Funny/scary/freaky drunk people stories

[Badside]

In the world of gigging musicians, there is this one rule: when you play in a place that sells alcohol, there will always be at least one really drunk pathetic human being that will do everything possible to make you regret being a musician.

 

You know like the guy that is already there at 3pm during soundcheck, he's already drunk enough he can't walk and while you're trying to adjust sound, he's yelling over the PA to whether shut the hell up, or to play some Black Sabbath or whatever (somehow, we never get asked to play Freebird, lucky we are).

 

I remember one of those loser who I felt like kicking in the face, the guy just couldn't understand the concept of a soundcheck and was over at the board harrassing the soundman, thinking we were doing this cause we couldn't play or sing so we had to practice or whatever. But in a really mean mean and loud way! To him we were idiots cause the singer had to sing while the soundman adjusted the EQ and the compressor. I wish kicking in the face was legal...

 

Another one was quite more funny: he kept asking for some Celine Dion! We play hard rock and metal, it's quite clear we don't play any Celine song!

 

Another time, the bar was packed with bikers... drunk bikers... with tatoos and big arms. Nobody ever asks for a Guns 'n Roses, ever. We do play like half of Paradise City in a medley but that's it, we have no reason to play Guns 'n Roses, nobody ever asks for it. Somehow, these guys were all over us asking for Guns 'n Roses songs, like in a really harrassing way. And we could figure they probably had a knife or a gun hidden somewhere. Just doesn't feel the same saying "Sorry we don't play any" to these guys.

 

We also had the typical drunks who get on stage and decides to play drum during a break, or the drunks that grab a mic and improvise themselves singers.

 

Ah isn't that a great hobby/career we've chosen

 

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[zookie]

A couple of weeks ago I was playing at a venue when two middle-aged women came in and took a table. They were very complimentary; paid attention, applauded between songs, sang along to some. During our first break I spoke with them and they were getting buzzed. One lady told me these songs meant a lot to her. It was her 5th wedding anniversary and these were songs she and her husband enjoyed. She requested a few songs. We knew about half of them and I said I'd see what we can do.

 

Several drinks later a guy comes in and the lady runs over to hug him. Now that the happy couple was together we started playing her requests. They were out on the dancefloor now very drunk. They were veering towards to stage once in a while.

 

Nevertheless, they were friendly enough. After the gig my partner was chatting with the other lady, who was asking when we'd be back, etc.

 

Turns out the guy who had showed up wasn't the husband, but some hookup.

 

I'd evidently provided the soundtrack to someone's adultery.

[FlyingKeys]

My old band went did a cross-country to my hometown of Sacramento in 2000. During a gig this guy who was completely out of it comes up on stage between songs and before we realize what's going on, he grabs a free mic. Our singer says "I guess we have a guest singer on this one." All of a sudden there are three bouncers on stage and they're wrestling - hard - this hopped-up guy away from our mics - all this about 4 feet from 3 guitars and a sax on their stands. Funniest part was the guy goes "Let me go! You're messing with my life!" BWAAAHAAA

 

I was embarrassed for the nice California reception my ND buddies got from that guy. Talk about feeding unnecessary stereotypes. At least we had a story to tell...

[fastplant]

There was this one hammered preppy looking guy at one of our shows once that was just laying across the stage after our first break. We're like, "dude, you gotta get up so we can play." He looks up at us and says, "Take me with you!" We say, "um, where exactly?" He goes, "To the golden sun, I know you you're going to the golden sun, take me with you!" So we kindly pushed him off the stage at this point.

 

We later see this kid puke in his beer glass and keep on drinking, haha. He later started to fall down and grabbed onto this girl to keep himself from falling, but then wouldn't let go. The bouncers weren't too happy about that and literally threw him out.

[FlyingKeys]

Okay - I've got another, but it wasn't so funny at the time. One of our college-rock band's last gigs was for U of North Dakota's student-body presidential victory party. Anwyay, our guitar player, who is a seriously talented musician, was getting handed drink after drink while he was playing and his usual restraint went out the window. Needless to say by our third set he was gone and just raking obnoxious arpeggios. The whole band (8 of us) is either laughing, pissed, or trying to ignore him so we can finish the gig. We ended up unplugging his direct box and that helped for about 2 songs until he stumbled and fumbled his way into plugging it back in, but the FOH guy caught on and iced his mix.

 

The funny (now) part is after the show we're starting to break our stuff down and he goes to grab his amp and just slumps to the floor with his arm draped over it, passed out. Meanwhile his girlfriend (now his wife), also wasted, is telling us stories about how she sucked him off in the street in Acapulco, which we could have gone without hearing. Anyway, he ends up staying this way for the ENTIRE hour load-out while we're just ripping him to pieces, then proceeds to wake up right as we finish. We still think he did it on purpose.

[ratthedd]

One of the first non-corporate gigs we were doing was at an American Legion. There was a guy in his 50s who was drinking all night and dancing right next to where I had some 70# speakers up on poles. I was dead sure he was gonna take a header into one of them and end up with the cab on top of him.

 

The funniest thing was that he couldn't walk a straight line between the tables and dance floor, but he could cut a rug like nobody's business--he was really good.

 

 

 

Two weeks ago we were playing a local small-town summer festival and the beer was flowing and drunken frat boys were running around all over. Two in particualr were stumbling and tripping around my mix board with a full pitcher of beer, and it was really starting to piss me off. I never said anything to them, I just stood next to the board during the break to make sure they didn't get any closer.

 

 

 

 

I'm sure that one of these times some drunk is gonna do some serious damage to equipment... ...does home insurance take care of the bill, or do you turn the bill in to the club owners or what?

[TheMan]

I had a drunk fratboy pull my keyboards out from under my hands in front of 2000+ in Athens, GA. I was playing bass and keys at the time, and had the then-ubiquitous Ultimate Swingset stand with 3 boards on it at stage left. We were on one of those mobile-stage flatbeds, and the idiot climbed up there to rawk out, lost his balance, and grabbed the stand to break his fall. Fortunately, I saw it comin', grabbed the stand, and kept it from going completely over.

 

He made it to the stage ladder before I could extricate myself from the keys, but I did manage to catch him by the collar as he went down and beat him against the truck a bit before he slithered away. I was filled with glee when I learned after the show that the Brothers of the hosting frat house had caught him, dragged him behind the stage, and beat the piss out of him. I loves me some Instant Karma!

[LateGreats]

Besides the usual "wicked drunk guy dancing like a jackass for some chick" deal? Some guy came up on stage once and started singing the songs into the guitar player's mike. All well and good...except we were playing originals, and he didn't know them.

 

I have really good When Late Greats Got Drunk At Gigs stories..

[caveman]

I've told this story before but back in the early 70s I was playing in the house band at a biker bar. One night this drunk, who one of the guys knew, asked if he could buy us a round of drinks. He went and bought the drinks and brought them back to the stage.

 

Everything was fine until we were half way through the next set. The walls seemed to be melting and the people on the dance floor all merged into a blob of movement. The song that we were playing went to hell in a hand basket but we thought it was the best we had ever played. We were tripping our asses off.

 

One of the bouncers heard the guy bragging that he had put a hit of acid in our drinks. They took him outside and busted him up pretty bad.

 

The owner took us up stairs and had one of the girls that "worked" up there watch over us until we were in control again.

 

We took quite a bit of ribbing over it but we knew of one drunk that wasn't smiling to much about it.

 

Lesson learned!

[fastplant]

 

Originally posted by LateGreats Besides the usual "wicked drunk guy dancing like a jackass for some chick" deal? Some guy came up on stage once and started singing the songs into the guitar player's mike. All well and good...except we were playing originals, and he didn't know them. I have really good When Late Greats Got Drunk At Gigs stories..

 

 

 

Man, I think it's hilarious to see guys, who would never dance on their own accord, act like dancing is their favorite past time because they think girls want a guy like that. Meanwhile, the girl is usually making fun of him to her girlfriends.

[Retrospex]

Last Saturday night a lady was dancing bending over and a guy came up behind her like he was pumping her from behind, he kept at it, and by the end of the song she was pukin' on the dance floor. Smelled it the rest of the set.

[BndGrl]

Watching some friends play a few weeks ago and look over and there's some random old, NASTY lady who sat down at the band's table. None of us had a clue who she was.

 

After the show we all go back to the hotel and guess who is at our hotel room??

 

We just let her hang out because she was so freaking weird that we couldn't stop laughing at her. At one point I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe and she offered to give me mouth to mouth. I never really knew I could run that fast!

 

Eventually we convinced her to walk outside while we locked her out. She just sat down beside the door and waited on someone to open it. Luckily she was gone in the morning.

 

 

[axe2 2001]

got 2 stories, one quick, A drunk fool nails our bass players mic stand right into his teeth, he shows restraint but it happens again so he kicks the guy out of pure rage and he goes down. He got up wanting to start {censored} but 4 people were on him and tossed him out. This one was in like 1983, I was in a band with 2 guitar players that both did huge solo spots. I was first and really ripped it up with a long delay on and all. Theres a wasted dude standin right in front of me cheering and weebling. I finish my spot and the other guitar player starts his. So I put my guitar down and i'm goin for a drink. The guy grabs me by the neck and starts like tryin to choke me and wrestle me down. He's obviously toast and I shuck him off no big deal. Well, we had 2 brothers for roadies that were weight liftin muscle dudes. The one brother grabs him and basically gives the guy a massive bear hug till he's almost pukin. The other brother comes over to , what I thought was to stop what was happening. He grabs the guy and seriously over the head body slams the guy right on the dance floor! He was out and I'm like what the {censored} is with the WWF at our show?!!??!!! I never lauged so hard. The guy was ok, just knocked out for a bit. In 23 years of giggin in bars I got alot more good ones but......

[greaseenvelope]

This is more of a funny *tripping* person story..

 

My band used to play these long freeform psyche improv sets in the "chill areas" of large underground outdoor electronic music parties deep in the Oregon/Washington woods during the summer (until not being able to sleep due to the unescapable pounding bass from the main system until dawn drove us away )

 

We would sometime play 4-5 hour sets, switching off in small ensembles and using a lot of different instruments which we had laid out on a tarp behind a table with electronics..etc..

One of the instruments we had at the time was this metal drum, kind of tuned like a steel drum, which was just sitting out with a mallet next to it. It could be very loud, and I try to use it very subtly and sparingly...

 

So we are well into one of these sets one night, and this blue-dreadlocked raver kid tripping out of his mind just wanders into the area were playing in, sits down and starts playing that {censored}ing steel drum.. LOUD and totally out of time... we all look up at each other in horror and for some reason (some of us -not me that night- are tripping also at this point ) we all thought that the other one had said it was "ok" for this guy to play with us, and it took a really long time for anyone (me) to get up the balls to go up and ask him to stop playing, as he was totally transfixed in his task of destroying our set, and we were trying to keep a performence going for the 50 or so people reclining in front of us in various states of mental undress on big inflatable couches, poofy pillows, and camping furniture. He was really apologetic, as he thought it was an "open jam".

 

That's why we have a sign that says DENDRITES hanging in front of us, dumbass. He ended up buying a cd they next day though...

 

This was actually the last straw in a number of incidents like that at these things where various talentless hippie/ravers with musical instruments like flutes or (horror!) djimbes would just plunk themselves down next to us and start playing like it was the thing to do. Our drummer often makes hand drum loops in 5 or 9, so an off-tempo tamborine hanging out in the mix is NOT COOL. The solution? We supplimented the DENDRITES sign with an equally large sign that read THIS IS NOT A DRUM CIRCLE. If we ever had any problems we'd look at the offending person real bitchy-like and then point at the sign, or better yet have one of our friends do it for us.

 

It's fun sometimes having a crowd that's pretty much assured to be totally out of their heads to play our music to*, but it can definately be a pain in the ass.

 

*Think of it as research and development

[Strings74]

Nice thread.

 

These are some great stories. Keep em' comin'!

[GCDEF]

I see them all the time. I hate the talkers. I don't mind a little chitchat, but when I'm tearing down at 1:30 in the morning so I can go home and get a little sleep, I really don't care about your son's clarinet lessons or how you play Kumbya on your acoustic. I just don't. When I'm trying to set up and get everything plugged in and working, I'm happy to answer questions about the band or the club. I really don't care that you used to be best friends with Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's amazing the number of times I hear that.

 

A few weeks ago I was setting up the PA. Some drunk didn't think I had the mains in the right place. I told him when the sound guy was free, he'd get them positioned properly. A few minutes later I see stuff getting dragged across the stage. Numnuts was moving our PA cabinets without regard to what they were plugged into or what other cabling was involved. He managed to unplug the crossover and it took about 15 minutes to figure out why we had no sound on one side. I'm usually a patient guy, but that one pissed me off.

 

Then there are the parents that think it's fine if their little kid starts walking around on stage touching our stuff. One time we played a pavillion in the park kind of gig and mom puts her 2 year old and dog right up on stage to run around with us.

 

Of course there's the usual litany of drunks that try to talk to us in mid song, or get all huffy if we play one song they don't like, or the drunk dancers that crash into equipment or slosh beer all over the place, or the guys that want to talk about guitars when you're on break when you'd rather be yakking with the cute girls that have been dancing in front of you all night.

 

I love gigging, and really enjoy 99% of the people we meet, but playing bars till the wee hours really exposes you to the sad nut cases too unfortunately.

[JBJ]

to be honest most of the drunken stories surrounding our band revolve around me and our bass player but thats for another post or 30

 

One gig we done a girl we kinda knew turned up to see us cause it was a pretty big gig at a fairly famous venue, in fact lotsa people turned up we hadnt even asked to come which was pretty cool, we wer kinda local heroes for the night.

 

but i digress, so this chick straight away makes it clear she's into my bro, i think he may have been in a long term relationship at that point so he was a bit apprehensive but when you load in at 4 and dont go onstage till 11, theres alot of alcohol you can consume. she's getting stinking drunk and as more beers flow he's starting to change his mind.

 

after the set he couldnt find her for the life of him trying but later that week someone gave us a video theyd made of the performance and hunched over the front of the stage and clinging onto a monitor for dear life is this chick. our bass player was too gone to even realise she was right in front of him during the set.

 

in the end she got thrown out halfway through the set because they didnt want her being sick on their stage setup.

[Badside]

 

Originally posted by GCDEF I when I'm tearing down at 1:30 in the morning so I can go home and get a little sleep, I really don't care about your son's clarinet lessons or how you play Kumbya on your acoustic.

 

 

That reminds me of an idiot who kept asking us "My son plays music too, do you know him?". We were like 3 hours from where we live...

 

That's like somebody asking "You're Canadian? I know a Canadian, his name is Johnny Humpalot, do you know him?"

 

Idiots...

[MrKnobs]

For those of you who haven't checked out this thread over on the Live Sound Forum, there are also quite a few drunk people stories embedded in there.

 

I'd point you precisely to one or two, but the damn search feature is disabled.

 

 

Terry D.

[rim]

I just had a scary one this past weekend but technically after the gig was over. It was a camping trip with maybe 60 people and we played Saturday night. On Sunday, most people were just packing up but some folks were still polishing off the last remaining keg. One guy is so drunk he's stumbling. Word got out that he was going to get in his car and drive home, so some folks try to talk to him not to go. Unfortunately, this made him really mad and starts to get hostile. Someone snuck off to take the distributor cap off of his car so he can't go anywhere. The drunk guy starts to pick fights with different guys. We tried to get the guys he thinks is messing with him to leave the camp ground to avoid instigating him, but it's clear he just chooses another guy to pick a fight with.

 

So I'm just watching him and he's still pissed off. He starts looking at me and I can see him point to me and I hear him say "Is that him?" He then starts walking towards me. I can see the anger in his eyes. And he's much bigger than I am. I was bracing myself. When he's within an arm's length of me he says "Oh, you're from Loaded (my band's name)" and then he smiles at me!!! He seemed to calm down and I breathe a sigh of relief. Who knew being in a band would get you OUT of a fight? He apologizes to me and the guys that have hudddled around. Unfortunately, the peace was short lived and 10 minutes later, he was back on the hunt. Fortunately, someone had called the cops earlier and they eventually arrived with the paddy wagon and they put him in it.

[ATOMICDOG1]

I have one along the same lines...

This past winter I was running sound for a band at a club in the bands home town. One of the regular bouncers was off duty that night too. The guy is pretty big, maybe 6'3" 250lbs and barrel chested. He's been bouncing at this club for as long as the band has played there, maybe 10 years or so. He's got to be in his mid forties. So he has the night off and he was already pretty buzzed up when we got there at about 4:30. So we set up and do the show, no problems at all, really good crowd of about 400 people or so.

As we are tearing down a commotion broke out by the bar at the front of the club. I looked up just in time to see the off duty bouncer push the owner about halfway across the room. He was yellong so hard that his face was purple and he was way out of control. The two other bouncers were staying out of arms reach and telling him to calm down and go home and sleep it off. This just made him more mad. He started walking to the back door of the club picking up and throwing the chairs out of his way and as he walked past the pool table (full sized coin operated table) he crouches down and puts his arms under the side of the table and in one motion flips it from on its feet to on its top. Then he went through the kitchen doors and on his way through the kitchen he knocked about 50 plates off of a shelf and pulled the gas main for the kitchen out of the wall. And he knocked the back screen door off its hinges when he went out.

The other bouncers just followed him out and kept everyone else out of his way. Once they got outside they did manage to calm him down and talk him into walking home (only three blocks away, its a small town). It turns out that the whole thing started when the guy decided that it would be a good idea to drive to the next town (10 minutes away) to catch last call since the bar in the next town was open an hour longer. It seems that the owner distracted him while another guy went out and took off his distributor cap. When he couldn't start his truck, he looked under the hood and figured out what had happened and he flipped out.

Needless to say, he doesn't work there anymore.

[tdempsey]

 

Originally posted by fastplant Man, I think it's hilarious to see guys, who would never dance on their own accord, act like dancing is their favorite past time because they think girls want a guy like that. Meanwhile, the girl is usually making fun of him to her girlfriends.

 

 

 

I recently heard a pretty good comedian riffing on this/

 

Key points were how girls dance with each other, because they can't bear the site of how idiotic we look - OR - when they do dance with us, they dance with their eyes closed.

 

I have a gig tonight and I "have a bad feeling" that I'll be contributing directly to this thread.

 

Otherwise, harmless stuff [knock wood] like a tipsy woman trying to hire us for a private party, retired musicians trying to play "Money (That's What I Want) while the clients son bashed out a solo, rather than playing rhythm...

[Next to Nothing]

My band plays mainly sludge/dirt rock type of stuff so we play mainly really rowdy/seedy/divey bars with lots of tattooed drunks and crusties.

 

Anyway a few gigs back, we get on stage and are opening for a few national acts. Of course playing @ 10pm is the worst slot (since most derelicts don

[RupertB]

I was playing solo acoustic at a small Wrightsville Beach NC bar. Everything was going well and the crowd was very friendly. Two couples come in and sit down front. They're older folks (late 50s-early 60s). One lady was clearly trashed. Half-way through the second set, she comes up and requests "Ruby". I tell her I didn't know it, but thanks for asking. She tries singing it for me, again I tell her I don't know it. "Aw, come on" she says as she steps up and screeches "RUUUUBY!" into the side of the mic. I look over at the manager who mouths "Just leave her alone." Apparently this isn't a first for this lady.

 

"I'm going to take a quick break" I say as I turn the PA off and pull my guitars to the other side of the stage. She grabs the now-dead mic and continues screeching "Ruby" over and over. Eventually, the crowd gets tired of it and starts heckling her, even more so when she flips everyone off. After a few minutes of this, she quiets down, stumbles to the right, overcompensates left, face-plants into the corner of my monitor, and comes up pouring blood from her nose & mouth. Her friends grab her, stuff a handful of bar napkins on her face and as they're hustling her out, one shoots me a sarcastic "Thanks a Lot!"

[ShoNuf]

It was our second (or was it 3rd) out of town show, many years ago. We were nervous and excited, waiting to see what the night would bring us. What it brought us was a taste of the surreal.

 

There was this dude, and this dude was there when we were setting up. He was drinking, but it didn't appear that he was putting them back like it was his job. In fact he seemed pretty in control. (More in control than we were, anyway.)

 

I went up to the bar and we exchanged a pleasant "How's it going?" type look. We finished getting our gear up on stage and waited to start our set. I was standing talking to our bassist and I see the dude come quietly up behind him with his arms out. He starts bellowing (from behind our bassist) "I AM A BEAR! I AM A BEAR!!" I simply start laughing, I couldn't help it. Our bassist dodged out of there like Jackie Chan.

 

So he continues to stalk around proclaiming that he is a bear, then just stops, almost like somebody turned off a switch. The he yells "Well I hope you all get your TV dinners!!" He continues to yell about TV dinners until he wanders out during our set.

 

That was one of the strangest things I have encountered, well besides the guy that hit on my now wife, then girlfriend, by asking her if she, "Worked at the Big - Bear?" (Big Bear is a farm, and workman clothing/supply store.) She told me that and I crapped my pants. She was pissed that the only dude to hit on her that night had 3 teeth and was dreaming of her in a Carhardt jump suit.

 

Peace!