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What has been your worst distraction?


Shaster

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No I'm not talking about those kinds of distractions - although you can if the mods let you :) I mean things like police sirens, bar fights and so on.

I just did a little Sunday gig in a very nice downtown lounge. A couple of months ago they were doing construction in the lounge. They didn't close the place down, they just erected these temporary plywood walls. So as I might have mentioned, I was playing the gig while a few feet away guys were cutting wood and marble, and also using jackhammers.

They've finally finished all that, and today I was enjoying being able to hear myself play, when all of a sudden this series of blasts from a cruise ship went off (a very low Db). A half hour later it happened again. This place is almost right on the water with open windows to the street so it was loud - so loud that the second time it happened I shifted the whole song to Db and ended the tune. Since I was originally in G it was a tritone - yuck. It's interesting that both ships were Db - maybe that's the scariest note or something...

Any other tales of distractions?

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It's not a distration to where I can't play, but friggin Harley's drive me nuts. It's usually when their leaving. They'll fire up their bike, gas it a hundred times and let it idle for 5 minutes while they put all of their gear on. I'll normally make a wise-ass comment over the microphone and get a good laugh.

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Back during the CR radio craze, a lot of "devotees" had illegally amped up antennas, which would come over the PA LOUD and CLEAR.

As a rule, if one started between songs, I'd shift into a trucker tune like "Six Days On The Road", "Convoy", Teddy Bear, etc.

Good days! :smiley-bounce015:

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A couple of things come to mind. . .

 

One, I play every summer at this Farmer's Market in a little downtown area. At noon, the clock tower across the street goes off making all kinds of chimes and gongs. That's not usually distracting enough to mess me up, but I always chuckle to myself.

 

Another time I was playing a bar gig and this dreadlock dude comes up and just stands RIGHT IN FRONT of me and starts doing these weird dance moves, staring straight at me the entire time. He was picking up my tip jar and putting it on his head, sitting down and daning around on the chair I had my tip jar in, etc. Never took his eyes off of me. Weirdest thing ever.

 

My duo partner always does stupid stuff to make me lose my concentration and laugh while I am singing. It's funny, and the crowd usually likes it, too.

 

 

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I had a few crazy ones, first one I shared here some time back...

Some genious tought it was a great idea to set the stage for this town carnival, back to back with the shooting gallery game, you know the one that uses the air pressure machine guns? So we had to adjust our song tempo to match the bursts of shots hitting the alluminum back of the gallery...playing while being shot at...pretty distracting!

Had a weird on in a biker bar in South Jersey, no gang colors allowed kinda place, heavy security, etc. I showed up on my bike, and the owners were afraid the locals might be mad some stranger rode in to their bar, so he had me park in the back of the bar, he told me that when it was time to leave, he would have security escort me out of the lot...well you can say I was "disctracted" during the whole gig wondering what would happend when I left! When the time came, nothing happened at all, no one seemed to care I was riding out of there...reality was much netter than the image in my mind!

Rod

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Singing "I hope I'm old before I die" by Robbie Williams whilst some guy was having a heart attack in the corner, Elton John "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" at an Irish wedding as they quite literally tore the place apart and the older sister of a good friend stipping completly naked and grinding on my mic stand whilst I sung "You Can Keep Your Hat On" by Tom Jones. The most bizarre thing was whilst singing on the Greek Islands in 2004 when the Olympics were in Athens and Greece won the European Football. To see Police motorcyclists doing burnouts outside of the bars, draped in the Greek flag and firing guns into the air was like the friggin wild west.

Rock n Roll hey !!!!

 

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remarkable1967 wrote:

Singing "I hope I'm old before I die" by Robbie Williams whilst some guy was having a heart attack in the corner, Elton John "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" at an Irish wedding as they quite literally tore the place apart and the older sister of a good friend stipping completly naked and grinding on my mic stand whilst I sung "You Can Keep Your Hat On" by Tom Jones. The most bizarre thing was whilst singing on the Greek Islands in 2004 when the Olympics were in Athens and Greece won the European Football. To see Police motorcyclists doing burnouts outside of the bars, draped in the Greek flag and firing guns into the air was like the friggin wild west.

Rock n Roll hey !!!!

 

And we may have a winner :smiley-bounce005:

Cheers Steve

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Just made me think of something that happened at an after hours club, decades ago. The lead singer who was very attractive, went into this long champagne (and more) induced version of some funky slow song. Every once in a while, she would turn to the band, and arrange her dress so that we could give our opinions on her Brazilian, I don't know why she was doing that - after all her boyfriend who had paid for all the champagne was right there in the audience. That was pretty distracting.

If I've blocked that out, I'm afraid to think what else I can't remember.

I guess the most distracting thing that I do remember, can't be written here on this family friendly forum! I can say it involved a working person with gender identity issues, going about their business right beside the bandstand - hope that is vague enough for the mods.

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I feel ya Bob...it happens to me all the time too. it us probably my BIGGEST annoyance. Sometimes for fun I'll just keep cranking my PA up until they realize what I'm doing. Occasionally I'll even announce that I can go louder than them. It usually gets a laugh and they'll move with an apology.

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Televisions.

We are a pretty little Celtic duo, vocals, guitars, cello. My wife sings most of the stuff. One night we're doing our peaceful easy feeling stuff and someone INSISTED on having this show with the footage of a bank heist gone wrong full of helicopter shots of the shootouts and bodies on the ground. It was quite a dichotomy of the senses.

 

Or, when "the game" is on and someone kicks a basket and everyone cheers in the middle of a song. I'll say something like "We haven't even gotten to the good part yet!"

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Potts wrote:

 

I feel ya Bob...it happens to me all the time too. it us probably my BIGGEST annoyance. Sometimes for fun I'll just keep cranking my PA up until they realize what I'm doing. Occasionally I'll even announce that I can go louder than them. It usually gets a laugh and they'll move with an apology.

 

The burnout that are up wind of the stage are the worst ....loud and smelly and the vis goes way down.

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