OK this is what happened tonight right. There was this Latino guy who asked my friend who is female and in her 50s for a light after a session and she gave him a light and smiled at him, and then he said "feic off ye feicin bitch" and went back into the pub. He later made threats against me. To cut a long story short, things escalated, and it turned into a fight on the street outside. I was saying "how dare you speak to a lady like that". Then I crossed the road in disgust and went to get a cab home. The Latino guy somehow managed to exit the pub past the bouncer and ran across the road full tilt. I adopted a karate pose which I learnt in Okinawa, where you go left foot forward, right foot back, arms up, fists clenched, and you can block or punch at high, middle or low. I adopted a facial expression that said "if you touch me I will kill you". When he crossed the road he suddenly decided he didn't want to fight me and said "I'm a nice guy really", and then fled back to the pub, and I got a taxi home. It didn't even turn into a fight. So who here has had an *actual* fight after a session?
Dow - only joking - I'm impressed. I'm never ever going to try and slag you again and I'll make doubly sure I always agree with everything you say. In fact I'll send you lots of money in compensation for ever disagreeing with you, or trying to slag you (failing miserably of course) in the past.
Years ago I did have an altercation outside a pub in North London. I was a cycle courier at the time. We had finished a session and I was to meet up with the rest of the session gang in a late opening further down the road, they had gone on ahead. As I walked by this bus stop a long tall West Indian guy was really giving out cursing and swearing at a young woman at the stop. Fearing he would get violent to her, I hung back at the far end of the stop for a minute, and of course my fears very shortly became reality - he started punching her and pulling at her hair to pull her to the ground. As I advanced towards him, heart in my mouth, he let go of her and came towards me adopting a boxer's stance, punching at the air. Meanwhile I was reaching into my cycle courier bag to grab my pliers. So next moment he lunged towards me, trying to hook me with a wild blow, which I dodged out of the way of. I made contact with the pliers, pulled them out of the bag and smacked him right on the crown - hard. His legs went wobbly and he staggered away, across the road - and guess what? - the door of a waiting car (blacked out windows) opened, he blundered in, the car revved up and off it sped. The end.
I asked the young woman was she ok and she was; did she know the guy? Had never seen him before in her life. Walked on down to the pub to meet the rest of the session gang, told them what happened and you know what/? - they didn't believe me. This is true.
We have a Cape Bretoners' club in our town, with whom we associate, and they have dances. Recently Andrea Beaton was playing at one at the Irish club downtown.
While she was on a break, at the bar, this guy asked her for a light, or something, I dunno. He was half Irish-American and half Mexican, I think, not that it matters. He said something nasty to her, which she wouldn't repeat, but seemed to upset her. So, the Cape Breton Club's president wanted her to point him out, so he could mention it to the managers.
As she was pointing the guy out, he stood up, started shouting something about us being leprechauns, escaped from his friends who were semi-holding him, and came running across the bar, top speed. He lept through the air and took a swing at the Cape Bretoner, which didn't land quite flush.
Then I ran over and put my arms around his neck from behind, but he slipped out by ducking down and turning around towards me. I got a hold of his head, and was starting to twist and wrench on it, when I got pulled away from behind. Then there was just a mob of half-Mexicans and other bar hoppers, vs. Cape Bretoners and fiddle enthusiasts standing around arguing about what just happened.
We agreed to stay in separate areas of the bar for the rest of the night.
I believe you Danny. I just think the story coulda had a better ending. Those people in the car with the blacked out windows should have leaned out and done a drive-by shooting on you with an uzi, spattering bits of your guts all over the bus stop in full-on, Hollywood style.
Hard to surpass a former banjo player of ours who laid out a bloke who had just hit a woman. The odd thing was he was showing off on the "Mason's Apron" at the time, and managed to deck this bloke without missing a note. Impressive, from a musical viewpoint.
To add to the general fabric of the story. No one would be up in arms if a "tall guy" or a "young guy" had been referred to. Describing someone is not racist.
That's a good point. I don't even know what race the guy was, and it doesn't make any difference. I think I said Latino because it was so unusual for that part of Sydney. Never even met any Latino people here, so that's what I noticed about him. I only said that to add to it descriptively, in the same way as I'd say, if I'd been attacked by a dog, I was attacked by a Jack Russell as opposed to an Airedale Terrier. It was meaningless. Don't jump to conclusions.
Actually you know what he probably wasn't even Latino. He was a lot darker skinned than me and had like a Mediterranean look about him? He could have been Greek or something I suppose. I dunno.
Where we play is pretty mellow usually, but I sometimes imagine playing in one of the many cowboy country-western bars we have around here and it being like the scene from The Blues Brothers-- chicken-wire, bottle-throwing, the whole bit. Usually the worst thing we get is some drunks asking us to play "Cotton Eyed Joe".
Damn! I came to this thread thinking it was going to give great links to where the best after-session fights are. You could do it by country and region/county and you could let people give brief descriptions of the kind of instrumentalists who would be involved and what style of fighting there would be.
... what nights of the week, whether it was a free-for-all, a hosted fight, or possibly one where the people stand around and take it in turns to fight ...
Well, MacCruiskeen, I honestly did see a fight after a session between two bodhran players. It was over a very paltry payment, something like fiver or a tenner.
BTW the bus stop wher my altercation took place was in Harlesden - you never lived there did you? That really is Gun City these days.
I worked in Harlesden for a couple of years at CMH, but never lived in the pre-Watford hinterland.
I fought you meant proper Norf Lunnon (!) and was describing a possible belligerent route from the Archway, past the Redcap and heading sarf.
Historical note. As late as the end of the 1980s it was still possible to drink in various county pubs while participating in a crawl along the upper reaches of the Holloway Road (Mayo, Sligo, Kerry, Donegal, Galway and Cork were all well covered). There was also The Gresham Ballroom for after-hours on a Sunday and a whole succession of great céilí bands and showbands.
An afternote. The only pub I've ever visited with a picture of the Offaly football team behind the bar (except in Offaly) was in Drury Lane and it was, by some stretch, the friendliest place in the Covent Garden area. I once dropped a full pint glass on the floor in there and the landlady's only rebuke was 'That'll be a pound in the poor box and another not to tell your mother on Monday'!
Sadly, or perhaps wisely, the couple sold up in the mid-1980s.
My pal, Danny Carnahan, (of Wake the Dead fame,) who penned a novel about this sort of thing that's called, "A Jig Before Dying," recently had it published. Here's what Danny imagines might be written inside the dust cover.
"Back home in San Francisco after a year in Dublin, computer engineer Niall Sweeney enjoys a pleasant routine working in a bank and fiddling at night in an Irish bar. Suddenly, he is the target of a vicious and insane bar-room assault at the hands of a near-stranger. But Sweeney’s troubles really begin when he discovers the mutilated body of his attacker outside, opened like a can of sardines. Horrifying coincidences crash down on Sweeney. Baffled, he is fingered by the police as the link connecting the murder with a complex IRA banking scam and a deadly bombing. With the help of his wife Rose, a brilliant college literature professor, Sweeney tries to keep one step ahead of both the police and a malevolent shadowy stranger while searching desperately for the truth. While Sweeney hunts among the bar musicians for the murderer, discovering only smoldering fear, secret affairs and a bartender who is far from what he seems to be, Rose launches off in another, seemingly crazy direction, convinced that the secret can be found in the murdered man’s obsession with a haunting thousand-year-old Irish poem—The Legend of Mad Sweeney. Rose learns, to her horror, that by revealing the strange solution to the mystery she would destroy the lives of half a dozen innocent people. The final decision about what to do is made for her by the sinister shadow man in a terrifying and deadly climax. But to save her husband, Rose must give the police a solution to the murder that is as believable as it is completely wrong."
However, I have been, on and off, working on a crime novel called 'The Session Killer'. The plot's line is simple. Gradually, and one by one, participants in an Irish rural pub's session are bumped off in a series of musically-related deaths.
The guitarist chokes on a handful of plectrums. The fiddler is strangled with his/her strings (haven't worked out the genders yet). The flute player succumbs to reed-poisoning. An explosive device is place below the piper's elbow, etc..
It's hopeless, I know, but I'll think more about the plot options.
Fight after a session. It was in the late sixties and I was on stage with three other musicians doing a paid session of ITM at an Irish pub in North London called the Duke of Cambridge. We had an sort of a self appointed MC who called up the odd singer from the floor. He refused to call up a particular nasty piece of work who started a fight with the MC. The MC's son joined in as did a crowd of other nasties. We cleared the gear from the stage and having packed it in the car we returned to the pub where all hell had broken loose. We even stood on a table at the back of the large saloon bar to watch the row. The term 'There was glasses flying and Biddies crying the Paddies were going to town' comes to mind. By the time the law turned up the pub was nearly wrecked. The brewery closed it for three months for refurbishing and it was re-opened with a new non Irish manager and re-christened ' The George Robey' Best fight I ever seen in a pub and I seen a few in my day. Shame about losing the session though.....
Two others stand out. JfiddlerH's debut with mics and all on St Paddy's Day. Just as he is doing his show off bit, a girl right in front of us leans back in her seat and throws a bottle at a man sitting opposite. as the bottle bounces of his head, she lifts another one and smashes it over his head. JFH was shocked, although the fact that we just played on shocked him more.
And one famous Christmas in a lounge bar, invited "select guests" only, a real John Wayne type saloon brawl breaks out, including two wrestling amid the Christmas tree which topples over with them in the middle of it. Thank God it was a select crowd. At one point our guitar player walked into the middle of the mayhem, everyone stopped, he lifted his case and walked back to us. Then they all started again.
As for fights after sessions, well this brawl spilled outside, and the police arrived. The warring factions then united to attack the police.
And, Freereed, The George Robey actually became for a while the best music pub in North London (though not often for Irish music).
I did see The Pogues there, plus The Men They Couldn't Hang, Lena Lovich, Tír na nÓg, Michael Chapman, Oxy and the Morons, Nine Below Zero and many others, including a stonking gig by Dr. Feelgood.
Last time I was in the area, the pub was in the process of being demolished.
It wasn't a session, but one time at a gig I joined the audience to watch the fiddler and guitar player go fisticuffs at each other. I'm embarrassed to admit that the crowd found the row far more entertaining than our music.
I have seen a number of Fights in my time both in London and at the North East.
The only time I was directly involved I was threatened by a well known London Irish fiddle player at a pub in the Holloway Road. It had been a fine session including Danny Mehan, Fergus McTaggart among others . Late on my friend an Australian Flute player asked to swap seats with me so I was now sitting beside the above mentioned Fiddle player and she was not.
The fiddle player then played his version of the hornpipe version of hey Jude. Everyone seemed to like it at 3 in the morning. So my friend then played her hornpipe which turned out to be .........Skippy the Bush Kangaroo theme tune.
Then the fiddle player started thumping me in the arm saying are you taking the p@@@ out of me. Ok so I was playing my Bodhran at the time .but I wasn’t deciding the tune.
It was only later I found out that he thought I was the flute players BF (I should have been so lucky).
It took some restraint not to hit him back and I had a bruised arm in the morning .
Oh to be young again
Ref The George Robey. Soon after it re-opened following the fight, I dropped in for a pint one night and was sitting at the bar when I overheard a musician ask the new Guv' what were the chances of a gig. The Guv' enquired as to what kind of music he played, adding "I dont want any of that didily iye type music, it drives these bleedin' people mad" (For our American friends, the Guv' is a manager or the person in charge) Sad to see that's it been demolished. I have great memories of that area.
This was 18 years ago in by a pub in London. A young lady was making fun of my sunburn. As I reacted with embarrasment, she stole my burke whistle. She had left the pub before I knew that my whistle was gone. I went outside and saw her standing at the bus stop. I asked her kindly to give me back my whislte. She started yelling and screaming at me at the top of her lungs. I reached out to calm her down. She started punching me. She grabbed my hair and tried to pull me to the ground. I saw a little man standing at the other end of the bus stop dressed like one of those mailmen on bikes. I approached him, my arms stretched out, pleading for help. He reached into his little bag and produced a large inhaler and tried to do me harm by wacking me over the head. He was pretty puny, so he had to do it over and over and over. His skinny legs were moving fast as if he were running in place. I think I saw his eyes moistening. I had to laugh when the inhaler flew out of his hands and landed across the street. I felt sorry for him, so I started to cross the street to retrieve it for him. My date, who was supposed to meet me in the pub pulled up in her silver lambergini convertable so I got in. The crazy woman chased the guy with the inhaler down the street. He ducked into the pub.
I spoke to some bar staff in the know today and they reckon that the bouncer is on ice and apparently smashed a glass bottle over someone's head on Paddy's Day, and that the guy who was picking on me is probably his dealer or something. That explains why they seemed matey and the bouncer wouldn't chuck him out even though he was being aggressive and rude with other customers. Pretty sad really the whole thing. I really should make a formal complaint, but I can't really be bothered...
I was in a session in England last year, on St. Paddy's Day, and by the end of the night most of the musos (except for me since I was driving) were totally off their faces, as we had been playing since about noon. The flute player and the whistle player nearly came to blows -- I think the flute player said something about the whistle player's mother-in-law. Someone split them up and the session tentatively resumed playing tunes. An hour later, in the middle of "The Wandering Minstrel" I believe, the flute player and whistle player cease playing and attack each other, nearly on top of me. I cease playing and dart across the room, putting several tables between me and the angry, drunken musos. The pub landlord breaks up the fight and threatens to throw both of them out unless they cool it. The session pretty much ends after that, since it killed the mood and no one wanted to play any more.
If I were you I would complain, Dow. Not joking. It could happen again with disastrous consequences for some poor innocent. In fact, if that's the way that prick behaves regularly it most likely will happen again, but to someone who doesn't know how to at least look intimidating with a karate posture.
I had a guy slide across the table toward me scattering pints in the middle of the session. He was a wannabe Scot wh'd spent the afternoon celebrating a Scottish rugby win over England and was winding everyone (mostly Scots and Irish celebrating an Englishman's birthday with a session) in the bar up. One of the guitarists just stood up and lamped him. We carried on playing as he was removed from the table and then paused to wipe the beer off our instruments and ask waht was happening. By this time he ( not the assailant!) had been thrown out by the landlady who'd observed everything.
Dow, you are very perceptive about the value of a good bluff. I have played in some rough places myself, and never had any trouble from anybody. It's probably just that I try not to be annoying. But it might also be "good posture"--I have been mistaken for ex-military (definitely not) more than once. And a lady once complimented me by saying I must have had a good mother who trained me not to slouch.
I also spent a couple of years being beaten by elderly Japanese men (and penty of other kendoists) with bamboo sticks, did some judo, and learned your Okinawan pose along the way too. I did have a good mother, but those experiences probably affected my posture more than she did.
If it is those things--posture, manner, bearing, whatever--I hope they continue to work for me, because I am nowhere near black-belt expertise in any martial art. But so far, so good.
about 5 years ago I was playing in a great session in North Belfast when the f'n RUC or were they the PSNI, came into the bar in full riot gear accussing the bar man that he was serving drink after hours. The barman pulled the framed liquer liscense off the wall and handed it to the sargent who was wearing a riot helmet and balaclava (ski mask to our yank friends ) and told us under no cercumstance were we to stop playing. A table of fine lookin' girls then shepherded the cops out the door with threats and punches. One got battoned and all hell broke loose on the street, while we played standing on seats. Tottally surreal experience.
The thing is I should have just walked right away from it. At the point where he told the woman to eff off, we should have both just left the pub quietly there and then. It's just I was so furious that someone should be allowed to get away with speaking to someone so rudely so I took it up with him. The guy was probably on ice so might not even have been aware of what he was doing, and maybe the bouncer understood that. He could have easily had a knife too, although that didn't bother me at the time as I'd had a few beers and was really really angry - angry enough to hit someone. I did try and hit hiim in the face but the bouncer was between me and him, so I didn't make contact. It would have been horrible anyway. I might have broken his nose and got blood on me or something. Yuck!
Bazouki Dave, I think I know the fiddler in question in your story and he actually spent some time in gaol in Ireland after being found guilty of GBH.
Here's an apposite tale from Tommy Sands's excellent book 'The Songman':
One night down by the Port de Pêche, in a place called Teeptoe, a row broke out. That was nothing new in the Teeptoe. Michel from Djiboujeb was quite capable of going after a French soldier with his clog. And many sailors gathered there, a little worse for wear. On this occasion, however, it wasn’t Michel or the sailors who were the troublemakers. Paddy Keenan, the peerless piper with the Bothy Band, had lost his balance and taken half a table of drink with him. That was fine, anyone could make a mistake. He got up, however, which was his downfall, and came up with an encore that brought down any beer that had been missed the first time.
Dónal Lunny tried to calm things and got a punch in the jaw for his trouble, and in no time a battle royal began to develop. A big bouzouki fan was asking for his coat to be held so that he could throw a punch somewhere, and the drunken, beerless opposition were flinging off clothing left, right and centre. They say in times past it was traditional for the Celts to go naked in battle and Mícheál Ó Domhnaill rolled up a shirtsleeve in anticipation. “Do you think,” says he to me, “will we have to die for Ireland yet again?”
Legend has it that a certain bodhran player, whose first name begins with an F and ends with an S, was knocked out cold by a famous piper at the end of an Austrailian tour that the bodhran player booked himself into with the aforementioned piper.
Surely the grand-daddy of all session fights was the Peter Sellers comedy sketch that included immortal quotes like "That was a bum note ye played there, Sean!", and "Me harp! Me harp! I'll never get to Heaven now!"
My apologies if those quotes aren't quite accurate - it's been very many years (decades in fact) since I last heard it.
That sketch was immaculate. A few of us at school in 1970 whiled away many a few minutes doing our best to mimic it. In that sketch, of course, the English and the Scots get the treatment also.
I once heard that Peter Sellars did all the voices on the album himself; I wonder whether that is true.
Yes, in all probability, I think. Peter Sellers, of all character actors, was one of the greatest of his time (think of the Goon Show). His ordinary speaking voice was comparatively flat and uninteresting, which, coupled with a very keen ear for sounds, was perhaps why he was able to overlay it so successfully with his characterisations.
Many thanks, Airport, for that wonderful and classic YouTube link "The Hard Stuff". It's brought it all back to me. A recent comment on the link confirmed that Peter Sellers did indeed do all the voices.
Of course race is a major factor here !!!!
Don't no beaners play diddly di !!! AND
It adds fuel to a good story !!!
Oh----you bleeding hearts.
And 'Airport'---I still have the "Drop of the Hardstuff"
Precious !!!! --thanks, dude. All my 'Mic' session friends really
dug it.
Fights after sessions
Fights after sessions
OK this is what happened tonight right. There was this Latino guy who asked my friend who is female and in her 50s for a light after a session and she gave him a light and smiled at him, and then he said "feic off ye feicin bitch" and went back into the pub. He later made threats against me. To cut a long story short, things escalated, and it turned into a fight on the street outside. I was saying "how dare you speak to a lady like that". Then I crossed the road in disgust and went to get a cab home. The Latino guy somehow managed to exit the pub past the bouncer and ran across the road full tilt. I adopted a karate pose which I learnt in Okinawa, where you go left foot forward, right foot back, arms up, fists clenched, and you can block or punch at high, middle or low. I adopted a facial expression that said "if you touch me I will kill you". When he crossed the road he suddenly decided he didn't want to fight me and said "I'm a nice guy really", and then fled back to the pub, and I got a taxi home. It didn't even turn into a fight. So who here has had an *actual* fight after a session?
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
Dow, you're a hero among men.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by mehitabel23
Re: Fights after sessions
I adopt a similar pose for playing the bodhran and people run away from me too.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: Fights after sessions
Wow impressive
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by protz
Re: Fights after sessions
You play at a bar that needs a bouncer?
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by kennedy
Re: Fights after sessions
Some fowk wid start a fecht in an empty hoose........
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Johnny Jay
Re: Fights after sessions
I play in coffee houses. A lot safer. Caffine seems to be much safe than alcohol.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by grumblingoldwoman
Re: Fights after sessions
Keep your Head down- jim,,,
lol..
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by FIDDLE4
Re: Fights after sessions
So my plan failed. Wait till I get a hold of that Latino guy I hired to beat you up.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Fights after sessions
Danny, it was you. I might have known. Of course you know now I have to get my revenge
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
Kennedy: "You play at a bar that needs a bouncer?"
I know, it's like so urban and raw here
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
Dow - only joking - I'm impressed. I'm never ever going to try and slag you again and I'll make doubly sure I always agree with everything you say. In fact I'll send you lots of money in compensation for ever disagreeing with you, or trying to slag you (failing miserably of course) in the past.
Years ago I did have an altercation outside a pub in North London. I was a cycle courier at the time. We had finished a session and I was to meet up with the rest of the session gang in a late opening further down the road, they had gone on ahead. As I walked by this bus stop a long tall West Indian guy was really giving out cursing and swearing at a young woman at the stop. Fearing he would get violent to her, I hung back at the far end of the stop for a minute, and of course my fears very shortly became reality - he started punching her and pulling at her hair to pull her to the ground. As I advanced towards him, heart in my mouth, he let go of her and came towards me adopting a boxer's stance, punching at the air. Meanwhile I was reaching into my cycle courier bag to grab my pliers. So next moment he lunged towards me, trying to hook me with a wild blow, which I dodged out of the way of. I made contact with the pliers, pulled them out of the bag and smacked him right on the crown - hard. His legs went wobbly and he staggered away, across the road - and guess what? - the door of a waiting car (blacked out windows) opened, he blundered in, the car revved up and off it sped. The end.
I asked the young woman was she ok and she was; did she know the guy? Had never seen him before in her life. Walked on down to the pub to meet the rest of the session gang, told them what happened and you know what/? - they didn't believe me. This is true.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Fights after sessions
There was a fight during a session. Luckily none of the instruments were damaged.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by c.g.
Re: Fights after sessions
We have a Cape Bretoners' club in our town, with whom we associate, and they have dances. Recently Andrea Beaton was playing at one at the Irish club downtown.
While she was on a break, at the bar, this guy asked her for a light, or something, I dunno. He was half Irish-American and half Mexican, I think, not that it matters. He said something nasty to her, which she wouldn't repeat, but seemed to upset her. So, the Cape Breton Club's president wanted her to point him out, so he could mention it to the managers.
As she was pointing the guy out, he stood up, started shouting something about us being leprechauns, escaped from his friends who were semi-holding him, and came running across the bar, top speed. He lept through the air and took a swing at the Cape Bretoner, which didn't land quite flush.
Then I ran over and put my arms around his neck from behind, but he slipped out by ducking down and turning around towards me. I got a hold of his head, and was starting to twist and wrench on it, when I got pulled away from behind. Then there was just a mob of half-Mexicans and other bar hoppers, vs. Cape Bretoners and fiddle enthusiasts standing around arguing about what just happened.
We agreed to stay in separate areas of the bar for the rest of the night.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by m_gavin
Re: Fights after sessions
I believe you Danny. I just think the story coulda had a better ending. Those people in the car with the blacked out windows should have leaned out and done a drive-by shooting on you with an uzi, spattering bits of your guts all over the bus stop in full-on, Hollywood style.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
Dow - if that had been nowadays, that probably would have been the outcome. But it was some 20 years ago.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Fights after sessions
Pity it wasn't nowadays then. You would be totally pulp
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
We fight at our session just for the make-up music, which is so much better than just plain old music....
:-|
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Will Harmon
Re: Fights after sessions
Hard to surpass a former banjo player of ours who laid out a bloke who had just hit a woman. The odd thing was he was showing off on the "Mason's Apron" at the time, and managed to deck this bloke without missing a note. Impressive, from a musical viewpoint.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by bodhran bliss
Re: Fights after sessions
That's awesome. Sorry to use that in its banal American sense, but it is.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
I've a funny feeling that was my local bus stop, Danny.
Lots of strange stuff used to happen there.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Fights after sessions
banal American sense? if something's awesome, then it's like totally awesome, dude...
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by airport
Re: Fights after sessions
Why does the race/nationality of the individual deserve mentioning?
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Wyogal
Re: Fights after sessions
To add to the general fabric of the story. No one would be up in arms if a "tall guy" or a "young guy" had been referred to. Describing someone is not racist.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by mehitabel23
Re: Fights after sessions
That's a good point. I don't even know what race the guy was, and it doesn't make any difference. I think I said Latino because it was so unusual for that part of Sydney. Never even met any Latino people here, so that's what I noticed about him. I only said that to add to it descriptively, in the same way as I'd say, if I'd been attacked by a dog, I was attacked by a Jack Russell as opposed to an Airedale Terrier. It was meaningless. Don't jump to conclusions.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
Actually you know what he probably wasn't even Latino. He was a lot darker skinned than me and had like a Mediterranean look about him? He could have been Greek or something I suppose. I dunno.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
And just what do you have against Jack Russells, you breedist b**st**d????
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Michele Sims
Re: Fights after sessions
What race were the women?
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Kerry NW
Re: Fights after sessions
Where we play is pretty mellow usually, but I sometimes imagine playing in one of the many cowboy country-western bars we have around here and it being like the scene from The Blues Brothers-- chicken-wire, bottle-throwing, the whole bit. Usually the worst thing we get is some drunks asking us to play "Cotton Eyed Joe".
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by PatrickJWK
Re: Fights after sessions
Damn! I came to this thread thinking it was going to give great links to where the best after-session fights are. You could do it by country and region/county and you could let people give brief descriptions of the kind of instrumentalists who would be involved and what style of fighting there would be.
... what nights of the week, whether it was a free-for-all, a hosted fight, or possibly one where the people stand around and take it in turns to fight ...
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by ethical blend
Re: Fights after sessions
Or sessions after fights. You know, like "make-up sessions"
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by grego
Re: Fights after sessions
(according to Seinfeld, theyre the best kind)
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by grego
Re: Fights after sessions
been there, done that. Yep, it's good... the music, that is.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Wyogal
Re: Fights after sessions
Thanks for joing us for "fighting". Up next on flagrant Irish stereotypes: "alcoholism"
Woo hoo! [hiccup]
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Fights after sessions
"Joining" sorry, I need more to drink.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Fights after sessions
I don't think I've ever seen a post-session struggle when someone shouted out "He's a fiddler, Gary, he's not worth it!", but there's always hope.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Fights after sessions
Yeah, then it'll be "diddley music"
oh, i forgot...
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by grego
Re: Fights after sessions
Well, MacCruiskeen, I honestly did see a fight after a session between two bodhran players. It was over a very paltry payment, something like fiver or a tenner.
BTW the bus stop wher my altercation took place was in Harlesden - you never lived there did you? That really is Gun City these days.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Fights after sessions
Nah, Danny,
I worked in Harlesden for a couple of years at CMH, but never lived in the pre-Watford hinterland.
I fought you meant proper Norf Lunnon (!) and was describing a possible belligerent route from the Archway, past the Redcap and heading sarf.
Historical note. As late as the end of the 1980s it was still possible to drink in various county pubs while participating in a crawl along the upper reaches of the Holloway Road (Mayo, Sligo, Kerry, Donegal, Galway and Cork were all well covered). There was also The Gresham Ballroom for after-hours on a Sunday and a whole succession of great céilí bands and showbands.
An afternote. The only pub I've ever visited with a picture of the Offaly football team behind the bar (except in Offaly) was in Drury Lane and it was, by some stretch, the friendliest place in the Covent Garden area. I once dropped a full pint glass on the floor in there and the landlady's only rebuke was 'That'll be a pound in the poor box and another not to tell your mother on Monday'!
Sadly, or perhaps wisely, the couple sold up in the mid-1980s.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Fights after sessions
My pal, Danny Carnahan, (of Wake the Dead fame,) who penned a novel about this sort of thing that's called, "A Jig Before Dying," recently had it published. Here's what Danny imagines might be written inside the dust cover.
"Back home in San Francisco after a year in Dublin, computer engineer Niall Sweeney enjoys a pleasant routine working in a bank and fiddling at night in an Irish bar. Suddenly, he is the target of a vicious and insane bar-room assault at the hands of a near-stranger. But Sweeney’s troubles really begin when he discovers the mutilated body of his attacker outside, opened like a can of sardines. Horrifying coincidences crash down on Sweeney. Baffled, he is fingered by the police as the link connecting the murder with a complex IRA banking scam and a deadly bombing. With the help of his wife Rose, a brilliant college literature professor, Sweeney tries to keep one step ahead of both the police and a malevolent shadowy stranger while searching desperately for the truth. While Sweeney hunts among the bar musicians for the murderer, discovering only smoldering fear, secret affairs and a bartender who is far from what he seems to be, Rose launches off in another, seemingly crazy direction, convinced that the secret can be found in the murdered man’s obsession with a haunting thousand-year-old Irish poem—The Legend of Mad Sweeney. Rose learns, to her horror, that by revealing the strange solution to the mystery she would destroy the lives of half a dozen innocent people. The final decision about what to do is made for her by the sinister shadow man in a terrifying and deadly climax. But to save her husband, Rose must give the police a solution to the murder that is as believable as it is completely wrong."
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Phantom Button
Re: Fights after sessions
Blimey, Jack,
That certainly wiped the sweat off my posting!
However, I have been, on and off, working on a crime novel called 'The Session Killer'. The plot's line is simple. Gradually, and one by one, participants in an Irish rural pub's session are bumped off in a series of musically-related deaths.
The guitarist chokes on a handful of plectrums. The fiddler is strangled with his/her strings (haven't worked out the genders yet). The flute player succumbs to reed-poisoning. An explosive device is place below the piper's elbow, etc..
It's hopeless, I know, but I'll think more about the plot options.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Fights after sessions
Fight after a session. It was in the late sixties and I was on stage with three other musicians doing a paid session of ITM at an Irish pub in North London called the Duke of Cambridge. We had an sort of a self appointed MC who called up the odd singer from the floor. He refused to call up a particular nasty piece of work who started a fight with the MC. The MC's son joined in as did a crowd of other nasties. We cleared the gear from the stage and having packed it in the car we returned to the pub where all hell had broken loose. We even stood on a table at the back of the large saloon bar to watch the row. The term 'There was glasses flying and Biddies crying the Paddies were going to town' comes to mind. By the time the law turned up the pub was nearly wrecked. The brewery closed it for three months for refurbishing and it was re-opened with a new non Irish manager and re-christened ' The George Robey' Best fight I ever seen in a pub and I seen a few in my day. Shame about losing the session though.....
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by Free Reed
Re: Fights after sessions
Loads of examples, we live in violent times.
Two others stand out. JfiddlerH's debut with mics and all on St Paddy's Day. Just as he is doing his show off bit, a girl right in front of us leans back in her seat and throws a bottle at a man sitting opposite. as the bottle bounces of his head, she lifts another one and smashes it over his head. JFH was shocked, although the fact that we just played on shocked him more.
And one famous Christmas in a lounge bar, invited "select guests" only, a real John Wayne type saloon brawl breaks out, including two wrestling amid the Christmas tree which topples over with them in the middle of it. Thank God it was a select crowd. At one point our guitar player walked into the middle of the mayhem, everyone stopped, he lifted his case and walked back to us. Then they all started again.
As for fights after sessions, well this brawl spilled outside, and the police arrived. The warring factions then united to attack the police.
# Posted on March 18th 2008 by bodhran bliss
Re: Fights after sessions
And, Freereed, The George Robey actually became for a while the best music pub in North London (though not often for Irish music).
I did see The Pogues there, plus The Men They Couldn't Hang, Lena Lovich, Tír na nÓg, Michael Chapman, Oxy and the Morons, Nine Below Zero and many others, including a stonking gig by Dr. Feelgood.
Last time I was in the area, the pub was in the process of being demolished.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Fights after sessions
It wasn't a session, but one time at a gig I joined the audience to watch the fiddler and guitar player go fisticuffs at each other. I'm embarrassed to admit that the crowd found the row far more entertaining than our music.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Phantom Button
Re: Fights after sessions
I have seen a number of Fights in my time both in London and at the North East.
The only time I was directly involved I was threatened by a well known London Irish fiddle player at a pub in the Holloway Road. It had been a fine session including Danny Mehan, Fergus McTaggart among others . Late on my friend an Australian Flute player asked to swap seats with me so I was now sitting beside the above mentioned Fiddle player and she was not.
The fiddle player then played his version of the hornpipe version of hey Jude. Everyone seemed to like it at 3 in the morning. So my friend then played her hornpipe which turned out to be .........Skippy the Bush Kangaroo theme tune.
Then the fiddle player started thumping me in the arm saying are you taking the p@@@ out of me. Ok so I was playing my Bodhran at the time .but I wasn’t deciding the tune.
It was only later I found out that he thought I was the flute players BF (I should have been so lucky).
It took some restraint not to hit him back and I had a bruised arm in the morning .
Oh to be young again
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by bazouki dave
Re: Fights after sessions
Dow: "He was a lot darker skinned than me and had like a Mediterranean look about him? "
Mate, y'sure he wasn't a dubh fella ... ?
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by dogbox
Re: Fights after sessions
Ref The George Robey. Soon after it re-opened following the fight, I dropped in for a pint one night and was sitting at the bar when I overheard a musician ask the new Guv' what were the chances of a gig. The Guv' enquired as to what kind of music he played, adding "I dont want any of that didily iye type music, it drives these bleedin' people mad" (For our American friends, the Guv' is a manager or the person in charge) Sad to see that's it been demolished. I have great memories of that area.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Free Reed
Re: Fights after sessions
This was 18 years ago in by a pub in London. A young lady was making fun of my sunburn. As I reacted with embarrasment, she stole my burke whistle. She had left the pub before I knew that my whistle was gone. I went outside and saw her standing at the bus stop. I asked her kindly to give me back my whislte. She started yelling and screaming at me at the top of her lungs. I reached out to calm her down. She started punching me. She grabbed my hair and tried to pull me to the ground. I saw a little man standing at the other end of the bus stop dressed like one of those mailmen on bikes. I approached him, my arms stretched out, pleading for help. He reached into his little bag and produced a large inhaler and tried to do me harm by wacking me over the head. He was pretty puny, so he had to do it over and over and over. His skinny legs were moving fast as if he were running in place. I think I saw his eyes moistening. I had to laugh when the inhaler flew out of his hands and landed across the street. I felt sorry for him, so I started to cross the street to retrieve it for him. My date, who was supposed to meet me in the pub pulled up in her silver lambergini convertable so I got in. The crazy woman chased the guy with the inhaler down the street. He ducked into the pub.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by feardearg
Re: Fights after sessions
Yup. I went to London once too.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Fights after sessions
I spoke to some bar staff in the know today and they reckon that the bouncer is on ice and apparently smashed a glass bottle over someone's head on Paddy's Day, and that the guy who was picking on me is probably his dealer or something. That explains why they seemed matey and the bouncer wouldn't chuck him out even though he was being aggressive and rude with other customers. Pretty sad really the whole thing. I really should make a formal complaint, but I can't really be bothered...
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
Feardearg that was a very funny story. It would be totally believable if it weren't for the lambourghini bit
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
I got suspicious when I realised he couldn't spell it. Are you still with that young lady, feardearg ol' chap?
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: Fights after sessions
I was in a session in England last year, on St. Paddy's Day, and by the end of the night most of the musos (except for me since I was driving) were totally off their faces, as we had been playing since about noon. The flute player and the whistle player nearly came to blows -- I think the flute player said something about the whistle player's mother-in-law. Someone split them up and the session tentatively resumed playing tunes. An hour later, in the middle of "The Wandering Minstrel" I believe, the flute player and whistle player cease playing and attack each other, nearly on top of me. I cease playing and dart across the room, putting several tables between me and the angry, drunken musos. The pub landlord breaks up the fight and threatens to throw both of them out unless they cool it. The session pretty much ends after that, since it killed the mood and no one wanted to play any more.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Fights after sessions
If I were you I would complain, Dow. Not joking. It could happen again with disastrous consequences for some poor innocent. In fact, if that's the way that prick behaves regularly it most likely will happen again, but to someone who doesn't know how to at least look intimidating with a karate posture.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Fights after sessions
I had a guy slide across the table toward me scattering pints in the middle of the session. He was a wannabe Scot wh'd spent the afternoon celebrating a Scottish rugby win over England and was winding everyone (mostly Scots and Irish celebrating an Englishman's birthday with a session) in the bar up. One of the guitarists just stood up and lamped him. We carried on playing as he was removed from the table and then paused to wipe the beer off our instruments and ask waht was happening. By this time he ( not the assailant!) had been thrown out by the landlady who'd observed everything.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Paul_draper
Re: Fights after sessions
Headline from the Sydney Morning Herald Website, March 19, 2008:
Posers Amuse Bystanders with Curbside Spat
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by ∅
Re: Fights after sessions
Dow, you are very perceptive about the value of a good bluff. I have played in some rough places myself, and never had any trouble from anybody. It's probably just that I try not to be annoying. But it might also be "good posture"--I have been mistaken for ex-military (definitely not) more than once. And a lady once complimented me by saying I must have had a good mother who trained me not to slouch.
I also spent a couple of years being beaten by elderly Japanese men (and penty of other kendoists) with bamboo sticks, did some judo, and learned your Okinawan pose along the way too. I did have a good mother, but those experiences probably affected my posture more than she did.
If it is those things--posture, manner, bearing, whatever--I hope they continue to work for me, because I am nowhere near black-belt expertise in any martial art. But so far, so good.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by John Galt
Re: Fights after sessions
I usually adopt the posture of a Zui Quan stylist, whether I want to or not.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by fidkid
Re: Fights after sessions
about 5 years ago I was playing in a great session in North Belfast when the f'n RUC or were they the PSNI, came into the bar in full riot gear accussing the bar man that he was serving drink after hours. The barman pulled the framed liquer liscense off the wall and handed it to the sargent who was wearing a riot helmet and balaclava (ski mask to our yank friends ) and told us under no cercumstance were we to stop playing. A table of fine lookin' girls then shepherded the cops out the door with threats and punches. One got battoned and all hell broke loose on the street, while we played standing on seats. Tottally surreal experience.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by iwerzon
Re: Fights after sessions
The thing is I should have just walked right away from it. At the point where he told the woman to eff off, we should have both just left the pub quietly there and then. It's just I was so furious that someone should be allowed to get away with speaking to someone so rudely so I took it up with him. The guy was probably on ice so might not even have been aware of what he was doing, and maybe the bouncer understood that. He could have easily had a knife too, although that didn't bother me at the time as I'd had a few beers and was really really angry - angry enough to hit someone. I did try and hit hiim in the face but the bouncer was between me and him, so I didn't make contact. It would have been horrible anyway. I might have broken his nose and got blood on me or something. Yuck!
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
Sorry iwerzon cross-posted there. Your experience was pretty full-on - unnerving to say the least.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: Fights after sessions
Does beating the crap out of the "Wolfe Tones" while they were playing on stage count?
We pulled them off the stage before administering the beating.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by bodhran bliss
Re: Fights after sessions
I once went to a fight, and a session broke out.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by pbassnote
Re: Fights after sessions
OK, I'm calling you out on the recycled ice hockey joke there.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Fights after sessions
Bazouki Dave, I think I know the fiddler in question in your story and he actually spent some time in gaol in Ireland after being found guilty of GBH.
Here's an apposite tale from Tommy Sands's excellent book 'The Songman':
One night down by the Port de Pêche, in a place called Teeptoe, a row broke out. That was nothing new in the Teeptoe. Michel from Djiboujeb was quite capable of going after a French soldier with his clog. And many sailors gathered there, a little worse for wear. On this occasion, however, it wasn’t Michel or the sailors who were the troublemakers. Paddy Keenan, the peerless piper with the Bothy Band, had lost his balance and taken half a table of drink with him. That was fine, anyone could make a mistake. He got up, however, which was his downfall, and came up with an encore that brought down any beer that had been missed the first time.
Dónal Lunny tried to calm things and got a punch in the jaw for his trouble, and in no time a battle royal began to develop. A big bouzouki fan was asking for his coat to be held so that he could throw a punch somewhere, and the drunken, beerless opposition were flinging off clothing left, right and centre. They say in times past it was traditional for the Celts to go naked in battle and Mícheál Ó Domhnaill rolled up a shirtsleeve in anticipation. “Do you think,” says he to me, “will we have to die for Ireland yet again?”
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Fights after sessions
I think I know who that fiddle player is also -- one of two suspects.
# Posted on March 19th 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Fights after sessions
Legend has it that a certain bodhran player, whose first name begins with an F and ends with an S, was knocked out cold by a famous piper at the end of an Austrailian tour that the bodhran player booked himself into with the aforementioned piper.
# Posted on March 20th 2008 by Phantom Button
Re: Fights after sessions
Surely the grand-daddy of all session fights was the Peter Sellers comedy sketch that included immortal quotes like "That was a bum note ye played there, Sean!", and "Me harp! Me harp! I'll never get to Heaven now!"
My apologies if those quotes aren't quite accurate - it's been very many years (decades in fact) since I last heard it.
# Posted on March 21st 2008 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Fights after sessions
That sketch was immaculate. A few of us at school in 1970 whiled away many a few minutes doing our best to mimic it. In that sketch, of course, the English and the Scots get the treatment also.
I once heard that Peter Sellars did all the voices on the album himself; I wonder whether that is true.
# Posted on March 21st 2008 by nicholas
Re: Fights after sessions
That's great! never had heard it before:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v6k1lml4AvE
# Posted on March 21st 2008 by airport
Re: Fights after sessions
Yes, in all probability, I think. Peter Sellers, of all character actors, was one of the greatest of his time (think of the Goon Show). His ordinary speaking voice was comparatively flat and uninteresting, which, coupled with a very keen ear for sounds, was perhaps why he was able to overlay it so successfully with his characterisations.
# Posted on March 21st 2008 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Fights after sessions
Many thanks, Airport, for that wonderful and classic YouTube link "The Hard Stuff". It's brought it all back to me. A recent comment on the link confirmed that Peter Sellers did indeed do all the voices.
# Posted on March 21st 2008 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Fights after sessions
Of course race is a major factor here !!!!
Don't no beaners play diddly di !!! AND
It adds fuel to a good story !!!
Oh----you bleeding hearts.
And 'Airport'---I still have the "Drop of the Hardstuff"
Precious !!!! --thanks, dude. All my 'Mic' session friends really
dug it.
# Posted on March 25th 2008 by hauke