Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => Time Out => Topic started by: Bob Gnarly on August 28, 2012, 12:29:12 PM
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(https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/295146_193682350764662_57721231_n.jpg)
Saw this over on facebook earlier, and got me thinking about tough crowds.
We were shot at by someone with an air gun in a club once.
What's your worst 'tough crowd' moment?
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I've been lucky enough to have welcoming crowds for almost all of my shows.
My third "guitar" show was in Brussels (10 years ago now!) and I was fairly naive. I played a pretty hard punk set and alienated the crowd completely - felt pretty bad. Hopefully I've learnt my lesson and now throw a few ballads in the mix.
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I played a pub about 10 years ago where the audience stared at us in silence and didn't applaud once. Oh well, we thought. The landlady appeared with a diary wanting to arrange more bookings and when we said that we didn't think they liked us much she said that they loved us. They didn't like the band the previous week and after a couple of numbers they unplugged their gear and carried it out of the pub.
In another pub we were told that the singer in the previous band had managed to antagonise the audience so they carried him down to the beach and threw him in the sea.
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I once had this drunken irish guy get up on stage and start smacking a snare as loud as possible shouting '$%&# you, $%&# you, $%&# you den' whilst trying to play acoustic quiet folk music, luckily one of the audience forced him off stage but in a weird way kind of enjoyed how insane it was, we just had to stop until he was taken off stage.
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A few months ago we played at Queensday in a big festivaltent in a village nearby. Suddenly it was raining cats and dogs and the center of tent flooded a bit, cause that was the lowest area. Of course some chicks thought it was funny to jump in the water. I had a sort of tidal wave in my pedalboard. After that the electricity went down. Luckily we could proceed after ten minutes. And yes, the girl even apologized.
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In all my years of gigging, I have never encountered any hostility directed at me or the band I was in at the time- the most unnerving was a pub in Harold Hill Essex many many years ago where a large brawl broke out and they got very close to the stage too.We kept playing throughout and I'll always remember at the end there was a guy lying on his who was picked up from the floor and taken through the double doors at the far end of the pub and lifted onto the back of a flat bed truck and presumably carted away from treatment. The atmosphere afterwards was a bit dicey but it was a residency so we were back next week.
Another time I was playing in a duo when a group of uniformed police ran in and started hitting people at the bar. Seemed entirely random to us but perhaps there had been something going on to cause the Landlord to call the rozzers-I don't know but I remember being amazed to see them all rush in and seemingly attacking people for no obvious reason. Again, we carried on playing throughout.
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I've played a pile of Antifa gigs where all the bands and fans have been attacked by Nazis/national front groups etc.
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When I was a student we played a gig that had probably 30 people in the audience, midweek, not many people were there to see us and we got the apathetic applause after our songs. About half way through someone from the back shouted "mediocre!" after we finished a song and that felt like a massive slap in the face! Looking back we were pretty mediocre so it was fair comment, but at that point it felt worse than someone telling us we were completely shite.
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When you doing the things you like to do, please do not care about others' view.
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Looking at that guitar, I'd say the guy in the pic probably deserved it.
I assume he wasn't playing a beatw@ts cover, or he'd have been (rightfully) glassed.
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When you doing the things you like to do, please do not care about others' view.
So true, just wish more people would realize it.
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Years ago I played in a southern/country rock band and we had the chance to sit in for another band for a gig in a US army club near Mannheim, Germany. After the first two songs we heard comments like "it's Saturday night" (as if we didn't know), "rock n roll", "Black Sabbath", "AC/DC", "turn the radio on", "hang this band". Turned out that Friday was their country day and Saturday their "Rock 'n' Roll day". We should have hanged the agent who got us this gig instead.
With another band I played at a biker festival. I believe they pretty much ignored us the whole first set throughout - just as if we were not there at all. That was easily the most phlegmatic crowd I ever witnessed.
Cheers Stephan