Strangest gigs

Tympanista

Junior Member
What's the strangest gig you've played? It could be the location, the people, the building you were in, etc.

I'm wondering what kind of out-of-the-ordinary places I could have my band play.
 
About 10 years ago, the band I was in at the time played at this quiet little pub on the campus of Rice University, which is like an ivy league kinda school here in Houston. Our bass player was actually a student there at the time and somehow he thought it would be a good idea to have us play there. We weren't death metal or thrash, but we sure as hell weren't smooth jazz either. 45 seconds into our opening song and the whole place completely clears out lol. Even the bartender left.

It was humiliating, yet really funny at the same time. We played another song and then packed up and left. To add insult to injury, we all got parking tickets from campus police.
 
Her Majesty's Prison, Beechworth.

We played outside in a courtyard surrounded by the high sandstone walls of the cell blocks. Best outdoor amphitheatre I ever played in. Awesome sound, awesome gig and believe it or not, awesome crowd. They were a very appreciative and very friendly bunch of blokes. We even invited some of the crims who told us they could play various instruments, up on stage to jam with us. Very surreal. Played there again but bad weather meant we were inside this time. Still fun, but just didn't have the same appeal for me as that first time. I missed that sound.

The other was sharing the bill with a Les Girls styled drag show. What a riot. Great days.
 
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Seniors home. 50's Rockabilly band
After first song 'C'mon everybody' (kinda the Led zep version) they insist we turn down. Old dude at the back told my wife (who was anonymous in the audience) "that damn drummer ought to learn to use brushes"
We did nothing, .....well maybe I switched to smaller sticks. 3 songs later they were all dancing on the floor, all eve, and forgot everything they were complaining about.
 
One time the band I was in played a gig for the city parks and recreation dept. It was inside at one of the parks multi-purpose buildings. We were setting up and were surprised.when a crew came in and started putting up a barricade of tables and chairs in front of us. Turns out that the event was for a group of developmentally challenged adults. When they arrived they went right up to the barricade and started jumping up and down, dancing, and generally having a great time. It felt like we were at one of those festivals back in the 70's. We had a great time. A couple of the girls asked who was single in the band and we all pointed to the keyboard player. He was hounded all night.
 
Got a call to do a gig at an amusement park once, which I thought would be cool. At the time I was playing in a Christian hard-rock band, all originals. We got there and it turned out to be a political fundraising function of some sort. They wanted us to play soft covers during dinner. We had never played a single cover together, not one. I thought to myself, who in the world hired us for THIS? And why did WE (by we, I mean the singer who did the booking) say YES?? It was excruciating.

As far as embarrassing, I played in a rock-n-roll cover band in high school that got hired to play at a church youth group dance. We usually played parties and school dances. Anyway, we're churning through our regular set - basically, all the songs we knew - and the bass player plays the opening riff to Van Halen's "Running With the Devil." Only as I was playing the bell of the cymbal leading up to the guitar line did it occur to me this might not be the best place to play this song.

Actually, the kids loved it, but the pastor of the church gave us an earful, and we weren't invited back.
 
I played a couple gigs with the funk band at a strip club. I wouldn't really call it strange... it was ya know... different that's fo sho. We played on one stage while the entertainers... uhm... entertained on the other stage. It was very difficult to focus on the music, I'll just put it that way. Pretty good paying gig. The money was OK too! ;)
 
A couple months ago, I played a corporate gig on the deck of a large sailboat just behind the main mast...
I was playing cajon with a pedal (right foot) and I had a tambourine strapped to my left foot...
and I was playing bass at the same time! Two other guys playing acoustic.
Strange but fun.

Neal
 
I grew up in Montana and started playing bars when I was 16....... Played my share of chicken wire bars (yep just like in the Blues brothers). But the strangest gig by far was one our lead singer had lined up back in the early 70's....... He didn't give a lot of details but we loaded up our gear and drove out to the middle of nowhere. Literally there was nothing around for miles. We topped a hill and came down into a small valley where there was a hippy commune. They had a great stage set up and a generator for power..... We played late into the morning hours....... Didn't get payed enough to cover gas but the girls there managed to take our minds off that........ Terry
 
Pretty much the same as Ian Ballard's story. Topless go-go joint in East Baltimore. What made it "strange" was that I was 14 at the time. (Pretty seedy that they let me in). It was my brother-in-law's band, and the drummer got arrested that day. I was the only one available to fill in. My parents drove me to the gig and stayed the whole time. There was a topless dancer in a cage right next to me. Needless to say, I got a stiff ... ummm ... neck that night. My first paid gig! I'll never forget that one!
 
This was in the mid 70's.Upper east side of Manhattan(NY City),the club was called Brandys and in was a popular place at the time for semi and pro acts alike.
We had opened for Manhattan Transfer a few weeks before.

Anyway,the owner rented out the back room occasionally,and booked a band for the entertainment as well.So my band is booked to play,we get there ,set up and come to find out the "party" that had booked the room was a gay motorcycle club.

No kidding.They did pay well and tiped even better,but the whole thing was a bit surreal.They left us alone,and just partied amongst themselves.

Steve B
 
I played the drum kit (barely visible to the right) in that pit, for free, about 30 nights/summer, for 5 summers:

bqrr62ceaemswy.jpg


The all-volunteer band plays 30's and 40's era "pop" music between acts and during intermissions.

It's a vaudeville-style melodrama and skit show that plays weekends all summer long, with proceeds that benefit the local Community Theatre: Summer Mummers

There's a tradition to throw popcorn at the villain and his minions, and then at the people around you during intermission. Popcorn sales alone brings in over $50k/season. That's the aftermath in the photo above.

I've moved on to other things so I no longer have the time to commit to the show. I do miss it, though.

Yes, popcorn salt does pit chrome.
Yes, people do like to try to bounce popcorn off your toms and cymbals.
Yes, it's the best seat in the house.
 
man THATS a lot of popcorn. How do they supply that much?

They start about 4:30 in the afternoon, and they have the mighty "Popper 9000" that they built. The first photo shows the poppers, that then feed into the big bin shown poorly in the second photo:

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(The funnel is the dead kernel detour)

and that's enough thread hijacking. Sorry.
 
Back in the early nineties, the band I was played in was asked to support a telethon...........................a "Jerry Lewis" type telethon.

They had several bands and we were third or fourth to play

The band before us was a bluegrass type and we were hard rock / 80's metal type band

we played "Back for More" by Ratt..........................started off quietly with an acoustic and then kicks in hard.................................need less to say, when the band hit the accent before the vocals, everyone in the studio jumped a foot............................it was pretty amusing. Man, I wish I had some footage of that...............here's a clip of the song, the accent I'm talking about is at the 46 second mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLkF3lpDD5M
 
I played a house party a couple of weeks ago, in which there was this crazy girl ranting about how she went to school for music production and engineering, and about how she apparently is good friends with Bill Murray. We crashed at the house that night, and woke up the next morning to find old photos on our windshields of goats, appearing to be giving each other oral, with her name and number written on the back. That was definitely one of my weirder experiences.
 
I have a couple...

One of the first gigs with my current band, a jazz quartet, we played a senior home. I had been to one before so I thought I know what I was getting into. This particular senior home was more of an assisted living type of thing. The entire audience were in wheelchairs of some sort. Very strange to look out and see that. We actually have a monthly gig at this place now. We get plenty of compliments...but no dancers.

My first ever strange gig was when I played in a rock band that did everything from oldies to Green Day. One issue with this band was that it had 2 different drummers...not 2 drummers playing at the same time...2 completely different drummers. We get to my first (and last) gig with this band at some 5K benefit run that also had a DJ booked. At least the DJ was kind enough to sort of rotate with us. Still really weird though. On top of that awkwardness, the band wanted me to play the set list that they had rehearsed with the other drummer. I knew something was wrong when he started playing my songs.

It was just the most embarassing and unprofessional thing to be a part of. The band really sucked anyway.
 
About 4 years ago we were asked to play at a church/town fair in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania..not sure why we said yes, but we did. About a 2 1/2 hour drive each way, finally get to the place and the set up is pretty good, outdoor pavilion/stage in a county fair type setting. We set up and then the other bands start to play. First was a highschool marching band..then a Barbershop Quartet followed by a Lee Greenwood wannabe singing to recorded music, had the mullet and theatrics to go with it. The older ladies in the audience loved him.

We go on and play our normal set - contemporary Christian rock, mostly originals. Crowd was polite but not overly enthusiastic. About halfway through we noticed that everyone in the front rows started moving back failrly quickly..thought we were too loud only to find out there was a rather large snake that came out from under the stage!

After we were done our lead guitar player and I were walking around and a young boy wearing overalls came up to us and asked us if we were "in that rock and roll band"...felt like a scene out of the movie Deliverance...all we needed were banjos!

Between the snake, the Lee Greenwood/Elvis wannabe, the middle of nowhere location I was pretty happy to be packed up and on the road home!

Rtliquid, I know how you felt at 14..I started playing in bars with my father's band when I was 13...not sure how they let me in but I did that all the way through college...

Played behind chicken wire to block bottles as well...what doesn't kill you definitely makes you stronger AND provides plenty of laughs!
 
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One time I played a gig with a Mapex Saturn kit while wearing a cape. It was a long night to say the least, and I woke up the next morning face down in a Holiday Inn Express bath tub, wearing only the cape. I had to send my mom to get my drums from the pub the next day because I was too embarrassed to ever be seen there again. Thanks, mom! You're my hero! :)
 
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