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Major disasters at gigs

#41
played an outdoor show on a half-sized flat bed tractor trailer about 10 years ago...half way through the first set - the brace or whatever it was that held up the hitching end of the flat bed slipped or got knocked over and gear/band members went flying....

the drummer nearly fell off the back, one main tumbled over and crashed into the drums - another flopped off the front, all the mic stands fell over, amps were bumped around, we were all instantly crouching low and holding the deck like we were on the titanic

luckily no serious injuries

also much praise to the "silence of the goats"
 
#42
A guy was shot and killed right in front of the club we were going to play, people ran out, check and went back to the show.....

ANother Almost tragedy it was back when i was a guitard player, we got to the place (a highschool) to play, we had everything ready and out of nowhere they canceled everything... when i got home i found out that my guitar wasnt working, all the electronics were blown off on my last practice and i didint know
 
#43
Something of an un-disaster–it could have been worse. My son was playing on a live telecast (local music TV). I'm his roadie, and this was perhaps the only time I didn't pack a backup. His bass started going in and out. We tackled as best we could during an interview break for the front man. Pliers to tighten a loose output jack. It didn't work, cut out completely and the band had to play. Lots of arm waving and confused looks when the camera was off my son. The lead guitarist turned up his bass and added a pretty good bassline to his playing and saved the show. Viewing the tape afterwards, you couldn't really tell. Guitarist kept his cool. He was 14.
 
#44
A good friend of mine and old bandmate was recently on a canadian tour with the Daniel Wesley Band. About half-way through the three-week tour they packed up all of their gear into the u-haul trailer, put in their luggage in the back... and my buddy locked the tailgate. They hit the open road and headed towards their next gig. Upon arrival (or somewhere in between) they stopped to find that the tailgate wasn't properly latched! Both of the other two band member's suitcases had flown out the trailer somewhere along the way, never to be seen again! They had to buy all new clothes for the rest of the tour... and decided not to forgive my buddy for mis-latching the tailgate. After the tour was up, for "reasons unknown", he was fired. :scowl:
 
#45
Nothing major

closest were:

PA we brought to the club blew out in the first few songs, thankfully, it was a sports bar, and no one was paying attention to us. We played for another 2 hours instrumentally.

Drummer's who played the wrong song (and one of them never recovered during the song - he still doesn't know what song we were playing)

Guitar player who busted a string, then instead of using his back up, re-strung it with the wrong gauge, busted it again, and then had to get out the back up - AND TUNE IT UP.

But the worst was when some roadies dropped a bass cabinet on my foot, and probably broke some bones. although I've never been to the hospital to check it out.


I was at a show once in SF, I think it was called the Gorilla Room, on Beale Street. Basically, it was a warehouse. Well, various gang members, from opposing sides started fighting and it turned into Mayhem. My friends band were playing and were 3 songs into their set when it happened, they were like - F this, we're outta here! I think someone busted some windows, etc. The place was like a free for all with people running to get out! (including me)
 
#46
Many years ago, we played at a small town bar, owner was so proud that he had built this big stage that was about 4 high for us. When we first got there to load in I told the rest of the bandmates that thing would'nt last long, as the joints were put 3 ft apart and the top flooring was made out of waffle board. I'm 6'3 220 first set went off ok, secound set I made a little hop and you guessed it, right threw the floor I went, kept on playing, thought my drummer was going to lose it, my vocalist thought I left the stage until he look down and seen me sitting there playing with this *** look on my face.
Needlist to say the owner of the bar wasn't to happy but oh well, that's what you get for building it out of crap, over our break we found a old door covered it and finished the night.
2 weeks later the bar burned down to the ground, If we could have only got that on video
 
#47
Played at gig for a biker club. Couple hundered showed up from various clubs. After the 1st set during break. We were standing outside and 1 biker decides he doesn't like another biker and punches him in the face. The guy that got punched pulls a gun a starts shooting hitting the guy in the leg. Everybody goes to the ground to avoid the bullets. This all happened right in front of the cops monitoring the event from across the street. They rush over and arrest the fighters. Meanwhile some of the other bikers are starting to get restless. The cops called in for back up and practically the whole police force arrived with helicopter and a local news team. We decided to break are gear down and leave (with the blessing of the host biker club leader who paid us 1/2 what we were owed). Some of the bikers were pissed that we were leaving, but with the biker club leader backing us nobody did anything. We will never play for a biker club again.
 
#48
crashnjerry said:
Many years ago, we played at a small town bar, owner was so proud that he had built this big stage that was about 4 high for us. When we first got there to load in I told the rest of the bandmates that thing would'nt last long, as the joints were put 3 ft apart and the top flooring was made out of waffle board. I'm 6'3 220 first set went off ok, secound set I made a little hop and you guessed it, right threw the floor I went, kept on playing, thought my drummer was going to lose it, my vocalist thought I left the stage until he look down and seen me sitting there playing with this *** look on my face.
Needlist to say the owner of the bar wasn't to happy but oh well, that's what you get for building it out of crap, over our break we found a old door covered it and finished the night.
2 weeks later the bar burned down to the ground, If we could have only got that on video
Click to expand...


Y'know what I reckon? He insured that stage for a tidy sum claiming it was top class, then burnt his bar down for the insurance :p
 
#49
ohh... hardcore shows....
I was a vocalist for a metal/hardcore band over the last year, have a few stories.

-My guitard had just bought a used peavey XXX, and i had plenty of experience with this amp (my guitarist from the band before this one had one) and I told him the tubes needed to be replaced. After a couple hours of practice you could hear the tone getting worse and I told him to get new tubes before our show three days later. He didn't. I told him to at least bring his old head, in case (or, in my head, when) the tubes died during the show. he refused. (this guy was a full fledged guitard)

So yeah, halfway through the first song, tubes sang their swan song and pooped out (I've heard it so many times, but it's still the coolest sound ever!) and we didnt have a guitar. our bassist was horrible, and our drummer was the only competent musician (besides me! but i was the stupid vocalist)

luckily, after about a minute one of the other band's guitarist walked over and plopped his marshall head on our cab.

problem 2. it was the 350 watt marshall head, and my guitard is a GUITARD.

he cranked it. two more songs, and oop, there goes his cab.

I quit the band after that show.

but before that, we had one kid in our pit dislocate his kneecap and put his hand through a lamp at the same time.

and one older guy trying to look tough and be a bouncer (was 500 lbs of fat) had a heart attack during our set.

and our band sucked. :(
 
#52
Here’s a wardrobe malfunction, well not a malfunction as much as it was a miscalculation!! We were scheduled to participate in battle of the bands at a local high school and I really wanted to make an impression to help us win it!

Let me start by saying back … way back (circa 1985) … parachute pants were popular and well I decided to buy myself a pair for the stage. At the time I played black & white Flying V bass as my main instrument. So I went to the local mall where I found a nice black & white mesh shirt with zippers that would have rivaled anything Michael Jackson was wearing at the time on his Thriller tour! Well it only seemed natural to pair that fine shirt up with a pair of white parachute pants.

So I get the high school, we get set up and sounded checked. I go back to change clothes, did I mention that my g/f at the time had bought me some nice white tiger undies that were skin tight. I put the whole outfit together and changed, right before things started. So I came out grabbed my instrument, walked out on stage for the first time wearing this get-up to start the show. Well, we start the first of 4 songs things go well with the first, 2nd song goes great, then between the 3rd & 4th song I decide to turn around for a quick drink of water. Immediately I hear sighs, gasps & a “holy sh*t” behind me, I think the sound guy said the “holy ….” What I failed to realize is that white parachute pants are very see thru in bright lights. When I turned around … those tiger print undies showed up bigger than day to the crowd behind me. Needles to say I finished the show facing the crowd & walked off sideways!

The drummer said “sorry dude I tried to warn you … been looking at you’re a*s all night.” Needless to say I finished the show facing the crowd & walked off stage sideways!

I quickly ditched the pants after the show! The part that sucks is that we didn’t win … but I did get a few phone numbers!!!! :bassist:
 
#53
Michelob_64 said:
Here’s a wardrobe malfunction, well not a malfunction as much as it was a miscalculation!! We were scheduled to participate in battle of the bands at a local high school and I really wanted to make an impression to help us win it!

Let me start by saying back … way back (circa 1985) … parachute pants were popular and well I decided to buy myself a pair for the stage. At the time I played black & white Flying V bass as my main instrument. So I went to the local mall where I found a nice black & white mesh shirt with zippers that would have rivaled anything Michael Jackson was wearing at the time on his Thriller tour! Well it only seemed natural to pair that fine shirt up with a pair of white parachute pants.

So I get the high school, we get set up and sounded checked. I go back to change clothes, did I mention that my g/f at the time had bought me some nice white tiger undies that were skin tight. I put the whole outfit together and changed, right before things started. So I came out grabbed my instrument, walked out on stage for the first time wearing this get-up to start the show. Well, we start the first of 4 songs things go well with the first, 2nd song goes great, then between the 3rd & 4th song I decide to turn around for a quick drink of water. Immediately I hear sighs, gasps & a “holy sh*t” behind me, I think the sound guy said the “holy ….” What I failed to realize is that white parachute pants are very see thru in bright lights. When I turned around … those tiger print undies showed up bigger than day to the crowd behind me. Needles to say I finished the show facing the crowd & walked off sideways!

The drummer said “sorry dude I tried to warn you … been looking at you’re a*s all night.” Needless to say I finished the show facing the crowd & walked off stage sideways!

I quickly ditched the pants after the show! The part that sucks is that we didn’t win … but I did get a few phone numbers!!!! :bassist:
Click to expand...

I laughed so hard I think I wee'd a little :eek:
 
#54
Well, mine's not funny but stinks!

I was playing a show at a venue near me that's housed in a store front, so it echoes like a tin can. Well our then rhythm guitard couldn't cope with it, at all.

So much he forgot to switch from the verse to the slower chorus in one of our oldest songs, and tried to blame it on everyone else after the show. When it happened, he just looked around like an idiot and my drummer looked at me with that "oh holy CRAP" look in his eyes, and the lead guitarist just stop playing, so did I, and we had to stop the song mid-set. Obviously, we looked like idiots, but no one in the audience knew why we stopped, so I yelled out "Amp problems!" and started messing with the rhythm guitard's amp and cussed him out under my breath. Well, we started over with him TURNED WAY DOWN (which I did adjusting his amp and he somehow didn't notice, like it seems, he was honestly not very bright, musically or in general) and we finished the set. After the set, all the other members in the band came up to me and said "we gotta work with him" so we went up to him as a band and confronted him about it, and his reaction killed his spot in the band. He cussed us out and said it was everyone elses spot in the band but his, and the rest of the band talked and just didn't want to deal with him anymore.

Well, we kicked him out and played a show the next weekend. Needless to say, that was a better show than we had played with our previous guitard and we still have the replacement, a kid named Hayden, and we couldn't be happier.




Oh, PS. I'm assuming Guitard means dufus that plays guitar, because thats how I'm using it. :p
 
#55
Playing a night club. Guitar player doing his Jimmy Page thing playing a solo. Drumstick broke on one particularly sprited note and half of it flew through my 18" JBL speaker. Being poor and stupid, I did not have a back-up. That was mid-way through the 1st set.

Spent about a half hour finding a back up and transporting it. Got towards the end of the 3rd set and an "enthusiastic" buddy jumped up on the stage with a pitcher of wine coolers (back in the day wine coolers were Sangria and 7-up). You can guess what happened there. Let's just say Sangria sticks particularly well to most electronics.

Another gig was a new bar. The owner booked us blind. We showed up (a heavy-metal hair band) to find a room full of potato-chips (big cowboy hats). No problem we figured and launched into our mellower and classic stuff. Things were going fine until someone in the crowd yelled "play some Willie Nelson" and our singer screamed back "Willie Nelson sucks". Owner came over at break and said we didn't have to play the rest of the night or the next night either. We got out fast.

He did pay us for both nights though. Nice enough guy.
 
#57
I played bass in a school production of "Footloose".

It wasn't too bad until one weekend when we needed to sub a drummer for a matinee and an evening show. No rehearsal or nothin. This was not a kid who could read rhythms or a kid who could play by feel. He couldn't keep a boom-tap-boom-boom-tap to save his life. Imagine having to play your way out of false starts with 25 stage singers! It was a long day to say the least.
 
#58
Let's see, there are so many of them...

OK, here's one. Our lead singer had just gotten his brand new wireless mic, and he was using it to prance all over the venues, flirting with the girls and such. He did notice that it drained the batteries fairly quickly, though, so one night when we were playing a song with a fairly long jam section (no vocals) in the middle of it, he left the stage to pee, and while he was in the bathroom he had the bright idea to shut off his mic to save the batteries. Unfortunately, next door there was another band playing whose lead guitarist was wireless and on the same frequency.

Suddenly there was a third guitarist in the mix, playing VERY LOUD and a different song. Of course our vocalist was in the can and didn't hear the effect of what he did, and the sound guy had left his post, so it went on for a while.
 
#59
ggunn said:
Let's see, there are so many of them...

OK, here's one. Our lead singer had just gotten his brand new wireless mic, and he was using it to prance all over the venues, flirting with the girls and such. He did notice that it drained the batteries fairly quickly, though, so one night when we were playing a song with a fairly long jam section (no vocals) in the middle of it, he left the stage to pee, and while he was in the bathroom he had the bright idea to shut off his mic to save the batteries. Unfortunately, next door there was another band playing whose lead guitarist was wireless and on the same frequency.

Suddenly there was a third guitarist in the mix, playing VERY LOUD and a different song. Of course our vocalist was in the can and didn't hear the effect of what he did, and the sound guy had left his post, so it went on for a while.
Click to expand...

hahah thats great, what would be better is if he had a singing part and went to the bathroom, singin while doing business:D
 

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