GIG REPORT - Slightly Offensive (191 South & Blarney Island)

This past Fri/Sat night my band SLIGHTLY OFFENSIVE played 2 gigs. Friday night we were at 191 South in Mokena and Saturday night we were up at Blarney Island in Antioch IL (2 hours away).

Friday Night:

Now 191 South is a pretty hard bar to get a gig at, I tried to book GTA there and I was completely ignored. I found out from the bass player who booked the gig that normally you have to play a couple times at Sam McGuire's (a nearby bar) in Orland Park on Thursday nights to see how you do before getting a gig at 191 South. This is because the booking agent books at both places and 191 South is considered a “step up” from Sam McGuire's. Our bass player's old band had a routine 6 week gig rotation at 191South before so he got us the gig without all the BS.

So we got all set up and I thought we had a pretty good crowd to start with (around 100 ppl), which for me is A LOT of people to start with!!! The crowd here was all in their 20's, girls with short shorts & heels was the look of the night. I don't know if it was a full moon or it just being the middle of summer but the girls were on the prowl Friday night. The bass player said he was worried that the crowd was “a little thin” and hoped that it wouldn't hurt us too bad. He told me that his buddy's band played here and got a second gig but nothing after the 2nd show. He told me before that we NEEDED to do well otherwise he would look like a total ass to the booking agent…ok, got it.

We played the first set pretty tight but the crowd response was minimal again just like the last (benefit) gig. After the first set the bass player went and talked to the manager who said we were doing ok, a couple of flubs but he understood we were a “new band”. Hmmm…this is new, I've never had a bar/club manager pay that much attention to how the band played. Anyway, the DJ had the crowd up and dancing playing club/dance music so I was hoping that we didn't kill the vibe right out of the gate starting our 2nd set. Our 2nd set started with Poison's “Every Rose” which is REALLY SLOW compared to the “Cupid Shuffle” the crowd was just getting into so I had reason for concern, but I saw people singing along with us so it wasn't the feared “wet blanket” song…not great but not bad. THEN shortly thereafter everything fell into place. We had a pretty girl who was celebrating her 21st B-Day there and we brought her up on stage and sang for her and then the liquor (FINALLY) kicked in with the crowd. We had a wedding party show up after their reception was over and they requested “Summer of ‘69”. Played that…now we're grooving, went into Buckcherry's “Crazy Bitch”…WOW!!! Now we have 6 girls on the stage dancing w/us then…right into Def Leppard's “Pour Some Sugar On Me”…NOW WE ARE ROCKSTARS!!! Funny how things turn around like that. Then at the end of the night, a girl who wound up with a drumstick as a souvenir came up to the drummer and said to him “I'm going to do something you'll really like…” and proceeded to nibble on his ear :) . The drummer put an end to that really quick and her friend told her “he's married” and she said “I know…I saw his wife leave already…” Wow, some people huh”?

So Friday night ended very well for us, we'll just have to see if we get a second gig out of it!!! AND thankfully the rain held off till the end of the gig…unfortunately it came as a torrential downpour when we were loading after 2am.

Saturday Night:

Blarney Island is a bar up in Antioch IL in the middle of a lake (about a mile off shore), its known as the “Key West of the Midwest”. There are 2 bars, one is on the mainland (Port of Blarney), they had a 2 piece band playing covers w/bongos and if you want, you can take the shuttle boat (for $7) to the island. I've never been here before but I've ALWAYS wanted to play here and I was not disappointed.

Now Blarney Island's “headliner” bands play from 9pm-1:30am and those bands are either national acts or usually what I call “Tier 1 cover bands” that play around Chicago. These are bands that draw THOUSANDS of people to local summer festivals around Chicago every year. Our singer knows the owner so…as a favor to her…he gave us the 2nd band slot playing from 6:30pm-8:30pm (SA-WEET)!!!

So I got to the boat dock EARLY and I loaded my gear onto the boat & decided to grab some pub grub before we shipped off to the island bar…besides the rest of the band wasn't there yet. Well a group of 20 girls or so loaded onto the boat and the captain said he was getting ready to leave but my grub wasn't ready yet so I had to unload all my gear. Now…hearing that Blarney Island has a reputation for “Bikinis Gone Wild” I wore my “Boobies Make Me Smile :D ” shirt…and a couple of the girls on the boat saw my shirt and asked if they could take a picture with me and my shirt? So I said “sure” (I'm thinking to myself this is gonna be a GREAT GIG)!!! After I told my bandmates about that they said I should have said “sure…but we'll have to do it topless”…damn, why didn't I think of that???

When we got to the island the band had less than an hour left to play and we staged all our gear on the side of the stage for a quick setup. Now we had 17 songs in our set and the band before us played 6 of the songs we were going to do. It started to get comical after the 3rd one, then we started guessing which of our songs they were going to play next. Now HERE is a real problem being a cover band with multiple bands on the bill and everyone is playing the “standards”. So we decided to swap out some songs and still keep some of the ones they already played because…well…we really don't know much more than what we know. The band before us was “DEEP SIX” so when we played one of the songs they already played we were like “here's another DEEP SIX cover”!!! Even the band after us played some of the songs both bands played but the crowd really didn't seem to care.

But we had a GREAT crowd, girls up on the stage dancing with us, Crazy Bitch didn't go over as well as it did the night before but it went over BIG when band #3 played it…of course they hired a “professional” dancer (stripper) who was “pre loaded” at the side of the stage before the song and she came out and danced w/the band during it. That REALLY primed the crowd and from there it was just OFF THE HOOK!!! Between their set the MC/DJ had girls up on stage, one girl flashed the crowd, it was just bedlam. My wife and I took off after their first set because we had a 2 hour drive ahead of us.
I would DEFINITELY play here again or just make the drive to see a national act for sure!!! Now that we know a lot of “standards” we have to learn some songs that will separate us from the crowd a little bit.

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