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Years ago, a blues band that I was unfortunate enough to play in for a while had a gig at some dive in west Texas that was little more than a barn with a bar license.
The stage actually had chicken wire between the us and the dance floor. I had heard about this arrangement, but never experienced the design feature in real life. That night I was to learn, however, that there are good reasons for such measures in some of the more unsophisticated venues.
After refusing to play his blurry request for "Wipe Out", a large, burly, bearded, bear-like patron threw his domestic beer at us. It was a poor throw and our bass player was dampened slightly, but we weren't overly concerned since we were an extremely talented band at spilling beer on ourselves.
Anyway, we launched a serious attempt to talk the drummer into playing "Wipe Out" when the burly guy - apparently furious that his beer attack had failed - rushed the stage. The bouncer made a valiant attempt to stop him, but bear man was deceptively agile and escaped his grasp. I think bear man was a POW in a past life or something, because he was making excellent progress through the wire barricade when I clocked him with a sunburst Les Paul right on the noggin. His lights went out so fast that I was afraid I might have killed him which would mean spending the rest of my life in a Texas jail thinking of ways to improve the defensive capabilities of chicken wire.
But thankfully, the bouncer said he would be okay because he had been struck more forcibly than that in the past many times. The Les Paul was fine and, since that time, I've been amazed that the Surfari's still have such passionate fans.
FAX in round 1.
FAX
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