--There's some sort of "special project" scheduled at
my job this weekend, and they want all hands on deck.The so-called extra hours are supposed to be 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday.So my normal two days off ain’t gonna happen...
Yeah,
it's gonna suck with the intensity of a thousand suns.But you want to hear the real kicker?After I finish this week …and the weekend special project
…and next week, Nancy and the Gang will be rolling into town.
That's
right, I'll be working a minimum of ten hours per day until April 24,
and Eninen and their rolling circus of kookery will be here on April
25.
I
have a feeling I'm going to be a little less tolerant of stupid shit
by then, and am not completely confident in the ability of the golden
elixir to counterbalance such a significant disturbance in the
irritation curve.To my
mind it's never been adequately tested.Who knows what might happen?
If
I start throwing haymakers, I just hope they're in the direction of
Nostrils.Because I think Nancytook some Tae Kwon Do classes a
few years ago, and I don't want to go out as a result of some exotic,
high-flying martial arts move.Like
the Hair Diaper of Darkness, or whatever.
Wish
me luck, my friends.
--Last night Brad and I were emailing each other about unusual
concerts we've seen in our lives.And since I've basically been working and sleeping since we
returned from our trip, and don't have much to report, I'll briefly
tell you about the ones that jumped to my mind.
Marty
Willson-PiperThis guy was/is the lead guitarist of the Australian band The
Church.I always liked
them, and went to see this solo show at a tiny club in Atlanta.And the dude was obnoxious.
He
was irritated because people kept talking while he was playing his
brittle little folk songs (in a Southern bar at midnight), and eventually got nasty about
it.He said things like,
"You know, in more enlightened places, people can actually be
bothered to listen to an artist perform his songs."
This,
of course, didn't help matters, and the crowd turned on him.By the end he was literally sitting in the middle of the stage,
leaning back in a chair, and noodling with his guitar.He wasn't playing anything, he was just absent-mindedly
strumming it, and tuning it, and so forth.
All
this while the audience yelled, "FUCK YOU, YA PANSY-ASS
AUSTRALIAN FAGGOT-PANSY!"You
know, things like that…
Finally
he sighed, turned to someone offstage and said, "How much more of
this horrid contractual obligation will I be forced to endure?"He sounded like Mr. Howell, or John Kerry, or someone.
And
if he'd hung around for another five minutes, I'm convinced he
would've been pulled from the stage, and beaten until dead.Wotta spectacular douche.
Scruffy
the CatA fun college band from the 1980s, I saw them (at least) three
times, and twice it was chaotic and insane.
At
the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill,
NC, the lead singer kept warning
the rambunctious crowd they'd better stop crushing the people up
front, "or the show's over."
He
told the drunken jocks twice, then… the show was over.The band just laid down their instruments, walked off the
stage, and the house lights went up.I think they were only about three songs into the set.
Holy
shit, I thought they were going to tear the place down.For a couple of minutes I was wondering if I'd make it out
alive.Fights broke out,
assholes were shoving each other, cups of beer were flying through the
air, people were rolling around on the floor…It was nuts.
But
it didn't last long. It seemed like nobody had a real passion for
anarchy, and the whole thing petered out almost as soon as it began.Within minutes everyone was back in line at the bar.
Another
time, at a strange "club" inWinston-Salem,
NC, the power kept going off while
Scruffy was playing.This
was in a darkened shopping mall at night, and the bands performed on
an elevated landing of a staircase.Incredibly weird.
The
band would be on "stage," playing their songs, when
everything would suddenly shut down.This happened repeatedly, and the crowd was not amused.
Whenever
their amps and instruments shit the bed, the guys would just shrug and
go into the crowd and hang out with everyone.Then they'd go up and play when the juice was restored.It felt like we were all in it together.
But
the power was off more than it was on, and it wasn't very much fun.I don't think they booked too many more rock shows into that,
um, club.You know, the
Beside Lane Bryant and Radio Shack Theater…
dB'sOn a similar note, I attended a dB's reunion show in Charlotteyears ago.This was the first time the original members of the legendary
power-pop band had performed together in a very long time; they’dbeen coaxed back into action to benefit a local charity.
Many
other acts had performed earlier in the evening (excruciating), and
then – FINALLY – the dB's were on the stage.The crowd was going crazy, and the band sounded great.
And
at exactly midnight, the power went off.Turns out there was a local noise ordinance – and a nervous
show organizer.And the guy
yanked the cord!He'd
probably gone through hell to get these guys back together for the
evening, and didn't have the balls to let them play.
It was amazing.
Red
SovineRed was an old-time country singer from West Virginia, and first cousin of my
grandmother on my father's side.Because
of our distant relation to him, my parents took me and my brother to
see him perform when we were young.And the dude was BLASTED.
His
big hit was "Phantom 309," which he introduced and sang
early in the show.Then he
did another song, and launched into the same exact introduction of
"Phantom 309" again.“You
already did that one!” somebody hollered.And Red said, “Huh?Oh,
sorry…”
He
kept sipping from a Styrofoam cup, and had obviously started the
sipping process many hours before…
After
the show we went on his tour bus, and it smelled like underwear and
Jack Daniel's.He chatted
with my grandmother (his first cousin), but I wasn't convinced he
really knew who she was.
He
was nice enough, just drunk off his ass.A memorable experience for a ten year old…
StyxWhen I was in high school these guys played at the
CharlestonCivicCenter.And since it was about as good as it got back then, we all went
to the show.The
auditorium was packed, and everybody was ready to rumble.
There
was only one problem:the
band was in Virginiaor
Kentuckyor someplace.After making us wait for a long time, some toadie came out and
told us Styx was "delayed," but
they still wanted to play the show.
The
guy begged us to be patient, and then bribed us with gifts.If we stayed, and didn't ask for a refund, he said, we'd each
receive one free Styx album of our choice.A big drunken hillbilly roar went up, like we’d all been
promised a new car.
Of
course, we stayed.And the
band eventually did play the show.Unfortunately (fortunately?), everybody was so drunk by that
point, nobody can remember much about it...
But
we got our free albums.We
were instructed to show up at an empty mall store on a Saturday, with
our ticket stubs.And they
gave us our choice of one of the band's older
albums, not the new ones we actually wanted.
Oh,
and my ticket hadn’t been ripped when I entered the concert.It was still complete, so I tore it in half while waiting in
line and scammed two
albums out of them.I
think I got Equinox
and Crystal Ball.
Rolling
Stone magazine covered the whole thing, and it was quite an event.It was the biggest thing to happen to Charleston,
WVsince we were bumped up to
number three on the Soviet Union's Big List of Nuclear Bomb
Targets.
The LyresThese guys were (are?) a great, rockin’ garage band from Boston.When I lived in Greensborothey played at a short-lived
club called The Underground, and only about twenty people showed up.
It was brutal.The place
was so empty there was an echo in the room.I felt guilty and tried not to make eye contact with the band
members.
But, to their credit, they played a full set.And they rocked the joint.Afterwards the leader of the group, Jeff “Monoman” Conolly,
walked off the stage and went to the beer window.
And he started spewing venom:“What
kind of town is this??Don’t
you people support live music here?!I thought this was going to be a show, not
a fucking garden party!”
We all just looked at each other, blinking real fast.Then somebody said, “Dude, don’t be pissed at us.We’re here.”Monoman
thought about that for a second, accepted it, and apologized.And after that he was, well, a
little friendlier.
But I’d bet money they never played Greensboroagain.Ya know?
Five-EightA wild-ass college band from Athens, GA (I think), who were being called
the “new Replacements” for a while.With a descriptor like that, I had to check ‘em out.
I saw them one night in Atlanta, at the same club where the
Marty Willson-Piper debacle took place.And the lead singer got
completely naked onstage...
I’d seen Angus Young and Johnny Rotten show their asses to a crowd,
but I’d never before witnessed a man buck naked on a raised
platform, hollering into an amplification device.I couldn’t believe what was happening before me.
And it wasn’t pretty.The
dude was pasty-white, and his wiener (and whatnot) was bouncing up and
down as he jumped around the stage.There wasn’t much to bounce, but what he had, mister, was bouncin’.And we saw his ass and his pubes… and I think I woke up
screaming in the night for weeks afterward.
Even in rock ‘n’ roll, I’ve learned, there’s such a thing as
“getting carried away.”
Those are the events that jump immediately to my mind…And now I’m going to turn it over to you.Have you ever attended a concert or show where something crazy
happened on the stage?
I’m not talking about drunks in the audience, or your wild friends
pissing on the windshield of a parked Volvo or anything like that.I mean craziness on the stage itself.
Use the comments link below to tell us your stories.
