Takatak – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the progressive metal band, Takatak, shares one of their stories from being on the road. You can check out the story, after the break.

Sup guys. Zain here, the guitarist from Takatak!

Since we’re a metal band from Lahore, Pakistan, we don’t really get to play many shows, let alone TOUR properly. However, most of the members are prominent session musicians in the local market and were on tour with a very well known rock act from the country. The whole session band is made up of Takatak members, except for the singer, who is our employer, and a super cool chill guy.

Back to the story though. The show was to take place in a fairly remote part of Pakistan (interior Sindh for those who know). And the venue was a small-town, women-only University out in the boonies that we will leave unnamed, for… reasons. The nearest major city, where we drove in from, was about 4 hours away. The show was slated to start around 8PM. Time went by and we hung out in the green room waiting for a stage call that never came. Right as we decided to get out of there, around 1 am, we finally got called on stage.

You need to understand that this is in an all women’s university, in a very small town out in the boonies, in conservative af Pakistan. A show going that late is very unprecedented, and we were definitely getting sketchy vibes from the whole setup. But against our better judgment, the band got on, sound checked at 1 AM in an auditorium full of students, played an hour and a half long set, and decided to pack up and get out asap. Our singer had already left the venue, and we were wrapping up our gear when I caught one of the university officials pacing near the stage, looking exceptionally pissed. It just felt like something was about to go down so I went over to Yusuf, the drummer, who takes the longest to wrap up since he has so much gear, and told him to pack the rest of the stuff up in the van. The vibe just wasn’t right.

We quickly made our exit from the stage, to the backstage area, where we were greeted by the same man, livid and red in the face. Turns out, he was the owner of the university. “Who told you the show was over? How dare you end without asking me?” (in more…colorful language). Our jaws hit the floor, as he opened the door to the small room and proceeded to call in two hefty looking guards, armed to the teeth with kalashnikovs. These imposing fellows stared us down, as we backed up against the walls, unable to process what was going on. The man resumed his barking routine, shouting obscenities; he was obviously drunk. “We have a flight out from Karachi in a few hours that we need to catch. We played the set that we were booked for and now we’ve got to go. Besides, we’re just the session dudes. Talk to management!”, I replied back, as respectfully as I could’ve. He wasn’t having it. He left the room for a few moments, and the guards seemed to chill out and told us to calm down and that it’ll be alright. LOL. Seems like they were used to this routine. We exchanged nervous glances, as the psychopath came back in. We proceeded to tell him that we had no say in the length of the set and that we do as we’re told, being the session guys that we were. After much cajoling and back and forth, we convinced the dude to let us go. He agreed but kept our gear in the room, and opened the door. Once out, we called the other half of the team and told them what went down. Within 5 minutes, a jeep rolled in with the manager and his brother in law, who was a local from the area. They asked us, in front of everyone, who had taken our gear.

We pointed them in the direction of the perpetrators while taking refuge in a lonesome corner next to the university gate. What followed was a verbal tussle between both parties, which was bordering on turning into a physical one. After a good hour of shouting and obscenities exchanged, the band manager was able to extract our gear from the clutches of that messed up place. After loading all our shit into the van, we told our driver to STEP ON THE GAS!

Keep up with the band on Facebook, Instagram and their website.