Loosely inspired by the Noel Gallagher/scissors incident on Jools Holland.
I saw Seal Cub Clubbing Club at T In The Park (probably around 2009/2010) and in their last song, their keyboard player stopped playing and started picking up various books which were lying around his keyboard and flicking the pages really quickly without opening or reading them. This lasted the duration of the song. No idea what the message was other than “look at how clever I am with all these books”.
I saw Dillinger Escape Plan at Reading 2001, which is when Greg Puciato famously shat in a plastic bag.
Action Bronson popping out to get fried chicken
DJ Scotch Egg throwing mini scotch eggs into the audience while playing chiptune through a Gameboy
The Locust supporting Yeah Yeah Yeah’s around 2005 ish, the drummer puked into a bag and launched it into the audience.
Probably not the oddest considering the above, but Shellac started putting their gear away (the drummer was full on dismantling his kit) whilst the bassist continually played the final riff (to End of Radio I think) - the whole crowd stood there watching them. Eventually the bassist said “I can play this all night” and went on for a few more minutes and then just stopped.
Thought it was pretty funny and cool (they might do this all the time but it was the first time I’ve seen them)
Oddest thing musically were Fiery Furnaces who used to play all the songs together with no gaps as if it were one long Paranoid Android style song only with 10 sections. A neat trick i’ve never seen anyone else do, and possibly much harder than they made it look.
Probably when I saw Bad Body and the main guy poured maggots on himself whilst saying “I am a king I am a maggot king”
Chili Peppers at Murrayfield (I know, I know…). Anthony Kiedis phoned his girlfriend. He left the stage to continue the call. The other three dicked around on their instruments for a few minutes, then started checking their text messages. Not odd, I guess, but massively dickish.
Once saw a visibly high/fucked up Bradford from Deerhunter come back on for an ‘encore’ which consisted of him leaving a 20 min or so answer phone message on his mum’s phone, through the sound desk.
This could easily turn into a Bradford sub-thread tbh. The My Sharona incident immediately comes to mind.
I saw The Offspring turn a fire hose on the crowed at Reading 1999.
i was quite baffled during Kanye at Glasto when it just went silent and dark for about 10 minutes and he reappeared in a crane above the stage
oh and also when I saw the Dwarves and during Lesbian Nun, HeWhoCannotBeNamed spend half the song wanking on a speaker
Singer from Be Your Own Pet was sick on stage, mopped it up with a towel and then lobbed said towel full pelt into the crowd
also remember the video of someone nicking Travis Scott’s shoe whilst he’s crowdsurfing and he basically incites the crowd to beat the person up and then throws a mic at his head
The first time I saw the Black Lips, in 2004, I certainly didn’t expect them to piss into their own mouths and then snog each other.
I’ve seen so many bands do this since. Usually FoTL
Who I’m pretty sure got the idea off Kong as they used to do it. BUT WHO DUN IT FIRST?
Probably Wayne Coyne zorbing out of a psychedelic vagina.
Shellac did exactly this when I saw them in Glasgow last month so there certainly seems to be a pattern.
Guitarist from Kong attempting to stick the vocal mic up his anus. Safe to say the sound engineer who they belonged to was less than pleased.