continued…
I will say that most of the places I’ve played are fairly considerate of the entertainers. If they want to fight (fists, knives, pool cues, bottles, whatnot) they might seriously damage each other and the bar but I have never seen any musician injured. Equipment only gets damaged inadvertently and there is usually an apology if not an attempt to compensate. Tennessee gents are often gregarious enough to stop fighting long enough to step aside for ladies. Although everywhere I’ve played males seem to be content to watch females fight it out among themselves. I have seen a guy get hit for trying to stop a female fight.
As regards a musical context, I have been threatened many times but rarely been involved in anything more than a brief scuffle or hitting/pushing match. Except once.
The worst I ever got it was not at a gig but in the attempt to get a gig. We went to this guy’s house in order to secure the details of a job. There was a party in full swing when we arrived. We went in and found the guy that supposedly called us about hiring us for a private party. Every time we would bring up the subject this guy would get all excited and start to talk about us playing. Unfortunately it would quickly degenerate into a long winded monologue on how much he loved a certain punk band he was currently listening to. Then he would put the needle back on the turntable and play more of this terrible, out of time and tune punk album he was so excited about. I have no idea what he thought these two topics had in common: his new found favorite punk album and hiring us to play for one of his parties. It might have been more understandable if we had been under the influence of the same recreational chemicals as he was. Finally, my drummer got impatient enough to say, “Look man, your punk album sucks. Do you wanna hire us or not?” This was the effective end of the conversation, but the beginning of the adventure. We were told to leave. We walked out the door into the crowd partying in the front yard. A guy came up to my drummer acted like he was going to shake his hand and sucker punched him. Mayhem ensued. A crowd gathered around my drummer and held him and pushed him back at this steroid-pumped goiter boy that had punched him and continued to punch him. Part of the crowd went after my bass player and me. My bass player managed to get in his truck a take off with people hanging on his vehicle, yelling and running after him as he pulled away. About 10 guys jumped on me and proceeded to beat the hell out me. I started swinging, hitting and kicking everything I could make contact with. They obviously weren’t serious about it because that many people could have easily killed me. Eventually they got bored with me and just wandered away to see what was going on with the guy the rest of the crowd had surrounded with my drummer and their favorite pit bull. My drummer escaped after a while and we all got together at his girlfriend’s house a few miles away across town. The whole thing wound up in court, I had to testify and Mr. Steroid went to jail for a while. The public defendant told me we were lucky to get that much justice accomplished and assured me my desire to try and have the evil bastard castrated would not meet much sympathy in a court of law.
Other adventures include the time my metal band was booked to play in some clubs in Michigan. We arrived in separate vehicles at separate times. We were supposed to have gigs and lodging lined up. Ha. The bars we showed up at expecting to play were oblivious to our existence, but happily let us play “for free” as a possible “audition”. We did play some underground type low-rent clubs for money eventually (otherwise known as structurally deficient, abandoned warehouses in a dead, crack-head section of some downtown district that the police didn’t like to visit).
The band itself did create some interesting music. We had some fantastic experiences in various studios and live performances all over South Florida.