Your weirdest music memories?

[JakeK]

We all have some weird music memories, such as seeing crazy music store experiences, jerks who don't know your favorite bands/guitars, etc

I'll start with two really weird memories I've experienced:

Last Friday (I told Mike Snow this story):
I'm at a block party with some friends when this random guy walks up with a Epiphone SJ-185. He asks me what kind of guitars I have and I said, "Rickenbackers". "What the f is that?" he asked. I said, "They were used by The Beatles". "Beatles?" the guy said. I told him he'd never look at an Epiphone again if he picked up a Rickenbacker. And he said, "I love my Epi's. I wouldn't go for something I've never heard of!"

September 2008:
I'm sitting in C&M Music Center when I hear a (mentally) handicapped guy going nuts on a bass. He talked like a stuttering Forrest Gump. While he was slow in the head, his fingers were just digging away at a fretless bass. (it sounded good, too!) When he went to put it away, he was shaking so bad, he almost knocked the entire rack of basses down. Some employees ran as fast as they could to help him. Then the old man staggered away to his old GMC truck.

[collin]

A few years ago, I was celebrating my 21st birthday (besides getting nice and drunk..) with a gig at Zen Sushi--a nightclub/restaurant in Silverlake CA. I was playing in a 60s style power pop/ R&B band. Anyways, we were wrapping up the set and as I looked out into the audience I saw a familiar poof of hair in the audience....apparently Morrissey had walked in and stopped to check us out for a few minutes. My girlfriend's eyes grew as big as dinner plates (she is a HUGE Moz/Smiths fan).

We talked with him for a minute or two after the show (have pictures somewhere too). I guess his old guitarist, Alain White, was playing a gig with his side band in the upstairs room at Zen Sushi, where they have two stages, and Moz accidently walked into the wrong room. Cool for me though! Wild night...

-C



ps.. Jake, Epiphones are actually pretty good guitars. In fact, I'd say their hollowbodies are the best value-for-money on the market anywhere. Heck, ask the Beatles themselves! I wouldn't say a Ric is an Epiphone replacement either, they are kinda apples/oranges and do very different things.

[paologregorio]

A gig in Newport Beach about 2002 at Haogie Barmichael's:

I was unloading my Vox AC30 from the back of the car near the front entrance to the club. A tall lanky gentleman with a sophisticated English accent, and the appearance quite like that of an older looking George Harrison (though it was definitely not him, obviously) with hair and mustache like that of George's during the White Album era, walked up to me in the midst of my lifting the amp from the car and asked "Are you part of the Pete Best Band"?

Thinking he was teasing me and making a reference to to my AC30 with its Beatles connection, I replied with the wisecracking answer, "Nah, I just stole his guitar amp".

The gentleman looked at me with a slightly surprised expression, smiled with resignation, shook his head with a "what jerk" air, then turned and went into the club.

I set the amp on the walk, stacked my pedal board and guitar cases atop the amp, and wheeled the whole stack up to the club. As I showed my ID to the doorman, informed him which band I was with, added a name or two to the guest list, and extended my arm for that all important bandmember's stamp on the wrist, I looked up on the Marqee; on the list of bands for the night was "The Pete Best Band"...oops. I felt really stupid and embarrassed for my wisecrack comment at that point.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Best and some of his bandmates watched as we soundchecked. I don't think he was much if at all impressed (as he watched us, he seemed to look as though he had a slight case of indigestion, but I think it was our music, rather than anything from the club's kitchen that was the source of his facial expression)! After our set some of his younger bandmates came up and complimented us on our sound and choice of gear however.

I felt kind of bad for wisecracking to Pete Best's friend, and making Pete suffer through our soundcheck.

Does that qualify for a weird gig memory?

[N.F.A.]

Okay here are two.
First one is when I was in the Army. A bunch of us were stading in this huge mess tent talking and suddenly things got real quiet. Some guy a few feet away was going off about the Beatles. He said, loud enough for a couple hundred people to hear, " I hate the Beatles. If one of them was here right now, I would kill him." Very disturbing..A couple years after that of course someone did kill John...
Second was seeing my all time favorite group, at the time, since the Beatles. It was a Police concert in early 83. It was the worst concert I ever attended. They played 20% faster than their records. No jams.. Played horribly... Then they were gone... Really turned me off to them.. Turns out it was their last tour and I guess they all hated each other by then..
G.

[kiramdear]

Around 1980, Van Morrison slurring obscenities at a fan who had the absence of mind to call out a request between numbers at the Great American Music Hall. He then finished a lifeless performance for those who remained ... I like his records but that was just plain weird for everybody.

[cjj]

I was in a well known pizza place in Boise a few years back and the young kids who make the pizzas were rockin' out to a Rush album, they were really getting into it. I asked one of them how old he was, he said, "19". I said, You know, I went to the tour concert for that album". He said, "Wow, when was that? I didn't hear about it." I replied, "Uh, about 5 years before you were born..."

He told me he had no idea that Rush was such an old band...

[sloop_john_b]

I told him he'd never look at an Epiphone again if he picked up a Rickenbacker. And he said, "I love my Epi's. I wouldn't go for something I've never heard of!"

I love my Epiphone Dot.

[whojamfan]

Some years back, I was playing a 360FG through a Marshall JCM800 combo in the Guitar Center in Hollyweird. I'm playing "Complete Control" by the Clash, when I look up to see Joe Strummer standing there. He's got this smile on his face, and I asked him if he wanted to join in(what else was I gonna say? ). We talked for a minute and the people he was with were leaving, so he left with them. That was a trip.

Some friends of mine had a band a few years back that were more in to drinking than playing. Most of their songs were about drinking and such, and were basically just a loud, simple punk rock band. One night, me and another friend went to see them at this total dump that used to have some pretty wild gigs. The guitarist and bass player played follow the leader trying to tune their instruments, and some 15 minutes later, asked if there were any musicians in the audience who could tune them. My buddy went up, tuned their instruments, and they played a slamming show. At the end, the guitar player smashes this Tele copy he was playing, and gives it to my buddy, like some kind of payment

[scotty]

love the JS story mike you must have been buzzing mate!
A quick one was early 90s decorating Robbie Coltrane`s house up yonder in the country and during one tea break Bob Geldof walks in strumming a guitar.I might also add that he was a toss pot!
Ive seen many,many bands live but probably one of the strangest moments was the Proclaimers debut album tour.Famous Glasgow Barrowlands and women strip off everywhere and throw their knickers and bras onstage! I mean holy mackerel have you seen The Proclaimers? Not exactly the best lookin bean in the tin........

[jingle_jangle]

Weird gig memory?

Here's one:

I'd been with North of Malibu a few months, when we booked a gig at a dinner at what I understood was a "private school". I got a mental impression of some exclusive place with ivy-covered walls and red-brick Tudor buildings and huge halls with their rafters lost in shadows many hundreds of feet overhead. Maybe it was because I was reading the fifth book in the Potter series at the time...

The evening of the gig, we showed up an hour early to set up. It was a small church hall-type place. Oops. We wheeled our first load of big amps and PA system to the door, led by George and his giant '68 Dual Showman cabinet, which was almost as tall as we were...we knocked on the door.

It was answered by a tiny, blue-haired lady well into her 70s, who looked up at George and asked in a quavering voice, her eyes big as saucers, "Oh, you have amplifiers?" We traded glances and made our way into the hall, where about two dozen really senior citizens were having a quiet potluck supper.

We set up and played one song with the amps set on about 2 1/2, then another at 1 1/2, and a final three songs with the amps at 1. Then we were asked by the organizers to sit down and eat.

Then we packed up and left.

[cjj]

But was the food good?

[kiramdear]

Hard to choose from so many in my career, and the weirdest are unfit for print. Maybe it's easier to describe the one or two times when I felt "normal".

[Clint]

I played a house party once, the cops were called out 5 times. That's a personal best for me. There was one concussion, 3 fights, including the fight when the guy who threw the party found his girlfriend, in his own bed, with his best friend. We ran out of gas on the way home and ended up sleeping in the van by the reservoir. Oh yeah, the guy with the concussion was listed as AWOL from Ft. Hood until he was found, three days later, wandering around an airport somewhere in Kansas.

[cjj]

Sounds like quite a party...

[captsandwich]

I could write a book.
The surreal - watching someone beat an effigy of the Prime Minister with a golf club on stage, under blacklight, everything done up in flourescent paint. The club breaks and just about knocks a kid in the front out cold. Later that night, the kid clutching the piece of the golf club like he'd won a prize.

The odd - a benefit gig out of town where a friend (the guy who did the beating in the above) sitting on the edge of the stage, offering me swigs of cheap wine out of a container roughly the size of an office water cooler bottle while I'm trying to play. Playing at a waterpark. Playing an impromptu (drunken) set at an open stage in Winnipeg with a guitar owned by someone who was at least a foot taller than me and a non-adjustable strap.

The scary - metalheads threatening to beat up my high school punk band in the parking lot, neo-Nazi skinheads throwing stuff at my ska band, touring Canada in February in a van with no right to be on the road and a drummer who had never even rehearsed with us, touring Canada in late November with a band that was already at each others throats before we even left town.

It's been an interesting ride. Thank god I never did drugs.



PS: a friend of mine once told me that the movie Hardcore Logo was exactly how she pictured my tours.