I'm not even going to share some of them! But...I'll start off with one that happened to a friend of mine - a saxophonist. he was on this Jewish wedding gig with some band and the drummer in that band had brought along some empty Tupperware containers so he could cop a bunch of the catered food.

Apparently in this particular Jewish wedding, there was to be a special, blessed loaf of bread that was to be "broken" in a special ceremony of some kind at some point.

Cut to the chase...

The drummer's Tupperware containers were full. Next thing you know, the Rabbi asks for the special loaf of bread to be brought out.

No loaf of bread!

WHERE OH WHERE COULD THE BLESSED LOAF OF BREAD HAVE GONE?

(need I tell you the punchline?)

All's well that ends well, though... The drummer snuck the loaf back out of his drum case and on a table out of the way. I thin some little kids might have gotten blamed for the mishap! LOL!

Now you share one!

hi.

"WATERSTOCK" - on the bay...

A pretty fun and unique gig actually. Started off with a half hour boat ride to the "venue", which was a large pontoon boat anchored off-shore with a pretty serious looking umbilical cord stretching overhead to a big-assed generator on shore. This was to be surrounded by the "seating", a slew of anchored boats. PARTY!!!!!!! woo hoo

The runabout pulls up to this mess and spends awhile putting around before realizing there's no access left to the stage. In a fit of last minute desperation, I hitched a ride on a tandem jet-ski, appropriately piloted by a bikini clad party goer Of course, about halfway there, capnnumbnuts goes overboard! Not much matters at this point so I says to myself...wtf.....and swim the rest of the way, flop and roll onto the "stage" not unlike a soaked loaf of bread ready for stuffing and sit in on this dudes kit. Luckily (for him) it was a wrapped kit. The throne was a cloth topped R-n-S, however.

Maybe my favorite part, though, was when guitarist (scurvy landlubber) got seasick and hurled in the middle of "Let it Rain" which, incidently, led to a massive downpour!

No, I take that back, favorite part was the exhibishionist, drunken audience

I know two bass players who had very funny "personal" stories about Miles Davis.

The first one is about a time when Miles was playing at a club in NYC back in the 60's. My friend was a BIG Miles Davis fan, so he found a spot by the wings of the stage and when the band exited after their set, Miles was walking by and my friend said something like, "Wow, Miles! You guys sounded GREAT!"

Without missing a step, Miles turned and responded, Well, what do YOU know about anything, mother****er?" and zoomed on by.

Forty some years later, my friend tells that story with a W-I-D-E grin every time!

hi.

About 2 months ago, I got a call from a country band that I had never heard of asking if I could sit in for a gig.  I had the night open, and told them I wanted $100 to play it.  They agreed.  I learned later that the whole six-piece band was only charging $250 (for a good reason, they sucked), so the other five guys split $150.  That's not the funny part.

They had this really strange lead singer.  He walked in wearing stretch jeans, black penny loafers (with the pennies in), and a great big white cowboy hat.  In from of my kit, he set a wooden bar stool, and covered it with big red handkerchief.  From a special bag that he had made custom, he pulled out his prized tambourine and set it on his stand.  It was the first tambourine stand that I've ever seen.

During the first two sets, he pounded that frickin' thing on every song..slightly out of time.  If was bad enough that the rest of the band sucked, but after two sets with that stupid thing, I couldn't take it any longer, so during the last break, when the star was not looking, I hid his precious tambouriine under my coat that was on the floor next to my kit.  When he can back for the last set, he freaked.  He was looking everywhere, so I said, "it not back here, but I saw some girls looking at it before". And not sh!t, said, "Sometimes when you are the star, people want to take something to remember you by", which made ol' White Hat all Barney Fife.

At the end of the show, again when he was not looking, I put the tambourine under his coat that was also on the back of the stand.  When he went to put on his coat, there it was.  It was funny as hell, because he kept saying, "I can't remember putting this back here"..but he wasn't sure.

Oklahoma City about 1987..I booked a gig at a Japanese "Saki House" where they had live music on a regular basis. My band was a trio playing some reeeeaaally "out there" experimental "free jazz" kind of jazz -the kind that just agiates the hell out of listeners most of the time.

Anyway, when I booked the gig, I was with my bass player. The owner asked us if people could dance to the music. I looked at my bass player and we both nodded and said, "Sure...Why not?" -kinda smiling and looking down at the floor.

Gig night comes along...I'm playing a set of Simmons drums basiccally set to go "dawwwwwwhhhHHHOOOOOOMmmmm" at different pitches on each drum! LOL! The bass player is just going off on some crazy riffs and the keyboard gu is playing a DX-7 and making helicopter sounds and just running through all the voices on the thing...electric harpsichord, bells...you name it.

Some of the audience had come thinking there might be some kind of rock band playing cover tunes that they could dance alomg to...NOT! heh heh

Long story short...We had a blast...Everybody hated us...We were never going to get a gig there again..etc., etc., etc.

Comes time to get paid. The bartender pulls the cash out of the drawer and out of nowhere like a ninja, appears the owner - a Japanes man who also is the chef and he's all dressed up like a Samurai and he grabs the money before I could and takes three twenties out of the pay. "People no dance! You say people can dance! Nobody dance! What kind of music that?"

We all started laughing -like at the end of an episode of The Monkees when everything almost works out...but not quite? -yeah...like that.

hi.

I was in the back of the truck, "playing Tetris" with the gear after playing a gig in a rural location.  Very rural (insert banjo music here).

Earlier in the day we had seen an old, beat up, multicolored VW Rabbit full of drunken dudes cruisin up and down the main drag blasting tunes on a cheap stereo while enjoying their cold beverages.  This party-mobile came into the parking lot in a four wheel slide and before it had completely come to a stop one of the locals who had been at the gig walked hastily over to the car, ripped open the door, pulled the driver halfway out of the car, and started beating the hell out of him.  At about that time, our drummer came out of the building with the next load of whatever and set it on the tailgate of the truck.

Whack.  Thump.  Whack. Thump...

Sees drummer standing there, watching.  Stops beating & dons a big grin.  Points at drummer while still holding onto driver with other hand.

"Hey, man.  You guys were awsome!  Really top-drawer!"

...Whack.  Thump.  Whack.  Thump.  (repeat and fade...)

Knowing what I know about life in rural Nova Scotia, these turkeys probably went home in the same car together and are either best friends or brothers in real life, up to about 20 min before last call.

SG

 


Hey - Where are we going?  And why am I in this handbasket?