Risers

bigjimslade: We were playing this club on Cape Cod in an area catering mostly to fairly affluent tourists, aka Douchebaggimus Optimus. We are a five-piece band, singer, drums, guitar, bass and keyboards. The stage at this place was small, though, and the keyboards were set up on the floor next to the stage, which was only a 4" riser.
itchy: just one of those overcompensating types ... probably trying to establish himself as alpha male
bigjimslade: As the night went on and these fuckwit douchenozzles got drunker and drunker, they kept dancing near the keyboards, the stack of which are roughly $6K or so minimum
bigjimslade: instead of my usual gig of hanging around offstage, I had to stand next to the keys pushing people away when they got too close
bigjimslade: there was this one group in particular, bunch of early-20s dipshits who were swaggering and hitting on anything with breasts, carrying around three drinks each so they didn't have to go to the bar as often
itchy: brilliant!
stresstwig: that's why i always keep a tazer with breasts handy
bigjimslade: One of them was particularly obnoxious, as he kept leaning in over the keyboards to "throw the horns" right in the keyboard player's face while he was playing
itchy: was the place too packed or something?
bigjimslade: on the other side of the room was this cute blonde who was there with her husband/boyfriend/whatever (we'll call him Moose), and her friend, an equally cute brunette
bigjimslade: packed to the gills
itchy: i hope they didn't fuck with Moose's woman ;)
bigjimslade: blonde and brunette danced togegther a lot, and were very touchy-flirty with each other. The band and I appreciated this, and enjoyed that
itchy: oh yeah, that's gotta attract the flies
bigjimslade: douchebag alpha in fact did that
bigjimslade: during the opening riffs to Separate Ways, D.A. reached over and full-palm grabbed the blonde's right breast, and squeezed
bigjimslade: Moose, shall we say, took exception
itchy: man, what kind of jackass does that
itchy: i mean, it seems counterproductive in more ways than one
bigjimslade: he swiped D.A. across the arms, which threw the bouquet of beer bottles across the area to land pouring all over the keyboards
itchy: oh shit
bigjimslade: Keyboardist, to his credit, mostly kept playing whuile I in one otion grabbed his sweat towel and ran it across the board, and stepped out in front of the keyboards as the fight started moving towards them
bigjimslade: D.A.'s friends kindof grabbed him and pulled him off, while the blonde tried to restrain Moose
bigjimslade: by this time, someone had gone and woken the club security out of their naptime, and they came over to grab D.A.
bigjimslade: this is all happening with D.A. three feet to my left, Moose about the same distance to my right
bigjimslade: Moose sees D.A. restrained, and decides he wants a piece of him, going through me
stresstwig: D.A. and the Moose sounds like a morning dj show
bigjimslade: I'm sitting there planning on going straight to the front of his neck as my opening shot if he came at me, glaring right at him, and according to my friends, I was dropping into a ready stance and mouthing the word "No" while glaring at him
bigjimslade: he backed down and went a few steps back with the blonde while D.A. got thrown out
itchy: wait, so Moose is now coming at you?
bigjimslade: he was, to get to D.A., and I'm there because he also would hit thew keyboards
bigjimslade: so at that point I turned around and grabbed towels to help Scott clean his boards and see if they were ok
bigjimslade: the whole time I guess I kept looking over my shoulder at Moose
bigjimslade: so we played the same place Saturday night, but this time we brought a riser for the keys, and I remained relatively violence free