Good stories all! Don't worry about the story being "legendary" I was pretty drunk when I wrote that and just wanted to be funny. If you have a story you think everyone might enjoy post it, no pressure here.
Anyway I happened across this one in one of my old journals, I shortened it up a bit...hopefully it still reads well.
In the summer of 2005, the last year I worked with my jazz combo. We found ourselves booked at an insufferably snooty upscale restaurant in Portland. Honestly this was the worst of the worst, pseudo sophistication for annoying summer tourists, weak $10 beer, and items like Smoked Salmon Pininos and goat cheese lobster burgers or something equally dreadful. The manager was some snot head who wore a purple beret and let the smoke from his Virginia Slim filter up through is neatly groomed moustache. We were informed upon arriving that we should keep it simple, which is slang for be as boring as possible. Yup a night full of Jazz standards, Star Dust, Summertime, Polka Dots and Moonbeams, you couldn't gentrify an art anymore if you gave John Rockefeller an electric guitar.
We mucked through the first set, hobbled like a runner on a broken ankle before heading out back to tuck deep into a bottle of Jack (I drank about 3/4 of the bottle during our time in the parking lot) and vent our frustrations over a pack of camels. We returned to the stage about as uninspired as musicians could be. Our drummer looked like he'd fallen asleep and about half way into Body and Soul I just stopped playing altogether, sighed and leaned over my double bass to stare at the audience in a drunken stupor. The audience at this point was completely oblivious to the fact that half the band had stopped playing, or maybe they though we nodded off on heroin something, I don't know. Anyway the rest of the band slowly stops playing and we gather around the drum kit passing around a flask, letting down our ponytails and discussing just packing up and going home. Then one of us suggested we just be as abrasive as possible until they throw us out. Now in rehearsal we had a habit of playing music we weren't accustomed too, it kept us on our toes, so we had build up quite a catalog of rather bad music to play.
I grabbed my electric bass, stepped to the mic and the band launches into a fierce version of Love Gun. I fully admit that I can't sing a lick...but that just really made it all the better...and besides the song sounded great with brass and piano and our guitar player could smoke when he wanted too. As I'm shrieking away at the mic, I notice out of the corner of my, one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The snot head manager comes tearing out of his office like a sprinter, trips on a trash can and goes flying like superman behind the bar. We'd gotten about half way through the song when I looked out at the audience to see room full of dropped jaws glaring at the stage, grumbling ensues and people start throwing down money and heading for the door. We just kept on playing.
We decided to take it up a notch after that and launched into some song by Pantera. The alcohol was really starting to set in and the band had more or less lost any interest in playing as the song descended into a maelstrom of off beat riffs and feedback. It was some point during this song I notice a cop walking through the front door. Yup the bastard called the cops on us...didn't ask us to stop or anything...I don't know maybe he did, I was pretty drunk at this point. The officer comes over to the stage starts waving his hands to get our attention, we stop playing. "Whats going on here?"
"Just playing our set officer" I smiled back.
He sighs and rubs his eyes, "Well hold tight, I have to get to the bottom of this" And heads over to the seething manager seated at the bar. We sat on stage passing around a flask behind their backs, kind of laughing at what we had pulled off, when the cop walks back over.
He sighs again obviously annoyed at being in the middle of any of this. "He says he wont press charges if you agree to just leave."
"Charges? You know he could just ask us to leave."
"Yeah, that's what I was going to suggest"
For a moment I wanted to be a dick and demand payment...but half the band was roaring drunk and I guess we didn't feel like pressing our luck. The scene began to calm down as the officer left, we packed up our equipment and customers began filing back in. We drove down to the coast after that, found a nice little quite beach to sit on, drank and had a good laugh over the whole thing.