When I was 19 I landed a gig with a band on Bourbon Street in New Orleans (Check out some pics of the street here)...We played 5-6 nights a week, 5 hour shifts, 3 hour and a half sets with 2 thirty minute breaks. This was THE gig that got me together as a player and put me on the level I wanted to be at...and did I mention it was on Bourbon Street? If you've never been there, and you'd like to take a break from reality, by all means...be my guest...
I grew up a pastors son in deep South Mississippi...if you want to call it sheltered you could...oh yea, and I was home schooled most of my life also? Ok, I lived a sheltered childhood, whatever. Bourbon was about as far removed from what I'd grown up with as I could have gotten. People came there to lose their minds at the airport and then picked them up on their way back to their "normal" life. One of the club managers asked me one night after a week long break what I had been doing..."Just normal stuff...just being normal..." To which he replied "what's normal?" And I just thought "Not this buddy, not this..."
Anyways, it was a wild ride...lots of beads, boobs, alcohol, debauchery, etc...I was only 19, so I had a first class sober seat for this ride...which is the difference between me and 99% of the other folks on that street...I remember it all...
I was on the 4:30-9:30 shift one day at the BBC (Bourbon Street Blues Company)...the band was called RTL (it stood for Redneck Trucker Love...I'll delve into the story sometime about how I had to learn 64 songs in 2 and a half days for that audition...)...good group, played everything from classic rock to current rock, blues, whatever...At this time in the day we played to a mostly seated crowd that just wanted to get away from the oppressive cajun heat and humidity.
Out of the right corner of my eye I caught them coming in...we'll call them Deuschbags 1, 2, and 3 (DS for short)...all of them were pretty muscular guys, the kind you might run into at any of the identical frat parties happening across college campuses, and they were dressed accordingly...
DS1 was wearing an American flag bikini top with tight daisy duke American flag bottoms, tennis shoes, lipstick, sunglasses, and topped it off with a curly blonde wig...he was also carrying a large jar of pink liquid with bright red chunks floating inside. More on this later...
DS2 was the most conservatively dressed, or so it seemed...He had on full face makeup (think your everyday, run of the mill streetwalker)and a conservative bright red minidress with red high heels...not too bad...
DS3 was the "man" of the group...he was out caveman style...Had on a Tarzan suit, leopard print, barefoot, and was using one of the cups from a local bar that served a drink they called the "Hand Grenade" (a highly potent green concoction of liquor poured into a glass with a skinny neck about 2 feet in length...pic here) as a caveman club...
Keep in mind it was 4:30 in the afternoon...hardly late enough for these types of shenanigans...
They were a loud group, much to the chagrin of the calm folks seated at the bar...jumping around, hollering, jumping on stage, flashing the audience (apparently DS2 had forgotten that proper ladies wear underwear underneath their dresses...our female lead singer was having fun with him...thank God I was at the back of the stage and he was facing the other way. I missed his "show"...)
The next few minutes were a blur...
we kicked into AC/DC's "Back in Black"...and they kicked into overdrive...
I was looking down for some reason when I heard the crash...I looked up to see what had happened and was suddenly transported into some sort of GWAR type ordeal. Our singer was holding onto his mike for dear life, his feet slipping out from under him due to the thick coating of broken glass and slime that now covered the floor...the bass player was hollering for the doorman and pointing towards said deuschbags...my guitarist was screaming profanities at DS1, 2, and 3 and kicking large, soft reddish chunks out into the audience while trying to keep his footing. And then the smell hit me...it was like rotten pickles mixed with decaying flesh and feces...
...we're still playing "Back in Black"...
The loud music, the smells, the deuschbags going crazy
...It was pickled pigs parts...the jar I mean.
It was full of pickled pigs parts and pickled slush juice...and DS2 had decided to launch it onstage. We ended the song, all 3 deuschbags were kicked out, and we took a break.
So what did I learn from this?
I don't know...don't let 3 guys exotically dressed up carrying jars of pickled pigs parts into your club? Maybe I wasn't supposed to learn anything. That was actually not too suprising of an afternoon on Bourbon Street. And I played there for 3 years...I have ALOT of these stories...
So even on my worst gig, I always think "At least no one's got a jar of pig..."
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