I've many road stories far too numerous and detailed to chew up band width here.

But one in particular when I was a young buck/nerd - take your pick (back in the early 70s) with the first professional gig I had, and that being in a show band, with dancers and a very effeminate male vocalist/front person/band leader. Part of the show, included doing a minstrel set of Jolson material, so you have this male vocalist with a very deep baritone voice doing "Mammy" and other Jolson favourites with very effeminate moves. Everything was charted and arranged and we were expected not to veer or improvise one whit from any of the arrangements. All the musicians in the band were jazzers and, druggies as it turned out.

One Saturday night, in Brockville, Ontario at some dive where we were booked (with mostly a redneck and biker crowd - gotta picture doing a minstrel set with this clientele!) about an hour before show time, the guitar player offered to lay acid on everybody in the rhythm section to "make the evening a little more interesting" (since we were all bored to tears with the arrangements, knew them by heart and could play them in our sleep) and we all unanimously agreed figuring it would be good for a laugh, and so we did, about an hour or so before we hit the stage.

So we hit the stage and the band (rhythm section) does a few funky numbers by the Average White Band, Tower of Power, etc...and we're groovin', and then the show portion began --and about half way into the 2nd show tune, the acid started to take hold, and I guess it was hitting everybody at about the same time because suddenly we all had these goofy grins on our faces - and, we're becoming completely oblivious to the increasingly cantankerous audience. As the set continues we all just sort of go onto autopilot, where what we're actually playing is remotely in the background of our minds, and of course we all started improvising, and this in turn threw off the dancers as all their steps were choreographed to the arrangements, and the leader (vocalist) kept turning around and glaring at us as if to say "what the fuck are you guys playing up here?"...and it just descended into musical mayhem, and then...before we knew it the evening was over...and the band leader called us into the dressing room and said it was the worst show he'd ever performed, and couldn't figure out what was up with us - and of course the louder he yelled in his effeminate lispy voice, the harder we laughed and the more the tears streamed down our faces.

Following the gig, we found ourselves (don't know how we got there) at someone's cottage, where there was a full scale party in progress and we all started drinking and partaking of smokables. I then found myself standing on the deck over the water in front of the cottage admiring the stars in the sky (I think they were stars), and the next thing I knew I was under the surface of the water - with all my clothes on of course, and vaguely remember being pulled to the surface and helped back up onto the dock, whereupon 2 very attractive girls hustled me back into the cottage, stripped me of my wet clothes, threw a blanket around me, sat me down in front a fireplace, massaged me and fed me drambuie straight up. I'm pretty sure this was real. 8-)

I woke up the next morning in my hotel room not having a clue of how I got there, or what transpired after the massage -- but about a week later I had to go and see my doctor for a prescription for tetracycline.

Two weeks later I quit the band. Bad for my health. 8-)