Re: Funny concert experiences?

New thread, submitted for your consideration and response: What's the funniest thing you've ever witnessed at a concert?

Let's limit this to things you saw happen on the stage, since (1) when a crowd of people gets together, almost any ridiculous thing can happen in that crowd, and (2) a lot of the "funny" things you see audience members doing at a concert may well be drug-induced. (Granted, the same may be true of the funny things you see the musicians do on stage ... but they chose to get up there on that stage, so they're more obligated to bear the scrutiny if they commit some absurd gaffe.)

For me, it was probably the time I saw Whitesnake ... the night that David Coverdale sang, gyrated and cavorted through nearly half the set before it was brought to his attention that his fly was open.

Black Sabbath touring for "Born Again" - their stage fog was so thick that Tony Iommi was invisible for most of the performance and Geezer Butler kept waving to the stage crew who ran onstage for the entire show - and it still didn't stop. Periodically , through the fog you could see all their panicked faces.

Black Flag / Meat Puppets show in '84: the insanely bad Nig Heist--featuring Black Flag roadie Mugger and anyone that would join him--unexpectantly open the show by hitting the stage in their underwear. The bassist quickly shed his Hanes and proceeded to wank around the stage in more ways that one. After the crowd booed them off, Barry Fey, Denver's own uber-promoter, said, ""I congratulate you on the good taste not to like what you just saw. I'd like to apologize and promise on behalf of The Rainbow and myself that there will never be a piece of **** like that on this stage again." That's a quote. I had just turned 15, it was my first hardcore show, I was stupid enough to land a spot on the dancefloor until I was landed on twice by stagedivers. Finally, a sympathetic local punk named Fly suggested I might like the seats a little more. God, it just doesn't get any better than that. (By the way, the Meat Puppets were fun and truly original; Black Flag, with Henry in his black jogging shorts and Greg playing the worst guitar solos imaginable--sucked balls. But then again, they weren't Nig Heist.)

And I wasn't the only one that thought it was a noteworthy experience:

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when i saw the alarm in 83, most of the members had teased, long hair with lots of hairspray so it could stick-up in the air. there was certainly a strong belief system holding up their hair-doos as well. as the polished performance began into the second or so song, a couple audience members shot up streams of silly string over, atop, around the keyboardist's head who was vulnerably situated right up to the edge of the stage. i don't know if this act came from exhuberance, but the keyboardist frowned the whole rest of the concert and the other band members kept a wary distance from the crowd pit.

"we're the Nig Heist and we want to f_uck your girlfriends!"... saw them on that tour too and one other time... they came out naked and the bouncers made 'em put underpants on... "this song is called "Last Night I Beat Off So Hard I Have Scabs On My Dick"...

2) there was the time I saw COC and the Offenders play a church show with a local metal band called Executioner... I was actually outside when Executioner were playing but all of sudden the door opens and there's all this smoke billowing out... apparently, Executioner's smoke machine malfunctioned and filled up the room... and the fire dept. showed up and almost shut the show down but the room aired out and it continued

3) the Dwarves played at CMJ as part of Sub Pop night at some trendoid club in NYC... I forget which... a pre-fame RuPaul introduced them... their guitarist HeWhoCannotBeNamed also came out sans pants and was made to put something on to cover his derriere... he climbed up on the PA and pissed onto the dancefloor... they ended their set by firing firecrackers into the crowd. You never saw an audience scatter so quickly.

4) GG Allin stole the show at a punk fest in NH that he wasn't even playing... he was getting a blow job by the side of the stage while a band called Psycho were playing and got arrested...

5) Municipal Waste playing at the Chicago fest earlier this year... they're a kickass crossover hardcore/thrash metal band ala Nuclear Assault, etc... anyway, they brought two springboards for people to do stage dives and also had a rubber raft and boogie (?) board for crowd surfing...

Caught the great D.O.A. at an Elks Lodge. When they broke into "Singing in the Rain" a la Clockwork Orange a group of wired skinheads busted out of the bathroom and continued to demolish the dance floor. I believe a large stack of chairs saved my life that day.

the repalcements: they were so drunk we kept screaming--from the front row!!--play a GD song sober for a laugh! Tommy threw a beer at us and we promptly threw it back. the concert was over about 3 minutes later.

jeff beck throwing an inefficient PA monitor at cowering stagehand


debbie harry crying when the crowd started ragging about peroxide when she opened for iggy/bowie

frank and kim glowering at each other in lame pixies concert

seeing IR at a yanni show

Yeah, the time I saw the Replacements, they told the audience that they were recording a live album that evening, and asked everyone to boo as loud as they could between songs. They kept encouraging us to boo, song after song, while they busted up laughing on stage and said things like, "Please! Just give us a chance, will ya?" into the mics. (I've heard since then that this was a fairly regular bit of shtick at the Mats' shows.)

Wasn't that the Mat's show at the Paramount where Paul, in lieu of singing, was running around the stage snapping his mouth open and shut like a muppet? When the crowd asked him what he was doing he said there were a bunch of flies on stage and he was getting rid of them.
What's funny is; I saw the band 3 times and snuck/scammed in all 3 times.

I don't remember Paul doing that, Paganizer, but it was definitely at the Paramount, in 1989.

The opening act was a band called Black Spot. I think they were from Minneapolis. Judging from Paul's comments about them, it was pretty clear that the Mats had brought Black Spot on tour mainly as a nuisance factor. They weren't quite on the same level as Nig Heist, but they definitely set out more to annoy and piss off the audience than entertain them. (I remember the singer gobbing onstage, a *lot*, throughout their set.)

I also remember the Mats' final encore: three covers, none of which they could be bothered to actually finish.

black spot was j. christopher's/chris johnson's (rifle sport) other band...

definitely annoying, but i don't really think he could help himself.

actually, steve brantseg was in black spot too! he'd previously been in the figures, the phones and curtiss a's band and later went on to play with tommy in bash and pop...

nevertheless, black spot was annoying as hell!



Post Edited (07-22-05 14:46)

Speaking of Mould fans; 2 friends of mine at a Husker Du show; 1st one sees Bob and, not knowing what to say, yelps, 'Your Band Saves Lives!'. Mould, on way to bathroom, stops, puzzled, "really??". This was Zen Arcade-era so he probably didn't have too much adulation yet. My other friend decides then to go for the autograph but only has his temporary driver's license (they were construction paper back then). Bob scrawls all over it, writing a verse, stops and says, "Is This a Focking Driver's License? No Way!".

Meat Puppets at the Blue Note. They all rotate intruments, which they trash and destroy. But then they feel bad avout not playing longer so they pass around pictures from the tour and chat about other bands.



Post Edited (07-25-05 23:13)

I saw Dylan in West Palm Bch '89 or '90, so drunk he fell off a stool he was supposed to be sitting on. Or is that sad? Either way, it's still just BD

In the early 80s I went to a Christian music festival with a friend of mine who had to cover it for her local newspaper. One of the performers was Gary Chapman, who at the time was married to Amy Grant. Chapman seemed to be feeling a little cranky and out of sorts that day, and before his first song made some incoherent speech about god knows what, then went into his first song which he promptly forgot the words to. Then he spent another 10 minutes or so farting around with his band before he finally attempted another song, which he again stopped about halfway through. By this time the very polite crowd had had enough and started booing him, so he threw down his guitar, shouted "YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS BECAUSE I'M MARRIED TO AMY GRANT!!!!" and stormed off the stage.

Then he hit on my friend backstage when she was trying to interview him. Told her she was "nice and curvy."



Post Edited (07-19-05 15:41)

My wife told me about the time she saw The Young Fresh Fellows. They had fastened a deep-sea fishing pole to the drum riser, so it stood upright, directly in front of the bass drum. A large round pad of some kind was fastened about midway up the pole's length, facing the drummer. A Chinese gong was attached to the top of the pole, also facing the drummer.

Just before the drummer's big solo, he put on a helmet. Then, during his solo, he would occasionally hit the pad, causing the pole to spring outward, toward the audience. When it would spring back toward him, he would hit the gong with his head! She said it was just about the funniest thing she'd ever seen, anywhere.

a drug-era Steven Tyler coming out on stage with a post-chartdom Cheap Trick at the Ritz (i think) in new york and failing to recall the words to "I'm a Man" ("I'm a .... ??? I spell ??????--a-???????") or thereabouts

Bob Dylan failing to recall the lyrics to "This Train" at the Woody Guthrie Memorial show at Carnegie Hall a hundred years ago and having Joan Baez whisper them in his ear, line by line

A Replacements show where Bob Stinson wore no pants and played a plexiglass guitar

Stiv Bators being knocked unconscious by the dead boys drummer hurling a floor tom at the back of his head at CBGB

Mott the Hoople losing the PA at Radio City Music Hall

Bruce Springsteen



Post Edited (07-19-05 22:53)

I was the only paying member of the audience at a Jackonuts concert at a tiny club in Springfield, IL. The singer, who I believe was also the kind of creepy androgynous singer for the Bar-B-Q Killers in the movie Athens Georgia: Inside Out, kept leaping off the stage into the audience - which consisted of me, the bartender and the members of Phydeaux, the opening band (who did a great punk version of the Devil Went Down to Georgia) - and repeatedly running headlong into us. Or even more frighteningly, she'd do this sort of backwards bunny hop and ram her butt into anyone not quick enough to take evasive action.

I think the Phydeauxs eventually all took refuge behind the bar while I moved far enough to the back of the club that I guess she just figured it wasn't worth the effort to charge that far and stayed on stage for the rest of the show.

This one is not so much funny as impressive:

I saw an outdoor package tour in the summer of '93 with Soul Asylum, the Screaming Trees and some other grunge-era band (maybe L7) and will never forget Dave Pirner's performance.

Soul Asylum would play / sing two or three songs in a row, note-perfect, great vocals, etc. and then Pirner would want to talk to the audience but was so hammered out of his mind as to be incoherent. He would then sing another couple of songs flawlessly, babble some more, repeat etc.

Now that's a true professional.

Also, Devo in 1981 marching on treadmills while performing and occasionally simultaneously freezing in poses and rolling backwards only to start marching again (back up to the microphone) at the last moment and continue the song. Genius.

Social Distortion in a ballroom around '91 or '92 and Mike Ness dealing with a heckler by saying he was going to come down there and F*** him up the A** like a big boy.

The Tubes (as in White Punks on Dope) were attempting a mid-80's comeback and had used our campus as a practice venue, giving a show later that night, with strong attendance. Everything that could go wrong did. Best examples; lead guitarist with no sound so he basically air-guitared the set and hoped most people wouldn't notice which artist made which sound (since most people don't). At the end of the set, he struck these fey hero poses and when bowing, pointed and said thankyous into the singers mic. We were close enough to notice he was pointing at empty places in the room. The drummer was on a kit that was supposed to levitate and spin. During the drum solo it rose a couple feet, spun 180-degrees, tilted and broke. He was drumming furiously, tilting and with his back to the audience. The stage lights flickered and went dark. When the lights were fixed, two mechanics popped their heads and arms through trapdoors and were furiously trying to fix the kit. The solo had continued throughout before the lights went off again and the drummer gave up. They came back up and the band went into another song. Singer (waybill?) turns around at first verse and notices rhythm guitarist is not actually back on stage and lead guitarist's sound is out again.

There's a motif here:

Many anecdotes either involve the Replacements or forgotten lyrics. I'll tackle both.

1) I've got a parcel of Replacements stories, but the best was in Nashville in '87 or so: Paul rushing out for the opening of "Color Me Impressed" and ending up flat on his face and guitar. My friend Pfenning and I were in the front row and so pressed against the stage by the crush of the crowd that our upper bodies were flat against the stage floor. So, with our faces also pressed against the stage, we had an inches away view of Paul stinking of Jack and sort of lying there for five minutes, gathering his wits. He opened his eyes for a couple of seconds to ask Pfenning for a cigarette (to which he obliged). It was interesting to see the exchange between the two, with their faces pressed against the stage, just sort of looking at each other. (But in those days, Paul could be looking at you, and not really looking at you at the same time.) Everyone was together but Paul. He listed off stage a few times to recuperate (or something). One time he staggered back and started pulling a few crumpled ones out of his pocket and tossing it into the crowd by way of "refund."

2) The other was New Order on Long Island in the late '80s, with Barney Sumner forgotting a pretty simple lyric (do New Order have any other kind?) and singing "Oh you've got green eyes, oh you've got...green eyes, oh you've got...green eyes." It wasn't even like he was playing an instrument at the time. He just kind of spaced out while Gillian handled all of the programmed sounds.

Young Fresh Fellows, early '00s, probably their last tour. Scott McCaughey's inebriation led him to run into the side wall of the stage at Maxwell's over and over again. Really hard.

The Replacements, opening up for Keith Richard (!!) in the Meadowlands Arena (now Continental Airlines Arena) around 1989. Paul says "I hope we don't **** this one up" ... and then they do, of course (I believe the song was "I Won't").

Rik Didjit of the Didjits getting pissed off for no good reason about 45 minutes into their set at The Union in Athens, OH, abandoning his band, throwing a chair and rushing offstage. He was about to threaten a few audience members, but he looked around and realized he, a Midget Didjit at about 5'3", was surrounded by several very large dudes. He shut up and walked right out of the club.

A friend of mine went to a Bob Mould acoustic show and saw Bob getting his guitar out of his vehicle outside. Being a huge Husker Du fan, he was at a loss for words and could only shout "Rock 'n' Rolllll!!!"

the Gun Club and the Bush Tetras in Milwaukee. I got to go back stage ( I was in a band at the time) to meet Jeffrey Lee Peirce, who was passed out on a couch with a tape deck blasting reggae into his ear. He managed to get on stage, but fell off during the third number and remained passed out on the floor for about ten minutes. He got back up on the stage, grabbed a mic and argued with those in attendance before stumbling off.

it was not my experience but my high school buddy's, paige's...and i just thought of it because i hit two stations in a row playing j. geils's 'rage in cage' then 'centerfold,' which was odd.
so paige, around '82-'83 sees j. geils at the capitol (sp?) center in the d.c. area. during the mid of the show, peter wolf says in his mike, "here we are, at the center of power and money...," meanwhile, the crowd cheers, and he is unable to continue his story about corruption.