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Ridiculous requests


T-Bay

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17 minutes ago, TrevorR said:

 

Speaking of which, given our line up was drums, bass, sax and male singer who doubled on acoustic and electric guitar, the request that really flummoxed me was the guy who came up and asked in all seriousness whether we did any Depeche Mode or Yahoo. “Sorry mate, we’re not really set up for it?” “Huh?” Points at stage, “Erm, can you see any synthesisers?” “Oh yeah, fair enough.”

I wouldn't let that stop me. Our acoustic band is Doublebass, a mixture of guitars/mandolin/ukulele, cajon and female vocalist. We've done Depeche Mode and Yazoo among other 80's synthpop. A good tune is a good tune no matter what it's played on. 

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9 hours ago, Maude said:

I wouldn't let that stop me. Our acoustic band is Doublebass, a mixture of guitars/mandolin/ukulele, cajon and female vocalist. We've done Depeche Mode and Yazoo among other 80's synthpop. A good tune is a good tune no matter what it's played on. 

Yeah, but none of us in the band actually  liked DM... of the 150+ odd songs outside our core song lists we could busk through with a cheat sheet for a special request DM did not feature once! :D

Edited by TrevorR
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I used to play with a singer/songwriter, all original songs. He usually did a solo spot before the band came on and one of the favourites (requested once by a drunk and forever included) was the Britney Spears song Hit Me Baby One More Time.

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On 25/06/2018 at 07:44, dmccombe7 said:

Think there are people out there (non-musicians) who don't understand or realize the difference in music styles. They just see a live band playing songs. 

Either that or he was just rather drunk.

Dave

This. Dave hits the nail on the head. No matter how low you set your sights, you can never underestimate the musical perception of some punters. Listen to any non-specialist commercial radio station and yes, you will hear Kylie, Guns n Roses and Depeche Mode all on the same show, so why should people expect any different from a covers band?  OK, it is a bit different for originals, but then again, if you are playing to people who haven't specifically come out to see you play your music then, again, there will be those that have a completely different perspective on music than we do as musicians.

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1 hour ago, chris_b said:

I used to play with a singer/songwriter, all original songs. He usually did a solo spot before the band came on and one of the favourites (requested once by a drunk and forever included) was the Britney Spears song Hit Me Baby One More Time.

One of my son's friends used to do this on acoustic guitar at open mic nights and it always went down a storm.

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22 hours ago, Rich said:

Aww c'mon, you can't leave it hanging like this. What happened then? What did the bride tell her and did it involve the word 'off'? We need to know.

OK, for closure: we made sure we spoke to the bride (we'd already been paid, but hey, we're professionals 😉) after Over-Entitled Woman and she said "Oh, just ignore her: she's been a pain in the derrière all day". The venue manager just said "There's always one: if it isn't the food or the loos or the queue at the bar, it's something else..." 😊

I've just remembered, we did an acoustic thing (acoustic guitar, small bass amp, single PA top for the mic, cajon, that sort of hoohah) in a country pub a while back, and some wag shouted "Do some Luther Vandross"...so we did Never Too Much. Never in a million years will it make the crossover to cajon and acoustics*, but it shut the heckler up...  Our singer/guitarist does a great Bohemian Rhapsody solo, too, so that's always in the back pocket as a wag-silencer... 😁

 

* Cue some clever sod here posting a KT Bloody Tunstall** version I've never heard of...

** Her real name. No, honestly: look it up...

Edit: Chapeau to the profanity filter for making the bride sound even more classy than she was...however, this was the end of a loooonnnng day for her, and she definitely didn't say 'derrière'... 😁

Edited by Muzz
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5 hours ago, chris_b said:

You realise how musically illiterate some people are when they come up and ask for a song. You tell them you don't know it and they reply, it's easy, you can just play it.

Always seems to be the functions gigs where people seem to think you're a jukebox that can play whatever they ask for (even if you've never heard of the song). The pub punters seem to be a bit more intelligent and understand that you do actually have to learn a song before you can play it.

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9 minutes ago, Japhet said:

Always seems to be the functions gigs where people seem to think you're a jukebox that can play whatever they ask for (even if you've never heard of the song). The pub punters seem to be a bit more intelligent and understand that you do actually have to learn a song before you can play it.

It's even better when you're playing bass for a bloke who's rushed through his set with 15 minutes to spare, panics a bit, and starts blasting through a load of new songs that he's never even played to you before, let alone rehearsed with you, hoping that you'll "pick it up in no time" - not only have I never heard of the song, nobody else in the room has either...

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54 minutes ago, Japhet said:

Always seems to be the functions gigs where people seem to think you're a jukebox that can play whatever they ask for (even if you've never heard of the song). The pub punters seem to be a bit more intelligent and understand that you do actually have to learn a song before you can play it.

Yep, this is it completely: it's that look of affront with functions punters when you say you don't know the song...I've had this before: (anther Drunk And Overly-Entitled Woman, funnily enough) walks up in the middle of a song and beckons...

"Play some Abba" (note lack of 'Please'...)

"Sorry, we don't know any"

"Noooo..." Here she points at the Mac we use for Mainstage, etc "Play. Some. Abba."

"No"

"What?"

"No. We don't know any. We don't know any Abba."

"But you must do...everybody knows Abba"

 

Sometimes I envy Lemmy's approach: I once went up to him in Jillys in Manchester when he was feeding the one-armed bandit:

"Lemmy, can I buy you a drink?"

"flip off"

"OK"

I went back to my mates, thrilled that Lemmy had told me to flip Off... 😁

 

Edit: If you hadn't already guessed, he didn't say 'Flip off'... 😁

Edited by Muzz
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On 25/06/2018 at 22:48, Dan Dare said:

I used to play fiddle in an Irish trad' band. We were forever being asked for Duelling Banjos. We didn't have a banjo player. When I pointed this out, we would be told "Well, play it anyway". I once told a bloke we didn't know it. "You must", he replied. "it goes dunga dung dung dung dung dung dung dung".

Yeah, we get a lot of requests for that, probably because we do have a banjo player. It actually takes a bit of playing once you get past the first few bars. We do now have a banjo player who can probably play it, but as  Pogues covers band we don't normally play anything they didn't record.

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On 25/06/2018 at 07:20, T-Bay said:

It seems to come on here quite regularly, so wondering what mad requests people have had from punters over the years. Our most surreal one was a middle age bloke asking if we did any Kylie. We are a hard rock/ alternative/ punk band. I usually just say it’s in the next set, or we will play it next time but that one left me nowhere to go. He was friendly sort so no harm but why would you ask that?

 

We were asked for a Britney Spears song once... we were a Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute band... they must have been related

 

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St Patrick has a lot to answer for.

We are essentially a juke box rock covers band.  At a gig last St Pats day one particularly drunk lady kept asking if we could play a selection of Irish jigs, and when we pointed out that it wasn't really our bag she then asked if we knew any songs by Irish bands.  We had of course just played a couple of Thin Lizzy tunes and a U2 tune to boot.

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23 hours ago, Muzz said:

We always have half a dozen Oirish songs in the bag, just in case. Six pints in (the punters, not us) and they never fail... 😁

Well a hey dum a do dum a die...

Whack fol me daddio!!!

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52 minutes ago, TrevorR said:

Well a hey dum a do dum a die...

Whack fol me daddio!!!

No, that's morris dancing. Oirish stuff would be more ...

Me Gallaway mare is trottin' along wid a foine set o' hair an' a bit o' a song ...

:|

Edited by Dad3353
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Ahhh, you've been to one of our gigs...actually, when I say we 'have half a dozen in the bag' it means we can play them, but the singist regularly forgets the words, and has actually gone through entire songs ad-libbing like the 'Hi di diddle I-aye' bit in Rare Auld Mountain Dew. 

And no-one has ever noticed...

It's not as bad as his Volare, though...he didn't even know it was Italian until I pointed it out after we'd done it at several gigs...

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7 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

No, that's morris dancing. Oirish stuff would be more ...

Me Gallaway mare is trottin' along wid a foine set o' hair an' a bit o' a song ...

:|

Think you’ll find it doesn’t get much more traditional (17th C ) than Whiskey in the Jar which I think the lyric is from?

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4 minutes ago, casapete said:

Think you’ll find it doesn’t get much more traditional (17th C ) than Whiskey in the Jar which I think the lyric is from?

And to think that all these years I've been playing it with bells around my calves and a thick stick..! Oh well... :$

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