Mismatched Disaster Gigs

[Bluewine]

7 hours ago, peteb said:

No aggressive drunks or acts of senseless violence to report. Shame really, might have livened things up...  

To be fair, even the drunks stumbling past the door outside when we were loading out at the end of the night were unfailingly polite!

Yeah,

Pete, that's something I didn't think about. There's a downside to a stone cold sober crowd.

I'm playing Hops & Leisure Friday night 8-12. I'm concerned, it's an hour drive one way ( very unusual for me ). It's a nice place, but the room is very large, we need at least 150 people to pack the place. And the bar is small and way back at the opposite end of the room. 

Blue

Edited April 8, 2018 by Bluewine

[borntohang]

I was playing keyboard in a pop-reggae band a few years back (well, we thought we were reggae but really we were a rock band with a passing offbeat acquaintance) and one of the doormen round town booked us to play at his nephew's christening. He wasn't offering much but he was a nice lad and we already owed him a few favours for 'well-timed assistance' around town, so we hop in the van and troll down to Brum for a play. 

We rock up outside this old community hall about 6PM to meet Mustafa, and after a minute he comes out dressed in this incredible full-length black and red leather robe, which makes him look like something out of Star Wars. That was Red Flag No 1. Red Flag No 2 was the polyrhythmic music playing at punishing volume inside the hall. We go inside only to find ourselves walking into the middle of a traditional Ghanian christening ceremony (or whatever the equivalent is) and that was the point where we instantly realise we are not going to go down well.

We're sat down over at the back of the room with the other men and given a plate of rice that nearly takes my head off (our singer causes a minor scandal by sitting with us instead of the women, but I think we got tagged with the 'musician' exemption) and Staf introduces us to approximately 350 members of his extended family, who are all absolutely lovely and just as totally baffled as to why we're there. The ladies are all sat in circle of chairs in the middle of the room with the kid in the middle, the men are sat around the edges, and the actual ceremony is being conducted by two MCs, one man and one woman, who will quickly become MC Tall and MC Short respectively.

They're taking it in turns to shout through a PA turned up so loud it's become a fuzzbox; there is a second PA playing music at a volume where my eyeballs are vibrating; I do not recognise a single tune all evening. Every few minutes MC Tall or Short will double up on the shouting tempo and the women all get up and pull huge wads of dollars out of their pocket, which they then throw at the kid. The ladies are all stunning with incredibly elaborate hairstyles and the men are wearing the same leather robes as Staf - this is clearly a big occasion and everyone is putting on their best 'look how much money we have' display, which explains the throwing of the dollars. We are under-dressed, hungover, and trying to make awkward chit-chat at the top of our voices.

Eventually the ceremony is over and we set up on the community hall stage, planning to make this the shortest set of our lives. We have a quick argument about what to play, which ends with us scrapping everything from our set that isn't the reggae material. Our singer is already nervous after the men's section faux pas and we've not been able to understand a single word of the ceremony so far so we have NO IDEA what is happening. We're gamely vamping away at our best imitation of an authentic roots band but are keenly aware that our material is aimed at a spot several thousand miles and a different hemisphere away from what the crowd is expecting, and it's just dropping into the abyss of stares. The crowd is polite but clearly expecting something which is not happening.

Second song in and we're contemplating dropping the rest of the set and legging it. Singer is visibly wilting under the stares of an entire flock of matriachs perched to stage right; I'm getting extremely interested in the top of the keyboard, which I have never examined so closely before. My nose is scraping the flat keys at points. Suddenly MC Short is on stage with us and grabbing the mic off the singer. What fresh hell is this???

We're expecting to be cut off unceremoniously, but instead she starts shouting at the crowd with a variation on her earlier theme. This lady is about 60 and barely four feet tall, but she can shout for God and with the backup of the PA she is reaching pitches that are melting my fillings. Every dog in a twenty mile radius is starting to howl. At her instigation, the entire front row of (stunning) women gets up as a unit to start throwing dollars at us - I'm beginning to have some very complicated feelings indeed. After she feels the crowd are sufficiently harangued we get the mic back and play another few songs which are met with respectful applause if not much actual interest, so we take the hint and finish up. We've picked up about 600 dollars in ones and have to carry them in a basket along with our gear. 

As soon as we finish the party is back on and everyone is off their chairs and dancing; hundreds of kids have appeared out of nowhere to do the old church hall skidding dance which apparently transcends culture! Huge baskets of homemade fried fish and curried rices have started appearing round the edges of the hall and we eat as much as we can physically carry back to the table. It's all delicious but so hot my hair starts curling and I spontaneously develop sunburn, which the kids all find hilarious. Staf is crazily happy that we played as he seems to think we are megastars rather than the chancers we are, and we're just happy to have been asked to do it so we decline our fee and take petrol money instead, reasoning that the story will likely pay for itself in beer over the years. We donate the dollars to the kiddo as a gift because we're all fairly drunk on Star Beer at this point and getting them changed seems like hassle. Some of the stunning girls from earlier are starting to give us the eye but my daddy taught me never to hit on a girl when A) you're at someone else's family occasion and B) her daddy is roughly the size of a car, in the room, and giving you the death glare, so prudence becomes the better part of valour and we make a swift exit. 

In reality it wasn't actually that desperate considering we were playing to an audience who had absolutely no interest in what we were doing, but it was hell of a night at the time. Don't think I've ever felt so out of place before or since. The food sure beat the hell out of my family dos though! I'd do it all again just for another crack at that buffet, even if my fragile little English stomach meant I spent three hours glued to the toilet next morning...

Edited April 9, 2018 by borntohang

[ricksterphil]

On 02/04/2018 at 10:38, Bluewine said:

Nice !

Blue

 

+1. You guys are good!

Edited April 9, 2018 by ricksterphil

[cheddatom]

4 hours ago, borntohang said:

I was playing keyboard in a pop-reggae band...

One of the best posts I've ever read on Basschat, thank you! 

[borntohang]

11 minutes ago, cheddatom said:

One of the best posts I've ever read on Basschat, thank you! 

I didn't mean to write quite such an essay! I have some videos around somewhere but was busy trying to sink into the stage floor for most of it.

A brief flick through the wiki page for Ghaanian cuisine tells me we probably tried Jollof rice, Gari, and Koobi plus a bunch of other stuff that was  likely family recipes, and now I'm hungry again. Cubes of cheese and those little sausages stuck in a pineapple just aren't the same any more really.

[Frank Blank]

On 05/04/2018 at 21:21, davepb24 said:

On the subject of mismatches I often wonder how Motley Crue's tour with Killing Joke as support went some years back

It was a hilarious disaster essentially.

[uk_lefty]

My mate and I had an acoustic duo called "Not the Hoople" around 2006. We played in a town where the big live music venue always had tribute acts on with rubbish names so we used to make fun of them saying they may as well be called "Not *insert band name*" So we were an acoustic duo doing all sorts of covers. Our poster had a photo of Mott the Hoople with a big red line through it and a strap line "Acoustic covers, originals, but definitely Not the Hoople". We thought we had made it pretty clear we were not a Mott the Hoople tribute act.

Some big white haired fellar in a black Mott the Hoople t shirt and leather waistcoat watches us set up, sits really close to us and looks around to see all of our 21 year old mates. He looks a bit confused. When we started to play he looked truly baffled. At half time he got up, came over to us and said "that was ok lads, not what I was expecting, but ok" shook our hands and walked off.

[uk_lefty]

Big mid-March: Dizzie Rascal supporting red hot Chilli's in 2012. All Dizzie's stuff is set up on stage being relentlessly bottled before he comes on, loads of people moaning. He came out and absolutely won the crowd, he was brilliant. But it wasn't a logical match at all.

[Rubbersoul]

When my old band split up a few years back, the singer and I decided we weren’t ready to ditch our material so we started going out with me on acoustic guitar and him still singing. Our material was fairly politically charged anti establishment type stuff, with a lot of it relating to but not taking any sides in our country’s (Northern Ireland) violent past. We’d played a couple of gigs that we weren’t sure about but the least appropriate was when we were asked to play in the Officers’ Mess in Palace Barracks. We thought it a bit odd but were assured that they’d love us and that we didn’t need to change anything in our set. Boy was that bad advice! We’d just finished playing a particularly charged tune called The Vacuum and had about another 5 tunes to go when we were abruptly told that we’d run out of time! Couldn’t wait to get out of the place! Still got paid though, which was nice.

[chris_b]

Mismatched and disastrous gigs? I've done a few.

We were a Chicago blues band and the brides father booked us for his daughters wedding. Apparently he thought we were great! We spent the night playing in an empty room and they all stood chatting in the car park.

We played in the Ladbroke, a pub now long gone, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday and brawls just like in a John Wayne western would regularly break out! We were so surprised and shocked at the first punch up we stopped playing. The landlord rushed up shouting, "Keep playing or they'll turn on you!" We played right through without stopping after that.

We were playing in the Officers club on a US Air Base in Germany in 1971 and a Captain got up to sing with the band. He was great. The best voice I've heard but we were fired on the spot. The other officers wouldn't accept him singing with our white girl singer. . . because he was black!! They complained to the club management and threatened us and our gear, ffs!

We were playing the Windsor Castle, Harrow Road and the singer didn't show so the 3 of us decided to carry on. We played a few instrumentals, all sang (badly) and asked if anyone in the audience could sing. A guy in a suit got up and sang a version of Little Richard's Long Tall Sally in the style of Stanley Unwin (Google him). Then a girl got up and offered to do a strip to Green Onions. Well we thought she was a she! He was actually going through gender reassignment and while he had real boobs added still had the meat and 2 veg. That was a very enlightening 10 mins and the moment when he/she whipped off her knickers has stayed with me for the last 40 years. 

Edited October 5, 2018 by chris_b

[chris_b]

. . . oh, yes. . . then there was our brief and disastrous involvement with Don Arden.

The drummer in our school band wanted to be famous so somehow he got us a week's worth of gigs with Don Arden. After 7 gigs in 7 days we discovered we'd been added to the long list of bands ripped off by Arden and his mate Ron King.

[uk_lefty]

4 hours ago, chris_b said:

We were playing in the Officers club on a US Air Base in Germany in 1971 and a Captain got up to sing with the band. He was great. The best voice I've heard but we were fired on the spot. The other officers wouldn't accept him singing with our white girl singer. . . because he was black!! They complained to the club management and threatened us and our gear, ffs!

Unbelievable that ignorance like that ever existed.

[chris_b]

7 hours ago, uk_lefty said:

Unbelievable that ignorance like that ever existed.

You'd better believe it. That's why "taking the knee" is so important and why the Right are so keen to misrepresent it's purpose.

The Centre for Civil and Human Rights Museum in Atlanta, documenting the Civil Rights struggle, will bring tears to your eyes but when you meet this attitude face to face it is truly shocking.

On the same tour, in the early 70's, in our German hotels we met several ex-Nazis. One in particular still sends shivers down my spine.

Civilisation is a very thin veneer. No matter what happens in your life, always, always, always be grateful you live in the UK.

 

. . . and now back to our regular programming.

[Low End Bee]

3 stick out. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to match a high speed noisy new wave punky stuff &...

A Crosby, Stills & Nash tribute - Disaster. Felt like uniformed cops at Woodstock.

Gloomy 80s goth guyliner multi band night - Not too bad in the end. Even the undead need a little light relief I guess.

Jazz funk fusion 11 piece - Worse than the CSN&Y debacle. A genuinely confused audience who didn't seem to like either band.