Gig gone bad quickly!

[Never_grew_up]

Sounds like the biggest issue was power quality at the venue and if it was a high school I bet the rack w/power amps, x-over, and wireless mic receivers was on stage so your backline was also affected.
They probably didn't get all the power back on. A lot of school installs have multiple single phase breakers instead of a 3-phase breaker to a power distro.

Whenever I run into power problems at a venue I pull one of those 'touched the mic & got the sh!t shocked out of me' reactions ala Almost Famous. Puts everyone on edge & no one trusts the power after that.

 

[NKBassman]

What do you experienced guys have to say? How would you handel the situation and what should I have done differently?

Shrug it off and hope for better luck next time.

 

[fingerbun]

First, everyone has a story like that. Don't lose too much sleep over it. The snafus are what you learn from.

Second, treat each problem separately.

Mix issues....learn to listen to the others and judge each other's volumes. Have someone you trust in the hall to give you a second opinion. And learn to play softly. Having to turn up all the time is a noob mistake, and it's much more fun being asked to turn up than turn down And the better you are at controlling your level, the better the mix can be out front. Both because it gives the sound guy more control, and because if you are listening to each other you can bring yourself forward or back in the mix with your playing as needed.

Power failure, cannot diagnose without a lot more information but as a general rule sound gear doesn't draw all that much power. Lights or some heating appliance on the same circuit (eg a hot water urn) is usually the culprit there in my experience. Even when things don't shut down, you can get noise through the sound gear so you usually put all the sound gear on the same circuit, isolated form everything else, if you can. You need to learn a bit about electricity and electronics, and then think more deeply about how to set up than just "plug things into the nearest power outlet".

Tuning, in the gig I would have switched basses or played without using the G. Then look at the problem later. If the bass does that all the time, change the bass. Otherwise was it a new string? Or a defective string? Or were you panicking a bit under pressure (as we all do sometimes) and just doing something silly?

 

[Jake Morris]

First, everyone has a story like that. Don't lose too much sleep over it. The snafus are what you learn from.

Second, treat each problem separately.

Mix issues....learn to listen to the others and judge each other's volumes. Have someone you trust in the hall to give you a second opinion. And learn to play softly. Having to turn up all the time is a noob mistake, and it's much more fun being asked to turn up than turn down And the better you are at controlling your level, the better the mix can be out front.

My dad stood in the audience area an hour before the show to help with that. I guess I have to get someone else to do it. But who?

 

[fingerbun]

My dad stood in the audience area an hour before the show to help with that. I guess I have to get someone else to do it. But who?

Dunno. Someone who gets your sound?

 

[Never_grew_up]

My dad stood in the audience area an hour before the show to help with that. I guess I have to get someone else to do it. But who?

Sound check isn't the same thing as the show.
Since you said a fuse blew rather than a breaker tripped, I'm guessing it's a really old building and the power distribution wasn't adequately designed to handle the load being put on it.

Fuses & breakers don't necessarily trip the instant they're loaded past their rated capacity, especially if they're only loaded a few % past it. But leave it loaded past capacity for a few hours & the heat will build up finally causing it to blow or trip. Since you were the last band you 'got lucky' and were the ones on stage when it happened.
But if you had a good mix dialed in before the power went out, nothing should have changed when the power was restored unless you and or the guitar player fiddled with your amps before realizing the power went out, or whoever was running sound fiddled with the board before realizing the no sound problem was a no power problem.