Members jigsaw Posted September 2, 2004 Members Share Posted September 2, 2004 One of my tubes went during the last show.. Biggest show of the summer too. But I persevered, we rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members musemaker123 Posted September 15, 2004 Members Share Posted September 15, 2004 my first show ever was a battle of the bands at St John's University in Staten Island NY. i was 16 and nervous as hell fidgeting all over the stage before we went on. pretty big deal for a 16 year old cause they got a big time NYC radio station to sponsor the event. anyway five minutes before we went on i got my pic stuck in my throat. I panicked and thought i was going to die. just moments before the first chord I spit the pic out. what a spinal tap moment that was. no one noticed but i felt like an ass anyway. http://homepage.mac.com/musemaker1234 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fllstck Posted September 17, 2004 Members Share Posted September 17, 2004 I love getting off stage while I'm playing, especially if I'm doing a bass gig. I had this experience with a LOUD Melvinsy band in Austin called Black Cock: we were all wearing white masks and long underwear so it was a pretty bizarre sight to start with. I got off stage and danced around for the big finale... then I went too far out into the crowd and my cord popped out my amp. So I climbed back up onstage with only a few measures until the final note was to be BANGED out. I was determined to hit the final note with everyone! The next part happened in about 5 seconds: as I climbed up, the lead guitarist, in a swaying frenzy amid lights and and all, clocked me right on the head with with his headstock sending me back down to the floor. I pushed him away, jumped on stage searched frantically for my cord, found it, plugged in, held my bass as high as I could and slapped that low drop C# as hard as I could. the whole bar yelled! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members amoodymule Posted September 22, 2004 Members Share Posted September 22, 2004 Originally posted by fuzzball HOw do you break a strap?? That must suck! I've done that twice at gigs, I'm just happy I was sober enough to catch my LP before it hit the ground Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members amoodymule Posted September 22, 2004 Members Share Posted September 22, 2004 Oh, I guess I should buy better straps instead of useing cheap giveaways Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members howldog Posted September 22, 2004 Members Share Posted September 22, 2004 this is fun, great stories, some funny, some sad.... my two worst gigs were biker field events, outside. The firs tone i was sick as hell and puked off the side of the flatbed trailer stage between tunes, hell, once in the middle of a song and i didnt even stop playing. Later these strippers showed up and did their whole act, strip contest, the guys went wild. we played for awhile and much alcohol was being consumed (by us and the biker audience) eventually this biker chick crawls up onstage and says, what about us girls? We wanna see some DICK .... so these biker guys storm the stage and start stripping. Down front suddenly two biker chicks start bitch slapping each other and pulling hair, one of em made some comment about her old man who was stripping up onstage, and then the guys tried to pull them apart, and before you knew it, this huge ugly brawl erupted. Man. I just hid behind my amp stack. I just knew i was gonna throw up on the first guy to punch me and then i'd get killed. the next year they asked us back and being gluttons for punishment, we agreed. they had a makeshift stage outside, not a flatbed. we're playing, late, a few bands before us, the audience remaining is drunk as hell and starting to get kinda obnoxious. about halfway thru our show, this freak blinding rainstorm breaks over us. Horrible lightning everywhere. Rain slashing in sideways on us, you cant even see. Turn the amps off, stop playing, these two giant biker rednecks command the stage and tell me, you play Born To Be Wild right now asshole, or we'll kill you. they were tackled by two other guys and all hell broke loose. We basically just ran for the vans and chucked in whatever equipment we could. the stage collapsed while we were doing it. Somebody dropped my telecaster into a mud puddle and a fricking motorcylce ran over it. It survived. My marshall got soaked; it did not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Somerled Posted September 24, 2004 Members Share Posted September 24, 2004 nothing worse than water at gigs... unless its water at gigs and incompetent bandmates. I'm pretty much a straight ahead blues/rock sort of guy. I had just come out of a band which was completely messed up (hired into that one as a lead guitarist, lead singer sucked and then quit and left me with lead guitar and lead vocals, then came back a year later and since he was friends with the other guys in the band they let him back in, and kicked me out when I couldn't deal with how bad this guy made us sound). so I'm looking for a chance to play a little, make a little money. Talk to this drummer friend of mine, and he invites me to audition for the band he's currently in. It's presented to me as a funk/blues band although the blues were currently lacking because their only guitarist was all ego and no talent. So I sign on. after a nightmare of practices and song selection (apparently funk/blues means motown, and slow blues, mixed with Prince) we get booked to our first gig, which is playing at a local chili cookoff. We get down there to setup, and I get my gear (dunlop wah, boss od-20, tech 21 trademark 120, with a boss gt-5 in the effects loop) exactly tuned in the way I want it. the other guitarist shows up late, plugs in his flextone, and its dead. no power, no nothing. so we really quick do a swap, so he's playing through my amp, and I'm going direct to the board from the gt-5. now I know a bit about running sound, but all the pa gear was the other guitarists, and he and the bass player acted like they knew what they were doing. so I didn't bother to pay much attention to how things were set, just made sure I had enough of my guitar in the mix. Bass player was running without an amp, or a direct box, straight into the board. We've got two monitors up front, two 15" mains, a monitor in the back for the drummer, and a jbl dual 15 sub hooked up. for some unknown reason(at the time) the monitors were running the main mix, rather than a monitor mix. we start our set, and everytime the bass player (who does a lot of slapping and popping) gets going, the sound cuts out in the mains and monitors. this goes on the entire set. we take a break, and I look around, and we're running 3 8 ohm monitors, a 4 ohm sub, and 2 8 ohm mains, off one peavey pv2000 power amp. No crossovers, or anything. its amazing the amp isn't on fire. (and the worst thing is, one of the monitors was the drummers. he usually triggered his kit, so he had a monitor and a power amp in his rig. so we had an extra power amp to run monitors that was just sitting there, not hooked up) I did a quick rewire of the system, disconnected one the monitors, ran the other two of the smaller power amp, ran the mains off one side of the pv2000 and the sub off the other, and there rest of the show went without too much of a problem. Right until the folks at the other end of the parking lot decided drain all the water out of the dumpster, which all ran right towards our gear. fortunately, we got it all up off the pavement before it got flooded, but it was certainly close. I've got lots of memories of that band... none of them good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Somerled Posted September 24, 2004 Members Share Posted September 24, 2004 here's another one. Not my band, but a friend of mines, and I was there to watch the fun. 4 piece rock band, playing at a small bar. Gig is going good, except the singer just keeps drinking throughout the night. nothing unusual, except he's getting drunker than normal, and he tends to say stupid {censored} between songs when he's drunk. by the third set, he's staggering around the stage, mumbing words almost incoherently. by the last song of the set, he's completely toasted, and is barely keeping upright. they finish the song, with him leaning heavy on his mic stand, and say goodnight to the crowd. Soundman signals that the owner wants them to play one more song, that they've ended to early. So they launch into one last song. about halfway through the song, the lead singer pitches headfirst off the stage, a if my wife and I hadn't been in the front row, he would have taking the 4 foot dive straight into the floor. So we find a nice safe out of the way place in the corner to stick this guy while the band breaks down and packs up. they finish packing the trailer, and realize the singer is gone. after much searching, they find him passed out on a bulldozer on the lot behind the building. (probably lucky the keys wern't in it) now the singer had driven to the gig (about an hour from where they all live) by himself. So they decide who is going to drive him home, and ask him where his car keys are. he thinks, and replies "I put them in the light box after we unloaded"... this would be the light box that gets loaded first, in the back of the trailer. so they have to unpack the trailer to find the guys keys, so somebody can drive him home... got home from the gig at about 5am... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Somerled Posted September 24, 2004 Members Share Posted September 24, 2004 here is my horror story... my first band upon relocating to Oklahoma (I'm from Detroit) played frequently in this little bar that was trying to change its music style from country to rock. the joy of that was playing rock music to a empty dance floor, and then have the old timers poor quarters into the jukebox and fill the dancefloor dancing to country music. After a few gigs though, we started to win over the locals. then came the night of "scary dancing guy"... we end the second set with a cover of Voodoo Chile, and I look up, and this guy, who is a short pudgy guy, completely wasted, is tearing up the floor with his wife. I've never seen anybody dance this bad in my life. he looked like a hillbilly trying to impersonate ricky martin (and failing, badly) so we end the song, and take a quick break. (during the break my wife almost gets in a fight with a woman while I'm in the bathroom, but thats another story) We get back up on stage, and are starting to play Oleanders' "its the reason". About halfway through the first verse, as I'm singing these serious lines, I look out, and in the middle of the bar, scary dancing guy is wrapping himself around one of the support poles, trying to entice his wife to dance with him. I just about choked when I saw it. and to make it worse, he was about 5 feet from the table that the bands wives were sitting at. my wife just about fell off her chair laughing, but managed to get a picture of it. I'll have to find it and post it. I still have nightmares about "scary pole dancing guy" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JoyBasu Posted October 1, 2004 Members Share Posted October 1, 2004 No monitors were working. Heard nothing but the crowd screaming. LOL! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Somerled Posted October 1, 2004 Members Share Posted October 1, 2004 Originally posted by JoyBasu No monitors were working. Heard nothing but the crowd screaming. LOL! as long as they were cheering, and not screaming things like "you suck"... had just the oposite case at a new years eve gig. We had just added a fifth person (percusion, split lead vocals with me). This guy was a great percussionist, and a decent singer, but had some personal problems at the time, and it just so happened that a couple days before the gig his doctor had given him a perscription for some antidepresents, but forgot to tell him to stop taking the ones he was already on. Add that to the usual drinking at a gig, and he got just plain wasted real quick, and was a complete ass. Didn't seem to affect the crowd much durring the first set though, and after our first break, I realized why. We couldn't afford a soundman, so our mixer was on stage behind our rythm guitarist (this itself was confusing to a lot of people, myself included, because the guy couldn't even manage to set input levels) turns out that after we had done soundcheck, he had tried to mute all the channels, but instead had managed to remove the new guy from the vocal subgroup. so what we had the entire first set, was a great sound from the monitors, but the guys vocals were never coming out of the mains. I fixed that during the break, and by the time the night was done, and they audience got to listen to this guy for two sets, we were not so politely told that as long as he was in the band we were not welcome back... guess I should have left the board alone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members patvalley Posted October 2, 2004 Members Share Posted October 2, 2004 Originally posted by musemaker123 my first show ever was a battle of the bands at St John's University in Staten Island NY. i was 16 and nervous as hell fidgeting all over the stage before we went on. pretty big deal for a 16 year old cause they got a big time NYC radio station to sponsor the event. anyway five minutes before we went on i got my pic stuck in my throat. I panicked and thought i was going to die. just moments before the first chord I spit the pic out. what a spinal tap moment that was. no one noticed but i felt like an ass anyway. http://homepage.mac.com/musemaker1234 wow. Haha. I'm 16 now and...{censored}, I can just see this happening to me. I don't get really nervous before gigs, but...you put it best. what a spinal tap moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 69lespaul Posted October 14, 2004 Members Share Posted October 14, 2004 Another one from my "Bentwood Rockers" days.........One night our rhythm player (at the time I was frontman and played very little at gigs) needed an axe for a gig cause his p. o. s. Yamaha shredder was screwed up. Like a dumbass I let him use my 69 Les Paul. Gig is going great, but on our second break, one of this guy's (Woody was his nickname) buddies took him out to the parking lot and "powdered his nose." Two numbers into the third set I spin around and say "take it Woody" as he is about to start his lead (he played several leads a set split with our main lead player) and there is Woody on some guys shoulders ! With my vintage Les Paul YIKES!!! The guy is jumpin around with Woody up there on his shoulders. The ceiling was real low with those drop in acoustic tiles. So I run to stage left and onto the dance floor, where they were by then, and just as I get there, Woody bangs his head on the tracks that hold the ceiling tiles. He starts to go backwards off the guy's shoulder and I get there just in time to catch him and get a hand on my axe. Whew! I told him on the next break to borrow the lead's back up Strat cause he wasn't touchin mine again. Two years later Woody got pulled over after a gig, DUI, got hauled in with my Martin Stinger strat copy in the back of his van. The next day I took him to the impound yard to get his van and you guessed it, the Martin was gone. Never paid me back for it either. I have only seen him once (briefly) since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members anothertxn Posted October 15, 2004 Members Share Posted October 15, 2004 I've broken 2 amps, 10000s of strings, 3 straps, and about 4 pedals at shows. The most embarrassing moment came at a show where the headliner canceled so pretty much no one came. I tend to get off the stage whenever possible, which usually isn't a problem. However, in a nearly empty club I tried to hop over my pedal board to the ground only to catch my foot on a cable. Board flies apart and I smash face first into the ground below, everything disconnected. Did manage to get it all back together before the end of the song, but it wasn't a fun experience. The most painful came from my short time in Minnesota. My old amp, a Traynor YBA-1, had only a 2 prong power cord, which I was of course too broke to fix. This meant that if I touched my strings and any other charged metal at the same time I'd get burned badly! While doing a show on a tiny stage with my band, I'd set up on the floor to give the viola player space. Near the end of the set, during a massive rockout part, I lept on the stage for the grand finale. Suddenly, I felt shearing pain on my neck and back. Turns out one of the guitar players hadn't bothered to cut off the excess string length from his guitar, so every time he rocked back and forth the ends would drag across my back, burning the living hell outta me. I was pinned in and unable to move, so I pretty much just took it for about a minute. After the show, you could see the burn marks all over me, even in areas covered by my shirt. Probably lucky I'm not dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sventvkg Posted October 15, 2004 Members Share Posted October 15, 2004 Over the years just about everything that could go wrong on the gig has. Be prepared, and ALWAYS have at least twice the amount of cables you need, the ability to Run the PA if a power amp goes out, extra tubes, Numbers of fil in musicians if a bandmember doesnt show up, ALWAYS remember to take your instrument to the gig!, Have enough spare strings, and a little first aid kit with everything you will need for an emergency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Somerled Posted October 15, 2004 Members Share Posted October 15, 2004 At one point in time I wanted every effect known to man in my pedal board. a string of bad gigs changed that... my setup at the time was kind of convoluted... guitar into boss gt-5 for compression, overdrive, and wah, loop out of the gt-5 into the input of a tech 21 trademark 120, effects send frin amp into loop return on gt-5, stereo outputs of gt-5 into stereo effects return on amp. all kinds of flexibility, and I had the option of turning the loop of on the gt-5 and bypassing the preamp on the amp completely. I kept my patches pretty simple... a clean, clean with chorus, crunch, lead, and a heavier crunch. gt-5 has 5 patches per bank, so I'm set. I learned really quick that the gt-5 has very sensitive switches under the patch buttons. we're in the middle of a mellower song, and the drums kick in... and the kick drum apparently triggered a patch change on my effects unit. Switched banks completely, to something I've never used, and sent me from a clean chorused sound to a heavy distortion with flanger and phaser. I stopped playing (for once the rythm guitarist earned his keep) and then started to panic. There were no breaks in the vocals on the song until my solo, which was supposed to be clean. So here I am ducking down to try and fix my board in between lines in the verses... Next gig I decide to relegate the gt-5 to effects loop only, and run a wah and overdrive pedal in front of the amp (figure that if something goes wrong with the gt-5, I can just turn the effects loop off on my amp from my amps pedal board) unfortunately, some drunk chick spills some toxic mixed drink directly on my amps pedal board, shorting out the clean channel. and since I had regulated my gt-5 to effects loop only, I couldn't use it to bypass the preamp until the end of the set... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JJPSGAK Posted October 15, 2004 Members Share Posted October 15, 2004 Ohhhhh man! You guys have some good stories. One show we did, I was playing the third or fourth song of our set. Then in the middle of it, the mic cuts out. It was the one song I hadn't felt completely comfortable with yet(because of no practice) and I forget the words instantly. I jump back in on the chorus, throw my arm up and kind of back and get ready to slam the next chord and scream the last part of the chorus, and AHHHHHHHH! I pulled a muscle on my side. I put out a little wimper and finish the last few parts of the song, and get back stage. I think that was the most embarassed I have ever been on stage. I think I just tenced up after forgetting the words. Never practiced more in my life before that incident though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Somerled Posted October 15, 2004 Members Share Posted October 15, 2004 Originally posted by JJPSGAK Ohhhhh man! You guys have some good stories. One show we did, I was playing the third or fourth song of our set. Then in the middle of it, the mic cuts out. It was the one song I hadn't felt completely comfortable with yet(because of no practice) and I forget the words instantly. Forgetting words sucks. I remember being up there, starting the intro guitar part for Kryptonite, and the words just left my brain. I played the intro like 4 times and then leaned over and asked the bass player how the song started... happens to me on acoustic gigs too. I've taken to blaming it on the guitars (for various tunings I usually have 3-4 guitars at a full acoustic gig). I swear, some of my guitars just don't know the words to half the songs I play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Somerled Posted October 15, 2004 Members Share Posted October 15, 2004 sometimes its interesting to be the experienced, older musician... hard to believe sometimes, but I have children. the oldest two boys, were 18 and 16 at the time of this story (Day after halloween last year) The oldest, Stonie has been playing guitar for a couple years, and the younger, Christopher had just picked up bass a couple of months ago. our local youth services center runs a coffee house every other weekend for the teens. they try to provide live music, but since it doesn't pay, its hard to get bands in there. and lucky me, I was the guy they'd call the day before when they didn't have a band booked. for some reason though, this particular time, they booked me a whole week in advance, and I decided the boys could jam with me. We worked up about 6 songs together, practiced for 3-4 hours a night for 5 days straight, and went to the gig. Now, having teenagers is an interesting thing. they have some bizzaar ideas about music. Christopher insisted on us learning Stacy's mom, and he was going to sing it. so we opened with that. it was moderately awful, but hey, it's a moderately awful song in the first place. All along the watchtower went fine. Bloodletting went fine. Then came Hemorage, which, being used to working with more experienced musicians, had added at the last minute. It was abysmal. we finish the song, and Stonie says, stading next to my mic, "well, we prison raped that one...". and of course, my wife is preserving this gig for posterity on the video camera. Guess I'll have to edit that before sending it to grandma, right? by the end of the night, we vowed never again to play half the songs we had worked up, because the sucked so bad. and to top the whole thing off, I'm up there with my 18 and 16 year old sons right? this little blond chick decides she's gonna hit on me, and starts asking Christopher if he'd introduce her to his "brother"... I though my wife was going to kill her. (come to think of it, that seems to be a pretty familiar scene... like at the bar one night when some drunk chick noticed my wife "hanging out with the band" and asked her to tell the "that cute guitarist with the long hair" that she thought he was hot... my wife responded with "okay, I'll tell him that when we're in bed together later". Sometimes I think she just goes looking for trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members InsomniacAndy Posted October 28, 2004 Members Share Posted October 28, 2004 We were the last band of the night at a coffeehouse playing in the back. They told us they closed at midnight but it turned out they closed at 11:00 so we rushed our setup without a soundcheck. Needless to say our levels were all screwed up. And then our cd player blew out(we have lots of synthwork and electronic drums on a backing track, we are industrial rock.) We found another one and set it up quickly, only problem, the song started, synth pad comes in, first bass note and bam the cd player stops. Turns out someone put the crappy cd player on the bass amp cause it was closer to the PA in the back, so the bass killed the cd player. It took about 3 starts on the song to get it worked out. Luckily the crowd was forgiving and our other guitarist kept the crowd entertained while we were fixing them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rowlageorge Posted November 1, 2004 Members Share Posted November 1, 2004 These are a few simple things-Drummer drops a stick-guitar/ bass looses a string-guitarist drops pick-drum skin breaks-tripping over leads I once saw a band and the guitarist hit himself in the face with the top of his guitar there was blood everywhere, but he continued playing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members incurab1e Posted November 1, 2004 Members Share Posted November 1, 2004 I dropped a nugget in front of 550 people oh dear Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RobRoy Posted November 1, 2004 Members Share Posted November 1, 2004 Once at our church we could get almost no volume on the mains. I lead worship even though I am the bass player. Just before we were to start I told the frantic sound man that it sounded like we had a bi-amplified system and only the really deep bass was going into the mains. He played with all sorts of switches and I went in back to check out the amp. It is a Mackie amp and as I examined the back, I noticed a "subwoofer" button was pushed in. I pushed it and suddenly the mains were quite loud indeed. The sound guy the week before had used subwoofers and set the switch. I'm trying to get them to sell the subs that they have absolutely no need for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fuzzball Posted November 3, 2004 Author Members Share Posted November 3, 2004 I hate it when I drop a pic, I then have to play using my finger as a pick because I usualy forget to tape some to the stand. I used to clime up some suport beams (at a house party, in the garage) untill I sliped and landed on my back.Ouch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members InsomniacAndy Posted November 3, 2004 Members Share Posted November 3, 2004 I took an empty mint case and velcroed it to my strap so I always have picks, because I am notorious for dropping them. I always put one chord in my songs where I hit an open chord and have time to grab a pick if I dropped it. At a local battle of the bands, I dropped the pick during the prechorus, luckily I had time to grab another pick to come into the chorus strong. Always have more picks. Forgetting words......I started the song and played the opening acoustic progression probably 20 times before our cellist finally whispered the first line to me. It was rather embarrassing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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