Great "Saves"??

[jeffl]

Neonmoony reminded of this stuff... where some of the best stories from gigs have nothin' to do with how you played.

It reminded me of my first actual paying gig in 1964, as a fill-in vocalist ( I was in 8th grade- 13 years old ) for a folk music group that consisted of three brothers and one of their friends. They had one guitar with a DeAarmond soundhole pickup, and a mic plugged into a 2nd jack on a Magnatone amp that they all sang into.

One of the brothers got sick, and they asked me to fill in on baritone, singin' songs by the hot folk acts of the time. The guitar player & I got up to the gig ( a church youth banquet in a town about 250 miles away-- it actually paid great and they had houses for us to stay at overnite ), got the amp & mic set up and waited for the other guys to show up. When they got there, it was apparent that they had drank their way up; I was the only guy under 16 yrs. old, and they had gotten some liquor from somebody. We tore into a few songs and the drunks started makin' a few mistakes.. not bad, but apparent, so the two sober ones decided that we'd start actin' a little drunk and pretty soon the audience is laughin' their asses off. It turned out to be alotta fun.

After the entertainment, we all ate & sat through the awards part of the deal & the drunks sobered up. It turned out to be a great gig & nobody got hurt.

[NEONMOONY]

Good stuff!

[jbone1]

the first band i worked extensively with, we had a p.a. with powered speakers and the board was small and light. and easily forgotten. it was left behind one evening at the rhythm player's house, which was 40 minutes from the gig. we were mostly set up when he realized the brain for the p.a. was sitting on his coffee table, so he jetted off to get it.
this was a sort of rough little club. the owner had a trash disco dj who came in at midnight every night and the guy had a following, so we had to be finished and off the stage by 11:50. there was no time to wait for the rhythm player to return with the p.a. board, we had to jump off. we alternated between my harp mic and rig and just no amp for the vocals at all. lucky for us the gal who was doing half of the singing had some pipes! she stood flat footed and belted out most of a set worth of vocals.
meanwhile the owner is walking by us every 5 minutes. he stops when we're between songs and asks where the rhythm player is and why we don't have the p.a. working. which i explain we had an "emergency" and he's coming right back. the guy walks away disgusted and i start wondering if we're going to get to finish and get paid. finally the p.a. brain arrives between set 1 and 2 and we get rolling again. the owner never let up all night though, he kept coming over and shouting questions at us between songs. "what kinda crap was that???" sort of an attitude. the guy who'd booked the job told us to just not worry about the guy, he was "just a little coked up." at one point when i was coming out of the mens' room i walked by his little office and he had a pistol sitting next to a pile of money. i got scarce before he saw me.
so we get through the sets we'd been hired to do. 11:45 and we're about to tear down. owner comes over and says the his dj was not going to make it, could we play some funky stuff for his disco crowd. he agreed to up our pay if we did one more hour-long set, so we did. finally, 1 a.m. and we're done. we go to get paid and the guy tries to stiff us for the last set even though the crowd liked us and kept buying drinks and dancing.
he ended up paying us what he'd promised but when we went to leave, all 4 cars of ours had 1 flat tire each. as we were helping each other get tires changed the guy comes by and leans out his window waving a pistol and yelling at us to never come back, blah blah blah. which we never did.
about 6 months later the joint was razed top make room for a highway project. and good riddance!

[jeffl]

Wow! I hate clubowners who stiff people, and there's no template for the type of person who'll do that. I've met some seemingly classy owners who have no morals.