One gig we had to bring our equipment through the kitchen of a catering hall. The chef had a big pan of prime ribs in his hands and he had to sneeze. He had no where or time to put the pan down so he turned his head to the left to sneeze. But he didn’t know that the oven door was open with another rack of ribs sitting on it. And he sneezed all over that pan. What a spray! We just looked at each other and said at the same time, “We’ll have the chicken tonight.”
There was a wedding we played on Staten Island at a catering hall where the entrance way for the band was located about 50 yards away from the room we had to play. In between was an open grass field. The Maître D said we had to carry our equipment across the field to where the room was. We weren’t going to do that! We drove the van across the field and got stuck in the muddy grass. The more we gunned the engine, the deeper we got into the mud, the harder we laughed. Of course, the Maître D was screaming at us. The funniest part was watching our keyboard player using a rake, trying to fix the divots while in his tuxedo.
We played at The Riviera and it was a hard room to get a good sound. While eating dinner, Gary our drummer was running his finger along the rim of his water glass causing it to ring. Three times Rich, our guitarist got up from the table to adjust the PA thinking it was feeding back!
At one gig our sax player, Alex, annoyed me because he kept putting his empty beer bottles into the bottom of my bass amp. So, when we were on break, I put a red linen napkin into his sax. The rest of the band was in on it. We purposely started the next set with a song that did not require a sax lead, just background color-work. When he tried to blow a note, nothing came out, except his eyeballs!
Before we had sax players, we auditioned some trumpeters. There was one guy named Anthony who was pretty bad. Every time he was blowing off a high note, he would also blow off a fart. He kept farting and we could not help but laugh!... He kept apologizing for it. Maybe he would have been better if he blew the trumpet out of his ass.
I remember a fancy wedding we played at a very ritzy country club called the Crest Hollow Country Club. The band (us) was given our own private dining room --- only to find stale cheese sandwiches waiting for us!
I remember just before a holiday party we played where an old guy asked George, our lead vocalist for the first 4 years, what instruments we had. And George said we have drums, guitar, bass, organ, and skin flute! And the guy said, "Oh! Very nice, very nice". The joke went right over the guest’s head!
When I was in the wedding circuit for 12 years, we played so many weddings at the Huntington Townhouse on Long Island. We were “pigging-out” during the cocktail hour in our own room. I commented on how good the tenderloin tasted. Our sax player said, “That’s not tenderloin, that’s tongue!” I spit it out and he added, “And that cow was probably licking some other cow’s ass!”.
Remembering a wedding we played at the Fox Hollow Country Club: After the reception, the groom went up on the high diving board and dove into the pool with his tuxedo on. I hope it wasn’t a rental!
Whenever we used to rent vans for gigs that were long distances, one of us would crawl under the van on the side of the road and disconnect the odometer. Rental companies would charge by the mile. We would then reconnect it just before we got back.