General Music Chat

I tried finding the thread Lynard put up a cpl of wks about sharing gig stories before Willie the Wuss crapped all over the board but struck out.

This a PG rated story (PG...gettit?)

Back in 2013 I went on a two wk tour out west to AZ, CO, and NM w a cpl of friends....Mark Raborn, an excellent "modern" banjo player who plays and writes in the style of Bela Fleck, and Thom H, a very good acoustic gtrst/mandolinist.... And me, I was supposed to be playing upright bass.

I'm waiting for the guys to pick me up, and I'm outside in my driveway w my duffel bag of clothes and essentials, and my bass. M.R. was to snag us a rental van. Instead, he shows up w a Chevy Caprice! Well, ain't no way the doghouse is gonna make it in that ride w the three of us. So back in the house it goes, and I grab my Washburn six string bass.

We're mostly playing MR's very cool, but extremely challenging tunes that have lots of key changes, often four chords per measure, and many of them have shifting odd time signatures. In other words....some really complicated $hit. Thom and I charted out the tunes and we had a pretty decent handle on most of their weird moves and idiosyncrasies after two or three prcts.

First gig goes OK... I'm using the house bass amp and we're in the house PA. Capable sound guy had it dialed in pretty good. Then we get to the next gig at Fiddler's Dream, a listening room in Phoenix. We show up and I learn straightaway....there's no bass amp!

Then I learn why.....they don't ALLOW anything but "acoustic" instruments there ! SAY WHAT??!?!?! But you can have 'acoustic' gtrs and mandos that you plug into the PA???? That's not EXACTLY acoustic is it?

I was hoping to plug my bass into the PA but they wouldn't have it...."No Sir! NONE OF THEM ELECTRIC INSTRUMENTS IN HERE!"

Well, I ended up playing Thom's old 1918 Gibson A4 mandolin ....and I want to tell you, i was scuffling and working my ass off on these tunes that I'd only played bass on previously.

MR and Thom were gracious enough to mention to the crowd that i'd never played mando on any of this stuff before and that I'd been holding out on them keeping my mandolin playing a secret from them.

It ended up being a fun gig...but here's the kicker, next up was a very talented lady....singersongwriter who played piano. that's right ELECTRIC piano!

WTF?!!&%!&%!&!!*!

Thanks Mark.
That is a GREAT story.
I can't top that one...


That's just great. LMAO!

PHUCK WILLIE!!! I'm done.

We played the Old Route 66 Club one nite.
The singer pulls out a plastic bag of pills
And starts handing them out to the band

By the 2nd set we had all pulled our mike stands close to the wall
so we could lean against the wall cause it was hard to stand
The bar owner begged us to quit, but he was paying for 4 hours
so he was going to get his 4 hrs, we needed the money

My wife said we had a crowd cheering us on and laughing at our performance
She said the crowd wouldn't let the owner shut us down, and was having a hell
of a time laughing at the show we were putting on

Before the 4th set started (I think it's kinda blurry) the owner paid us in full
We agreed to quit, even tho the crowd was dissappointed wanting to laugh some more

On a musical note in the early 80s playing in a hard drinking drug taking
sh*t kicking rockin country band I always loved the 3rd set, the 1st 2 sets were a party
By the 3rd set the band was wound up tight and could take it to another level
Altered States

June 74. My regular high school band had dissolved a month before - we were all graduating except the bass player and lead singer - the drummer was working full time, so had no time for the band.
Then someone at the youth club on Otis Air Force Base asked our rhythm guitarist (who worked at the base grocery store part-time) if we would lay a benefit show for the club. He said 'Sure!" and managed to get us all agree to play on this one Saturday night.
Being it was a benefit, we weren't getting paid, so , hey, why not "enjoy" it?
The bass player, a year younger than the rest of us, was drunk early.
The drummer was starting to shoot up H at the time (I didn't know that).
Rhythm guitarist was heavy into speed at that point.
And I decided to drop a hit of 'mild' acid.
Lead singer - I think he was the only straight one among us.
Anyway, we made a ton of mistakes, but the kids loved us.
During the break, a girl comes up to me and the rhythm guitarist, compliments us, then says, 'you could probably be better if you weren't so f**k up! The bass player is drunk, you're on speed' (looking at rhythm guitarist), ' you're tripping' (looking at me), 'and the drummer is high on something. The lead singer just seems nervous, he should take something!'

There wasn't no "mild" acid in the 70s, was there?

There wasn't no "mild" acid in the 70s, was there?

Some was more potent than others.

Not a gig story, but ....
End of the summer, 74, I had been playing bass for a band doing a lot of Allman Brothers for most of the summer. As September got closer, I had neglected to tell the guys in the band that I was heading to Montreal the week after Labor Day, to start college there.
So on the day I decided I was going to tell them, must have been the Saturday of Labor Day weekend (because I wasn't working my day job that day). I dropped a hit of acid and headed to the only music store on Cape Cod where I told the guy I was interested in a Mini Moog synthesizer. A friend had told me that if I went in there, they'd let me try it out with a set of headphones. Only problem was that when I got there, found out their headphones were busted, so they plugged the synth into a small amp.
The acid was kicking in real strong (think it was 'windowpane') and I started messing with the synthesizer for the next 2 hours. After about half an hour the salesman came over and asked me to turn it down because it was bothering other customers - no idea how loud it was, because every twist of the dials was sending me into outerspace, Pink Floyd-style!
Finally, the salesman cam back over and asked me if I was going to buy it, and I said 'sure', but that I had to get the money. I left, got in my car, and when I was driving (acid was still going strong), I got the idea that 'wouldn't it be great if cars were like synthesizers, and you could push a slider up, and it would get longer, or turn a dial and it would be louder, or taller,' etc. Somehow I didn't wreck the car getting home (I had some experience driving while tripping). By 6pm, band practice time, the acid had pretty much worn off and I went and told the guys, grabbed my gear and left.
It was from that band that I had acquired a couple of home-built PA cabinets (the guy who built them went on to build a lot of custom PA gear for bands in the area) in trade for two worn-out Fender cabinets that the high school band had been using for PA speakers - one was a Bassman, one was a smaller cabinet (maybe a Bandmaster) that had been burned up - all the Tolex was gone, and someone had replaced the grill cloth with black cloth and painted the wood black. Both had 'Allied Electronics' 15" speakers in them (think those cost us $30 each back in the day). The PA cabinets were marginally better - at least they had casters!

When I first got to Hollywood I joined a cover band to make ends meet but I refused always to play in the Hollywood proper, that was professional suicide. It's also where I started calling myself Talbot.

The band leader found us a rather sultry female vocalist and things went the way they always used to go with me. Suffice to say, I look back on the episode and the lady fondly.

It came to pass that our guitarist and band leader arranged for us to play what may have been my worst gig ever. But then, I have lots of dreadful gigs to choose from. In this case we drove to the absolute end of the charted universe, to a small settlement boiling in the desert sun, all alone in the middle of nowhere.

Blythe California. To paraphrase one of my least favorite Yankee generals, “If I owned Blythe and Hell, I’d rent out Blythe and live in Hell.”

To make it all the more amusing for us they’d booked one hotel room for the entire band. The real kicker was when we learned we’d been booked as a soul act. Well alright then…play that funky music white boy.

Talbot

I just passed thru Blythe a few months back. it's a dump, but I was relieved to get out of that dumb state. we stopped at the gas station and I took a leak, looked for some cheetohs and a soda. the entire store was stocked with flamin hot cheetohs but no regular. finally found the regular stuff near the floor at the back of the store. very strange town indeed.

We were all 18 playing at a school dance for 16 year olds.

We played that DEEP PURPLE song., SPACE TRUCKING...

The chaperone parents all thought we were singing something else.
Honestly with such a crummy little PA it may have sounded like something else.
Honestly... we may have changed the words a tiny, teensie, eansy, weenie, little bit.

They shut us down and told us to get our stuff out of there, in words that were far worse than I am presenting.

We did get paid the 50 bucks for that gig. The legend of THUNDERBUCKRAM was born.

We never saw so much jail bait getting into bars after that. Mind you the NY drinking age was 18 at the time.

How old are you? 15, is that OK. I got a license that says I'm 20.

That's my funniest story except for the naked girl chasing after her boy friend that stole her car and kicked her out of the back seat, jumped in the front and just took off. It might have been his car.I don't know.

Another Space Truckin' story - not really funny, but memories...

High school band was named 'Beowulf' - like the ancient Norse saga, pronounced 'Bay-wolf', not 'Be-O-wolf'.
We were playing a dance in the HS gym. Only lights were two 'color wheels' on stage - remember those, the rotating wheel with 3 colors of cellophane - and a follow spot at the far end of the gym which was aimed up at the pitched ceiling.
We're doing 'Space Truckin' when all of a sudden the bass player stops playing. I stop to look at hijm, and he staring up at the ceiling, and then he points. There. silhouetted in the light from the spotlight is a spider-like figure, dangling from the u-beam running up the ceiling. This drunk kid had pulled himself up the wall u-beam, onto the ceiling one, and was attempting to make his way across to the other side. He was almost to the peak, about 24 feet up, and was tiring out. I had stopped playing, as did the rest of the band and someone yells ' get down from there' (probably a teacher-chaperone).
He did - dropping to the floor, where he fell to his knees, bounced a little and flopped to the floor.
Lights came on, ambulance came and took him away, dance was over that night. Think we still got paid our $200. We were ready with our new slogan 'Beowulf kills', but the guy lived - with two broken kneecaps and some foot bones broken, too.

Which way did you have the color wheels facing.

Lights sometimes draw audience response
Especially aimed at them and the repetition

The color wheels were lighting us up on stage.

I think that's the way your suppose to have lights set up, pointing at the band

But I've had discussions on here before with people who thought the light should shine on the crowd

It affects some people, wildly, depending on what substance they're abusing

I'm Liking PG's story more and more.

I found some recordings of that short lived band in the story above.

This was the first time we all got together at my place. I threw up a cpl of mics in the room while we read down some charts. some Django, some standards, some David Grisman.

There's plenty of slop here but we were just getting to "know one another" musically and trying out some tunes to see what we all could play w/o mucking it up too badly.

some django: (you might want to roll off some bass on your listening device....the mics REALLY liked my upright!)

https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v3/player.cfm?type=single&songid=11951965&q=hi&newref=1

https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v3/player.cfm?type=single&songid=11951968&q=hi&newref=1

some david grisman:
https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v3/player.cfm?type=single&songid=11951971&q=hi&newref=1