Your Shout

What is your favourite horror story?

TOP SHOUT

This story comes from my mum and dad – it’s pretty wild…

“We were staying in a hotel in Limerick and went out one evening, found we were low in petrol, couldn’t find a garage, so turned down a side road and found a garage/pub with very dated petrol pumps.

“A man came out and filled the tank and invited us into the bar. It was a very old pub with no women, so I was a bit of a surprise to them... old men in flat caps sitting round the fire murmuring to themselves.

“Dad asked for a G&T for me with ice and lemon and the bartender looked amazed… he simply replied with “no ice,” so Dad just had a pint of Guinness. He asked where the loo was and was told to just go out the back, and when I asked, I was told to go upstairs across an attic filled with old stuff to what seemed like a long-drop loo. It was all very old fashioned, men’s clothing etc, maybe from the early 1900s. We quickly drank up, got in the car, and left, as eyes followed us everywhere we went.

“The following day, we asked people about the garage and the people there. Everyone we spoke to said that the road and pub didn’t exist, at all! Eventually someone heard our story and mentioned it to their old father who said he remembered a place as we described existing there a very long time ago, but… it was blown up pre-1916!” Rob McGee | FMLY Agency

There have been a few and most of them involve Russia. One that comes to mind: there’s about 100 of us flying between Moscow and Novosibirsk with a bunch of musicians including The Shamen, in a plane chartered by the promoter from “some friends in the oil business.” It’s a red-eye flight; everyone’s snoring away. A couple of hours in, one of the organisers wakes me up and says we have an unscheduled stop. I say, “Oh, why?” He says, “Because we’re running out of fuel…” Suffice to say that we landed, refuelled, and continued the journey, otherwise I’d have been asking where the parachutes were… Nick Hobbs | Charmenko How about two weeks ago at Focus Wales. I got a positive Covid test on day one (almost certainly a false positive), so spent three days in a crap hotel room in Wrexham. The Wi-Fi didn’t work, there was a collection of dead flies on the windowsill, a crap disco on the ground floor, nightly street fights at 4am close to my room, and garbage collection started at 5.30am.

I understand everyone else had a good time. Martin Elbourne | The Great Escape

I found a limb on a beach when I was a kid. A human arm. The authorities got involved… Gordon Masson | IQ Waking up at 5.30am to 102 texts, which started with “Had his passport stolen” and concluded with “Couldn’t get hold of you so decided to go into Canada anyway for these two shows; USCIS said he should be fine to get back into the US, they said they’ll remember who he is.” Mark Davyd | Music Venue Trust

In the late 80s, I was in Brussels for one of the twice-yearly meetings of The Network a.k.a. Network Europe, a meeting place for like-minded independent bookers/agents/promoters from all over Europe.

It was a dreary Sunday morning and we assembled at the venue – Plan K, I think – where we were going to have a meeting. Our Belgian host with the key to the building was in a traffic jam, so we decided to find a dry and warm place, without knowing how to alert others who were not there yet, such as legendary promoter Igor Vidmar from Slovenia. We had never met before.

We walked to some bars around the corner, and entered the second one for no apparent reason. It was pretty dark inside but warm and dry. Everybody sat down, wondering when and where we would meet our host, and also Igor.

Drinks were being ordered while I walked toward the saloon doors for the restroom. The doors suddenly opened from the inside and a man dressed in black, with black hair, wearing dark shades and black gloves came out, his hand reaching out to me as he spoke: “You must be Rob Berends. I’m Igor Vidmar. I knew you would be here.” Rob Berends | Paperclip Agency

We had a headliner once who also regularly appears on a popular TV programme. On the day of a sold-out show we hear from their agent that they had to reshoot a key scene, meaning he wouldn’t make it to the venue until halfway through his original set time – but “that won’t be a problem, right?”!

Due to licensing, it wasn’t feasible to push the show time back. It would be possible if the artist travelled by helicopter, but obviously we have a difference of opinion regarding who would pay. But I had an idea: I turned to Google to ask how many helicopters there are in the country, then I divided that by the population, and then looked at the headliner’s social media follower count.

I calculated that, statistically, seven of his followers own helicopters – and surely there’s no better use of having a helicopter than ferrying celebrities in distress. I put this to the agent, and long story short, within five minutes of sending an “SOS” tweet, the artist secured a free helicopter ride courtesy of a local hotel group. All it cost? A pair of tickets to the show. Andy Smith | From the Fields

is now

New branding: “SC Exhibitions” stands for “Semmel Concerts Exhibitions.” We thought a little refresh would be nice, so we have rebranded to “Semmel Exhibitions.” New exhibition celebrating 100 Years of Disney: Apart from working on a new logo, we are in the middle of the creative development of the offi cial exhibition marking the centennial of The Walt Disney Company. We will produce two exhibitions: one touring the Americas and the other a global tour. The fi rst exhibition will open in February 2023 at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. We are now planning the 2023–26 tour, so please contact us if that sounds interesting to you.

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