Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: jazzyvee on February 18, 2023, 07:49:20 AM
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I just saw this video on basschat so wondered who has any unfortunate things happen on gigs.
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I could write a book... just from episodes witnessed in the last band I was in.
"The Self-Imposed Disasters Musicians Stage"
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A guy i sold my old peavey tour 450? bass head to, had it vibrate off his cab on his first gig with it. Cost him almost as much to get it fixed as i sold it to him for.
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The Classico fell against a post in my living room. The post with its softwood veneer has the gouge. The hardwood Classico headstock was relatively unscathed. All nicks & dings on the Classico were removed during the electronics upgrade of 2017-19.
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I played a gig years ago in a school auditorium and after the gig a mom brought a toddler up to view my Mockingbird bass. I watched from 30 feet away as the little tyke reached out and knocked it right off the stand. Mom and kid scuttled right out the door. The crash left a dent in the neck. At another gig some drunk guy insisted on dancing with our guitar players wife and ended knocking her to the floor! He was ready to take the drunk down but kept on playing when she got back up unhurt. If it's windy or not secure I keep a pretty close eye on things these days.
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Never had anything like that happen to my equipment. However many years ago I played in band with horns in which the drummer and horns were placed on a riser behind us and about 2.5 feet off the stage floor. In the middle of the percussion solo in Im a Man, our drummer adjusted his seat and went off the back of the riser onto the stage floor. Our trombonist, a Berkeley School of music grad who could play anything, grabbed a set of drumsticks and without missing more than a beat or two finished the song doing a very capable job while standing.
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Yes, my stories can't compete with drummer tales! I used to play in a band where our drummer had been the house drummer for Jim and Tammy Faye. Boy was he a character! He told us he once did a gig with a band led by a husband and wife team where the husband up and died a little before show time. He remembered warming up while the EMTs were trying to resuscitate the guy behind the drum riser. They went ahead and did the show anyway... The wife told everyone she knew his health was bad and could go at any minute. I also saw a guy die on the dance floor once. Boy the bar sure looks more shabby when the house lights go up!
We once finished up a gig in a small town in Oregon and afterwards a little old lady scuttled up to one of the singers and whispered, "Get out of town, it's a trap". A couple of drunks also tried to steal out tour bus once in Aberdeen, WA (home of Curt Cobain) and we were still on board sleeping. I had to go forward and convince them to leave. Such endless fun and no real harm done.
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I was in one band where we actually discussed what we would do if our drummer either checked out onstage or collapsed and was unable to complete a show. He had a bad cocaine habit and was also prone to eating a bunch of valium when he got too tweaked. The discussion happened after a gig where we noticed the drums had kind of dropped out and looked back to see the drummer taking his pulse while trying to keep playing... he blamed it on someone in the audience supposedly smoking crack and claimed the fumes had wafted over him on stage. We had to fire him which led to a whole new level of hassle when he sued us claiming he owned the band name. Fun times being in a band...
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So I'm playing with this local band on a once-weekly regular gig we had for a 'Singles Night' at a VFW. One of those rooms with the stage in a recess into one wall, I hated those kinds of stages.
So they remodel the place, install a big new HVAC system, which eliminated one of those big set-in-the-wall window AC's behind the drums. Great.
Except . . . when they rewired the place, they installed the usual double 110v receptacle and faceplate . . . . . without changing that outlet to 110v instead of the 220v that ran that old AC.
So we get there, set up, and we were using one of the old Peavey XR600 PA heads, set on top of the guitar players Twin Reverb, right in front of the drummer. He hands Hank the cord and tells him to plug it in behind him.
He hits the ON switch, I hear this big BANG like a 12 gage, I turn around and see the most perfect smoke ring heading for the ceiling and sparks are shooting out of every empty jack on the front of this thing. You can imagine what it smelled like. Hank wrapped the cord around a drumstick and yanked it out. Guitar players, ya gotta love 'em, he says, 'hey, if we flip the ground the other way it'll work?'
We went home early.
After some serious haggling and threats, the club bought him another head. And they re-wired the receptacle.
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So I'm playing with this local band on a once-weekly regular gig we had for a 'Singles Night' at a VFW. One of those rooms with the stage in a recess into one wall, I hated those kinds of stages.
So they remodel the place, install a big new HVAC system, which eliminated one of those big set-in-the-wall window AC's behind the drums. Great.
Except . . . when they rewired the place, they installed the usual double 110v receptacle and faceplate . . . . . without changing that outlet to 110v instead of the 220v that ran that old AC.
So we get there, set up, and we were using one of the old Peavey XR600 PA heads, set on top of the guitar players Twin Reverb, right in front of the drummer. He hands Hank the cord and tells him to plug it in behind him.
He hits the ON switch, I hear this big BANG like a 12 gage, I turn around and see the most perfect smoke ring heading for the ceiling and sparks are shooting out of every empty jack on the front of this thing. You can imagine what it smelled like. Hank wrapped the cord around a drumstick and yanked it out. Guitar players, ya gotta love 'em, he says, 'hey, if we flip the ground the other way it'll work?'
We went home early.
After some serious haggling and threats, the club bought him another head. And they re-wired the receptacle.
I had a very similar experience where the outlets on stage were cross-wired to two separate circuits. Our sound guy also happened to be a licensed electrician and got the gig to rewire the place. They paid for a new Furman AR-15 voltage regular.
This biggest interruption I've had to a gig was in this video. 90 minutes of microburst hail with 70mph winds. Surprisingly, the only real casualty was a Mesa Boogie amp, but our guitarist was good friends with the guys at the factory and got it rebuilt quickly and inexpensively. Needless to say, everything was saturated.
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Wow! Mother Nature, she has some power.
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I was playing outdoors at the MN state capital. One of our guitar players had his set list / lyrics on an iPad, but the way he had it set up made it difficult for him if we deviated from the set list. This was quite annoying. He also had the habit of playing mandolin on songs where it was not appropriate (AC/DC's All Night Long, My Sharona). Both the mandolin and the iPad hung off of his mic stand.
A big gust of wind blew his mic stand over. Sadly, the mandolin survived.
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So I'm playing with this local band on a once-weekly regular gig we had for a 'Singles Night' at a VFW. One of those rooms with the stage in a recess into one wall, I hated those kinds of stages.
So they remodel the place, install a big new HVAC system, which eliminated one of those big set-in-the-wall window AC's behind the drums. Great.
Except . . . when they rewired the place, they installed the usual double 110v receptacle and faceplate . . . . . without changing that outlet to 110v instead of the 220v that ran that old AC.
So we get there, set up, and we were using one of the old Peavey XR600 PA heads, set on top of the guitar players Twin Reverb, right in front of the drummer. He hands Hank the cord and tells him to plug it in behind him.
He hits the ON switch, I hear this big BANG like a 12 gage, I turn around and see the most perfect smoke ring heading for the ceiling and sparks are shooting out of every empty jack on the front of this thing. You can imagine what it smelled like. Hank wrapped the cord around a drumstick and yanked it out. Guitar players, ya gotta love 'em, he says, 'hey, if we flip the ground the other way it'll work?'
We went home early.
After some serious haggling and threats, the club bought him another head. And they re-wired the receptacle.
It was a dark and stormy night. We had a gig in the Chicago 'burbs (Mr. Kiley's, if memory serves - not to be confused with the famous Rush St. jazz/comedy/folk club Mr. Kelly's). Both the band and the club personnel were baffled and irritated that I was hesitant to plug into the outlets just because there was water running out of a gap in the conduit.......
(The light geek plugged it in, it worked, and nobody died - but I still think I was right.)
Peter (who has always felt that The Muppet Movie captured light geeks perfectly)
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I once was playing an old Fender amp with a 2 prong cord at a guitar store and there was another one next to it with a 2 prong and I made the big mistake of shutting the 1st one off while turning the other one on. Let me tell you, 120 volts across the chest gets your attention real fast!
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The neck of my upright came off while I was carrying it up the stairs into the auditorium for the gig…
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The neck of my upright came off while I was carrying it up the stairs into the auditorium for the gig…
Richard! What happened next?
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I did the gig with my Hofner Verithin. And took the bass to Vancouver that week for a reset. But it was a drag. The gig was for a class of Jazz students at the local college. So it hurt to do a Jazz workshop on a transverse bass.
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I got a call yesterday just before finishing work to stand in for a band where their bass player told them on the day that he could not do the gig. As it happened the dep arranged to do it for him could not be contacted so hence me getting a call.
Anyway I agreed to do it and got over there about an hour before showtime.
They said I could use their bass rig so that was cool...... i thought.
I plugged in and checked to make sure i could hear it.
Come showtime, let the catalogue of errors begin.
After the intro of first song sound guy rushes over, no di signal from the rig so no bass FOH. Sorted that out then about halfway through the second track there was no sound from the bass rig, so no direct bass on my side of the stage as they didn't give me a monitor.
The keys and drummer were using in ear monitors so no chance of spill. I could hear the boomy bass in the room but no definition due to the heavy reverb in the room. The drummer was using an electronic kit so I could not hear any direct sound from the bass drum or the snare in time, only from the reflection from the room which is late.
During the break the sound guy came over and got some sound out of the bass rig but then again a few songs in the rig failed again. I managed to get through the gig, they were happy that they didn't have to cancel the gig (it was a full house), but what a situation.
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That had to be a tough night. :P
I stepped onto a stage with a bass a couple weeks ago for the first time since last July. Just a local charity fundraiser barbeque thing with my old band... used my '67 Starfire and trusty old Mesa WalkAbout Scout 15 combo. No soundcheck or anything, just a one-off, one-set, plug-n-play deal for me. I figured the stage volume from that tank alone was plenty, and if the FOH guy wanted, that old thing has a nice pre-eq DI out. I flicked the power switch on, the tubes began to glow, all was good except there was an annoying buzzzzzzz through the speaker, even with the input gain and master volume turned down. I flipped the polarity switch... no help. I jiggled stuff... nothing. I smacked it... hey, sometimes it works. Not this time. Finally, we plugged it into a different outlet that wasn't already occupied by eight other onstage devices... buzzzzzz disappeared, show went on. But I briefly was reminded of how quickly something that is supposed to be a good time can turn into a frustrating situation.
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A band i was humping gear for back in the hometown had a practice in the basement of Town Hall. Got all set up, but the rhythm player was late because he stopped at Steed Music to make the last lay-away payment & pick up his brand new 1976 Les Paul Custom, so they started a band meeting while they waited.
He walks in, unpacks, plugs in, and sets it in a stand, which he had set on a table to keep it safe and out of the way.
Turns around to come join the meeting, trips on the cord, it falls off and hits the floor; neck snapped in two about the 5th fret. He didn't even get to tune it up.
Peter
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Oh, that's sickening. :'(
Years ago, probably early 2000's, we were playing at a sports bar called the Deere John. Irrelevant to the story but funny, the bartender had been my high school geometry teacher. Her name had changed because of a remarriage, but I recognized her instantly even though it had been a decade and change. Let's not get into why.
Anyway, our guitar player had just received a custom-built Santa Cruz Tony Rice Model, that he had even provided the wood for; Madagascar Kingwood, some killer straight grain quartersawn stuff that looked remarkably like the fabled Brazilian rosewood which was rapidly becoming unobtainable. Richard Hoover allowed that crap was so ridiculously hard he didn't care for trying to bend any more sets of it. Anyway, a couple songs into the set, guitarzan tips it up to put a capo on, the strap let's go, and it hit headstock first on the tile floor, sheared off down to about the 4th fret, and clattered face-first the rest of the way, splitting open the German spruce top.
Zoowicky gathered up what was left of it, put it in the case and left. We figured that was it for him, but he came back about a half-hour later with another guitar and finished the gig. He eventually had the guitar repaired, and to my knowledge (I don't see these folks much anymore...) he still has it.
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a little late to the party but that's how i roll these days it seems. not exactly an equipment failure but definitly the gig where nothing went right.
'twas 1976. our band's getting its legs and we're starting to play out alot. book a wedding gig just outside of keystone on a spring day. load the u-haul with the band gear, hook it to my 1970 fury III with a bumper hitch. got the whole band in the car. start going down the west approach of the eisenhower tunnel. >6% grade for miles. trailer ain't loaded right and all of a sudden we're going 85 mph and fishtailing from one side of the road to another. somehow we survive that. get to the gig. it's outside. no stage, set up in the dirt (mud). starts raining. hard. get a set off. start the 2nd set late because the drummer was found passed out face-up, mouth open under the keg. get paid with a check, amount in the printed part doesn't match the written part, so we can't cash it. durmmer passes out in the back seat and wakes up only to barf in a conga case. get home 4 hours late and get chewed out by my dad (i'm 19 and still living at home).
those days i had a '74 genuine fender P-bass (my second bass. got such a deal on it from pete's music and guns on broadway!) and an acoustic 136 amp. played 100's of gigs with that setup and never had it go down on me, not even when playing in the mud.
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Oh, that's sickening. :'(
Years ago, probably early 2000's, we were playing at a sports bar called the Deere John. Irrelevant to the story but funny, the bartender had been my high school geometry teacher. Her name had changed because of a remarriage, but I recognized her instantly even though it had been a decade and change. Let's not get into why.
Anyway, our guitar player had just received a custom-built Santa Cruz Tony Rice Model, that he had even provided the wood for; Madagascar Kingwood, some killer straight grain quartersawn stuff that looked remarkably like the fabled Brazilian rosewood which was rapidly becoming unobtainable. Richard Hoover allowed that crap was so ridiculously hard he didn't care for trying to bend any more sets of it. Anyway, a couple songs into the set, guitarzan tips it up to put a capo on, the strap let's go, and it hit headstock first on the tile floor, sheared off down to about the 4th fret, and clattered face-first the rest of the way, splitting open the German spruce top.
Zoowicky gathered up what was left of it, put it in the case and left. We figured that was it for him, but he came back about a half-hour later with another guitar and finished the gig. He eventually had the guitar repaired, and to my knowledge (I don't see these folks much anymore...) he still has it.
OK, that story made me cry.......
Peter
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a little late to the party but that's how i roll these days it seems. not exactly an equipment failure but definitly the gig where nothing went right.
'twas 1976. our band's getting its legs and we're starting to play out alot. book a wedding gig just outside of keystone on a spring day. load the u-haul with the band gear, hook it to my 1970 fury III with a bumper hitch. got the whole band in the car. start going down the west approach of the eisenhower tunnel. >6% grade for miles. trailer ain't loaded right and all of a sudden we're going 85 mph and fishtailing from one side of the road to another. somehow we survive that. get to the gig. it's outside. no stage, set up in the dirt (mud). starts raining. hard. get a set off. start the 2nd set late because the drummer was found passed out face-up, mouth open under the keg. get paid with a check, amount in the printed part doesn't match the written part, so we can't cash it. durmmer passes out in the back seat and wakes up only to barf in a conga case. get home 4 hours late and get chewed out by my dad (i'm 19 and still living at home).
those days i had a '74 genuine fender P-bass (my second bass. got such a deal on it from pete's music and guns on broadway!) and an acoustic 136 amp. played 100's of gigs with that setup and never had it go down on me, not even when playing in the mud.
Well, if we're going there.....
About a year later (Jan or Feb of '77); same lead player, different band (an Elvis imitator, to be exact). First band to put me behind the sound board - which was easy. Only vocals in the PA; set Elvis a touch louder than the 2 back-up vocals, make sure they're all louder than the drummer, and spend the rest of the night drinking the free beer that was my pay & making out with their wives and girlfriends on the dance floor.
We hauled the gear in my buddy's VW van, which had a manual clutch. Not a manual transmission. Push in the pedal, shift, reach down with your hand and pull the pedal back up. We'd lift the sliding side door off it's track to load & unload - until the night it didn't go back on, and rode home in the drummer's trunk.
So, to recap: Midwinter in upper Appalachia, no side door; we're half drunk & passing joints; every time Tom shifts he has to reach down and pull the pedal up; every time we turn left (repeating: Appalachia; we turned left a lot) I had to reach back & grab the drums so they didn't go out the hole & down the hill.
Some of my best memories, if I'm being honest........
Peter
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It's the guitar in the picture of us here... furthest right----->
(Kelly's guitar was a Martin employee-made (shopnight) D-28. She still has it.)
*that VW "automatic stickshift" was mestup. Had one. Not a Transporter, mine was a SuperBeetle.
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Nope - not an Automatic Stick Shift; an actual stick shift - with a malfunctioning clutch pedal. When I say he reached down, I mean to the floor, to actually pull the clutch pedal back up.
Peter
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I had a ‘59 Mercedes 220s Cabriolet that had the “Hydrak” transmission. Same as the Automatic Stickshift on the VW. Porsche also had one, called it the Sportomatic, IIRC. On my Mercedes, it was a four speed on the tree. When you touched the shift lever, an electrically actuated vacuum box, like a giant vacuum advance, sucked in the clutch. When my vacuum box needed replacement, Mercedes wanted $5K for the part. I got a rebuilt VW version from a Bug dismantler for $260 that worked just fine.
Bill, tgo
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The Sportomatic was a dumb idea for a sports car.
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Oh man. If we start including gig-related vehicular failures...
I had the brakes fail on a '77 Dodge Tradesman cargo van coming down a switchback mountain road from Warm Springs, Virginia to Clifton Forge, (you can Google it for fun) one night after a gig at a hunter hangout/beer joint called Arrows and Antlers. I drove that frickin' tank back to Roanoke with the hand brake. Fully Loaded. Our guitar player smoked three packs of cigarettes.
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OK, then there was the time we (the bass player driving, the light geek, myself, and my visiting-from-grad-school then-GF riding) were heading down I-94 through the South Side of Chicago about 03:00 or so (a stretch of road & time of day where trouble can quickly become trouble) in the old bread van (AKA the gear truck) when we watched 2 wheels pass us, separate, and hit opposite guardrails; had just about enough time to say "WTF???" and the right rear brake drum hit the pavement.........
Peter (who is not sure how much the contrast between that dose of rock'n'roll and her harpsichord performance MM student Baroque-centered life led to the "then-" part of the description)
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Ah, the passing wheels. Many memories of those - we could usually hear a slight change in the highway hum when the bearings on the gear trailer seized, and then watch like a hawk for the sailing wheel, track where it went in the ditch, pick it up, pop open a can of greased wheel bearing from Canadian Tire (always carry lots), replace the bearing, pop the wheel back on, and Bob’s your uncle. Life on the road…
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I do have another story that actually involves a bass that's almost the exact duplicate of Hanksters I had an award winning Czech Bluegrass band playing a house concert at my place. When they arrived and the bassist took his upright out of the van the neck came off in his hands. It was a rented bass and he had no backup. Though I offered my fretless Alembic, he hadn't played anything other than an upright for 10 plus years. So we found some wood glue and while the other musicians in the band set up kept hitting the joint with a heat gun. It dried just enough by concert time to hold out for the 2-hour concert. When he lifted it up back into the van, a few hours later the neck came off again. Last I heard he was talking about using super glue on it next.
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Agh. The neck coming off. That happened to me right before a gig too! Fortunately had the mighty Hofner Verithin with me!
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Ah, the passing wheels. Many memories of those - we could usually hear a slight change in the highway hum when the bearings on the gear trailer seized, and then watch like a hawk for the sailing wheel, track where it went in the ditch, pick it up, pop open a can of greased wheel bearing from Canadian Tire (always carry lots), replace the bearing, pop the wheel back on, and Bob’s your uncle. Life on the road…
My old band Shockra had a number of vehicle fails. The most spectacular was on our way to our first Colorado tour in the winter of 1992. We played in Rochester NY until 4AM and hit the road for Steamboat Springs. About 10AM, as we were passing Painesville OH, our right two rear wheels on our 24' box truck went flying off at 60mph. We had put a wall up in the box with the gear in the back and a section to hang out in the front part, with mattresses, reading lights, etc. We skidded to a halt on the shattered break drum by the side of the road (the gouge in the pavement was there for years). It was early February and started up with the freezing rain. The cops showed up and wanted nothing to do with us, but did call a tow. The tow truck showed up, but it was one designed for cars, so it left. About 20 minutes later, a late 50s Mack tow truck for trucks showed up. The guy hooked it up, pulled the lever, the truck rose to a few feet and the cable snapped. The tow guy then fixed the cable in the freezing rain, cursing in Czech. He finally got it all rigged up and went down the road with our truck. His sidekick gave us a ride in a van to his shop/junkyard. It was a Saturday morning. He told us to go away for 5 hours, so we wandered around Painesville and got kicked out of diners, etc. Finally, we went back and he had gone to 3 other junkyards and found the parts to completely rebuild the back end. The total of the bill was about $750, which was insanely reasonable. So, we gave him about $400 in cash, $200 on our keyboard player's credit card and the rest in a check we asked him not to cash for about two weeks. And some T-shirts, stickers, and CDs. Bless Franz Lubeck.
This being the days before cellphones, we had lost track of the other vehicle, which we planned to meet at the first rest stop west of Cleveland. That wasn't happening, so we made our way to Steamboat and arrived the next day about 30 minutes before load in. The other vehicle had just pulled in. They had accidentally stayed on I-90 and made a detour in Wisconsin. Since we'd never been to Colorado before, we weren't familiar with the driving conditions, so they decided to cut through Rocky Mountain National Park, completely unaware that it was closed for the winter and ended up in a field surrounded by elk, so they had to do a very long detour to get there.
And then there was the time a porta-potty came through my windshield while on the way home from a gig....
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My old band Shockra had a number of vehicle fails. The most spectacular was on our way to our first Colorado tour in the winter of 1992. We played in Rochester NY until 4AM and hit the road for Steamboat Springs. About 10AM, as we were passing Painesville OH, our right two rear wheels on our 24' box truck went flying off at 60mph. We had put a wall up in the box with the gear in the back and a section to hang out in the front part, with mattresses, reading lights, etc. We skidded to a halt on the shattered break drum by the side of the road (the gouge in the pavement was there for years). It was early February and started up with the freezing rain. The cops showed up and wanted nothing to do with us, but did call a tow. The tow truck showed up, but it was one designed for cars, so it left. About 20 minutes later, a late 50s Mack tow truck for trucks showed up. The guy hooked it up, pulled the lever, the truck rose to a few feet and the cable snapped. The tow guy then fixed the cable in the freezing rain, cursing in Czech. He finally got it all rigged up and went down the road with our truck. His sidekick gave us a ride in a van to his shop/junkyard. It was a Saturday morning. He told us to go away for 5 hours, so we wandered around Painesville and got kicked out of diners, etc. Finally, we went back and he had gone to 3 other junkyards and found the parts to completely rebuild the back end. The total of the bill was about $750, which was insanely reasonable. So, we gave him about $400 in cash, $200 on our keyboard player's credit card and the rest in a check we asked him not to cash for about two weeks. And some T-shirts, stickers, and CDs. Bless Franz Lubeck.
This being the days before cellphones, we had lost track of the other vehicle, which we planned to meet at the first rest stop west of Cleveland. That wasn't happening, so we made our way to Steamboat and arrived the next day about 30 minutes before load in. The other vehicle had just pulled in. They had accidentally stayed on I-90 and made a detour in Wisconsin. Since we'd never been to Colorado before, we weren't familiar with the driving conditions, so they decided to cut through Rocky Mountain National Park, completely unaware that it was closed for the winter and ended up in a field surrounded by elk, so they had to do a very long detour to get there.
And then there was the time a porta-potty came through my windshield while on the way home from a gig....
And didn't you love every minute of it, Edwin? If not at the time, then in retelling? That is Rock'N'Roll in a nutshell.
Peter (whose former neighbor [drums, bass, guitar, keys, engineer] has more than once told him during a smoky ramble through his youth that a book should written)