Saturday, December 11, 2004
Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting
(And Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Weds ... )
The recent murder of a guitarist onstage (and a fan, a bodyguard, and a club employee) brought to my mind too vivid memories of violence I've witnessed, experienced, and fortunately just missed in a handful of music venues.
From bar room fights to bar room flights, there have been too many of them. Too many, even though the law of averages tells me, "wait a minute, these few are out of hundreds if not thousands of nights of performances." All I can say is it sure has escalated from phoned-in bomb threats (which shut down a Mike Seeger show during the Civil Rights Era), even for me.
In the height of the summer of love in flower power land itself, I was there pre-show as the manager of a peace love and happiness psychedelic band came running into the venue, the arm of his shirt soaked with blood. He ran straight through the foyer into the box office and slammed the door behind him. Turns out, a guy tried to rob him, asked him for his wallet. He bears a nasty jagged scar to this very day. Well, that was a bummer, all things considered ... in the time of peace, love, happiness ... However do we deal with the paradoxes of life and shit like that? Times passes and life goes on. A few years later, as that manager acquired a reputation for being increasingly parsimonious if not downright stingy and borderline venal, that story was mentioned once in my hearing, and a musician remarked: "Did he owe the guy money?"
Yet, it's all about safety as well as trust. This happened to me the following year at my job at a blues club. Like anything in the Berkeley at that time, it was a complicated sort of thing. The band was performing in front of a leopard skin curtain they'd brought for the occasion when a man and woman came in, sat down at the bar, ordered and were served a drink. The phone rang shortly thereafter. A weeknight and we were breaking in a new bartender on what we assumed would be a much easier night than a busy weekend shift. Our new bartender, first night on the job, answered the phone and chatted for awhile.
He hung up the phone, came over and told me the police had just called
and were looking for some suspects who had just robbed a hotel and pistolwhipped the nightclerk just down the street, and the cops described the couple who were now sitting at the bar. As he’d just served them a drink, the bartender recognized them
from the description and told the cops the people were there. The police
advised him the couple were armed and dangerous, and to clear the club without
the suspects noticing it.
After the bartender apprised me of these facts, he slipped over the bar and
went out the front door. So I told the manager about this phone call, and
he soon slipped away through that same door with the bouncer. We weren't used to trouble in that place. Onstage, the band began the first set of the evening and I was the last employee left in the building. I went around casually pretending to wipe off tables. Maybe overacting the part while trying to look casual. And I asked people one at a time and very cautiously to vacate the premises, to leave and be really cool about it.
The band continued to play. A group of white boys who covered R&B tunes pretty well, they were probably beginning to wonder about the quality of their performance with everyone starting to leave and all.
I went back behind the bar and the couple noisily demanded another drink. I gave them each a drink, and I accidentally spilled some of one as I set it down. I apologized, lifted the glass, and wiped the spill from the bar top with a cloth.
This incident made the woman very angry, and she seemed to spiral out of control and didn’t seem to like me, and let her companion know with the words, "kill that bitch." She started screeching, "Kill that bitch! Give me that gun, i’ll kill her." "Gimme the gun" she was shouting loudly. She moved towards him on the bar stool and tried to pull something from the pocket of his jacket, but he kept pulling his jacket away from her and told her to take it easy.
While they were so engaged, I walked away and got the last few people near the bandstand out. I walked over to the stage and told the lead singer every one’s getting off stage, there was going to be trouble. They tumbled off right away, and left en masse by the back door which slammed shut behind them. And I was right behind them, too, happy to leave the couple with the club all to themselves.
The cops leveled their fire power at me as I came out the back door and I
was so startled to be staring straight down gun barrels that I nearly hit the dirt. Unbelievably, up the block, a tv crew had been close and scanning the police radio. They'd set up and were interviewing the bartender. Why bother talking to him about anything, I thought, he was barely there. His first night as a bartender in a blues club.
Well, the cops went in and took them. But I was left wondering why I had to be the one taking the risks. Suddenly I felt like I had taken enough risks, and I was genuinely disappointed no one else was willing to take part. I guess there was an issue about rescue, too, whirling around for me. Most times, there’s no such thing, you know. After a cup of coffee with the band at a nearby restaurant, we all made our way back to the club and finished off the night. Anyone who wanted to come back in to hear the music came back. I got my wages for the night and the tips were scarcer than usual, but the owner made a special point of expressing appreciation when I showed up for the Friday shift. No shots were fired, no blood was spilled, but this incident made a profound and lasting impression on me.
Through the ages: from the anonymous phoned-in bomb scares, to knife attacks, to gun waving, to a series of drugged out brawls and drunken push and shoves. When in a new outlaw location described as a Preservation Park for the Sixties, I witnessed a coked-up sound man flip out and physically attack a patron for no reason.
Incomprehensible! The lard gutted soundman hiked up his fat belly with his forearm like the Bluto cartoon that had inspired him and threw a punch with no provocation whatsoever. A sudden vicious upperjab from a beefy soundguy, a blow-brained imbecile who we shitwits had to that point regularly hired, an uppercut that lifted a diabetic longhair patron two feet straight in the air off his feet.
A month later, on a night out in that small town, I watched in disbelieving horror as a laughable excuse for security collapsed and a maniac shouting "I'm Mose! I'm Mose!" pushed his way in to a club where in fact Mose Allison was playing. A jazz concert!
Who'd expect trouble at jazz event featuring a solo pianist?
The brawling loony smashed my husband in the face as he stepped in the way of the assault to protect a much smaller person from the wild swings of the crazed brute pushing his way in (an action on my husband's part for which he received not a thing -- certainly the promoter who overpacked the house didn't pay so much as a penny to replace a now ruined piece of expensive dental work, certainly no thanks or acknowledgement because an expression of that sentiment might have cracked the lips of the clown running the evening's show, but that's getting to be fairly typical of some of these life ruiners disguised as concert promoters. And such attitudes seem to run like blood in that promoter's family, (seriously, witness only Woodstock 99) and whatever pretensions for music and community they claim to profess, they simply end up the kind of people that help you learn the real meaning of the world "schadenfrude".
All those stacked up little bits of crud I've witnessed in music venues adds up only to a great big steaming ball of shit sometimes, from the first experience to what hopefully is the last one.
The last one, I was waiting in line thinking about going into a nightclub when I watched a man and a woman have a brief odd interaction in front of me. He was a big burly fellow carrying a small inflated plastic dinosaur. She was blond and in a black sheath dress and spike heels. She suddenly reached out and hit the dinosaur on the head. Kind of a tap. The man stared at her. After a moment, she reached out and gave the dinosaur another (playful? nasty?) tap and walked in to the club.
Those two gave me the willies and I decided to just go home instead. The local news was full of it the next day. A guy walked over to a woman he did not know in a nightclub, and without a word, pulled her out of her chair, knocked her to the floor, and jumped on her head. He walked away. Then he turned back and as she laid on the floor, he jumped on her head again, and she was dead. Yes, this was the plastic dinosaur couple. And just reading about it was trauma enough.
¶ 12/11/2004 01:39:00 PM
(And Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Weds ... )
The recent murder of a guitarist onstage (and a fan, a bodyguard, and a club employee) brought to my mind too vivid memories of violence I've witnessed, experienced, and fortunately just missed in a handful of music venues.
From bar room fights to bar room flights, there have been too many of them. Too many, even though the law of averages tells me, "wait a minute, these few are out of hundreds if not thousands of nights of performances." All I can say is it sure has escalated from phoned-in bomb threats (which shut down a Mike Seeger show during the Civil Rights Era), even for me.
In the height of the summer of love in flower power land itself, I was there pre-show as the manager of a peace love and happiness psychedelic band came running into the venue, the arm of his shirt soaked with blood. He ran straight through the foyer into the box office and slammed the door behind him. Turns out, a guy tried to rob him, asked him for his wallet. He bears a nasty jagged scar to this very day. Well, that was a bummer, all things considered ... in the time of peace, love, happiness ... However do we deal with the paradoxes of life and shit like that? Times passes and life goes on. A few years later, as that manager acquired a reputation for being increasingly parsimonious if not downright stingy and borderline venal, that story was mentioned once in my hearing, and a musician remarked: "Did he owe the guy money?"
Yet, it's all about safety as well as trust. This happened to me the following year at my job at a blues club. Like anything in the Berkeley at that time, it was a complicated sort of thing. The band was performing in front of a leopard skin curtain they'd brought for the occasion when a man and woman came in, sat down at the bar, ordered and were served a drink. The phone rang shortly thereafter. A weeknight and we were breaking in a new bartender on what we assumed would be a much easier night than a busy weekend shift. Our new bartender, first night on the job, answered the phone and chatted for awhile.
He hung up the phone, came over and told me the police had just called
and were looking for some suspects who had just robbed a hotel and pistolwhipped the nightclerk just down the street, and the cops described the couple who were now sitting at the bar. As he’d just served them a drink, the bartender recognized them
from the description and told the cops the people were there. The police
advised him the couple were armed and dangerous, and to clear the club without
the suspects noticing it.
After the bartender apprised me of these facts, he slipped over the bar and
went out the front door. So I told the manager about this phone call, and
he soon slipped away through that same door with the bouncer. We weren't used to trouble in that place. Onstage, the band began the first set of the evening and I was the last employee left in the building. I went around casually pretending to wipe off tables. Maybe overacting the part while trying to look casual. And I asked people one at a time and very cautiously to vacate the premises, to leave and be really cool about it.
The band continued to play. A group of white boys who covered R&B tunes pretty well, they were probably beginning to wonder about the quality of their performance with everyone starting to leave and all.
I went back behind the bar and the couple noisily demanded another drink. I gave them each a drink, and I accidentally spilled some of one as I set it down. I apologized, lifted the glass, and wiped the spill from the bar top with a cloth.
This incident made the woman very angry, and she seemed to spiral out of control and didn’t seem to like me, and let her companion know with the words, "kill that bitch." She started screeching, "Kill that bitch! Give me that gun, i’ll kill her." "Gimme the gun" she was shouting loudly. She moved towards him on the bar stool and tried to pull something from the pocket of his jacket, but he kept pulling his jacket away from her and told her to take it easy.
While they were so engaged, I walked away and got the last few people near the bandstand out. I walked over to the stage and told the lead singer every one’s getting off stage, there was going to be trouble. They tumbled off right away, and left en masse by the back door which slammed shut behind them. And I was right behind them, too, happy to leave the couple with the club all to themselves.
The cops leveled their fire power at me as I came out the back door and I
was so startled to be staring straight down gun barrels that I nearly hit the dirt. Unbelievably, up the block, a tv crew had been close and scanning the police radio. They'd set up and were interviewing the bartender. Why bother talking to him about anything, I thought, he was barely there. His first night as a bartender in a blues club.
Well, the cops went in and took them. But I was left wondering why I had to be the one taking the risks. Suddenly I felt like I had taken enough risks, and I was genuinely disappointed no one else was willing to take part. I guess there was an issue about rescue, too, whirling around for me. Most times, there’s no such thing, you know. After a cup of coffee with the band at a nearby restaurant, we all made our way back to the club and finished off the night. Anyone who wanted to come back in to hear the music came back. I got my wages for the night and the tips were scarcer than usual, but the owner made a special point of expressing appreciation when I showed up for the Friday shift. No shots were fired, no blood was spilled, but this incident made a profound and lasting impression on me.
Through the ages: from the anonymous phoned-in bomb scares, to knife attacks, to gun waving, to a series of drugged out brawls and drunken push and shoves. When in a new outlaw location described as a Preservation Park for the Sixties, I witnessed a coked-up sound man flip out and physically attack a patron for no reason.
Incomprehensible! The lard gutted soundman hiked up his fat belly with his forearm like the Bluto cartoon that had inspired him and threw a punch with no provocation whatsoever. A sudden vicious upperjab from a beefy soundguy, a blow-brained imbecile who we shitwits had to that point regularly hired, an uppercut that lifted a diabetic longhair patron two feet straight in the air off his feet.
A month later, on a night out in that small town, I watched in disbelieving horror as a laughable excuse for security collapsed and a maniac shouting "I'm Mose! I'm Mose!" pushed his way in to a club where in fact Mose Allison was playing. A jazz concert!
Who'd expect trouble at jazz event featuring a solo pianist?
The brawling loony smashed my husband in the face as he stepped in the way of the assault to protect a much smaller person from the wild swings of the crazed brute pushing his way in (an action on my husband's part for which he received not a thing -- certainly the promoter who overpacked the house didn't pay so much as a penny to replace a now ruined piece of expensive dental work, certainly no thanks or acknowledgement because an expression of that sentiment might have cracked the lips of the clown running the evening's show, but that's getting to be fairly typical of some of these life ruiners disguised as concert promoters. And such attitudes seem to run like blood in that promoter's family, (seriously, witness only Woodstock 99) and whatever pretensions for music and community they claim to profess, they simply end up the kind of people that help you learn the real meaning of the world "schadenfrude".
All those stacked up little bits of crud I've witnessed in music venues adds up only to a great big steaming ball of shit sometimes, from the first experience to what hopefully is the last one.
The last one, I was waiting in line thinking about going into a nightclub when I watched a man and a woman have a brief odd interaction in front of me. He was a big burly fellow carrying a small inflated plastic dinosaur. She was blond and in a black sheath dress and spike heels. She suddenly reached out and hit the dinosaur on the head. Kind of a tap. The man stared at her. After a moment, she reached out and gave the dinosaur another (playful? nasty?) tap and walked in to the club.
Those two gave me the willies and I decided to just go home instead. The local news was full of it the next day. A guy walked over to a woman he did not know in a nightclub, and without a word, pulled her out of her chair, knocked her to the floor, and jumped on her head. He walked away. Then he turned back and as she laid on the floor, he jumped on her head again, and she was dead. Yes, this was the plastic dinosaur couple. And just reading about it was trauma enough.
¶ 12/11/2004 01:39:00 PM
