Creepy Crawley

Suddenly he lurched off his stool and looked at us. We thought that he had finally had enough and was going to carry out his threat. Instead he stood swaying a little and headed out the door to the other bar/loo. Birthday Boy still looked his impassive self and was actually tapping his fingers on the bar in time to what we were playing. I kept looking toward the door expecting to see a mound of flesh and muscle come back through the door. But it never happened. He didn't come back the whole set. When we finished the collective relief felt all round was unbelievable but we were also a bit confused. I wen't to the loo-no sign of him, and he wasn't in the other bar either.It seemed he'd just left (a nice way to treat a mate on his birthday). We packed the gear away and I went outside to go and fect my car. As soon as I had left the pub I immediatly clapped eyes on white van across the road with something large and in shadow underneath the front of it. I immediatly went over and sure enough it was Mr. Intimidation passed out, looking very much like he was staying there fo the night. For a few seconds I felt like going and getting the boom part of a microphone stand and laying into him with it but there were people about besides that he actually looked like he'd not just fallen in a drunken heap but had done this on purpose as if he did it as a matter of course every Friday. The whole thing began assuming comic proportions and we went home vowing to be back not letting that kind of thing deter us.
We did go back and played there again but found our friend had been since barred from the pub for violence against staff members!

Crawley cont.

The man-mountain came up to the Singer/Guitarist and basically said that if we didn't play something "good" he would kill all three of us. His mate, whose birthday it was apparently(and was only slightly smaller than him) looked on fairly passively. At this point the singer tried to pacify him, telling him what a nice guy he was and patting him gently on the arm (he said it was like tapping cast iron) and generally trying to ease what was becoming a nasty situation. Allthe time this was happening the Landlord/lady couldn't care less and seemed to take no interest in what was going on in the pub at all, same as the rest of the punters. He went back to his chair after this threat and sat with the birthday boy necking more Stella. Mercifully our break came having tried to play a more "rocky" set and we went to the bar to talk to the management about what had happened. They just shrugged it off and carried on serving more Stella. We sat down and discussed how were going to get through the next 45 minutes unscathed. We took to stage again and started.By this time the band-baiting ogre looked very pissed and seemed less interested in us but we could take our eyes off him.He suddenly shouted out at me.I tried to ignore him but he kept on-"Oi, soft c*nt!" I didn't really feel like responding to this particular salutation so I didn't. Was he getting madder or more bored?

Crawley

I got booked to play a gig in a pub in Crawley a few years ago. As we approached the venue it seemed like a nice area-nice houses, nice gardens, middle class suburbia. As we went over the railway level crossing the urban scenery suddenly changed to one of stark contrast. Everything looked dirty, run down and a fine example of inner city urban decay. We could see the pub in the distance dimly standing out from the gloom. We were definately on the wrong side of the tracks!
I was the first to go in , which is always somewhat daunting if you've never played a venue before and don't know what to expect. The bar was populated solely by blokes who, as soon as they saw me carrying musical gear, immediately started giving me a hard time for being supposedly late, even though we weren't. Apart from this initial salvo they ignored us setting up.
When we started playing(our style being power pop-Elvis Costello, Jam, Beatles etc.) a couple of blokes, one of which was about 6'6" were not impressed and voiced thie displeasure at our stlye and material. They told us to play something they liked or else, this being "Sweet Home Alabama".Our guitarist cheekily player the opening riff and then stopped saying we didn't know it. Bad move. They obviosly thought we were taking the piss and got more agitated. They were also extremely drunk.