One of those that sounds totally like a movie story but...
WAY back in my college days I played in a glam rock copy band (sad i know, but I've mended my ways -- and at least I learned to play pentatonic well). We do Van Halen, Aerosmith, Stones, Hagar, BUT NEVER POSION!
Junction City, KS, Fort Riley AB. At JC we are playing at this little bar called "Jake's". We pull up to the address and find a place called "The Wagon Wheel" with this fence around it made of wagon wheels. Has a distinctive "country and western" feel. Not good. Got to have the wrong place. Go to the door which says "Jake's Wagon Wheel Ranch" and taped to the door is a little 3"x5" card with a hand written "Thursday Rock & Roll Night". We got a bit nervous.
Trouble is brewing here. Jake (who is actually Billy) comes to the door says hello and welcomes us to his FIRST EVER, "Rock and Roll Thursday". Go inside, and I'm not kidding, is a stage surrounded in chicken wire. Yeah, just like that movie (I forget which one). Billy assures us it's just for "effect" that no one will actaully throw anything. We set up, set the levels, and get ready. The place does fill up with many folks wearing belt buckles the size of dinner plates. We called these types "goat ropers" --those that live the "cowboy" life having never even touched a cow in their life. Now you can smell the fear.
Set starts about 8pm -- we always wanted to go big on the first one to get everyone's attention and we launch into "Locomotive Breath" from Jethro Tull. The crowd gets visibly active as we finish and head right into "Panama" by VH. No cheers, no clapping, no nothing but we see "Jake" up at the bar with a crowd having a "discussion". He leads a group of them to the door, opens it, and points to the 3x5 card type to the outside. At the end of Panama, they boo us big time, thumping the beer bottles on the tables, yelling stuff like "punks", "play some Bocephus", "can't y'all sing sumethin' purty". I played guitar so I ignored them, though I'm sure I was visibly shaken being quite thankful for the chicken wire, as I immediately change the set list by starting the one CW song we knew "Living on Tulsa Time" -- the Don Williams version. Then we hit Eric Johnson but the savior oif the night was ZZ Top (thank you Mr Gibbons!).
Anyway, now that we were "cool" we were allowed our little rock songs here and there, but they must have requested "Tulsa Time" and "La Grange" 50 times that night. Things tunred out okay and they started getting into it and gives us some howls and cheers and claps, buying us beers and by the 10pm break we're on the "accepted" list.
Finally the AB boys start coming in around 11pm and they were ROCKERS. That's what the chicken wire was for!
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