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I enjoyed your tale.
Unrelated anecdote:
It was 1977. I was the "leader" of an early punk band in Northampton, MA. We encouraged audience participation as a political statement. This led to some great nights (and some no so great ones). Daniel Lightsey (a published poet; if still a very damaged human being) did scat words on top of our jams. We took him on the road (regional) and he was always well received in clubs in Boston & New England environs. However, his love of heroin made him unreliable in the extreme and we had to stop his involvement. But I still think his poems (sometimes) were sublime.
We had a local musician we called Yoko Wayney who would leap on stage and take over the singing on occasion. He was a co-owner of an excellent NY deli in Oho. We later played his wedding (or his business partner - one of them was gay but I can never remember which one). Yoko Wayney was once a musician in NY with a band called the Gypsy Tramps and he knew folks like Alan Vega from Suicide - which was cool cause we then hired Suicide to play a one-off gig in Noho and they let us open for them at a club in NYC called the 80s. One of my very favorite gig memories. The audience assaulted me as lead singer and I loved the negative energy.
So those are my memories: Daniel causing mayhem and people throwing bottles at the stage. One night with Yoko Wayney, the bass player in my band decided Wayney had been sleeping with his wife (or something else - I never figured out all of his anger issues) and he threw a beer glass at Yoko. Who went berserk and threw things back and ranted for ages into an open mic. So the rest of us grooved on the cadence of his speech and gave him a cool James Brown backdrop for his diatribe. Then the cops shut down the club (Rahars) for the night. So L. Luchinie turned it into a private party, opened the cooler, and we all sat & drank into the wee hours while telling tall tales.
Between the 2 of them, the groove went on for almost an hour and I really wish we had run tape because I suspect it was excellent.
Anyway - I think being assualted by your listeners may sometimes be a good thing. I was assaulted by miiltant lesbians numerous times for my lyrics, even though I kept trying to explain they were hyperbole intended to skew homophobes. Such was life in the land of literal liberali9sm circa 1977.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Kirkdorffer
Sent: Oct 4, 2007 11:56 PM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: My worst looping gig...
....was when a very large and very drunken member of the audience came up on stage while I was playing an unlikely spot called "The Chopping Block" and recounted into the microphone his "special encounter" with Michael Brook. He was actually quite entertaining, which was reason enough for me to stop playing and just let the moment play out. What I didn't realize fast enough was just how long it would take to share all the details of this "special encounter."
and what about you??
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