Hotels and Rockers don't mix
I remember playing this bar in Kalkaska or should I say vaguely remember. It was a nice club in a small town. One of the benefits to playing this club was it was also the local hotel and they usually gave the bands a whole floor. Not a big hotel, this usually consisted of 10 rooms. Granted this wasn't the Hilton, but they were fairly nice rooms.
Well we were pretty excited to each have his own room for the weekend. That doesn't happen too often. Usually there are 4 or 5 guys cramped in one room. That is, of course, if we can afford 2 rooms. One room was always for band members or whoever wanted to sleep, and the other room was the party room. Basically because there was always a party after playing. Some one in the band always had to invite people back to the hotel with hopes of scoring a groupie that night.
Having 10 rooms was awesome to say the least. We had 5 band members and 4 roadies which left I designated room to trash and party in. You would think that one designated room would be the only room trashed that weekend....WRONG. Here's my account of what happened that weekend...to the best of my recollection that is.
Night 1. We gave a pretty good show. There were about 250 at the bar and our illustrious singer gracefully announced over the microphone before we finished, that there would be a prty upstairs on the 3rd floor. Yay!!! About 100 people showed up on the 3rd floor to party with the band. I think each person probably brought at least a 12-pack to a case of beer. It was definately going to be a night to remember, tho I can't remember most of it after the first 12-pack.
The band I was in. who shall remain nameless for legal reasons...sort of, had a reputation for destroying hotels and motels. There were counties in Michigan that actually had our name on a list of people not allowed to stay in their places of rest. We were best know as the band that had the loud parties, screaming groupies, Harleys racing in the parking lot and other things that would generally keep the other patrons from getting any sleep and demanding their money back. And yes, there have been a couple TV's thrown out the windows to fit the cliche' stereo-typical rock band. I remember whenever we played in Muskegon county, we had to drive at least 50 miles to get rooms. Although our reputations usually preceded us, it apparently had not made it to Kalkaska.
So there we were in Kalkaska with wall to wall people or should I say wall to wall drunken people. Women flashing everyone, guys getting sick and/or fighting, and of course, everyone using the halls as their personal trash bin or ashtray. It was a real bash. I should probably mention something here. We had one roadie, who in reality was pretty evil. Great guy if you were his friend, but I pity the guy who wasn't. Anyway, this roadie, we'll call him George, got the bright idea of blocking the toilets in as many rooms as he could while we were downstairs playing in the club. I, myself, always lock my room and was fortunately free from his malisciousness. But out of the other 9 rooms, he had managed to plug 6 of the toilets including the designated party room. It was pretty scary to tell you the truth. I'll spare you the disgusting details. So the party raged on until about 6 or 7 in the morning with the exception of the few die-hard partiers, when we realized that our lead singer was missing. He wasn't in any of the rooms and it was unlikely for him to disappear with out boasting of the groupie he was disappearring with. So we were worried, somewhat, we were still pretty drunk. So as we organized the drunken search party, someone mentioned they heard some noise over by the pile of empty beer cans and bottles. And Ta-Da..there he was, buried under the mountain of beer cans. This mountain was, I kid you not, all the way to the ceiling and protruded out about 6 feet from the wall. So as we pulled the singer from the beer mountain, someone noticed that he was bleeding from his foot. What had apparently happened was in his drunken stupor, he had stepped on a broken beer bottle and cut his foot, fell into the pile of cans and laid there as people continued to cover him up with empty beer cans.
We ended up taking him to the hospital and he ended up with about 20 stitches on his foot, give or take, and a large quantity of valium. So without all the sex stories that you would usually hear people brag about in their memories of such events, I thinkI'll go ahead and take a break here, although, just so you know, there wasn't much movement the next day. In fact, I think we all slept until showtime or close to it which was at 9 that evening.
My brain is starting to hurt. I think I have a phantom hangover so I'll continue this story on my next entry.
Well we were pretty excited to each have his own room for the weekend. That doesn't happen too often. Usually there are 4 or 5 guys cramped in one room. That is, of course, if we can afford 2 rooms. One room was always for band members or whoever wanted to sleep, and the other room was the party room. Basically because there was always a party after playing. Some one in the band always had to invite people back to the hotel with hopes of scoring a groupie that night.
Having 10 rooms was awesome to say the least. We had 5 band members and 4 roadies which left I designated room to trash and party in. You would think that one designated room would be the only room trashed that weekend....WRONG. Here's my account of what happened that weekend...to the best of my recollection that is.
Night 1. We gave a pretty good show. There were about 250 at the bar and our illustrious singer gracefully announced over the microphone before we finished, that there would be a prty upstairs on the 3rd floor. Yay!!! About 100 people showed up on the 3rd floor to party with the band. I think each person probably brought at least a 12-pack to a case of beer. It was definately going to be a night to remember, tho I can't remember most of it after the first 12-pack.
The band I was in. who shall remain nameless for legal reasons...sort of, had a reputation for destroying hotels and motels. There were counties in Michigan that actually had our name on a list of people not allowed to stay in their places of rest. We were best know as the band that had the loud parties, screaming groupies, Harleys racing in the parking lot and other things that would generally keep the other patrons from getting any sleep and demanding their money back. And yes, there have been a couple TV's thrown out the windows to fit the cliche' stereo-typical rock band. I remember whenever we played in Muskegon county, we had to drive at least 50 miles to get rooms. Although our reputations usually preceded us, it apparently had not made it to Kalkaska.
So there we were in Kalkaska with wall to wall people or should I say wall to wall drunken people. Women flashing everyone, guys getting sick and/or fighting, and of course, everyone using the halls as their personal trash bin or ashtray. It was a real bash. I should probably mention something here. We had one roadie, who in reality was pretty evil. Great guy if you were his friend, but I pity the guy who wasn't. Anyway, this roadie, we'll call him George, got the bright idea of blocking the toilets in as many rooms as he could while we were downstairs playing in the club. I, myself, always lock my room and was fortunately free from his malisciousness. But out of the other 9 rooms, he had managed to plug 6 of the toilets including the designated party room. It was pretty scary to tell you the truth. I'll spare you the disgusting details. So the party raged on until about 6 or 7 in the morning with the exception of the few die-hard partiers, when we realized that our lead singer was missing. He wasn't in any of the rooms and it was unlikely for him to disappear with out boasting of the groupie he was disappearring with. So we were worried, somewhat, we were still pretty drunk. So as we organized the drunken search party, someone mentioned they heard some noise over by the pile of empty beer cans and bottles. And Ta-Da..there he was, buried under the mountain of beer cans. This mountain was, I kid you not, all the way to the ceiling and protruded out about 6 feet from the wall. So as we pulled the singer from the beer mountain, someone noticed that he was bleeding from his foot. What had apparently happened was in his drunken stupor, he had stepped on a broken beer bottle and cut his foot, fell into the pile of cans and laid there as people continued to cover him up with empty beer cans.
We ended up taking him to the hospital and he ended up with about 20 stitches on his foot, give or take, and a large quantity of valium. So without all the sex stories that you would usually hear people brag about in their memories of such events, I thinkI'll go ahead and take a break here, although, just so you know, there wasn't much movement the next day. In fact, I think we all slept until showtime or close to it which was at 9 that evening.
My brain is starting to hurt. I think I have a phantom hangover so I'll continue this story on my next entry.
posted by Spinner at 9:47 AM
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