At our session last night, in sunnt Portrush, norn iron, this rather intoxicated eegit sat down next to one of the fiddle players.
Now Bob had set his fiddle on the seat for a moment, but when he looked round, horror of horrors, the eegit had grabbed his fiddle & was about to try & play a tune!!
Needless to say Bob grabbed the fiddle from him, asking him politely to go forth & multiply!!
Now Bob had actually spent months making this fiddle himself, so he had every right to be upset.
I, myself had a woman, once again a non musician, quite boldly pick up my Concertina at a session & she was most upset when I grabbed it back from her. I told her I didn't mind her playing with my £2,000 instrument if she didn't mind me going through the contents of her handbag!!
Has anyone else had this sort of thing happen to them??
Is it just the drink or is the world full of bad manners?
I once used someone's Rudall & Rose flute as a percussion instrument by dropping on the floor on the offbeats. Worked really well. THe punters liked it, anyway.
Seeing a drunken morris dancer slowly overbalance and fall into a hammered dulcimer during a session at the 'Pot Belly' in Canberra was pretty memorable.
One of the best reasons I know for playing guitar in DADGAD. When some clown wants to borrow it to play his "song" you strum it for him tell him its not in normal tuning and they go and bother someone else
What a difference a little comma can make. I read the title of this thread as "The Ultimate Session, No No! " Thinking it was going to be some sort of plea against the concept of a definitive session or something, I then couldn't figure out what was going on when I read it.
Morris dancer falling slowly into a hammered duclimer, fantastic. Not only is this a wonderful image, it comes complete with its own cartoon style crash sound effect.
- Chris
Excellent idea showaddydadito, but I still say they should each take a Piano Accordion with them, even if just to give the Morris Man a rest now & then.
Morris Dancers are being turned into California Highway Patrolmen????? This is indeed a strange world
JIm - what???????
On the subject matter - I think they should be crucified on the bar door 'pour encourager les autres' this, of course will include those pizza box bodhranistas who can't even play their own instruments never mind others'.
Why, no matter what the original topic, do our discussions descend into nyahh, nyahh, my instrument is better than yours, which should be used as 1) kindling, 2) ballast, 3) a target, etc, etc.
Of course, having said that, I do agree that Morris Dancers are fair game!!!!!!!!!!!!
As one of the few morris dancers in this here amorphous forum, I'd like to give a loud, formal "HARRUMPH!" as regards all these potshots being leveled at my brethren (and sistren). Do not judge us until you've capered a mile in our shoes, savored the sweet taste of cold ale after a hot July's day of dancing, or experienced the thrill of a pulled hamstring.
So there.
I've also encountered situations as described by geoffmca, i.e., someone asking to play your DADGAD-tuned guitar. In one instance, though, I offered to retune it to standard and it turned out to be a good move: The fella who asked was quite a decent guitar player, and his friend -- one of the session mainstays -- complimented me on my beneficence. Sometimes it pays to follow the better angels of your nature, I reckon.
I had someone borrow my guitar a few years ago when I was taking a break, and break a string on me--didn't go over real well. Usually these things happen when people are getting what we in the US call 'hammered'--fortunately our pub is mostly inhabited by moderate drinkers. And not too long ago, the publican limited the number of free drinks to two apiece, which also encourages moderation!
>So it's you that is encouraging all these bar pests to annoy us!!!
Well, technically, he wasn't really a bar pest. He was a friend of a sessioneer, and happened to be without his instrument.
(OK, reading that last line, it sounds either like the punchline to a really bad joke, or the title of a really bad music hall song.)
>Your punishment shall arrive later. - We'll send all those Piano Accordion players round to you instead!!
<strikes defiant pose> I'll have you know that I play in a band which features -- proudly -- a piano accordionist. And she's cute and perky.
>Not that I like steriotypes but I bet you have a beard too, don't ya?
Why yes, I do. See, I decided to stop shaving years ago, after having too many severe hangovers; you can't imagine the terrible racket a razor makes when you're in that fragile state of mind.
At the end of a gig, we were cleaning up and I turned around just in time to see a drunk woman about to hoist herself onto the stage with one boot in the piper's case, which contained an Uilleann half-set and a treasured Highland set (don't ask). She was somewhat annoyed when I pushed her over backwards onto the dance floor. "I just wanted to hear a Stan Rogers song..."
I suppose the best thing would be to hire a piano accordion player, and then they'd believe us when we said we all had galloping crotch rot or whatever.
Last November at the Ennis Trad Fest I was at a sesh hosted by Josephine Marsh and a few others and this madman was playing the whistle and behaving erratically. He was a large fellow and appeared to live outdoors. He picked up my Grinter flute and looked at me as if asking to play it. I said "sure" and he proceeded to struggle to get a tune out. I noticed that Jo and the others appeared concerned, but I played it cool. As I sat listening to him getting mostly the sound of gale force wind out of my flute, I suddenly remembered where I'd seen him before. It was in Galway at the Crane Bar a few years earlier and he had been on the stool next to me acting outrageous. At one point he got out a knife and opened it menacingly. He then stabbed himself in the leg (that turned out to be wooden) and laughed as the knife stuck in place. Before he left that night the table was turned on it's side as he fell over a few times. This sudden memory of the fellow wasn’t very comforting as I watched him huffing and puffing away on my beloved flute. Thankfully he handed it back unharmed and declared that it wasn't that great of a flute. I was relieved because I hoped that meant he had lost all interest in playing it again. His name was O'Leary as I recall.
Think I spotted the same guy hanging around outside Cruises that weekend trying to knock a tune out of a whistle and talking nonsense at the top of his voice and generally annoying people. wasnt quite so bad though as we were just hanging around chatting rather than trying to have a session. Hope you got the flute sterilised when you got it back!
I didn't have any medical equipment on hand to sterilize my flute except for wiping the mouthpiece with whiskey. (This happens every time I play it on account of my ridiculous mustache combined with my penchant for consuming whiskey) He did corner me in the jax a bit later and seemed to want to peg me as an eejit Yankee anorack or something, but I mesmerized him with radical political discourse when the subject came up and he finally let me by because he couldn’t seem to reciprocate.
Being a lefty guitarist and not having any quality instrument, I would just hand it over and go to the bar while my buds tried to not ROFTL.
Sometimes I'd actually get there in time to see the mystified look on his face when he figured out it sounded like crap. Then the lost puppy look when he's scanning the place looking for me.
Sometimes I'd yell" Keep goin', "Keep goin' ! Great Stuff !"
Unfortunately, there was always some compassionate human being that would offer to take it or lend him a dexter. Which is hard to do doubled over.
I haven't taken a guitar to a session in a long time. I kinda miss that.....
An accordion playing friend of mine from Cork told me this story once about how a little old man was sitting down at a pub at Feakle and this piano accordion guy was pulling all this tunes that no-one knew repeatedly, and no-one was joining in. So the little old man gets up and hobbles towards him. Suddenly, as quick as lightning, the old man pulls out a knife and slashes the bellows of the accordion as the man's in full flight through a polka and walks away saying nothing.
Now mind you, this could all be delusional rantings, but I thought it was a funny story nonetheless and perhaps apt to the thread of the conversation. Does anyone know if this actually happened?
Wow. That's never happened to me before, but that's weird.
I've never seen anybody do that (except for this one time at Patrick's pub, where the guy let him use his instrument, cause it was out of tune) That's funny.
I was playing with some friends of mine at a reinactment festival, when this lady grabs my fiddle and starts plucking it like a mandolin. My fiddle had been my great-grandfathers, so needless to say I wasn't too happy. =P I was so surprised I didn't really say anything. But after glaring at her for a minute or two, right when I was about to grab it away from her, she hands it back and walks away without a word....0_o
Jack, the guy you saw was Timber Tony. He lives in Ennistimon, and is the subject of many a strange story. he usually busks with a blind guy in Lahinch, and was once arrested, along with aforementioned blind chap, trying to break into his sister's caravan. This was never going to be a successful affair, due to the both of them being steaming drunk, and ending up stuck halfway through the window where his sister found them.
He once got into an argument with a guitar-playing friend of mine, Alex Fife of Glasgow, now West Clare; in a fit of temper Alex took off Tony's wooden leg and chucked it down the High Street in Ennistimon. He probably deserved it.
I last saw him busking on the Cliffs of Moher with his whistle, with a sign on the ground which read: "Money needed to replace a broken flute". Yeah, right.
well...playing along (in earlier years) without having made a decent effort to learn the stuff, missing key & tempo changes and generally screwing up-just the sort of sessioneer everybody dreads. Reform followed upon appreciation of the skills of my betters.
The ultimate session No No!
The ultimate session No No!
At our session last night, in sunnt Portrush, norn iron, this rather intoxicated eegit sat down next to one of the fiddle players.
Now Bob had set his fiddle on the seat for a moment, but when he looked round, horror of horrors, the eegit had grabbed his fiddle & was about to try & play a tune!!
Needless to say Bob grabbed the fiddle from him, asking him politely to go forth & multiply!!
Now Bob had actually spent months making this fiddle himself, so he had every right to be upset.
I, myself had a woman, once again a non musician, quite boldly pick up my Concertina at a session & she was most upset when I grabbed it back from her. I told her I didn't mind her playing with my £2,000 instrument if she didn't mind me going through the contents of her handbag!!
Has anyone else had this sort of thing happen to them??
Is it just the drink or is the world full of bad manners?
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: The ultimate session No No!
I once used someone's Rudall & Rose flute as a percussion instrument by dropping on the floor on the offbeats. Worked really well. THe punters liked it, anyway.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by wormdiet
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Seeing a drunken morris dancer slowly overbalance and fall into a hammered dulcimer during a session at the 'Pot Belly' in Canberra was pretty memorable.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by dogbox
Re: The ultimate session No No!
One of the best reasons I know for playing guitar in DADGAD. When some clown wants to borrow it to play his "song" you strum it for him tell him its not in normal tuning and they go and bother someone else
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by geoffmc
Re: The ultimate session No No!
The one I've liked the best so far is "sorry, I can't let you because of insurance reasons". Who came up with that one, anyway?
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: The ultimate session No No!
"Sure you can borrow it, but I have a fungus infection" also works really well....
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Will Harmon
Re: The ultimate session No No!
What a difference a little comma can make. I read the title of this thread as "The Ultimate Session, No No! " Thinking it was going to be some sort of plea against the concept of a definitive session or something, I then couldn't figure out what was going on when I read it.
Possibly more caffiene required.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by kris
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Double negatives are the ultimate No No!
I should have resisted but I couldn't.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Geoff Pollitt
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Morris dancer falling slowly into a hammered duclimer, fantastic. Not only is this a wonderful image, it comes complete with its own cartoon style crash sound effect.
- Chris
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by ramblingpitchfork
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Hammered dulcimers normally make good chips but morris-dancers have too thick a skin to go through the wire.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by geoffwright
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Are you saying we should make all Morris Dancers into CHIPS?
O.K. I'll second that motion!
But let's not destroy good Dulcimers in the process.
Why not tie a Banjo round each of their necks & float them out to sea on a Bodhran, with a Guitar as a mast & a Piano Accordion bellows for wind!!
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: The ultimate session No No!
A lot of morris dancers I know could provide plenty of hot air for wind.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by showaddydadito
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Excellent idea showaddydadito, but I still say they should each take a Piano Accordion with them, even if just to give the Morris Man a rest now & then.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Ptarmigan - perhaps they could actually take quite a lot of piano accordians with them - coupla thousand would be a start.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by showaddydadito
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Morris Dancers are being turned into California Highway Patrolmen????? This is indeed a strange world
JIm - what???????
On the subject matter - I think they should be crucified on the bar door 'pour encourager les autres' this, of course will include those pizza box bodhranistas who can't even play their own instruments never mind others'.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by breandan
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Why, no matter what the original topic, do our discussions descend into nyahh, nyahh, my instrument is better than yours, which should be used as 1) kindling, 2) ballast, 3) a target, etc, etc.
Of course, having said that, I do agree that Morris Dancers are fair game!!!!!!!!!!!!
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by AlBrown
Re: The ultimate session No No!
AlBrown, that's because my instrument is better then yours.
It'll stop if you just accept that.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Toresica
Re: The ultimate session No No!
As one of the few morris dancers in this here amorphous forum, I'd like to give a loud, formal "HARRUMPH!" as regards all these potshots being leveled at my brethren (and sistren). Do not judge us until you've capered a mile in our shoes, savored the sweet taste of cold ale after a hot July's day of dancing, or experienced the thrill of a pulled hamstring.
So there.
Anyway...
Re the thread's original topic, I experienced this phenomenon a few weeks ago myself, as breathlessly recounted here:
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display.php/7209
I've also encountered situations as described by geoffmca, i.e., someone asking to play your DADGAD-tuned guitar. In one instance, though, I offered to retune it to standard and it turned out to be a good move: The fella who asked was quite a decent guitar player, and his friend -- one of the session mainstays -- complimented me on my beneficence. Sometimes it pays to follow the better angels of your nature, I reckon.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by sts
Re: The ultimate session No No!
I had someone borrow my guitar a few years ago when I was taking a break, and break a string on me--didn't go over real well. Usually these things happen when people are getting what we in the US call 'hammered'--fortunately our pub is mostly inhabited by moderate drinkers. And not too long ago, the publican limited the number of free drinks to two apiece, which also encourages moderation!
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by AlBrown
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Ya big softy!!
So it's you that is encouraging all these bar pests to annoy us!!!
Your punishment shall arrive later. - We'll send all those Piano Accordion players round to you instead!!
Not that I like steriotypes but I bet you have a beard too, don't ya?
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: The ultimate session No No!
>Ya big softy!!
That's me: http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display.php/4801
>So it's you that is encouraging all these bar pests to annoy us!!!
Well, technically, he wasn't really a bar pest. He was a friend of a sessioneer, and happened to be without his instrument.
(OK, reading that last line, it sounds either like the punchline to a really bad joke, or the title of a really bad music hall song.)
>Your punishment shall arrive later. - We'll send all those Piano Accordion players round to you instead!!
<strikes defiant pose> I'll have you know that I play in a band which features -- proudly -- a piano accordionist. And she's cute and perky.
>Not that I like steriotypes but I bet you have a beard too, don't ya?
Why yes, I do. See, I decided to stop shaving years ago, after having too many severe hangovers; you can't imagine the terrible racket a razor makes when you're in that fragile state of mind.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by sts
Re: The ultimate session No No!
At the end of a gig, we were cleaning up and I turned around just in time to see a drunk woman about to hoist herself onto the stage with one boot in the piper's case, which contained an Uilleann half-set and a treasured Highland set (don't ask). She was somewhat annoyed when I pushed her over backwards onto the dance floor. "I just wanted to hear a Stan Rogers song..."
I suppose the best thing would be to hire a piano accordion player, and then they'd believe us when we said we all had galloping crotch rot or whatever.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Gzeg
Re: The ultimate session No No!
I used to be a "North West Clog" Morris dancer. If you lifted one of our instruments we just stomped on you with the horseshoes.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by bodhran bliss
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Last November at the Ennis Trad Fest I was at a sesh hosted by Josephine Marsh and a few others and this madman was playing the whistle and behaving erratically. He was a large fellow and appeared to live outdoors. He picked up my Grinter flute and looked at me as if asking to play it. I said "sure" and he proceeded to struggle to get a tune out. I noticed that Jo and the others appeared concerned, but I played it cool. As I sat listening to him getting mostly the sound of gale force wind out of my flute, I suddenly remembered where I'd seen him before. It was in Galway at the Crane Bar a few years earlier and he had been on the stool next to me acting outrageous. At one point he got out a knife and opened it menacingly. He then stabbed himself in the leg (that turned out to be wooden) and laughed as the knife stuck in place. Before he left that night the table was turned on it's side as he fell over a few times. This sudden memory of the fellow wasn’t very comforting as I watched him huffing and puffing away on my beloved flute. Thankfully he handed it back unharmed and declared that it wasn't that great of a flute. I was relieved because I hoped that meant he had lost all interest in playing it again. His name was O'Leary as I recall.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Think I spotted the same guy hanging around outside Cruises that weekend trying to knock a tune out of a whistle and talking nonsense at the top of his voice and generally annoying people. wasnt quite so bad though as we were just hanging around chatting rather than trying to have a session. Hope you got the flute sterilised when you got it back!
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by an_insoluble_pancake
Re: The ultimate session No No!
I didn't have any medical equipment on hand to sterilize my flute except for wiping the mouthpiece with whiskey. (This happens every time I play it on account of my ridiculous mustache combined with my penchant for consuming whiskey) He did corner me in the jax a bit later and seemed to want to peg me as an eejit Yankee anorack or something, but I mesmerized him with radical political discourse when the subject came up and he finally let me by because he couldn’t seem to reciprocate.
# Posted on August 12th 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Being a lefty guitarist and not having any quality instrument, I would just hand it over and go to the bar while my buds tried to not ROFTL.
Sometimes I'd actually get there in time to see the mystified look on his face when he figured out it sounded like crap. Then the lost puppy look when he's scanning the place looking for me.
Sometimes I'd yell" Keep goin', "Keep goin' ! Great Stuff !"
Unfortunately, there was always some compassionate human being that would offer to take it or lend him a dexter. Which is hard to do doubled over.
I haven't taken a guitar to a session in a long time. I kinda miss that.....
# Posted on August 13th 2005 by Owell Mabee
Re: The ultimate session No No!
An accordion playing friend of mine from Cork told me this story once about how a little old man was sitting down at a pub at Feakle and this piano accordion guy was pulling all this tunes that no-one knew repeatedly, and no-one was joining in. So the little old man gets up and hobbles towards him. Suddenly, as quick as lightning, the old man pulls out a knife and slashes the bellows of the accordion as the man's in full flight through a polka and walks away saying nothing.
Now mind you, this could all be delusional rantings, but I thought it was a funny story nonetheless and perhaps apt to the thread of the conversation. Does anyone know if this actually happened?
# Posted on August 13th 2005 by b2jay
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Wow. That's never happened to me before, but that's weird.
I've never seen anybody do that (except for this one time at Patrick's pub, where the guy let him use his instrument, cause it was out of tune) That's funny.
# Posted on August 14th 2005 by paratroopers
Re: The ultimate session No No!
I was playing with some friends of mine at a reinactment festival, when this lady grabs my fiddle and starts plucking it like a mandolin. My fiddle had been my great-grandfathers, so needless to say I wasn't too happy. =P I was so surprised I didn't really say anything. But after glaring at her for a minute or two, right when I was about to grab it away from her, she hands it back and walks away without a word....0_o
# Posted on August 14th 2005 by merrysisters
Re: The ultimate session No No!
Jack, the guy you saw was Timber Tony. He lives in Ennistimon, and is the subject of many a strange story. he usually busks with a blind guy in Lahinch, and was once arrested, along with aforementioned blind chap, trying to break into his sister's caravan. This was never going to be a successful affair, due to the both of them being steaming drunk, and ending up stuck halfway through the window where his sister found them.
He once got into an argument with a guitar-playing friend of mine, Alex Fife of Glasgow, now West Clare; in a fit of temper Alex took off Tony's wooden leg and chucked it down the High Street in Ennistimon. He probably deserved it.
I last saw him busking on the Cliffs of Moher with his whistle, with a sign on the ground which read: "Money needed to replace a broken flute". Yeah, right.
# Posted on August 16th 2005 by Conán McDonnell
Re: The ultimate session No No!
well...playing along (in earlier years) without having made a decent effort to learn the stuff, missing key & tempo changes and generally screwing up-just the sort of sessioneer everybody dreads. Reform followed upon appreciation of the skills of my betters.
# Posted on October 17th 2005 by pubpersona