Gigging Stories

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zoomboogity
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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby zoomboogity » 11 Apr 2018, 12:43

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Last edited by zoomboogity on 11 Apr 2018, 12:46, edited 1 time in total.

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zoomboogity
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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby zoomboogity » 11 Apr 2018, 12:45

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bobzilla77
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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby bobzilla77 » 11 Apr 2018, 18:56

My wife & I were in Charlotte NC for my best friend's wedding. The day after the big event, I woke up kind of bleary and went to get some coffee in the lobby. Surely you've had that kind of Sunday morning where you need everything to be kind of slow, and dim, and quiet as you gradually ease into existence.

As the elevator door opened, there was a little girl done up exactly like Jon Benet Ramsey - super high hair, garish lipstick, glitter around the eyes, frilly pink dress - and she looks up at me and gives me her BIG SMILE, and it's like someone is shining a lamp into my bloodshot eyes. I stand there motionless, in stunned disbelief, until the elevator door closes again and takes her away. I take another elevator to the lobby.

Of course once there I realize, this hotel is hosting a Jon Benet style beauty pageant for little girls, today. The lobby is full of them, and their parents, trying to get into place and have attention paid to them. It is just the most surreal thing I have seen in my life.

Once we've had something to eat, we have many hours to kill before dinner with the newlyweds. My wife and I decide we should go to the beauty pageant and watch the talent competition. It's just too weird, and too perfect to have it going on in the building where we already are.

Most of the performances were garden variety little kid talent show stuff but there are two I will never forget. One was a girl whose performance was an interpretive modern dance of Christ carrying the cross to Golgotha, set to Christian rock. And the other was, I think, the little girl I saw in the elevator, who must have been nine years old or so. She came out dressed like Marilyn Monroe and sang a very sexy rendition of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend", including showing some skin and calling out "Come and get some, boys!" The juxtaposition of those two acts said something about Pageant Values.

The other thing that sticks out in my mind - the vibe that we got from all those parents, who somehow ALL knew that we were the only people in the audience that did not have kids competing in the show, was downright hostile.
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clive gash
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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby clive gash » 13 Apr 2018, 13:51

Nuts wrote:NMA were a bunch of tossers. Punk band I was in (Lost Cherrees) supported them at a local gig organised by a promoter friend. They insisted on spending all their time in the dressing room and not even acknowledging us. They wouldn't let us use any of their gear either so I had to set up my drum kit in front of theirs. Had a problem with one of my cymbal stands so went to the dressing room to ask if I could borrow one cymbal stand to which the reply was "No!"
The ironic thing was as it was a very local gig for us, we packed the place out. When we finished our set, one of our mates jumped on stage and grabbed the mic shouting "More Lost Cherrees, more Lost Cherrees, Fuck New Model Army!" We played an encore, shifted our gear off the stage and about half the audience left, leaving NMA to play to a half empty hall. As I said, tossers.


Lost Cherrees :)

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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby Geezee » 13 Apr 2018, 15:10

bobzilla77 wrote:My wife & I were in Charlotte NC for my best friend's wedding. The day after the big event, I woke up kind of bleary and went to get some coffee in the lobby. Surely you've had that kind of Sunday morning where you need everything to be kind of slow, and dim, and quiet as you gradually ease into existence.

As the elevator door opened, there was a little girl done up exactly like Jon Benet Ramsey - super high hair, garish lipstick, glitter around the eyes, frilly pink dress - and she looks up at me and gives me her BIG SMILE, and it's like someone is shining a lamp into my bloodshot eyes. I stand there motionless, in stunned disbelief, until the elevator door closes again and takes her away. I take another elevator to the lobby.

Of course once there I realize, this hotel is hosting a Jon Benet style beauty pageant for little girls, today. The lobby is full of them, and their parents, trying to get into place and have attention paid to them. It is just the most surreal thing I have seen in my life.

Once we've had something to eat, we have many hours to kill before dinner with the newlyweds. My wife and I decide we should go to the beauty pageant and watch the talent competition. It's just too weird, and too perfect to have it going on in the building where we already are.

Most of the performances were garden variety little kid talent show stuff but there are two I will never forget. One was a girl whose performance was an interpretive modern dance of Christ carrying the cross to Golgotha, set to Christian rock. And the other was, I think, the little girl I saw in the elevator, who must have been nine years old or so. She came out dressed like Marilyn Monroe and sang a very sexy rendition of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend", including showing some skin and calling out "Come and get some, boys!" The juxtaposition of those two acts said something about Pageant Values.

The other thing that sticks out in my mind - the vibe that we got from all those parents, who somehow ALL knew that we were the only people in the audience that did not have kids competing in the show, was downright hostile.


I was convinced the New Model Army would pop up in this story opening the beauty pageant.
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Snarfyguy
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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby Snarfyguy » 13 Apr 2018, 17:55

Excellent story above, Bobz!
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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby sloopjohnc » 13 Apr 2018, 18:59

bobzilla77 wrote:Most of the performances were garden variety little kid talent show stuff but there are two I will never forget. One was a girl whose performance was an interpretive modern dance of Christ carrying the cross to Golgotha, set to Christian rock. And the other was, I think, the little girl I saw in the elevator, who must have been nine years old or so. She came out dressed like Marilyn Monroe and sang a very sexy rendition of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend", including showing some skin and calling out "Come and get some, boys!" The juxtaposition of those two acts said something about Pageant Values.


So they were back-to-back? That would be perfect.
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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby sloopjohnc » 13 Apr 2018, 19:01

Nuts wrote:NMA were a bunch of tossers. Punk band I was in (Lost Cherrees) supported them at a local gig organised by a promoter friend.


I'm sure you knew this, but there's a nice Wikipedia entry on you guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cherrees
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Re: Gigging Stories

Postby Nuts » 13 Apr 2018, 19:08

Yeah, the sour note on it all is that the bass player now runs a pseudo Lost Cherrees with only him as the original member.
We'd reformed to play a few gigs about 10-15 years back, enjoyed it so much that we decided to make a new album. Bit futile, despite the fact I thought we'd come up with some decent tunes, people only wanted to hear the old stuff. Fair enough really, saw Stiff Little Fingers the other week and I only wanted to hear the first 2 albums. We knocked it on the head again but after a few months the bass player emailed saying he wanted to put a new band together and would we all mind if he played some Cherrees tunes. We all said knock yourself out but don't call it Lost Cherrees. He agreed.. then a few months later out come the Lost Cherrees playing live. Wouldn't mind so much but they've decided to crank all the old tunes up into thrash mode and it's frankly pretty poor.
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