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Double Bass Double bass Train Wrecks

#41
For all of us that live in NYC know that when you take the subway there are times where you have to go up about 100 steps and you just can't do it with your bass.

So I was going up the escalator with my friend once with our basses and he kept his on his shoulder strap. NYC residents also know that on many of the ceilings above the escalators are low and while going up he wasn't paying attention and the scroll went through the ceiling. It got caught and start tearing up sheetrock until eventually the neck popped off. It popped off with such force it ripped his bag and the neck landed at the bottom of the escalator.
 
#42
Years ago I was playing in a London club where there were several other bands on the bill, most of them rockabilly types. One of the bands played a particularly bad set (mostly down to an almost terminal lack of talent), and in a fit of pique their bassist stomped off the stage, bass in hand, and violently kicked the doors open so he could get out and load his car up for an early exit. The security thugs chased after him ("we'd like to chat about the damage to the door,sir"), and by the time they found him he had gotten into his Ford Zodiac and was giving them all kinds of abuse from the safety of his locked car, and feeling very pleased with himself... right up 'til the moment when the no-neck assassins untied the bass from his car roof-rack, dragged it out into the car park, and took turns in jumping up and down all over it!

It always pains me to see a bass destroyed, even if it is painted powder blue... but I'd had several dealings with this guy myself, and I think he'd had it coming for a long time!

Cheers,

Tony
 
#43
I was talking to this elderly drummer a while ago, a pretty notable jazz drummer around Cleveland, who played with some of the best local big bands and such. Anyway, we were talking about 'In the Mood" and he told me this story of the Glenn Miller band coming to Cleveland and needing sax players. they called the union hall and the guy there fixed em up with some of the best players in the world- guys from the Cleveland Orchestra. Of course, they lit off the gig with In the Mood, and these guys all played it straight- as written, with no swing. I guess the fur flew after that....
 
#44
A few years ago I was playing my 1939 King in a local Gospel BlueGrass band. Upon arriving at an appointment in Kentucky, I retrieved the bass from the bed of my truck. As I swung it around to carry into the church, the head "bumped" the car I was parked next to, which happened to be the bandleader's. The result was a somewhat less rigid package I carried. The heel of the neck had cracked completely off. Since I couldn't play mine that night, the "house band" bassist let me play his electric. I tried to play it so that it sounded as much like an acoustic as I could.
 
#45
I mostly play by ear, even when doing shows and things. After I learn the music, it just kind of takes over. Imagine my horror when we kicked off Jesus' big dramatic solo and I'm playing a fourth away from the organ. OUCH! I tried to modulate, but then the guitarist was a fourth away! The keyboard had a transpose button, that had gotten pushed by accident....
 
#47
A friend of mine was playing for a while last semester in the house band for a jam session on monday nights in harlem. One night a singer came up and goes hey can I sing yesterday? the drummer (leader) thought he meant yesterdays the jazz standard so he says sure, the rest of the guys knew the singer meant the beatles tune but didn't realize the drummer was confused. Needless to say the entire band starts playing a different tune than the drummer. When he realized what was happening he stopped playing and goes to the singer "get the f*** off the stage what is that bulls***?!"
 
#48
Nearly 20 years ago I was playing at a Celtic festival at a college that had just built a new performance hall, complete with massive power amps, huge speakers, great mics, and good soundmen to operate them. I was playing in a Celtic rock band and was just starting a solo when my tailgut broke. The tailpiece flew up at mach II and whacked the neumann U87 mic they put in front of my bass. The resulting concussion, amplified by 20K watts, seemed to lift the audience out of their seats. It was the best bass solo ever!

I was finished for the night.

I still hear about it from time to time from jumpy folks that were in the audience.
 
#49
My old teacher told me about a time he was going to play a concert somewhere where the humidity was much higher then what his bass was used to. So he never thought it would be a problem until the concert time when as he was performing he just heard this very loud thud. he looked down and the entire back fell off the bass!
 
#50
You guys sure have some crazy stories! Now I feel a little better about snapping my neck off in college. :)

My musical train wreck happened around the same time when I had been diligently practicing "Stolen Moments", a nice and easy minor jazz blues number, so I could call it at a jam and do the head acro. Well, I happily called the tune on the bandstand, got my bow out, but about one bar into the tune I realized something was terribly wrong.

It turns out I called Moments Notice, a jumping Coltrane deal with kicks which I didn't have memorized. OOOOPS, Dyslexia plus feeling nervous on the band stand made me look like a real idiot that night.
Needless to say, I was :hiding: after that!
 
#52
This is an unseen train wreck. In 1967 I had a residency in a country club by the side of a lake (slightly damp!). I used to leave my Czeck ply upright in a cupboard between gigs. One day I arrived for the gig and found that the damp had got to the bass and it was in a kit of parts. The neck had pulled off and the body had sprung apart. I took it home and glued it up with carpenter's resin glue and needless to say the tone was ruined. I never played again until twenty years later.

I now have three quite nice basses and I look after them very carefully.
 
#53
My reggae band gets called up to open for Calli Budz, a dancehall one hit wonder who was big at the time. Sweet! we load up and drive 2 hours to the gig, and I realize I've left my bass at home.:eek: So I start scrambling for a bass, the artist relation guy says he can help me, but he's drunk, high, and paranoid. What's this guy so freaked out about? It turns out that Calli Budz flight was cancelled due to weather, and the club wanted the 2nd opening band to go on first and for us to headline! They didn't even tell the people who showed up with tickets that Mr Budz wasn't comming, they just sent us out there and let us explain things on stage:mad: We played well, but I've never seen a more hostile crowd. Oh yea, I ended up renting a $50 dollar bass for $60. Thanks drunk guy!
 
#54
I was playing Beethoven 7 with my college orchestra when the bassist sitting next to me started puking. She had the flu, but really wanted to play... She made it off the stage, but there was a mighty puddle o' puke (she had spaghetti for dinner) and a nasty stench in our section for the last 2 movements.
 
#55
at one point i was walking down a hallway after a preformance. I had to carry the bass up a ramp. so i was carring the bass up and one of my friends grabbed the bottom attempting to help me i screamed because i almost fell down the ramp backwards. then someone decides to take a picture and my friend felt soooo bad. it was funny though.
 
#56
This occurred several years ago during Halloween night.

I had put my DB in a stand in the front room adjacent to the living room. We had the usual stream of trick 'r treaters and things began to quiet down around 8:30 or so. No one had been in the front room all evening.

I then heard a big thump in the front room. OMG, there's my DB in two pieces. The neck had split and decapitated itself and was on the hardwood floor. It was a sad sight. The sound was enough to wake the dead. :eek:

I never had or never have since had any problems with putting a bass in its stand, although I did change stand type after that. The bass was fixed, and later sold.

Its just the timing. I will always wonder if some ticked off bass spirit was in my house that night doing damage, haha.

:hiding:
 
#57
I've only had one train wreck involving a bass becoming one with the ground, and one very minor one in a performance.

It was a few days before a jazz competition that my high school did every year, and it was our combo's last rehearsal before then. We were setting up, and a friend of mine was playing on the upright I was using right before rehearsal; I turned around to plug in the amp and check the settings and whatnot.

... And so, behind me, I heard a deafening BOOM CRASH.

I didn't even want to turn around, but I did anyway. The tailpiece popped off completely, the strings flopped round and about, and the body had popped open a bit at the seams - thank goodness, the damage wasn't as much as the sound had made me think it was. But that didn't matter anyway - I went to a CPS (Chicago Public Schools) place, and we were generally looked down upon at these competitions - we normally weren't as good, and didn't have good equipment. Having an upright made us look and sound better.

Our teacher was stark raving mad. Our guitarist waltzed in the room, "HEY GUYS, WHAT'S U- ... Oh, holy crap." But we didn't hold it against my friend who had been playing the bass - we didn't want him to have to pay for damage he didn't mean to do. We still blew the judges away. :D

For the minor wreck, it had nothing to do with my bass being damaged or anything. We were having a visitation day at my college and the jazz band director wanted my combo to play for the visitors. I thought, all right, that's great, and we decided to perform Night and Day. We're all set up, and then we start.

-- Little did I know that they decided to play in a DIFFERENT KEY. Granted, this shouldn't have been a problem for me, but at the time, I wasn't very good at memorizing chord charts and it took me longer than I would have preferred to find the tonal center. Thank goodness for knowing the sound of the chart though, because I faked my way out of it well and figured out the chart in the new key a chorus or two in. Ever since then, I've memorized chord charts and made sure I was able to play them in any key so I'd never be caught off-guard and have to fake again. >_<
 
#58
Three weeks ago, I finally decided it was time to take the old girl out into public. We were playing a cafe/wine bar. Small venue so we played in the entrance to the building just outside of the cafe. Two and 1/2 story atrium with a solid glass wall on the left and mezzanines on the right and a finished stone floor. Our jazz trio is pretty low key, so the room actually gave us a little kiss of reverb that actually helps rather than hurts.

First time on public with the URB, being recorded for a demo and the bandleader forgets the mike stand for the mike I'm to use for recording (no PUP's yet). We lay the mike on top of a plastic garbage can the BL uses to haul her extention cords around. This set up has a natual freqency of D.

On the recording, we get that percussive "thump" that one strives for playing 30's through 50's standards, but every time I play a D, that thump turned into a honk.

Then there was the attempt of being artistic and spun the bass with a flourish at the end of a set and sent the entire Wal-Mart sound rig skittering across the floor (which got edited out).
 
#59
My very favorite story came from a friend of mine who had been playing bluegrass and was interested in learning to play arco. She was very new with the bow and jabbed it around wildly without getting any grip on the strings. One of her wild jabs caught the F-hole in her bass; when she tried to pull it out, she discovered that it was stuck in the F-hole! :rolleyes: Immediately terrified, she put it in the back of her truck and drove to a repair shop with the bass jiggling and the jammed bow flapping in the wind!
 
#60
Okay. I thought of another favorite train wreck.

A friend's band went on tour in a tiny motor home--so tiny, in fact, that they had to put their instruments in the shower. I'm sure you can guess what happened; some idiot turned the shower on...and their instruments were ruined before anyone realized what had happened. Ouch.

Fortunately, the bass wasn't in the shower! :)
 

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