Tour Talk

How about a positive Thread...What's is your best gig ever?


Had a lot of good gigs in the past where the place was packed, everyone played perfect and everything just went smooth, but probably my best gig was in my backyard when I was a kid.
It was back in 1990, I sold my 69 Dodge Superbee I had restored in highschool and spent all the money on a huge party. rented porta toilets, Sound guy and lights, bought 5000 clams, 13 half kegs of Moosehead beer, 2 cases of Hard Liqueur and hundreds of hamburgers and hot dogs. The night before the party, a friend of my singer that did construction, came out and built a 100' long stage 3 feet off the ground with wood from a construction site he "borrowed" for the weekend.

It was the first Saturday in August and it was 95F that day, had to drive to the port of Albany to get the clams I ordered a week before...driving back in a van 50 miles with no air conditioning with it filled with clams on Ice ....well...it's not a good smell.

We probably had 2000 people there that day, It was like a mini woodstock, people camped out, people selling T-shirts and cars filled over 2 acres and down the road.

This great Led Zeppelin tribute band Valhalla showed up out of nowhere and played 7 hours of Zeppelin tunes for beer and food until the other bands went on. It was so loud, people in their cars 10 miles away could hear it!!


It was about 10 pm when we were doing the song "Kids goes Wild" by Babylon AD, Right when a state trooper with a dog walks around back of the house...with a sea of kids with their red beer cups in the air and yelling as my Bass player "Mote" from M-16, starts screaming the Sam Kinison part of the song....

"Oh, you f*** cops! You'll never get me. You'll never take me alive! You pull that f***** gun, you'd better use it! Cuz I'm not going down and I'm not going to jail and I'm not doing any f**** time! This is my night!
...............I'm alive!!!

and the place went completely nuts, everyone completely ignoring the trooper...

He just shrugged, turned around and got in his car and left, the party and Bonfire were going until 9am the next morning....yes...that was the best show ever!!

I just found this by viewing Unanswered posts. What a funny story and while it isn't the same thing something similar happened at an illegal firework party I was at some time ago.

Motorhead I think would be mine. Been to many a Genesis concert so I'm giving that to Motorhead.

Really good post. Pity it got missed.

Hard to qualify.
They have all been good in some way or another.
I just love to play, so I am easy and cheap.

We had those hippie fests regularly at this one farm for years. The cops would show up, but there was no noise ordinance, so they usually left after asking us politely to turn down the volume.

Then Dddonnie bought an old UPS step van that's painted black. We showed up to set up the equipment in it, & suddenly there were dreadlocks & sundresses running in every direction. We looked at each other, puzzled.

We later found out they all thought we were driving a SWAT team truck! They were running for the hills, in a literal sense. Got a good laugh out of that one.

Eventually, the police kept after the owner of the farm until he simply had to stop hosting the festivals. Damned shame, that.

Hahahahaha
Very funny Phil! Very funny.

We had those hippie fests regularly at this one farm for years. The cops would show up, but there was no noise ordinance, so they usually left after asking us politely to turn down the volume.

Then Dddonnie bought an old UPS step van that's painted black. We showed up to set up the equipment in it, & suddenly there were dreadlocks & sundresses running in every direction. We looked at each other, puzzled.

We later found out they all thought we were driving a SWAT team truck! They were running for the hills, in a literal sense. Got a good laugh out of that one.

Eventually, the police kept after the owner of the farm until he simply had to stop hosting the festivals. Damned shame, that.

There's no way I can qualify any gig as the best gig. There were great moments from a bunch of gigs over the years. We played a street fair in New Jersey and played a perfect version of Muddy Water's Close To You (not the Carpenter's Close To You). I remember the people just stopping in front of the band with this look of awe and the thunderous applause at the end. Some of the disc golf gigs have been extremely fun. I've been involved with the disc golf community for years running the course in olathe, Kansas. Hundreds of disc golfers never knew I was in a band and are shocked when they hear me play and especially sing, as I am rather soft spoken and have a singing voice that is surprising to many. Once in a while you play a gig where everything clicks. The sound is right on, the performance is right on, and everybody is into it. You wish you could bottle those gigs and repeat them at will. Hopefully the more gigs you do the better you'll sound. At least that's the goal...

The best gig that comes to mind was a couple of monthes ago. A local farmer has a hunting camp. The first weekend of squirrel season they have a huge party every year. Been doin it for close to 20 yrs now. We got hired. They have a covered pavillion we played off of. The weather was perfect t-shirt weather. We played from 9 til 1:30, then this big fight broke out. We stopped playing. After all the bad folks left we still had around 60 people hanging around. A lot of them were campers. They said we want to dance. We keep a drawer full of disco cds in our rack unit. We turned it into a big disco even turned the lights out on the dance area. All the band members got to dance and hang out and have a great time. It was 20 minutes from home I had nowhere to be the next day. A couple of our members were camping. So we kept the pa on playing dance music til 4 am. We would line up and folks would go down the line dancing like you see. As a band I think it was the funnest gig I can remember. O yea our playing part was great also. We had 100 or more people dancing all night,it didnt matter what we played. But it was a well paid gig, we played great and sounded great outdoors, which I hate doing, but the temp was right, you didnt sweat. Our monitor mix was perfect, the out front sound was great and the crowd was rocking from the time we started til we finished, which doesnt happen often ussually between 11-1 you have everyone dancing but early on its ussually just looking at each. Did I mention all the food they had cooked, jello shooters and they took care of us and just treated us like the kings we are HA HA

Squirrel Camp gigs rule, plus Darryl the farmer has already booked us for next year and he and his crew come to our gigs all the time.

I just found this by viewing Unanswered posts. What a funny story and while it isn't the same thing something similar happened at an illegal firework party I was at some time ago.

Motorhead I think would be mine. Been to many a Genesis concert so I'm giving that to Motorhead.

Really good post. Pity it got missed.

let jump on spmethin togeather it would be rock and hip hop combined

We just finished a gig that was rock and hip hop combined.
Albeit they were all Christian acts. It was a fun show.

I detest disc golf.

The best had to be Tallent Night at Durty Nellies 1985. We were the 3rd act following the house comic Jim Wiggins (The Little Guy) a writer for Johnny Carson and some lame duets (animal house scene on the stairway JB smashes guitar) stuff.We had 20 min. to play. Hit them with Honey dont,Moon dance and Statesbouro blues. Everybody else supposed to play after us left. One duet team (think they were the dixie chicks moms bofore they had kidds) started throwing things. The owner asked us to keep playing (loud) the rest of the night and to come back Saturday. The wost gig HMMMMMMM, Ever play off of generatorzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz all night at a biker party and throw your guitar into the bonfire after doing GLORIA for the nth time at the end of the night all in the name of fun? You aint lived yet L O L