the requisite 4 hours with no more than a half dozen couples wandering in for  a few dances.  We played for ourselves more than for anyone else.
 
At the end of the night, we packed up and the band leader went and got our money and came back laughing.  He handed me $10 for gas and the other guitar player $10, then he said:  John, here's your $1, Mitch here's your $1, Hutch here's your $1 and here's my $1 . . .  
 
But the night wasn't over!  A couple of minutes later the other guitar player came in shouting Who shut the trunk?  Who shut the trunk?  You guessed it - his keys were in there.  I wound up taking him home (only room for two people) to get his spare key and his Dad's car.
 
He drove back himself - just in the nick of time - the drummer was so ticked off he had started playing the drunk patrons in the bar rounds of pool for money and was cleaning up and making them mad in the process.  When the guitar player got back, he grabbed the band leader, the drummer grabbed his money and they ran out the door and took off for home.
 
I'm not sure whether it's worse to play and not get paid, or play and earn $1 . . . but that was 30 years ago and I'm still playing.