Members Terje Posted May 10, 2003 Members Share Posted May 10, 2003 This is sort of a verion of "Stupid stories" but it's more specialized I have a favorite story. It won't be as good in English as it is in Swedish but anyway, here it goes... This guy was a stand-in on very short noptice at a jazz gig at Fasching (Stockholm's most prestigeous jazz club perhaps) and he was playing keyboards. Lots of tunes to learn in absolutely no time. So at the gig, when they get to the bridge in the second song, he plays the wrong chord... ... and, the same instant he does that, the bass player (who is also the leader of the band) shouts in his microphone so everyone in the audience can hear it "The {censored}ing bridge you moron!" (or in Swedish "Sticket f Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Old Steve Posted May 12, 2003 Members Share Posted May 12, 2003 My philosophy on stage is to keep smiling and play on like nothing happened. Then AFTER you're off stage, critique the performance. 99% of the time an audience either won't notice or won't care about minor mistakes. James Brown (among others) used to fine musicians for screwing up. He had about a million cues and would change songs around at random times, so everyone in the band had to stay on their toes and look for his cues. If you missed one, he'd point at you and you'd know that you were busted and were going to have to cough up some money. The whole thing was done on stage, but was usually so subtle that nobody would notice. To me, going out of your way to humiliate somebody on stage serves no purpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Q moder Posted July 31, 2003 Members Share Posted July 31, 2003 OL James might have had a good idea there. I did'nt have to do this the audience did. We were gonna play this song on stage years ago that the host of the event wanted. The poor girl was gonna pay 50 extra for a couple to come up and sing and play it. I said why bother we can play it. The keyboardist could'nt play it so he defferred to the drummer who played better than him on keyboards. It had no guitar part so I was just to sing it. Well we had practised it. So I thought that things would go just fine. I did'nt even have a guitar in my hand and it did start out fine. Then the drummer went off into never never land on the keys. The poor girl came up to me and cried while she made announcements over the mic. As she cried the drummer went back to his drums and we played another song for the announcements. I swore I would never be in that spot again. If I was gonna be up there at all I would learn the chords on what ever instrument was at hand. Good thing too as I was stuck in the same situation again ten years after. That would make a good name for a group or song LOL. But his time I knew the song and no one seemed to notice at all that the boards had messed up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted July 31, 2003 Members Share Posted July 31, 2003 I had something similar happen at a gig MANY years ago at a county fair, (the guy's famous, still alive and touring so no names mentioned) and he had been drinking a lot and was in a "bad-drunk" mood. He chewed out his bass player right on stage (well known and great player) then chewed me (FOH engineer) out (more like threatened me) over the PA for something that made no sense at all. There was no second set, We struck the PA and packed up out stuff. The bass player was thankful for the easy out, as that was to be his last gig with the band as well. When he relaized what had happened, he just stood there mouth gaping wide open, cursing us to the bone. I don't think that had ever happened to him before, but I told them that I was not interested in working in conditions like that and I had plenty of other gigs to deal with. If you are not prepared, or can not handle yourself properly in public, then DON'T go out in public. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members L. Ron Hoover Posted July 31, 2003 Members Share Posted July 31, 2003 I've seen and experienced some instances of this.I was mixing an all day festival on a university campus (outdoors). The SPL limit was 100dB at FOH. Moderately well known 'punk' band starts at 3:00 PM in front of a crowd of about 500 (venue capacity 10000) . The first thing out of the singer's mouth was "turn this {censored}in' {censored} up!" I glanced at the meter and was just about at the limit. So I clear-commed the stage manager to explain to the guy that we had these limits and there wasn't anything we could do. He tells the stage manager to GFY grabs the mic and says (to me, I guess) "turn it up, you {censored}ing {censored}!" and stuff like "{censored}in soundguy messin' with my {censored}" and blah blah blah.... I endured this for about 5 minutes, when the stage manager commed me to tell me that campus security were on their way. I get a tap on the shoulder from the head security guy about a minute later and he tells me to shut the PA off. I shrugged and hit the master mutes. A bunch of other security guys escorted the band off stage and sent them packing. The stage manager had some serious pull at the university (does TD and SM for all their events) and decided that he didn't want him or the crew to be abused by these guys, so he had them removed.Rightly so. It doesn't matter who you are, treating people like that isn't acceptable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zeromus-X Posted July 31, 2003 Members Share Posted July 31, 2003 My last band had a major show in front of about 400 people (major for us!) that would have helped our careers immensely. I showed up around 4:00 for soundcheck; the rest of the band leaked in -- by the time the first band played, everyone was there but the drummer. We had his drums set up on the riser, but no sign of him. This was before the age of everyone having a cellphone, and none of us knew his home number anyway because it'd just been changed. It's now the 2nd band's set, and no one knows where the guy is. We tell them to go over about 15 minutes, and they do. By the time we're supposed to go on, he's not here. Our guitarist opts to take over drum duties, and we set up for one guitar. About 30 seconds before we hit the first note, our drummer runs in the front door of the venue, jumps on stage, and swings at the singer! We all break them up and play a rather abbreviated, rather tense set. Turns out he was waiting for the singer, who said he needed a ride, at his house, and had no way to get ahold of us to find out where the {censored} he was. He didn't want to leave because he had to wait for the singer! We broke up shortly thereafter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Q moder Posted July 31, 2003 Members Share Posted July 31, 2003 Bad horrow stories here. Whew! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members joncyberboy Posted August 1, 2003 Members Share Posted August 1, 2003 There's a lot of stories on here about dumb bands etc treating the sound guys badly, but i have one the other way round. We played a gig a week ago, i'm in a backing band for a female industrial rock singer. We run loops etc off minidisc so that needs a D.I. Well sound check was fine, but during the 1st song of the set the loops cut out, then blare back again. I thought, {censored} its a dodgy connection so at a good place in the song put down my guitar and changed the lead. Still there was lots of weirdness happening so i changed it to another new lead out the packet. At this point the sound guy is looking over my shoulder watching whats happening. Still the loops are not working so i figure it must be his lead or the D.I box. After 3 more songs he decides to change the D.I box (which he says is a stupid idea, it can't be that) and hey presto! the whole thing works.At the end of the gig we thank him for doing the sound (as we always do to sound guys) and he says that it would have been a good gig if it hadn't been for our dodgy leads! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members readybeans Posted August 1, 2003 Members Share Posted August 1, 2003 being a bass player who will do (almost) anything for a buck (gig whore) i would hesitate to count the number of times ive been abused onstage by ego-driven hotshot guitarist "bandleaders" who don't know much more than a coupla pentatonic boxpattern shapes and the ol I,IV,V... i've pretty much sworn off playing sideman jobs for those types - in the long run the money's not worth the stress now im happily ensconced in a swell band of friends who treat each other as equals and apprieciate one another's varied talents Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 80zboy Posted August 1, 2003 Members Share Posted August 1, 2003 Another story of miserable sound guys... We were playing for a wedding in a Mormon church... we arrived early to setup. The sound guy had everything pretty much setup already so it started well. As he carried on with his setup, a continuous stream of foul language rolled forth from his mouth. Well at first there wasn't really anyone there so I didn't say anything. Once people started arriving and he was still cutting loose, I pulled him aside and as kindly and cooly as I could, I told him that maybe it would be a good idea if he watched his language as this was a church and he might offend people. He looked me straight in the eye and with a snarl, told me it would cost me an extra hundred bucks for him to quit swearing. I couldn't believe my ears! I just laughed and walked away. He did take it easy on the swearing after that and the sound was great, BUT I have never, and will never hire that guy again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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