Roscoe wrote: ↑Fri Jun 19, 2020 10:46 am
My favorite drunk request story:
On our very first gig we got the the bar early, did our setup and and sound check. The bar had only a few bar flies who had been there all day camped on what I'm sure were their regular bar stools... After we were done, one of them drunkenly walks up and says that was the best version of "Come Together" he's ever heard and will stick around for our gig later because he wanted to hear it again.
Flash forward to hours later when we're half way through our first set... in between songs he starts yelling for us to play Come Together again. It's on the set list as the first song of set 2 so we just played our first set out. During the set break he comes up all ticked off saying he has to leave and we're assholes for not playing it for him to hear then he storms out. No biggie, we finish, get paid by the bar manager and leave.
The next time we play there we have a great time, finish up and go to collect and the guy who pays us is THAT GUY.. He was the owner of the bar. He turned out to be very cool and gave us a $150 bonus because he drew a much bigger crowd than before and apparently had no recollection of the previous gig's shenanigans. Alas, he ended up selling the place a few months later and the bar converted to a hip hop format.
Haha! It's been my experience that sometimes the most obnoxious drunk at the gig is the club owner... You need to know who the owner/manager is by sight, so you don't tell them to fuck off when they make a nuisance of themselves.
Personally, I don't like requests. Or I should say; I don't like the attitude that a lot of people have about requests. The ones who feel entitled to hear their favorite song, and get all pissy if you tell them you don't know it. They think that being a musician means you know every song that's ever been written, or that a band can just launch into a song they never played before if you just sing the chorus to them. People who are clueless about genre, and can't understand why an original jam band doesn't know any George Michael songs, or why a classic rock cover band has no Taylor Swift in their repertoire. If I wanted this kind of aggravation, I would have joined a wedding band!
I remember one time, this drunk Karen came up to me during my band's set break and asked if we'd play some top-40 radio song (I don't remember what it was) and I told her we didn't know it. Then she requested some other awful pop song, and I told we didn't know that either... "Really??" she said. "How could you NOT know that song??! You know it, it goes like..." as she started to drunkedly sing the song to me. I assured her that I had
heard the song, but we had never learned it or rehearsed it. "Well what about THIS song?? You
HAVE to know this song!" she said, totally committed to getting us to play
something. "Nope, don't know that one either..."
"Jeezus! I thought you guys were MUSICIANS!" she finally exclaimed, as she stormed off in a drunken huff.
When I did the solo, acoustic gigs I would sometimes end my self-introduction with: "...and if you have any requests, just keep them to yourself and we'll get along just fine!". I don't remember who originally said that, but I'm glad he did.
