Told a punter to 'get to f...' for the time last night!

[geoham]

Gig in a small pub in Glasgow last night. We're out doing classic rock covers, with yours truly doubling as the sound man. A fairly merry looking punter (who had been dancing and appeared to be on his own) approaches the singer a few times, between songs and during solos etc. I assume he's making ridiculous requests and the singer is laughing them off. He then tries to talk to me while I'm playing and I obviously can't hear him! End of the song, he comes up and tells me I need to do something about the sound - we sound terrible. I'm surprised, as we have a few friends in who often offer such guidance when we play live - these friends are musicians and sound engineers themselves. They'd previously indicated the sound was good after a few tweaks.

Regardless, I'm always happy to take feedback and ask the gentleman to elaborate - 'I don't know, it's all kind of boomy and you need to bring the level down a bit'. Next song, I walk out front, no particular boomyness, though the keyboard is perhaps a bit more bassy than I'd like - I tweak the EQ a bit and continue. The levels were fine, as low as they could be to compete with unmic'd drums.

Same guy approaches again - 'You're levels are mad mate, you need to sort this. It sounds fine at the back, but terrible down here'. Unable to provide any kind of detail. I point out it's a small pub and with questionable acoustics, but we're doing the best we can, also he's standing about a metre away from the vocal monitor so probably hearing that. Similar thing happens again a few times, then he once more tries to talk to me mid-song and I tell him to 'get to f...', accompanied by the universal GTF thumb action! Punter gets his coat and leaves.

Very out of character for me - I'm always one to try and humour punters as best I can ('Sure, we'll try and do Abba for you...'). I felt slightly guilty, but also relieved that the annoying guy had gone. I doubt the guy had any clue what he was talking about - since most musicians wouldn't interrupt a band mid-song and would be able to give some level of detail about what they found distasteful. 

Other than this, it was a rocking gig - the manager loved it and very keen to have us back.

I'm sure many of you have had similar annoying punters that have led to you losing it a bit!

[BrunoBass]

I get mildly irritated with the people trying to talk to me mid song, people asking me if they we can sing happy birthday to their mate, people wanting to engage in conversation whilst we’re packing up etc. But no harm is intended so it’s greeted with a smile and good humour. 
 

However... we were doing a pub gig on a little stage recently. Drunk punter stumbles backwards into my mic stand, mic collides with my upper lip, drunk punter stumbles off oblivious. Not good, but hey ho. A short while later same drunk punter gets up on stage and stands between me and the guitarist whilst holding arms aloft before shuffling off with a little nudge from the guitarist. As he goes his foot pulls the power lead out of the guitarists pedal boards. Guitarist is furious. Two songs later and he’s back on the stage. Guitarist is ready to punch him, singer is asking into the mic where the hell the bouncers are, I’m still irritated from the earlier mic/lip incident. Our drummer then stops playing, stands up, grabs the punter by the shoulders behind and shouts ‘get the **** out of my space’ in his ear. Drunk punter turns around, looks genuinely shocked, and shuffles off. We didn’t see him again. 
 

You’ll always get drunk people out of control when you play busy pubs, but I’ve noticed a different kind of behaviour in recent years as cocaine use become more prevalent on the pub scene. Coke users are generally less violent or disruptive, but a lot more irritating. How things have changed; we were happy with snakebite and B&H on a night out in my day....

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 4, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Graham]

Yeah, you can always tell the coked up ones, they're the worst

[hooky_lowdown]

You should have told the guy to go stand at the back where it sounds fine!

 

[Lozz196]

I suppose I`m quite lucky being on the originals scene, the only people who get up on stage are generally there to jump off of it. Every now & then we might get a bunch of people who decide to help out on the chorus of a song or two - we don`t really need the help to be honest - but it`s always good-natured. I`ve only ever got the hump with one guy, years ago, who spat at us thinking that was what you did at punk gigs - I hit him straight in the eye with the headstock of my bass then had a fight with him later. I had less patience when I was younger.

[Bassfinger]

Telling someone to get to France? That's really out off line!

[odysseus]

I lift weights and look like an axe murderer, so they tend to bugger off if I start walking towards them.  I have largely the same effect on single ladies, unfortunately.... 😕

[geoham]

1 hour ago, BrunoBass said:

However... we were doing a pub gig on a little stage recently. Drunk punter stumbles backwards into my mic stand, mic collides with my upper lip, drunk punter stumbles off oblivious. Not good, but hey ho. A short while later same drunk punter gets up on stage and stands between me and the guitarist whilst holding arms aloft before shuffling off with a little nudge from the guitarist. As he goes his foot pulls the power lead out of the guitarists pedal boards. Guitarist is furious. Two songs later and he’s back on the stage. Guitarist is ready to punch him, singer is asking into the mic where the hell the bouncers are, I’m still irritated from the earlier mic/lip incident. Our drummer then stops playing, stands up, grabs the punter by the shoulders behind and shouts ‘get the **** out of my space’ in his ear. Drunk punter turns around, looks genuinely shocked, and shuffles off. We didn’t see him again. 

Sounds like we got off lightly!

[MacDaddy]

A couple of gigs ago a punter wanted to high five me, while I was playing! 🙄

 

 

[skankdelvar]

[Happy Jack]

On the other hand, some of these bozos are sources of great band stories for the years to come. 

Last night is a case in point. I'm playing DB in a rockabilly trio (at The Oddfellows in Apsley, in case you know it), just about to start the third set, when a mid-40s lady walks up to me.

Here we go, I think, do we play any Abba. She points at my DB and says, "Is that a harp?". 

OK, this is a wind-up, right? But she looks perfectly serious. No, I say, it's a double bass.

"A double bass?" says she, "I didn't know about them."

Yes, I reply, it's a double bass, and usually when people ask about it, that's because they think it's a cello.

"No", she says, "I thought it was a harp. What does a harp look like, then?".

I ask her if she's familiar with Guinness. She looks startled but says that she is. I tell her to picture the Guinness logo. "That's a harp", I say.

She frowns, looks around for support, there's none forthcoming and my guitarist is now wetting himslef laughing, so off she totters to the toilet.

 

[Pea Turgh]

Some idiot started throwing coins at the saxophonist at a gig once.  Her husband is the trombone player, so hilarity ensued, then we all helped turf the offending idiot out.

[colleya]

33 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

On the other hand, some of these bozos are sources of great band stories for the years to come. 

Had an excellent one a few gigs back. I'd developed a dead spot on the A string 1st fret about 3 songs into the first half. Thought it was the strings (pink DR neons - hey, it's an 80s band) so spent the break swapping over to my reserve (standard colour) set.

A couple of songs into the second half a punter wanders over: "Where's the guitar you were playing before? You should play that one, it was much better"

For the record, it wasn't the strings, just needed a little truss rod tweak. However it was a night for gremlins and I was already stressed out from trying to sort mystery IEM problems so wasn't thinking straight enough to spot it.

 

[gjones]

Drunken a**holes, don't we love them?

[T-Bay]

To be fair, a well tanked crowd are almost always better than a stone cold sober one.........

[kevin_lindsay]

I did a gig in Glasgow bar where one of the audience stood to the side of us while we were playing our first set, while nodding along with a serious look on his face. He did this for another couple of numbers, the sauntered off. 

Two songs into our second set, he reappeared, this time with a black padded holdall type thing. He then unzipped it and produced.. a saxophone!!! He then proceeded to parp along with us on the number we were playing, while us in the band were looking at each other quizzically. Turns out we all thought he must be a friend of someone in our band. 

Wghen the song finished, he put his saxophone bag into his holdall thing, and then disappeared out of the bar! 

All very odd!! 

[Woodinblack]

2 minutes ago, kevin_lindsay said:

a saxophone!!! He then proceeded to parp along with us on the number we were playing, while us in the band were looking at each other quizzically. Turns out we all thought he must be a friend of someone in our band. 

We have that problem, but to be fair, he is the singer, so we just let him get away with it.

 

6 hours ago, geoham said:

He then tries to talk to me while I'm playing and I obviously can't hear him!

I often get that -- i have IEMs, I really can't here, and odds on I don't care. And TBH, even without IEMs my hearing isn't great for drunk audience members in the middle of a song.

But the worst thing, in this little bar, this woman who had insisted on standing right to the side of me where I had been having to lean backwards to not hit her with the bass (and failed to avoid her a couple of times), she had wandered off, then came back later and yelled something in the middle a song I was both singing and playing bass to, so I ignored her, then she tried again in the instrumental part, so I yelled I couldn't hear her as I had earphones in, so she went behind me and pulled my earphone out of my ear to tell me that the woman the other side of the bar had been nasty to her.

I am sure it wasn't anywhere near as nasty as I got at that.

6 hours ago, geoham said:

then he once more tries to talk to me mid-song and I tell him to 'get to f...', accompanied by the universal GTF thumb action! Punter gets his coat and leaves.

I have never heard that expression before in my life, if someone said that to me I would just be looking at them blankly wondering what they meant!

[colleya]

49 minutes ago, T-Bay said:

To be fair, a well tanked crowd are almost always better than a stone cold sober one.......

Agreed. Miles more fun playing to a nicely oiled crowd who are up for dancing & singing. The other bits also come with the booze though, so within reason I try to smile and humour them. If you play pubs, you're going to get drunk folk. I'd much rather put up with the associated buffoonery than the soul destroying experience of playing to two bored barmaids and a passing cat.

[fleabag]

A few years ago  ( different band back then ) we were playing a poky pub called The Seacourt Hotel, at Botley, Oxford.

We could hear some prune at the back shouting when the music had some quiet bits, but just ignored him because he was unintelligble.

After getting no reaction, he wandered upto the rhythm git, and said in his shell like...

" You're a c*nt mate  "

Cue fighting Dave,  the demon devil drummer.  He shouts out sumfing from behind his monster kit, and almost at the same, our voxist shouts out sumfing equally shocking, who believe it or not, was a fighting Gypsy nutjob, although a lovely bloke, and had been banned from every pub in the town he lived in, and suddenly the prune goes quiet.

Later,  punchy   Dave remembers the guy from times previous, to do with work, and remembered the guy had a business and was fiddling the Taxman, so fighting Dave bubbled him to the aformentioned Govt. stinkpots dept.

Andy the Gypsy nutjob, although a lovely bloke, and  2 hits Dave, decided that it wasnt prudent to slap him silly, so the Taxman was the result

Oh how we chortled

Edited October 27, 2019 by fleabag

[Bassfinger]

Do bands these days not take burly minders along with them, if only to fight off the groupies?

[Woodinblack]

Dealing with the groupies is the singers job. Dealing with the drunks is the singers job. Hes the front man, we are just the eye candy.

[NikNik]

1 hour ago, kevin_lindsay said:

I did a gig in Glasgow bar where one of the audience stood to the side of us while we were playing our first set, while nodding along with a serious look on his face. He did this for another couple of numbers, the sauntered off. 

Two songs into our second set, he reappeared, this time with a black padded holdall type thing. He then unzipped it and produced.. a saxophone!!! He then proceeded to parp along with us on the number we were playing, while us in the band were looking at each other quizzically. Turns out we all thought he must be a friend of someone in our band. 

Wghen the song finished, he put his saxophone bag into his holdall thing, and then disappeared out of the bar! 

All very odd!! 

There used to be a guy in an Edinburgh bar back in the '80s who sat, bare chested like Bon Scott, on the edge of the low stage that bands played on and played air drums all night. He loved it if you were a Heavy Metal band and played along at 100 miles an hour. And if your drummer didn't give him a set of sticks to play along with, woe betide you!

[BreadBin]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

I have never heard that expression before in my life, if someone said that to me I would just be looking at them blankly wondering what they meant!

This surprises me, although to be fair it is more of a Scottish phrase.

[odysseus]

And beware the drunken old fart who comes lurching towards the stage clutching a harmonica....