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Originally posted by Six String Stuntman Steve
Wow! You got it bang on! Not baaad at all. I didn't say he was a gurkha simply because I doubted many people would know who they are.
Yep he's a silent guy. I've never seen him get REALLY angry....and I don't think I ever want to.
So temme, where are you from?
-Nigel
Wisconsin, but:
A: I've been around, and
B: I'm a military historian by avocation.
Phil
More of a horror story than a "stupid story", but I've seen a few of these, so here goes. Brace yourselves. This happened last night. I'm the bassist in my band, for the record.
We'd been waiting over a month for the show, since someone from a major label was supposed to be out there. He ended up calling us to tell us he wasn't gonna be able to make it. Turns out that was the best news we'd heard all night.
So I get to the club around 7:15. We're not supposed to go on until 9:30, but I have to set up our lights and trusses, put up the backdrop, etc. I notice there's still a band playing. We were to go 2nd, but on the "late show" -- the club does an early and a late show for some reason. The early show was supposed to end around 7:30, with the late one starting at 9:00.
9:30 rolls aroud and the "early show" is still going on. The last band is up, but still. This brings about a small problem with setting up my stuff, but whatever. The rest of the band is there by now as well. The club tries to tell us we're headlining, meaning we wouldn't go on until about 12:30 AM at least. That didn't fly. We ended up settling with going 3rd, around 11:30. I hate being an asshole about set times and stuff, but our guitarist has to be up at 6 AM for work, and two of our band members had graduation that morning. Oh well.
During the two bands before us, I'm setting up our lights and cables and stuff off to the back of the place. I've got everything set up so that when the 2nd band finishes, all I have to do is run two trusses up front, secure them, and plug them in. I've got the rest of our lights situated likewise -- pick 'em up and they're all set and on and ready, just need to be plugged into the wall and foot controller. I recruit two other people there to put up the white backdrop for me, since that would take up way too much time.
By now it's starting to rain quite a bit, so I head outside to help the rest of the band get the stuff out of the van. We keep everything as covered as possible during this so that it doesn't get wet. No big deals. The 2nd band ends a bit before we thought they would, so we rush our stuff up to stage. I'm plugging in extension cords left and right, someone else set my rig up on stage. I notice the ground pin on the extension cord I'm trying to plug in is severely mutilated. Rather than defeat it, which would have been the only other option, I simply didn't plug in our strobes. Which sucks, because I spent twenty minutes setting them up on the trusses (thanks for the help, Skippii!) beforehand. Oh well.
We turn everything on, sounds good. Fog machine starts pumping stuff out, all lights working, everyone can see. Starts out on a roll. My first night using my new wireless at an actual show, so I'm set.
We get about halfway through the first song, and I lose all power. Literally. The entire rack, poweramp, you name it. The strange thing is, I'm plugged into the same strip as our lights, and they're still on. Panic ensues. This was the one night at the club that we mic'd the amp instead of running direct from SansAmp, of course, or else it might have been salvagable. The soundman sees something is majorly wrong with the power and comes up to me behind the stage, along with the bassist from another band playing that night. I'm up on stage playing as if nothing's really happening (I hate it when bands just stop when something screws up -- I'm sure half the people in the audience didn't notice anything different with the sound, so I'll let them believe that) and those guys are behind my rig checking everything. Unfortunately the fog machine is right behind my amp, and it's a 100% dense ball of fog back there. Ripped the cord out of the wall so it'd hopefully clear up, but that would take a while.
They plug the poweramp into the same plug as the lights to see if we can get sound back. In a matter of milliseconds, all our lights shut off. Not good. Poweramp unplugged and lights plugged back in.
Wireless unit plugged into same plug guitarist is using. No power. Not good.
This goes the same for the preamp, compressor, EQ, and noise gate. My tuner worked in the plug. I know the plug isn't screwed up or anything when I see this. More panic ensues. I've given up the "fake" playing at this point, to jump back behind stage and figure out what the hell is going on.
During this time, the lead guitarist (to my left) has had his Kaoss Pad, which is in the center of his signal chain, completely die on him. Someone from the floor who was moshing had fallen onto the stage and landed on some stuff, jarring the 9V adapter input which is loose anyway. His input jack on his guitar is also cutting in and out, and he's got no sound. This is *quite* noticible, but the rest of the band finishes up the song. A few seconds later the sampler starts blinking on and off, freaking out. The Kaoss pad doesn't. The rest of his pedals are fine.
A few minutes later, someone spills a full cup of water on the rhythm guitarist's digital delay pedal. It becomes completely unresponsive to any sort of touch. He's stuck with the delay on and the distortion on full. In between parts he cuts the delay to its lowest setting so it doesn't sound really noticible.
By the end of the set, I was playing my bass through a 25' speaker cable into the snake, straight to board. Couldn't hear any of it on stage. We had to cut a few songs from the set because of the delay thing with the guitar. I find a flashlight and check out behind the stage. It's completely covered in puddles. All our cords are sitting in water at some point in their line. We didn't see this beforehand to that extent because it was so dark. My rack case lid, which was off to stage right, had been filled with water when someone's cup seems to have been knocked down, so I pick it up and it immediately starts spilling all over the place.
...
Well that was longer than I thought it'd be, but oh well. I don't see many ways that show could have gotten worse, especially if I'm going to have to send every piece of gear I own in for repair.
I originally posted this in the bass forum, but I think it qualifies here.
We'd been waiting over a month for the show, since someone from a major label was supposed to be out there. He ended up calling us to tell us he wasn't gonna be able to make it. Turns out that was the best news we'd heard all night.
So I get to the club around 7:15. We're not supposed to go on until 9:30, but I have to set up our lights and trusses, put up the backdrop, etc. I notice there's still a band playing. We were to go 2nd, but on the "late show" -- the club does an early and a late show for some reason. The early show was supposed to end around 7:30, with the late one starting at 9:00.
9:30 rolls aroud and the "early show" is still going on. The last band is up, but still. This brings about a small problem with setting up my stuff, but whatever. The rest of the band is there by now as well. The club tries to tell us we're headlining, meaning we wouldn't go on until about 12:30 AM at least. That didn't fly. We ended up settling with going 3rd, around 11:30. I hate being an asshole about set times and stuff, but our guitarist has to be up at 6 AM for work, and two of our band members had graduation that morning. Oh well.
During the two bands before us, I'm setting up our lights and cables and stuff off to the back of the place. I've got everything set up so that when the 2nd band finishes, all I have to do is run two trusses up front, secure them, and plug them in. I've got the rest of our lights situated likewise -- pick 'em up and they're all set and on and ready, just need to be plugged into the wall and foot controller. I recruit two other people there to put up the white backdrop for me, since that would take up way too much time.
By now it's starting to rain quite a bit, so I head outside to help the rest of the band get the stuff out of the van. We keep everything as covered as possible during this so that it doesn't get wet. No big deals. The 2nd band ends a bit before we thought they would, so we rush our stuff up to stage. I'm plugging in extension cords left and right, someone else set my rig up on stage. I notice the ground pin on the extension cord I'm trying to plug in is severely mutilated. Rather than defeat it, which would have been the only other option, I simply didn't plug in our strobes. Which sucks, because I spent twenty minutes setting them up on the trusses (thanks for the help, Skippii!) beforehand. Oh well.
We turn everything on, sounds good. Fog machine starts pumping stuff out, all lights working, everyone can see. Starts out on a roll. My first night using my new wireless at an actual show, so I'm set.
We get about halfway through the first song, and I lose all power. Literally. The entire rack, poweramp, you name it. The strange thing is, I'm plugged into the same strip as our lights, and they're still on. Panic ensues. This was the one night at the club that we mic'd the amp instead of running direct from SansAmp, of course, or else it might have been salvagable. The soundman sees something is majorly wrong with the power and comes up to me behind the stage, along with the bassist from another band playing that night. I'm up on stage playing as if nothing's really happening (I hate it when bands just stop when something screws up -- I'm sure half the people in the audience didn't notice anything different with the sound, so I'll let them believe that) and those guys are behind my rig checking everything. Unfortunately the fog machine is right behind my amp, and it's a 100% dense ball of fog back there. Ripped the cord out of the wall so it'd hopefully clear up, but that would take a while.
They plug the poweramp into the same plug as the lights to see if we can get sound back. In a matter of milliseconds, all our lights shut off. Not good. Poweramp unplugged and lights plugged back in.
Wireless unit plugged into same plug guitarist is using. No power. Not good.
This goes the same for the preamp, compressor, EQ, and noise gate. My tuner worked in the plug. I know the plug isn't screwed up or anything when I see this. More panic ensues. I've given up the "fake" playing at this point, to jump back behind stage and figure out what the hell is going on.
During this time, the lead guitarist (to my left) has had his Kaoss Pad, which is in the center of his signal chain, completely die on him. Someone from the floor who was moshing had fallen onto the stage and landed on some stuff, jarring the 9V adapter input which is loose anyway. His input jack on his guitar is also cutting in and out, and he's got no sound. This is *quite* noticible, but the rest of the band finishes up the song. A few seconds later the sampler starts blinking on and off, freaking out. The Kaoss pad doesn't. The rest of his pedals are fine.
A few minutes later, someone spills a full cup of water on the rhythm guitarist's digital delay pedal. It becomes completely unresponsive to any sort of touch. He's stuck with the delay on and the distortion on full. In between parts he cuts the delay to its lowest setting so it doesn't sound really noticible.
By the end of the set, I was playing my bass through a 25' speaker cable into the snake, straight to board. Couldn't hear any of it on stage. We had to cut a few songs from the set because of the delay thing with the guitar. I find a flashlight and check out behind the stage. It's completely covered in puddles. All our cords are sitting in water at some point in their line. We didn't see this beforehand to that extent because it was so dark. My rack case lid, which was off to stage right, had been filled with water when someone's cup seems to have been knocked down, so I pick it up and it immediately starts spilling all over the place.
...
Well that was longer than I thought it'd be, but oh well. I don't see many ways that show could have gotten worse, especially if I'm going to have to send every piece of gear I own in for repair.
I originally posted this in the bass forum, but I think it qualifies here.
During end April-beginning June of 2002 our school hosted it's annual musical. This year's choice was the broadway version of "Saturday Night Fever" and guess who got to play the role of John Travolta....yes!! ME!!! There I was complete with the leather jacket and the bell bottoms....hell I got to be a hero for four days....people finally know my name in school....not just "the awkward kiddo that sits in the corner playing his guitar while ashivraj stands on a chair RAMMING out one bass note on an open E string." (
)
Not to say that I was really made for the role, hell I only got in because I could sing and act somewhat. It was quite a sight watching Mr. Oliver teach me to get down 'n' dancin'. Tommy wasn't given the director's slot because, hec, he's just too incompetent and lazy. Our old music teacher, who's now a theatrical director in Canada, was invited to come back to direct the show. He's known me for about 8 years now as I sang in a lot of his musicals.
Back to the dancing. Now you understand I'm a guitar player....not a dancer. So while all the other kids were doing cartwheels, I was busy trying to shake of my hunchback and two left feet. And when all the other kids were doing back bends, I was busy trying to bend over to try to touch my knees, forget the floor. Oh yes, it was a STRUGGLE! But I loved it.
That stage was my kingdom. They had a ramp extend out into the audience with the floor removed, coloured lights put in, and glass replacing the floor....for a disco light effect. There was a silver car decorated with tiny mirrors on the side of the girls choir and a Harley on the side of the boys choir. Three massive mirrors along the back wall, huge light bulb panels on either side, loads of coloured lights, a good proffesional lighting system complete with two disco balls....oh it was heaven!
Here are a few funny events that took place during the course of the show and the preceeding preperation:
1. Oliver: "Tommy, you're playing SH*T!!"
2. Feedback provided free of cost
3. Oliver: "Tommy, the school has turned to SH*T since you took over!!"
4. Danny the singer.
5. Swear by your mic!!!
6. Stephanie's dress falls off on stage.
7. Night Fever, Night Fe-BANG!!
8. Our mic-man's bane...the three queens.
9. Showing the audience "the finger".
10. Tommy kills the glorious legacy of SNF
Still nothing in the league of MrKnobs though
. When I get the time I'll note these down.
-Nigel
)Not to say that I was really made for the role, hell I only got in because I could sing and act somewhat. It was quite a sight watching Mr. Oliver teach me to get down 'n' dancin'. Tommy wasn't given the director's slot because, hec, he's just too incompetent and lazy. Our old music teacher, who's now a theatrical director in Canada, was invited to come back to direct the show. He's known me for about 8 years now as I sang in a lot of his musicals.
Back to the dancing. Now you understand I'm a guitar player....not a dancer. So while all the other kids were doing cartwheels, I was busy trying to shake of my hunchback and two left feet. And when all the other kids were doing back bends, I was busy trying to bend over to try to touch my knees, forget the floor. Oh yes, it was a STRUGGLE! But I loved it.
That stage was my kingdom. They had a ramp extend out into the audience with the floor removed, coloured lights put in, and glass replacing the floor....for a disco light effect. There was a silver car decorated with tiny mirrors on the side of the girls choir and a Harley on the side of the boys choir. Three massive mirrors along the back wall, huge light bulb panels on either side, loads of coloured lights, a good proffesional lighting system complete with two disco balls....oh it was heaven!
Here are a few funny events that took place during the course of the show and the preceeding preperation:
1. Oliver: "Tommy, you're playing SH*T!!"
2. Feedback provided free of cost
3. Oliver: "Tommy, the school has turned to SH*T since you took over!!"
4. Danny the singer.
5. Swear by your mic!!!
6. Stephanie's dress falls off on stage.
7. Night Fever, Night Fe-BANG!!
8. Our mic-man's bane...the three queens.
9. Showing the audience "the finger".
10. Tommy kills the glorious legacy of SNF
Still nothing in the league of MrKnobs though
. When I get the time I'll note these down.-Nigel
Here is another little story that is short but true. The guys over in Open Jam convinced me to tell it there, so I'm reprinting it here with a few more details:
This happened in the late 80s, when a couple of bandmates and I decided after a gig we would cross over into Mexico and seek some drinking, gambling, and female company. :cool:
We ended up thrown in jail in Mexico; the charge was, "being homosexuals," which is a crime in Mexico.
The thing is, we are all straight. We were drunk and having a fun time practicing our Spanish with some fat old whore in Boys Town. We had no intention of employing her services, it's just that none of the younger ladies would waste so much time trying to make a deal with guys who were so obviously disinterested. We were just goofing with her. She, of course, was diligently trying to close a deal that would have included all three of us. She finally made us an offer and said (en Espanol), "If you don't agree you must be queer. I will call the police."
We had a big laugh at that. A few minutes later we were all in a Mexican jail. Dirt floor, filthy conditions, guards with US M-16 automatic rifles. Very scary! I won't try to describe our fellow inmates except to say that there is a wide range to what is considered "human." :eek:
We asked one of the guards (who spoke no English) what we had to do to get out. He said the judge would be in sometime later in the week. We asked him if we could just pay the fine to HIM (wink, wink). That got his attention, and we soon arrived at a deal, which wasn't all that expensive. Maybe the whole thing was just a big scam to shake down the tourists, we thought.
As we left, we pointed at the other (armed) guard down the road and asked "What about him?" The guard responded, "That's between you and him." We shuffled quickly through the darkness down the mud road, until we saw a taxi and grabbed it. Five minutes later, several "Policia" cars passed us with their sirens and lights going, scanning the dark alleyways with their spotlights. Maybe the guard signaled a "jailbreak," or maybe they were looking for someone else, no way to know. We were pretty damn scared, though!
We were very glad to get back across the border that night!
Terry D.
$$$TDN$$$
This happened in the late 80s, when a couple of bandmates and I decided after a gig we would cross over into Mexico and seek some drinking, gambling, and female company. :cool:
We ended up thrown in jail in Mexico; the charge was, "being homosexuals," which is a crime in Mexico.
The thing is, we are all straight. We were drunk and having a fun time practicing our Spanish with some fat old whore in Boys Town. We had no intention of employing her services, it's just that none of the younger ladies would waste so much time trying to make a deal with guys who were so obviously disinterested. We were just goofing with her. She, of course, was diligently trying to close a deal that would have included all three of us. She finally made us an offer and said (en Espanol), "If you don't agree you must be queer. I will call the police."
We had a big laugh at that. A few minutes later we were all in a Mexican jail. Dirt floor, filthy conditions, guards with US M-16 automatic rifles. Very scary! I won't try to describe our fellow inmates except to say that there is a wide range to what is considered "human." :eek:
We asked one of the guards (who spoke no English) what we had to do to get out. He said the judge would be in sometime later in the week. We asked him if we could just pay the fine to HIM (wink, wink). That got his attention, and we soon arrived at a deal, which wasn't all that expensive. Maybe the whole thing was just a big scam to shake down the tourists, we thought.
As we left, we pointed at the other (armed) guard down the road and asked "What about him?" The guard responded, "That's between you and him." We shuffled quickly through the darkness down the mud road, until we saw a taxi and grabbed it. Five minutes later, several "Policia" cars passed us with their sirens and lights going, scanning the dark alleyways with their spotlights. Maybe the guard signaled a "jailbreak," or maybe they were looking for someone else, no way to know. We were pretty damn scared, though!
We were very glad to get back across the border that night!
Terry D.
$$$TDN$$$
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