Nailed Shut MA – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the hardcore band, Nailed Shut MA, shares one of their stories from being on the road. You can check out the story, after the break.

It’s insane that we’re writing about this for the Digital Tour Bus. Because this literally happened last night at one of our shows in Boston. We were recently given this huge opportunity to play a local cafeteria show at one of the biggest music schools in the world and we of course couldn’t pass up on this. Recovering from a show at another local venue a few nights prior where a punk kid performed a front flip off of a PA into the crowd during our set only to hit the concrete, and where a friend of ours at the show broke his nose by being punched in the face numerous times, we didn’t anticipate a college cafeteria show to be any crazier or even come close to this kind of energy. After promoting the show through a few posters around the campus and online social media postings, we anticipated maybe around 40-50 punk and hardcore kids to come by and push each other around a bit. After all, this was a jazz school. Fast forward to show time, we had just finalized the sound check and a line began to form on the left side of the Cafeteria. 40, 50, 60, 100… students in the local scene start to crowd into the Cafeteria as we’re preparing to take the stage. Fear takes the sound engineers’ eyes. This is a jazz school? Not often do these metal and punk creatures come out from their crusty rooms to see a show at a venue like this. I’m looking around and now realize that we are faced with over 200 students prepared to absolutely tear up this place that earlier in the day had students devouring peanut butter jellies and pizza slices. The engineers and stage crew begin to make a last-minute barricade from us and the crowd as another crew member tells the band that we need to inform the crowd of 1 simple rule… no getting on stage. Ok, so alright, this is fine. We have a barricade and I assume kids will get the gist, so I take the mic and I state that although moshing is allowed on the premises there will be absolutely no stage diving or coming up on stage. That’s when I noticed him. A man standing at about 6 foot 5, long hair, some sort of death metal shirt, and a skull baseball cap. In his hand is a 7-foot or so wooden stick he seems to have scrapped up from the woods. I quickly hop back on the mic as I began to prepare for our pre-show rituals and I state “and by the way, watch out for the man with the stick”. Why would anyone think to mosh with a weapon of battle, right? Show starts… Bodies are flying, barricades are broken, and people are tumbling on and off stage. Blood is literally being shed in this cafeteria. I’m climbing onto the PAs screaming my ass off. History is created. Little did I know that stick boy was in the crowd showing off his karate moves when he accidentally stabbed a kid in the back of the scalp with his woodland stick! Although the stabbed kid was ok, stick boy did steal some of this dude’s hair literally off of his head, entangling his locks within the stick. Cops were unfortunately involved in an incident of assault and the stick boy was taken to the side of the show. The kid who was hit is checked and all is ok despite his literal fucking head gushing blood during the rest of our set. Stick boy goes to apologize and all is well.

Aside from this as we finalize our set I come soon to find out that due to the intensity and heat in the building that more than 3 kids had thrown up throughout the set, one being all over the cafeteria carpet, which come to think of it doesn’t make too much sense to me that a cafeteria would even have a carpet? I wonder if it had been lunch earlier that day from said Caf? That’d be ironic. SO! To summarize a few things. If you are EVER performing in a college cafeteria, be aware of your audience and how many people you expect to come to your designated space. Offer water to fans and take time in between songs so that your fans don’t lose their lunch. And finally please, for the love of fucking god, don’t bring a hiking stick into the fucking pit.

Here’s a little clip from our recent Caf show outlining the hectic nature of it all. We hope you enjoy it and get a better gist of its insanity.

@nailedshutma typical show for us… 🍅 😎 #fyp #foryoupage #explore #veggietales #hardcore #metal #heavymetalbaby #punk ♬ VeggieTales Theme Song – VeggieTales

Keep up with the band on YouTube and Instagram.