Fight broke out at gig on Saturday

CaseOfAce

Fortunate that this is incredibly rare where we play.  
Halfway thru a number - caught sight of 2 blokes rolling on the floor at the far end bar area. Luckily it was all over in 10 seconds (if that) with no real injury done -  one escorted out and the other (?) deciding to smash up some tiles in the gents.
It's weird cos you suddenly sense the audience twigging on to the fact it's kicking off somewhere in the club.
Not a rough place either. It's not like there was metal fencing in front of the band as in Roadhouse...!

Doug Stanhope - "no one ever stopped watching a fist fight to go and listen to the band..."

RocknRollDave

Happened to me once. At a wedding gig!

Danny1969

Had seen  more fights at gigs than I can remember. People have been glassed, one guy stabbed and that guy returned later after we finished and shot his attacker with a sawn off shotgun. Pubs in the eighties, particularly in  Southampton could get pretty rough and no CCTV back then for them to fear. 

Roland

RocknRollDave said:

Happened to me once. At a wedding gig!

I’ve had a couple at weddings. Usually between family members who hadn’t met for years. Once between bride and groom, who then drove off in different directions, and left us playing to a nine year old girl and a woman who’d flown in from Norway. 

There was one pub gig where we had to stop three times, twice for the same domestic incident.

Jalapeno

RocknRollDave said:

Happened to me once. At a wedding gig!

Ditto.  The clue we should have clocked is that half the guests were wearing football shirts rather than suits !

Blueingreen

Some of the places we played back in the day, particularly in smaller towns, it was certainly not unusual for fights to break out.  A lot of guys went to the local Saturday dances with the attitude that they were looking for a girl but would settle for a scrap if they didn't get one.  Don't ask me to explain that mentality, because I don't get it either, but everybody knew a chunky minority of guys were like that, and the evidence of it was staring you in the face.

 Fortunately there was a kind of unspoken law that you did not attack the band.  Probably because that could have led to places being boycotted by bands, which could have killed off the Saturday dances.  It was a necessarly law, because guys in bands attracted the attention of of women.  Normally an out-of-town male attracting the attention of women would have been almost 100% guaranteed to lead to violence.  I'm absolutely not exaggerating.

I'm not saying bands were totally safe, I've been in a band that was attacked by locals, but it was extremely rare.

jpfamps

We had 3 women thrown out of a gig recently for fighting.

Quite a pile up on the dance floor.

We were pro though and kept playing.

trolley

We had a barmaid who chased a woman customer outside at closing time & battered the crap out of her. The doorman looked and wisely decided to leave them. I had to walk near them carrying my gear out.
Rough place Stoke!

mudslide73

We used to play a place in Cheadle Staffs where it kicked off every time. The first time we played there the bar manager said: "When it kicks off, just keep playing". Not if, but when   Usually the protagonists would be buying each other drinks by the end of the night.

Edit: I just looked it up and it got burned down.

Ossyrocks

I played a gypsy wedding once, the brawl mid second set was huge, about a dozen blokes all thumping crap out of each other, and a few women having a go as well. It was surreal as we were in a stately home, in a large and beautiful room with gilt framed portraits and antiques everywhere. We did stop playing, took our instruments and fled outside via the nearest exit. When it calmed down a bit we packed up and left. Fortunately we'd already been paid.

springhead

I heard an interview with Duane Eddy where he said he drove to a little US town and there was a banner across the main street saying “This Saturday - Come and Dance and Drink and Fight to the music of Duane Eddy”!  

Shrews

I can remember a video of Mud's 'Tiger Feet' playing on a video jukebox in the pub back in the Eighties and there were two sets of football supporters fighting in it. I've never see this particular video since on YouTube and just wonder if it go banned or something?

relic245

Played a gig near Wembley years ago.

Fight broke out, it was like a proper barroom scrap like you see in American films.

Basically it was one woman in the middle of the dance floor decking everyone in sight, men and women. We stopped playing.

When it calmed down the landlord came over and apologized and said, I hate it when my wife does that it's just not professional.

DB1

trolley said:

We had a barmaid who chased a woman customer outside at closing time & battered the crap out of her. The doorman looked and wisely decided to leave them. I had to walk near them carrying my gear out.
Rough place Stoke!

Yeah, @trolley - it could get a bit rough (we used to do the Potteries clubs most weeks) , but the only place that it really kicked off at was a place called The Blythe Spirit, not far from the Meir, if I remember rightly. It was 1985-ish, and our agent didn't mention that it was a type of miner's reconciliation evening. My recollection of the evening was that reconciliation was still a little way off.

Edit: in fact, this is it - looking almost as spick and span as I remember...   https://www.closedpubs.co.uk/staffordshire/stokeontrent_st3_blythespirit.html

Stratavarious

Had a few rough nights.. not too often but memorable. Best are when the lasses have a go at each other grabbing hair and scratching eyes.  Entertaining

BillDL

I used to help a drummer friend of mine cart in all his stuff to various venues when I had night off from work.  A lot of his work was last-minute fill in gigs covering for sickness, etc.  I recall one wedding that he played at where a massive brawl erupted between the extended families and guests of the groom vs the bride's that started half way through the first dance.  The groom's family were nearly all convicted criminals (although the groom himself was a hard working decent guy) while the bride's family were a respectable middle class family, so it was almost guaranteed that by the time alcohol had been consumed there would be a disagreement.  There were chairs being smashed over peoples' heads and backs, tables being turned on their sides and used as rams and shields to deflect flying glasses and bottles, and it looked like something out of a Wild West saloon.  I was out in front of my friend's drum kit trying to protect it and him from flying missiles and people fighting right in front of the foot high stage while he broke it all down and packed it away.  The bride and groom legged it out a side door and drove off.  The police arrived in force and arrested most of groom's family and some of the bride's family.  Surprisingly only two ambulances were needed.

One other instance of violence was when the same mate was filling in with a band that was doing some special event in the Ancient Order of Hibernians Social Club and the guitarist stupidly decided to play the melody of "The Sash (My Father Wore)" in between songs. 

p90fool

We've had a few, especially before I doubled our price for weddings, thus weeding out the real scrote ones. 

Some have been horrible (an 18-year-old lad was stabbed to death in front of the stage at Granville Casino) and amusing (two girls fighting on the bonnet of my car as I was loading out). 

Usually though it's just the traditional British martial arts, ie, pulling each others' jumpers and shouting "wanker". 

Hurling_Fruitmig

jpfamps said:

We had 3 women thrown out of a gig recently for fighting.

Quite a pile up on the dance floor.

We were pro though and kept playing.

Segue into Eye of the Tiger?

khaotic

Or Girls just want to have fun, or Sisters are doing it for themselves, or Saturday night's alright for fighting, or ...

Trude

Last time this happened to me, I was halfway through a solo version of Mr Blue Sky, which gave the punch-up a Guardians of the Galaxy comedy edge.

I finished the song in slightly muted style and then handled over to Spotify until things got back to normal. The first song up was Are You Ready For Love, which they clearly weren’t.

Makes me think there’s a place for a standard post-fight playlist. Give Peace A Chance would be a good start…

Dominic

I haven't played enough gigs over the years to have a fight situation but I went to a big pub gig years ago in a rough part of London (Edmonton ) and the band just played on but there must have been about 7 fights/brawls throughout the evening.
 I was at a Dire Straits Wembley gig circa 1987 and there was a fight in the row behind me . Security stopped it quickly.