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DJs are sods for taking up all the space; I've had a few interesting experiences.....
Saturday night had the usual pissed up smokers in the doorway.. only lightened by the landlord (thinking he was alone) letting off a superhuman fart that echoed around the car park like an explosion. The look on his face when he saw me was priceless. Good gig though.
It was an audition to play Glastonbudget festival. There were, IIRC, six bands on the bill.
We fought least hard not to be last, so that's where we ended up on the lineup which was decided entirely by the medium of bands staring sullenly at each other and declaring when they had to be up the following morning.
We ended up going on at 12:30am on what was by this time Monday morning. Everyone was gone. The other bands had packed up and left after their respective sets. The audience had never existed in any meaningful sense; certainly anyone any other band had brought with them had long since vanished. The Judge, who's job it was to decide who would "win" on this lineup and go on to play the festival, had left just before midnight.
We played our set to the sound guy, who left the room after the first song to presumably go and get some sleep, and a lady who was cleaning the venue - a totally empty room, therefore, other than someone mopping the dancefloor in front of the stage and sweeping the bar clean. We finished, packed up and went home.
I got back to my house in Rugby at about 2:30am and just sat there on the drive for 10 minutes, staring at the sky, wondering why the fuck I'd bothered with all that and putting off the moment I'd have to load my drums into the garage. Yes, I was the drummer, so intersperse this story with lots of heavy lifting. I *nearly* gave up on playing gigs that night, and I was pretty groggy at work after 3 hours' sleep.
Funny thing is, two years later in my next band we auditioned and the festival organiser actually ran up on stage and announced we were the best band he'd seen. We ended up playing the thing 3 times, and I can tell you now...
It was a total waste of time.
I think this story is a neat metaphor for gigging in an originals band, to be fair.
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The other band were furious with us. Especially as the students preferred our mayhem to their note perfect renditions of Mustang Sally, Brown Eyed Girl, etc.
Our bass player - who was Spanish - was so upset he left the band that night.
Whoever it is, make yourself known and correct/validate the story pleaseeeee! It's my favourite!
Everything ran about 4 hours late. We'd been due on at 10pm, so when it got to midnight and we were introduced to the band going on after us ASKING TO SWITCH BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO GO HOME BEFORE 3AM (!) we were quite happy to give them our slot. At which point we put our shit back in our cars and fucked off home.
I don't think the organisers even realised we didn't play.
Quite special, that one...
There was an aggressive dog that wanted to kill us.
Half a dozen friends came to see us, but the pub took their money and sent them upstairs to where a different band were playing, so they thought they were at the wrong venue and went home.
Afterwards, the pub turned all the lights off so we had to cart our gear in pitch darkness down a dogshit filled alley at the side.
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Times not on our side so I think fuck it I'll get in the van in my boxers and hang em out the window to dry on the way to the gig. This was actually working out pretty well until I thought it was safe to jam em in the window so I could roll a fag. Unfortunately the window let me down and doing 70mph up the A27 Chichester bypass my jeans vanished from the window into the night !
I ended up doing the gig in a pair of the sound guys old jeans which had been abandoned in the van because he had been sick on them .... they were several sizes too big and smelt like a bag of arsehole
I lost the power to my pedalboard halfway through Hard to Handle due to the bass player kicking my adaptors off the side of the stage. I was on my hands and knees de bugging the problem when my pint got knocked over and my legs got soaked in lager. I stank of yeast and beer.
At the same venue (outdoors) we had some pissed lads stood on the beer garden wall jump down and dent our drummer's car bonnet on the other side. It had to be a 6ft drop. We didn't realise it had happened until we packed the cars up.
Our drummer left his van parked blocking a taxi rank and had to run out to move it mid gig. Luckily this only took 5 mins but the police were not impressed.
Regarding the driving to a gig stories, I once agreed to take a mate's band from Northampton to The Clarendon (Hammersmith Broadway) for a gig, as I worked for Kenning Car Hire at the time and I managed to borrow a minibus for the night.
I had to pick it up from a local garage who did lots of repairs for us because the last person to hire it (probably Motorway Maintenance) had wrecked the clutch. I was told to tell my boss "it's working, but only just, if it breaks again it'll need a whole new clutch".
Having loaded the band and gear into the bus we set off, and the clutch packed up before we'd even left town. . . but as the bus was still driveable I decided it would be a laugh to carry on (I was 19 ) so we did. The motorway was fine (changing gear was a matter of revving the engine a little and holding the gear lever until it dropped into gear, so wasn't too bad).
The hardest bit of the journey was getting round the North Circular in rush hour - every set of lights on red was approached slowly in the hope they'd change by the time we got there. We only had to stop once, which, after stalling, involved putting it in first and starting it in gear to get moving again.
Having got the van unloaded it was dumped down the side of the pub until after the gig (which still pains me as I stayed with my mates instead of watching The Ramones upstairs). Once they'd finished I had to jump in the bus and get someone to stop the traffic while I reversed out on the starter motor.
We got back out of London without drama and the only other problem was that it started raining on the M1 and a couple of times the wipers and lights cut out completely (I kept going), fortunately not for long
We made it back and I left the bus outside the garage, so it could have a new clutch fitted.
He popped over one night and asked me what I was up to on Saturday night. “Not much” I said - “Good, then we are running a karaoke gig 75 miles away”
Saturday came, and we headed over to run the karaoke night in the dodgiest pub I’ve been in for some time.
I ended up singing “ooh aaah just a little bit” as a warm up to the two people who showed up.
Just as we were getting bored, about 50 people seemed to show up out of nowhere - they didn’t want to sing, they came to see the local hero. He turned up 10 mins later dressed as Elvis and looking like Les Dawson in drag. He did a dozen Elvis numbers and then we headed home... sheesh!