Oh, The Humanity!

Being a member of a Rock Band, you get to see a lot of shit that you would otherwise never see elsewhere -- especially if you play the bar circuit. Playing in the dives are always more entertaining than playing the "A-Clubs". On a slightly unrelated tangent, I find it amazing that people can be civil to one another, but the moment you pump six beers into them, they become unreasonable animals.

This weekend, I was playing in one of the worst joints I have been in. It was definitely not the worst bar I have been in, but there were some things I have seen this weekend that made me shake my head in disbelief.

There was this useless lush in the bar Thursday night. He was so drunk he could barely walk, barely talk, and I'm sure he forgot his name sometime in the afternoon. By the time we began playing at 9:00, he was quite unruly, and he kept trying to climb up on the stage and talk to us -- while we were playing. The barmaid walked up to him and warned him once to cool it, but it was obvious that the warning didn't sink in. So the barmaid threw him out.

Not five minutes later the idiot lush stumbled back into the bar. The barmaid promptly threw his drunk ass out, but that didn't stop him. A few minutes later, he was back in the bar, and he refused to leave.

This particular bar does not carry a staff of bouncers, though it is in dire need of some. In these riff-raff joints, bouncers are regarded only as expenses, so when things get aggressive, the best thing you can do is say a quick prayer and duck, or get the hell out of the bar.

The barmaid called the cops to get this uncooperative excuse for a human being out of the bar. The cops arrived, and hauled his drunk ass out. I was convinced that would be the last I would see of him that night.

Not twenty minutes later he re-entered the bar -- where he remained until the bar closed. He hadn't been served in over four hours, but there he stayed, consuming precious oxygen in a smoke-filled bar.

I gotta tell you, if I were managing that bar, I would have taken steps to ensure that he would not set foot in that bar for the rest of the night -- and maybe a few days after that. The doctors would have laboured to surgically remove a foot from his colon.

Then there was the old guy last night. When I entered the bar at 8:30, he was completely shit-faced. He was enthusiastic about our music, but I could not understand a single sentence he said, as he was slurring so bad, and his sentences had little content except for seemingly endless streams of profanity: "Shitgoddamnmotherfuckinkeepitrealyougoddamnmotherfuckersyoukickassyousonofabitchesrockthesefuckinwhores"

I had my bets that this drunk wouldn't make it until 10:00. If I was a gambling man, I would have lost dearly this weekend. I watched in disbelief as this old man continued to be served the entire evening. If I drank as much as these guys did, I would either be in a coffin, or dehydrated past the point of mummification.

After Friday's performance, a few of the guys in the band decided to go across town to a truck stop and get some greasy food. I did not join them, but the nest night I began hearing the stories. They were seated next to the same old guy who had watched us all night, who was still muttering incoherently: "Fuckintwobitwhoreswontsellmeagoddamnbeerfuckthisstupidassshit". I would usually laugh at the unsettling nature of such things, but what I saw this weekend was so depressing that I cannot believe how low some people will go.

Which reminds me of the Cougar that was in the bar tonight. She was likely fifty years old, with a face that only a mother could kiss, when she stared at the band we could tell she either took a trip down the stairs, walked into a cupboard, or her husband decided she needed a good ass-whooping. We had only played about three songs, and she jumped on the dance floor, and began dancing by herself to the music. She appeared like she drank a keg herself; she loved the music we were playing, and she was very, very horny. It was only a matter of seconds that she had her shirt off, wildly waving it in the air, and then succeeded to make sweet love to a load-bearing post on the dance floor. It took every ounce of strength I had to keep myself form either vomiting, or stopping our song altogether. By the time the barmaid made it from the bar to the dance floor to stop this nonesense, our drunken cougar was trying her hardest to get her pants unbuttoned. The barmaid wrestled with her, and managed to force her into the ladies' washroom where I assumed that the drunk would be allowed to get herself decent. The two of them emerged a minute later, and the cougar was escorted out of the bar. I think I was quite glad to not see her the rest of the night.

At the end of the set, I asked the other band members to wash my eyes out with Lysol.

I am quite happy that I will not have to perform in that dump in the foreseeable future.

First-Gig Jitters

The first gig is always the hardest to get through. You never know what to expect, even after three weeks' of rehearsals. The band members forget to teach you songs, arrangements are changed or forgotten, you have difficulty hearing the other players on stage due to poor monitors, and above all the influence of alcohol always plays a part.

I would not be lying if I said I was not nervous before and during the performance. I had a bit of the jitters, as I was trying my best to remember all the songs we had practiced, and if I didn't, how many of those would turn into train wrecks. I was certainly more excited than nervous, and having adrenaline mixed in with a little alcohol is a dangerous concoction in the body. Both do very well at altering your perception of time. For a drummer, being able to control those chemicals can make the difference between being a solid drummer and one who is fired.

I was solid as a rock last night, even though there were many times where I screwed up. I did miss a lot of changes, shots, pushes and pulls, and even some of my harmonies were absent. The bass player spent most of the time on stage kicking my ass, conducting with his axe, and yelling at me above the aural assault. He was just trying to help me, and I never took it personally. After we would get off the stage for breaks, he would return to his normal self, and we would be cool to one another. I really shouldn't complain about last night's show; it was the first gig, and it's only going to get better from here. Overall, the other band members were very supportive of my efforts, and were quite pleased to have me on deck with them.

Overall, we played very well last night. For a new band, were we tight. The bar was packed for much of the night, and the patrons were drunk and rowdy. In addition, a few local musicians went out of their way to catch us, and they were very supportive of our performance. I do like schmoozing with other musicians at gigs.

We managed to win the hearts of a few patrons last night and managed to sell a few signed CD's. I still feel a little weird signing my name on an album that I did not record. That will soon change, and some of the band members are pushing to have a second album out by the end of the summer. That sounds a little ambitious to me, and I am a person of the opinion that you should make your money back on the sales of the first CD before you decide to commit to a sophomore effort. I expect we will sell a bunch of CD's next weekend in Calgary.

Gawd! There's one in every bar. The shit-faced, loud geriatric who can barely stand, yet knows everything about everything. We nearly got verbally assaulted by this loudmouth who thought he knew a thing or two about music, and he would
not...
shut...
up!

After years of sluuging it out in the trenches of the Canadian music scene, I have lost all my patience for people like this, and was one of the contributing reasons why I quit playing in bars for three years. I must be a magnet for bullshitters. I get all the arrogant know-it-alls, while the other guys get all the hot babes. I'd love to tell these people to take a hike, or get out of my face, but I'm just too kind. I also learned very early on in my bar-hopping days that you can never argue with a drunk without serious repercussions.

1. Never argue with a drunk.
   
2. If you find yourself in a situation where there is no option but to argue with a drunk, see rule #1.
   
3. Failure to comply with rule #1 or #2 will find the situation will result in a heated one-way discussion about why the drunk is right and you are dead wrong. The best advice is to smile, nod, and accept defeat.
   
4. Failure to comply with rule #3 will likely result in a verbal assault from the opposing party. These can vary from simple name calling to crudely crafted insults. You may even be surprised that someone with a blood-alcohol level higher than Boris Yeltsen's can create new and offensive phrases in an attempt to goad you into a fight. At this point, you are on a slippery slope, and the situation will very likely escalate to #5.
5. Physical conflict. No rules apply anymore at this point. The drunk will generally try to get you to throw the first punch. If you keep your cool, you might be able to get him to throw the first punch. It doesn't matter, as by this time, both of you will be ejected from the establishment.
   
6. Never argue with a drunk.
   

The end result of last night's gig:
1 Alcoholic beverage
1 Broken drumstick
1 Blister
1 Annoying drunk