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Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Gotta be some interesting stories about strange venues played...
Cambodian Prision Camp?
Bung's Leather Bar for Sexually Ambiguous Biker's?
Assisted Living For Seniors with Turret's Syndrom?
..... just gotta be some good stories out there.... |
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January 2004
Posts: 1225
Location: Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey | I played this engagement party for a friend of my wife's. My friend was a DJ at the time and he played CD's for part of the party and I did about an hour set. What I didn't realize was it was that her family was Greek and they wanted to hear Greek music. They brought their own Greek CD's for my friend to play and all of the older guys started doing their Greek dances. Meanwhile I'm waiting to do my set of Eagles, Dylan, Neil Young etc. By the way, this was my first paying gig, so I was close to soiling myself as it was. It turned out that when I did my set, the younger people at the party really enjoyed it and it turned out OK. There were some tense moments though. |
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Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | with the Greeks... love you OR hate you, either way, you're fu.....
Nope, can't go through with it. |
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December 2001
Posts: 10582
Location: NJ | I used to play in a coffee house by rutgers univ in camden. the building was the old college hall, before that it was a hspt the basement where the gigs were was the old morgue |
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January 2003
Posts: 146
Location: Germantown, MD | On a flatbed truck.
A candidate for state senate was trying to get himself known throughout the district he ended up representing. The plan was that he'd ride around in the cab of a decorated flatbed truck with a rock band (that would be us) on the back, playing to attract attention. At several places, the truck would stop, we'd play three or four songs, and he'd make a speech. At first, we just hung on for dear life while the truck was moving, but the campaign manager got the idea that we should play while we were moving because the truck wasn't going very fast. There was justice, though, because he ended up trying to hold the plug in the socket on the generator that was providing our power.
It was a long day. |
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March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | Once got involved with a bunch of other guys to be the "rock band" providing music for a runway fashion show at a local mall . . . .
. . . oh, did I mention that it was a lingerie fashion show?? . . . .
. . . that was a good gig . . . |
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December 2004
Posts: 2150
Location: Orlando, FL | Many, many years ago (and my wife still makes fun of me for it) I did musical back up for a mime! So really anywhere we performed was the weirdest. |
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November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | haha Haha HAHA HUH HA HUH HA HUH HAHUHAHAHUH
....playing in that damned glass box |
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November 2002
Posts: 1300
Location: Madison, Wisconsin | I think I've mentioned this before but I did a wedding on the rim of the Grand Canyon at sunrise once. Ever try to sing ANYTHING at sunrise? I had to spend an hour in the woods b4 the service singing as loud as I could just to get the cobb webs out from the night before. |
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Posts: 2150
Location: Orlando, FL | Sad, ain't it. |
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November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Tho it wasn't a gig, my friend Brian and I hiked down into the ruins (VERY ILLEGALLY) of Navajo National Monument very early in the morning under the cover of dark with guitars and played in one of the pueblo chambers. It was both very exciting and spooky...
We got back to camp before first light feeling jazzed and a bit guilty that we trespassed on a resricted and protected area.
We were very careful to do no harm or physical impact. But the sound and atmosphere were very cool. |
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November 2002
Posts: 1300
Location: Madison, Wisconsin | Jeff, sounds like the makin's for a reality TV show. They could send the entire production crew along with and pretend that there is nobody there but you. |
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Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Bill,
Missed the boat again, again.
Navajo Mountain Ruins |
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November 2004
Posts: 4413
| But were they ruins before you played your guitar in them? |
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November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | ....Wasn't the first house we brought down.
(and why we always play wearing helmets) |
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Posts: 604
Location: Tampa, FL | And I thought that was for personal defense against audience participation in the form of ripe produce... |
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Posts: 2150
Location: Orlando, FL | I thought that's what the chickenwire was for... |
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November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | ...that it serves multiple purposes, helps keep *overhead* down...
Zilly,
don't make me put you back in your box. |
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Posts: 2150
Location: Orlando, FL | The box protected me from the wind and the rope. ;) |
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December 2004
Posts: 2150
Location: Orlando, FL | At least I didn't open for the Puppet show, like Spinal Tap. |
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November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | :D
but they had a dwarf doing a jig around a very small stonehenge... |
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March 2005
Posts: 12754
Location: Boise, Idaho | I keep looking at the title and starting a response, but then realize that "it" means playing the guitar. No strange places for me. I don't do either "it" in public (much). |
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October 2004
Posts: 78
Location: Avondale AZ | My first day in the dorms at ASU I walked into the bathroom and there was a student playing his guitar in the tiled room outside of the shower stalls. The accoustics of the room were great. I got my guitar (which was a Yamaha) and joined him. Soon we were joined by four other guitarist and a crowd of dozens including women. This soon became a common band room
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Old Lver Jones |
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May 2002
Posts: 651
Location: Australia | Played in a number of weird locations over the years but one that springs to mind was a band gig for a Mormon graduation ball.
I had to submit a list of our songs and they red lined anything that sounded anyway sugestive or mentioned wine or women.
Songs like Tequila Sunrise, Lay Down Sally and Start Me Up were definate no no's.
It was weird because when we started playing the hall was empty but then all of a sudden a whistle blew and teenagers came from everywhere and started dancing.
....and at the end of the gig a young guy came up to us which often happens to comment the guitars or sound or something but not this time
"Hey are you guys Mormons ?" he said.
Let me say they were very nice people and it was quite an enjoyable gig. |
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February 2004
Posts: 2487
| I don't know how to post the way this Gig went???? But if ya got a few minutes it is worth it if you want a good laugh.
Enjoy
I was 16 and it also happened to be, exactly, my first stage experience along with most of the rest of us. We had about a dozen songs down pretty good and our first song we decided, this night, was to be Skynard's - "That Smell".
Now this is the sensitive part and I have to tell you now I hope I do not offend anyone on this site with this tale. It is only the truth.
The Gig was a dance at an old School that had been converted for use by the county as a facility for the "Mentally Challenged". We had been paid in full and at that time this was to be the first "Dance" ever attempted by the directors of this facility. So the communication was not very experienced on either end of the phone...... with that said.....
.....we set up for our extravaganza in the gym, while the clients who lived in housing all around the county started showing up in large vans and small busses. By the time we were ready to start there were some 300 or more mentally challenged individuals milling around and many standing and staring at the curtain across the stage. Now they were quite a handfull for the staff as this was the first time any of them had been to a concert, much less in a crowed gym altogether, like this. They had been told for many weeks prior, that this big Rock & Roll show was coming on this night. And this only added to the tension.
OK.... so.... here we are, all tuned up, and man we had one hell of a sound system. We had borrowed stuff from three other bands and I am not sure of the wattage anymore but it was fairly impressive for a first gig back in 1976-77??? Now just in case some of you don't remember the band scene from your youth we had friends and friends of friends hanging around and there was always one guy who wanted to do some fun roadie stuff like make huge flash pots and set up strobe lights.... you know, remember? Well this guy was pretty good because he had a long flash troth across the front of the stage and some big ass strobes rigged in back to flash the audience. He also had his buddy waiting at the light switch for the gym and a bunch of other suggestions but we figured this would be quite enough for our first gig.
Well I am sure you can guess what's coming.... Yep! Here we go..... The curtains open......... the strobes come on........and we hit that first chord (cranked to 10) in "That Smell" while we all rush to front stage to show off our practiced guitar moves with our long hair and perfectly polished guitars and new strings! and at precisely this same instant; all the lights go out in the gym and the massive flash pot fires up the stage like a nuke! Now with what lights we still had behind us on stage and the with the strobes flashing all we saw was 300 of the most confused, terrified, and screaming faces you could ever expect to see in one room.
Well we didn't know what to do exactly, we were shocked ourselves, but we wanted to rock the house ya know so we continued to play. The front 2 rows of the crowd dropped to the floor almost instantly in cunfused disbelief. and the rest of the crowd still standing looked like so many "deer in the headlights"...From what we found out later those in the back who ran and managed to escape, through the open doors of the gym, took more than a half an hour to find and bring back from the parking lot. So I guess without going into all the graphics of the crowds amazing and unexpected response and perhaps to offend anyone, who may have a family member afflicted with this terrible circumstance, I will simply state, I hope you see just how much we as a band had made a lasting memory of our first gig and still to this day when speaking of this event have to belly laugh at the response of our first crowd as professional musicians! I have to say I am proud to be part of a very rare breed of Musician indeed! We utterly terrified and shocked our first audience. And no real harm was done, no one got hurt, so as politically uncorrect as this story may be it is the truth and we did not cause these events through maliciousness. So it stands as the all time funny band story to this day for me.
Now we did manage to get through about a minute of that Skynard tune and they did let us play a few more songs at half volume. But, we had to aggree that there would be no more flash pots, no more strobe lights and we had to leave the ligts on in the gym. We never tried to get a gig at the "Center" again but we did hire the guy with the flash pot and the strobes for our next gig.
I just remembered... when we were packing to go later that evening we found a stowaway in the old truck we had for the equipment. I felt sorry for this guy, he was real old dude and kinda frail, but he wanted to go with us..... wherever that was? And he chain-smoked the three cigarettes he bummed from me before the staff came out and got him. Reminded me of the Cigarette incident in "One Flew Over The Coo Koo's Nest" I always felt like we turned the old guy in ya know??
So for what it's worth, there's my version of "The Strangest Place You've Done It"
Hope ya liked it
Randy |
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Where's the strangest place you've done it?
