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Whats the most ridiculous thing you have been asked for on stage?


ubit

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Playing an originals gig in an unsuitable venue and our drummer was struggling with his kit sliding on a tiled floor. Guitarist was trying to help by turning around and putting his foot against the bass drum.

A whizzed middle aged lady walks onto the stage, taps him on the shoulder, points to the audience and shouts "the audience is over there can you look at them?" 

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7 minutes ago, geoham said:

Once we had a guy literally screaming “play f-ing catholic songs - this is O’Neil’s”, getting progressively more agressive. Thankfully he was eventually removed by security!

Lucky I have never been to one of those, I wouldn't know what a catholic song was!

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This was actually rather sad.

We'd been asked to play at the wake of a member of a bike club - Mrs Zero and I knew quite a few members of the club from my outlaw days but not the guest of honour. Anyroadup, pretty near the end, the son of the recently departed asked us for a particular AC/DC/song which none of us knew. We explained that we didn't know it. He kept asking, offering us £50 if we played it. I think we finally played another AC/DC song that was in our repertoire.

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Years ago, I was doing this regular Sunday lunchtime residency thing at a pub in Hackney.  Let me cover the specifics; we're set up in the corner of the pub (The Cat and Mutton), three piece band, I'm sitting on a barstool, playing root notes doing covers (shudder), a 90 minute set in exchange for money, beer and a free lunch.

One Sunday, there was some jostling at the bar over chicken wings and a fight breaks out.  Now when I say fight, I mean a fight.  It seemed the pub was full of two factions, both of whom were just itching to get it on and I'd say the place literally erupted and 90% of the clientele were punching the crap out of each other.

Furniture is flying, people are on the floor hitting each other, glasses flying.  It was like a brawl out of a cowboy film.

Anyhow, let's get back on point.  We're still playing.  I'm laughing at the incredulity of what is going on, when I stand up and push my stool back closer to my amp to give the fight more room to breathe and from a selfish perspective, to offer protection for my gear.

At this point, a bloke comes over to me and shouts, 'Excuse me mate, are you using that stool?'

I just do this shrug and nod thing, he picks the stool up, runs into the melee and breaks it over someone.

So there you are.  The most ridiculous thing I've been asked is whether I was still using a stool.

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6 hours ago, tauzero said:

This was actually rather sad.

We'd been asked to play at the wake of a member of a bike club

On a number of occasions we've turned up at the Dog and Duck ready to rock the place, only to find a wake going on that the landlord omitted to mention. That is probably another thread though 

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Many years ago we used to rehearse the full band in a church hall, which was underneath the actual church ( it was built on a hill) We were giving it big licks at full volume when the church handyman came running down the stairs with his arms flailing. Stop, stop, there's a funeral going on up there!

We paid for the rehearsal time every week and no one had told us.

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2 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

At this point, a bloke comes over to me and shouts, 'Excuse me mate, are you using that stool?'

I just do this shrug and nod thing, he picks the stool up, runs into the melee and breaks it over someone.

Its nice to see that manners still exist in the middle of a fight though!

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2 hours ago, ubit said:

There was a pub we used to play regularly and there was a fight of some description just about every time we played. We used to launch into Eye of the Tiger whenever we saw one start.

We just had the one fight in a pub, a bit of a minor thing, one guy too drunk wanting to take anyone out. We launched into Saturday nights alright for fighting. It wasn't even gig ready then but seemed appropriate

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3 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

We just had the one fight in a pub, a bit of a minor thing, one guy too drunk wanting to take anyone out. We launched into Saturday nights alright for fighting. It wasn't even gig ready then but seemed appropriate

We didn't know the whole song. Just the recognisable intro was usually enough for anyone tuned in

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8 minutes ago, ubit said:

We didn't know the whole song. Just the recognisable intro was usually enough for anyone tuned in

Ours wasn't very good (one rehearsal) but it was good enough to amuse the crowd. And the guy got dragged off by a very annoyed and loud girlfriend.

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On 19/01/2019 at 21:31, Woodinblack said:

Lucky I have never been to one of those, I wouldn't know what a catholic song was!

When my old man was a student he used to do the folk circuit with an accordion duo plus percussion playing English trad. Now, Morris and other associated English musical forms have a long and glorious history that tends to get overshadowed somewhat by the fact the Celts wrote all the tunes you can get whizzed and roar along to, but there's a lot of landlords who see it all as the same diddly-dee nonsense so book whoever.

This evening in question they were playing in a particularly low-rent Irish bar in Northern England and going down fine (by which I mean everyone was too whizzed or uncultured to notice the difference) and were looking forward to winding the set up and getting to the drinking part of the evening (my dad used to describe them as a drinking club with a musical problem) until the end of the set when the landlord comes over:

"About to close up now lads, can you play the anthem for time?"

This wasn't in the plan but was a regular request back then so they decide on a key and off they go into God Save Brenda. Three bars in there's an almighty clatter as all the pints go down on the tables and as one the entire room is stood up glaring daggers. Landlord comes storming back up to the stage:

"Not that shite, the bloody Anthem!"

Cue muttered and frantic discussion on how to busk Amhran na bhFiann arr. for two accordions and sphincter whistle; in the end they meekly admitted defeat and made a sharp exit stage left. He wasn't sure how much of it was genuine and how much of it was just a setup to get a full night of free music with extra entertainment at the expense of the daft folkie students, but he wasn't about to test out any working theories...

 

Edited by borntohang
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Well after nearly 40 years of gigging and never having been subjected to any requests let alone ridiculous ones from the audience I finally get my first this weekend.

First thing to bear in mind is that the band are playing post-punk influenced originals with an unconventional line-up (Drums, Bass VI, Synthesiser and Vocals). So having just played our one and only cover song of the set (a disco'd up bass heavy version of "A Forest" by The Cure), a young lady strides up into the "stage" area and leans over to ask me if we can do something by Placebo!

I have to smile nicely and say that our previous song is our only cover and besides the next one is our last before giving the synth player the nod to start the opening bass drone for the song...

We appear to get away with it as the lay in question and her friend seem very keen on coming to see our next gig.

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a young American couple sat front row at our gig. We are a 4 piece, acoustic and electric guitars, drums and bass.

 

American:"woo wooo, play L.A. Woman"

 

oh, we are all original, not one cover

 

PS remember, no keyboards in this band.

 

Our guitarist "we just played that,and we don't do repeats."

 

rotfl

 

then there was how I met my ex.......setting up the PA for a Sunday arvo gig she walks up to me, puts her arms around my neck and said "take me home and $%#^ me"

 

"ummmm we're playing two sets"

 

I made the drummer speed up in every song, by the end of the gig we were doing Ramones versions of everything hehe

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1 hour ago, bazzbass said:

then there was how I met my ex.......setting up the PA for a Sunday arvo gig she walks up to me, puts her arms around my neck and said "take me home and $%#^ me"

"ummmm we're playing two sets"

I made the drummer speed up in every song, by the end of the gig we were doing Ramones versions of everything hehe

That's amazing!  I'm jealous...

You got to play two sets!  Awesome

Edited by lownote12
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2 hours ago, bazzbass said:

 

 

then there was how I met my ex.......setting up the PA for a Sunday arvo gig she walks up to me, puts her arms around my neck and said "take me home and $%#^ me"

She mistook you for the singer/guitarist right?!?!

Edited by scalpy
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2 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

When playing in a marble clad church turned wedding reception venue... "I think you need to turn down the reverb on your desk".

As you can imagine, the desk was running drier than... well... 

Idiots.

We’ve been asked to turn down the tempo.

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22 minutes ago, bazzbass said:

now you mention it, I was at the mixing desk at the time, she probably thought I was the sound guy lol, talk about having low standards lol

I’m my experience, sound-guys often have really attractive girlfriends. My theory was always that they are connected to the band/the event that is taking place but are out amongst the punters (as opposed to being stuck on-stage) whilst it’s all going on, thus affording them “first dibs”, so to speak.

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