I was involved with a gig a number of years ago in a former band in which we had a three hour one-way drive to a small town "Ratrod" car show with my drums, amps and the standup bass in the front seat of my little compact car.
Before we left the show our guitarist tells the bassist and me that he absolutely has to be back home in time for the "Stray Cats" show in which he had laid down some major cash for tickets later that night, (an attempt to win back his former girlfriend.)
We finally arrive and after meeting the organizer, we are told that the other three bands had cancelled and we were the only entertainment for the entire show which started in the early afternoon and lasted until late evening/early morning. The guitarist is so pissed off he tells the organizer "no way" to the point that punches were about to be thrown! One line I recall from the exchange from the organizer to our guitarist "would you pull this at a Hell's Angels' rally?" to which he replied "hell yes I would!' which was answered with "Well you'd be leaving in a body bag!"
So thats when I pulled my band-mates aside and tried to reason that we had just spent three hours driving to the show and would be on the road another three hours to return home, so at the very least we needed to try to arrive at some sort of compromise! I then approached the organizer and proposed that we play part of the day for a increased amount, to which he agreed.
We then proceeded to play two arduous one-hour sets on the back of a flat bed semi trailer in one hundred degree heat with no shade! Following the sets we collected our pay and hauled ass back home (making it in two and a half hours) with no speeding tickets or crashes, but later in the week paid the price in sunburned heads, ears, necks, faces and arms!
The name of the club putting on the show had a tag-line "The car club from hell!" which definitely lived up to their name for the "show from hell!"
