Band escapades

Hmmm...maybe.

Being Canadian, you may recall the days of the FLQ (anglasize to Front to Liberate Quebec). Lots of bad stuff happened. This may or may not be related.

My band was booked into a small lumber town in northern Quebec. All our songs were in English. Somebody convinced the owner to book a French singer. She showed up with friends, but no band, and sheet music for one song. I was the only one who could read music, so I gave it a shot. It was terrible. We started playing our set and the audience didn’t really care that we sang in English.

We did 4 sets between 9pm and 2am. The bar sold lots of booze. People laughed, danced and had a good time.

After the show, the singer talked to me about some of her Montreal friends. The next week, the place burned to the ground.
 
Oh heck yes, I’m glad camera phones didn’t come about until early 2000’s, I’d have been in so much trouble!

I don't know what you'd be worried about. If we'd had phone cameras back then, the quality would not have been what it is today, so all the things you fear would look like

b59c7fd25310892.png
 
So it was about 1997.

We had a gig about 100 miles from home for the Ladies Netball Association.

It was a Dinner/Dance and awards evening.

It was bizarre because there wasn’t a guy in the audience.

I should mention that we travelled to the gig separately and as I arrived I was met by the other guitarist and bass player. I thought it was weird, because normally I was never greeted outside the gig.

They told me that Stu (the other guitarist) had left both his guitars outside his house and there was no way that he was going to get back there and back to the gig in time.

Luckily I had brought two guitars.

So all went well with the gig.

As the drinks flowed, we had more of the audience dancing on the stage with us than on the dance floor, which was of course terrible as most were athletic and gorgeous.

The funny thing is that if we had been a bunch of girls performing for an all male audience, some of the behaviour would not have been tolerated.

Anyhoo. It was pack up time.

The gig was up a huge flight of stairs. So I parked my car near to the door and brought my gear down bit by bit. Locking the car each time, as I was safety conscious.

On my last trip, I opened the fire door and stepped outside to see a young couple making out on the bonnet of my car. I coughed loudly and they apologised and moved off.

I went upstairs to say my goodbyes and went back to my car.

The exit was between the back of a bunch of buildings, restaurants, shops, bars etc. There were delivery entrances to a lot of the businesses. The sort that a truck could pull up to and the driver could roll a cage of stuff into the premises.

So I turn a corner, my headlights pick out a pale white bum moving backwards and forwards a some rate and a pair of legs, one either side of the bum. Yes it was the same young couple. Luckily for them (and me) they’d found somewhere else other than my car.

It gave me something to laugh about on the journey home.

It was a bizarre evening though.
 
So it was about 1997.

We had a gig about 100 miles from home for the Ladies Netball Association.

It was a Dinner/Dance and awards evening.

It was bizarre because there wasn’t a guy in the audience.

I should mention that we travelled to the gig separately and as I arrived I was met by the other guitarist and bass player. I thought it was weird, because normally I was never greeted outside the gig.

They told me that Stu (the other guitarist) had left both his guitars outside his house and there was no way that he was going to get back there and back to the gig in time.

Luckily I had brought two guitars.

So all went well with the gig.

As the drinks flowed, we had more of the audience dancing on the stage with us than on the dance floor, which was of course terrible as most were athletic and gorgeous.

The funny thing is that if we had been a bunch of girls performing for an all male audience, some of the behaviour would not have been tolerated.

Anyhoo. It was pack up time.

The gig was up a huge flight of stairs. So I parked my car near to the door and brought my gear down bit by bit. Locking the car each time, as I was safety conscious.

On my last trip, I opened the fire door and stepped outside to see a young couple making out on the bonnet of my car. I coughed loudly and they apologised and moved off.

I went upstairs to say my goodbyes and went back to my car.

The exit was between the back of a bunch of buildings, restaurants, shops, bars etc. There were delivery entrances to a lot of the businesses. The sort that a truck could pull up to and the driver could roll a cage of stuff into the premises.

So I turn a corner, my headlights pick out a pale white bum moving backwards and forwards a some rate. And a pair of legs, one either side of the bum. Yes it was the same young couple. Luckily for them (and me) they’d found somewhere else other than my car.

It gave me something to laugh about on the journey home.

It was a bizarre evening though.

You should have rolled down the window, tapped the horn, and yelled, "See? I'm horny, too!"
 
So it was about 1997.

We had a gig about 100 miles from home for the Ladies Netball Association.

It was a Dinner/Dance and awards evening.

It was bizarre because there wasn’t a guy in the audience.

I should mention that we travelled to the gig separately and as I arrived I was met by the other guitarist and bass player. I thought it was weird, because normally I was never greeted outside the gig.

They told me that Stu (the other guitarist) had left both his guitars outside his house and there was no way that he was going to get back there and back to the gig in time.

Luckily I had brought two guitars.

So all went well with the gig.

As the drinks flowed, we had more of the audience dancing on the stage with us than on the dance floor, which was of course terrible as most were athletic and gorgeous.

The funny thing is that if we had been a bunch of girls performing for an all male audience, some of the behaviour would not have been tolerated.

Anyhoo. It was pack up time.

The gig was up a huge flight of stairs. So I parked my car near to the door and brought my gear down bit by bit. Locking the car each time, as I was safety conscious.

On my last trip, I opened the fire door and stepped outside to see a young couple making out on the bonnet of my car. I coughed loudly and they apologised and moved off.

I went upstairs to say my goodbyes and went back to my car.

The exit was between the back of a bunch of buildings, restaurants, shops, bars etc. There were delivery entrances to a lot of the businesses. The sort that a truck could pull up to and the driver could roll a cage of stuff into the premises.

So I turn a corner, my headlights pick out a pale white bum moving backwards and forwards a some rate and a pair of legs, one either side of the bum. Yes it was the same young couple. Luckily for them (and me) they’d found somewhere else other than my car.

It gave me something to laugh about on the journey home.

It was a bizarre evening though.
I once had the pleasure of making uncomfortable small talk with the mother of some groupie our drummer was (loudly) banging in the van on the busy street in front of a club in Oregon.

I should clarify that it was only uncomfortable for me. The mom just acted like it was no big deal to listen to her daughter getting it on in public with a dude who looked like Frank Stallone.
 
I once had the pleasure of making uncomfortable small talk with the mother of some groupie our drummer was (loudly) banging in the van on the busy street in front of a club in Oregon.

I should clarify that it was only uncomfortable for me. The mom just acted like it was no big deal to listen to her daughter getting it on in public with a dude who looked like Frank Stallone.

Awkward!

Classy Bird.
 
Hmmm...maybe.

Being Canadian, you may recall the days of the FLQ (anglasize to Front to Liberate Quebec). Lots of bad stuff happened. This may or may not be related.

My band was booked into a small lumber town in northern Quebec. All our songs were in English. Somebody convinced the owner to book a French singer. She showed up with friends, but no band, and sheet music for one song. I was the only one who could read music, so I gave it a shot. It was terrible. We started playing our set and the audience didn’t really care that we sang in English.

We did 4 sets between 9pm and 2am. The bar sold lots of booze. People laughed, danced and had a good time.

After the show, the singer talked to me about some of her Montreal friends. The next week, the place burned to the ground.
Cultural differences can make for some interesting gig experiences. My Rush tribute band was booked for a gig in a smallish rural town in Quebec back in the late 90's. This was a gig where we had to bring in our own sound and lights guy and gear, in addition to all the instruments you can imagine are required for a Rush tribute show. We get there early (like suppertime) so we can get the PA, lights and monitor up before the gear. Unfortunately, there is some small-time beer-league football team having their year-end bash and they wouldn't let us have the stage until they were done their shenanigans, which involved chugging pitchers of beer on-stage (one guy succeeded long enough to puke it all back in the pitcher immediately after chugging - fun times).

Finally around 9:00 pm we get the stage and start setting up lights and sound, and didn't get to the drums till after 11:00. The audience assumed we were from out of town, not knowing that I am a local Francophone born and raised. Through the entire load-in and setup, they made disparaging and deliberately loud remarks in French, not knowing that I understood every word but just played dumb. Finally at 11:30, the head clown of the football team came up to me and started complaining in broken English about how long it was taking to get the show started, and I just whirled on him and let him know in French (with all the choice words I could muster) that if they'd let us have the stage earlier like we asked, we would be playing now, and we'd start once we were damn well ready. We did not play there again :).
 
I have a number of stories but this one still is the one that I think of first when I am remembering things that happened at gigs.

We were playing this place that is a restaurant that has bands there on the weekends. During one of our songs a woman walks over to a bar stool that is straight out across the dance floor from the band and pulls it to the side of the small bar there. She then proceeded to set on the front edge of it and started pulling her dress up her legs. She pulled it all the way up to her waist and then opened her legs to show us that she had no panties on. The bass player and I both saw it right away. Our wives were both there too. The singer didn't see it.

When we finished the song the bass player and I turned around and faced the drummer. The singer turned around as well because he thought we may be playing a song that wasn't the next on the list. I told him to pull his mic down so what I said wouldn't go out on the PA. I told him that when we start the next song to look where the bar in front of us was on the left side. We started the song and he looked over there and saw her in all of her glory and got tongue tied and started tripping over the words of the song and could hardly get the words out. The rest of us started laughing at him. She stayed like that for about three songs. I think that was the best gig of his life.
 
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