We in dePhaser have all had our share of strange experiences from various gig in the past. Fortunately, pretty much all the gigs we’ve had with dePhaser has worked out fine, but we do remember some funny incidents from our earlier musical careers.
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“The Iranian evening” by Johan
While Johan and Andreas was playing in their first band , Bluerhythm, there were a couple of strange/funny incidents. With Bluerhythm, who was mostly playing covers of old rock and blues classics, they had for example the incident with “the Iranian evening”:
“Andreas had contacted one quite large venue in Malmö, a dancehall call “the 54”, and asked if we could come and play. At first they were quite rejective, but eventually Andreas nagging gave result, and they forward him to some Iranian guy. This guy told that he regularly arranged an Iranian evening at the dancehall, and according to the guy this was a really big event, which drew hundreds of people each month. He explained that he already had an genuine Iranian band who would perform as the main attraction, but we were welcome to play for about 30-45 minutes while they held a break. Given the rare opportunity to perform before a larger crowd, we jumped at the chance and accepted. Unfortunately, his budget didn’t give him any room for a proper payment, except for some food and beer. -And by the way, can the other band borrow your drum kit and bass amplifier?
When we arrived at the gig, it turns out that the arranger has forgotten to inform us that the Iranian equivalent to Frank Sinatra is performing in Malmö the same night, with the result that only two families turned up at his arrangement (the poor bastards, who didn’t get tickets to see the Iranian Frank Sinatra). It felt quite strange to play in such a large place, with only two families eating in the back of the room. But hey – at least there were two 4 year olds dancing in front of the stage for our entire show!”
“At the homeless shelter” by Johan
Another incident with Bluerhythm was the show at the homeless shelter:
“Our drummers big brother was at the time manager for a homeless shelter in Malmö. We then came up with the great idea to arrange a gig there. The shelter had a big basement room, which also had some sort of raised floor section that could serve perfectly as a stage. Bluerhythm arrives at the place, and rips of a set of about ten well rehearsed covers song. There turns up about 30-40 people, who really LOVES the music and our the show! It’s a great success, and everybody begs us to come back and play again soon. So, of course, we book in another gig a few months ahead.
It turns out at the second gig, that we’ve chosen at very bad date for this show. It turns out that, the friday we chosen, the social security checks are handed out. And unfortunately, a lot of the homeless people staying at the shelter, are struggling with severe drug and alcohol addictions. So what many of them had done when the money arrived in the morning, was to go downtown to get some drugs and/or alcohol. So when Bluerhythm arrived to play, most people were “missing in action”. The staff managed to wake up maybe four or five drunk/hungover persons who had managed to get back to their rooms, and get them down to the basement to see the show. So this time we didn’t quite get the ecstatic audience response we had last time. Basically, it was like a rehearsal, with a few half sleeping persons in the same room… This was the last time we played at the homeless shelter.”
“The quiet gig” by Hans
Hans and Daniel played for many years in a band called Desh. Desh had lots of gigs, and also quite some success with their demo recordings. They also received some very nice reviews from various newspapers. It should be mentioned before we start this story, that Daniel has always been a hard hitting drummer – “The destroy of cymbals” and “The crusher of drumsticks”…
“Desh had landed this gig at a private birthday party. We had rehearsed all kinds of popular covers, but as usually tried to “sneak in” as many of our own songs as possible. The problem with this gig was, that the party took place in a rented club local of some sort, which apparently had some very sensitive neighbors. To avoid eviction, the association or club that owned the local, had had to install a decibel meter. When the sound level rose over a certain level, the meter started blinking, and whatever source causing the “loud” sound, had to be cut. This is of course a nightmare for a fully amplified band who is trying to perform. Normally, any rock band with self respect would of course totally ignore this, and play on, and consider the blinking decibel meter as extra stage light… But at this gig, the (big and hairy) handyman attending the building were for some reason present at the party. And he was not the overseeing type of guy, when it came to loud “noise”. This caused us to have to lower the volume level until it got right down to a ridiculous level. You can’t really go any quieter than what the drums are acoustically. But the handyman insisted to lower the volume even further, which forced Daniel to start using the brushes, and even then, he could barely touch the cymbals and toms. The guitar amps were turned down so low, it was almost like playing them unplugged… Of course this was a true nightmare, and we basically played through the set as fast as we could, just to be able to leave the god damned place. We’re still not sure to this day, who was the happiest when we left, us or the sensitive handyman…”
