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Major disasters at gigs

#141
JazzBass Love said:
I hate to post another gig disaster, but here's a recent one I encountered.

I was subbing in on bass for a friend's worship team. About halfway through the first service, I felt this excrutiating pain shooting through my urethra. I had a kidney stone. :bawl::bawl::bawl:

I kept it together until the last song, then I slowly exited towards the nearest bathroom. After 30 minutes of screaming, yelling, and crying like a baby, the stone passed. Luckily, I blacked out as it was passing. I came to about 15 minutes later covered in blood and urine.

After I came to the point where I could move again, I headed for the baptismal shower and cleaned off. Luckily, I had a spare set of clothing in my Jeep, so I didn't have to play the second set in the blood-stained clothes. The second service went a whole lot better than the first.

Just in case anyone is wondering why I wasn't rushed to the hospital, I have been fighting with kidney stone issues all of my life, so I know what to do when one hits. They tried to get me to go to the hospital, but since the stone was almost out, there didn't seem any reason to drive to the hospital (besides, the vibration of a vehicle would have made things worse...believe me, I've been there before).
Click to expand...

Do you drink tea?
 
#143
I was jumping around so much that my strap came off and my brand new guitar went crashing to the ground, taking a huge chip out of it and creating an ungodly "clang" through the PA system. I tried my best to salvage it but I missed a solo as a result and everyone in the audience laughed. Since then its straplocks all the way when gigging!
 
#144
I've had two kidney stones before. Once while I lived in Cleveland, and once when I lived in Jacksonville, Fl. At first, I was told (and I assumed) it was the tea that I drank. Well, since I love tea and have kept drinking it, I haven't had another kidney stone.

To me, I am starting to think that it's the water of the area. Since Jacksonville, we have lived in New Mexico and now the mountains of NC. I do remember fighting with calcium deposits and clogged sinks while we lived in Jacksonville. Maybe for me it was a combination of the water quality and the tea. I don't know.

Kidney stones hurt real bad though. I had to have surgery to remove them both times. Let's put it this way, they didn't cut me open, they just went in through the natural opening with a little basket catcher thing - fun times!
 
#146
Not a real disaster, but we were playing an outdoor wedding gig and the bride had requested a few country songs in the set list. I like country music and have played some country cover gigs but the rest of the bad had never heard any of the songs before. We had a few days to rehearse and they went well. At the gig it was time to kick off a Keith Urban song that's supposed to be in the neighborhood of 70bpm and our lead kicks it off at about 100bpm. They all knew something was wrong but couldn't really remember the song enough to know what. They just followed the charts and I cringed and closed my eyes until the song was over. It wasn't fun as there were many very important people from the community there.

:scowl::scowl::scowl:
 
#147
My apologies for hijacking the thread, but I've been there with the basket catcher thing...:bawl:

I'm sure tea didn't cause it. Even my urologist said that much. I'm sure that where I've lived has a huge impact on the stones. I lived outside of Greensboro, NC for a long time. After that, I moved to the midwest (which I'd hazard to say has worse tap water than NC).

Passing a stone on my own hurts, but frankly I would choose it anyday over the basket catcher/egg beater apparatus. After that procedure, I'm still not quite right.

We now return to your regularly scheduled thread.
 
#148
Mesa Boogie B400 died at a gig in Boston.

I'll never forget it even it being a long time ago at this big Boston club no longer there called the Channel.
 
#149
I was a spectator at a blues jam at a bar in Richardson, TX (Chuck Rainey sitting in on bass!). This was the sort of bar that had lots of things hanging on the walls for decor: watering cans, old farm tools, etc.

A while into the set, a HUGE moose head let go from the wall and fell about 10ft down onto the bar about 6" from a very surprised and very lucky woman. It would have injured her very badly had the moose better aim.

The band stuttered and sort of brought the song to a sudden but tidy end. Everyone was stunned, the woman got free food and drinks, and the band played on.
 
#150
ryco said:
In the early 80s I was playing a gig in Westport, WA at a nice resort/restaurant/lounge. The band featured me, my wife, a high school buddy and a college buddy who played fabulous drums.

Westport is a famous fishing town on the Washington coast. Huge working commercial fishing fleet and a huge tourist charter boat industry. We were booked for the standard two week deal, Tues - Sat, 9p - 1:30a. Decent band house about five miles down the road in the next town of Tokeland. Nice club, good food - all's good.

For some reason the lady owner of the club had paid us for our first week Friday afternoon. To be prepaid was unheard of! She was very nice and wanted to make sure we could cash our check so we would be sure to have money for the weekend. Wow.............

!
Click to expand...

Just about that same time, my band was playing in Portsmouth New Hampshire at a club we played at a lot.
One night there were about 10 fisherman. They all just came into port and were looking to party.
They started detting more and more out of hand as the evening progressed. There were too many for the bouncers to handle all at once, so they snuck up on them one at a time, geabbed them and threw him out the door and locked it. Then the bouncers would point out the next ejectee and do the same, untill they were all outside pounding on the door untill the cops showed up and they scattered.
Another time, while npt at the gig itself, we finished and the band leader took us back to thehouse they let the bands use. He was tghere earlier and thought he knew where it was.
We get tghere and the key doesn't work (you can probably guess what's next) so he breaks in through the back door. We get in, grab some beers and and the leaded doesn't see his suitcase. We weren't in the band house, we just broke into someone elses house. We high-tailed it out ASAP.

Andy
 
#154
Not a personal disaster but one for the guy who booked us.
Asked to play at an end of season 'best and fairest' night at a football club. All the votes were tallied and the winner crowned. Band starts up at 9PM as asked. 9.15PM the lights are on outside on the footy ground and the entire team and hangers on are having a huge punch-up.I'm not joking.......at least 50 people belting the living bejesus out of each other.
Barman walks over with our $800.00 and a carton of beer each (bonus) and says " go home fellas,all they want to do is fight tonight".Home by 10.30 with cash and booze. Heard they punched on for about 2 hours after we had gone. Not pretty.
 
#155
Not as good as the goat, but...

Was doing FOH for a well-known cover band back in the late-90's. We were booked to play an outdoor festival in a smaller town, and were the first band larger than a folk duo for the day.

The band had a great reputation and pretty loyal following, so we had a nice large crowd of at least 1000. I'd worked with the sound company before and knew them to be major PITAs, so I was careful to tread very lightly. Everything went well, line check was perfect, first song out of the gate was "Satisfaction" by the Stones. Guitar intro sounded excellent, and as the bass and drums came crashing in...

ka-BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!

Entire side of the festival goes dead, and a pole-mounted transformer up the block goes off like a roman candle.

I stood there at FOH with a look of total shock on my face. Turns out that the company supplying inflatable kiddie rides had tied into the same power as the PA, and when we added some serious sub amp draw on top of their air pumps...well, you know the rest. The only ride I could see was one in terrible taste; it was a mockup of the stern section of the "Titanic", and kids could slide down it (the movie had just come out about a year before). When the power died, it slowly collapsed. Talk about surreal...

As a footnote, the PA company owner started screaming at me. Our drummer (well-known pothead) came up, ushered the guy backstage, and gave him one of the biggest fatties I've ever seen. I don't partake, but even I know when something is huge. The owner spent the rest of the night laying on his speaker covers backstage commenting on "the stars, man, the stars".

Power company got it back up about 45 minutes later, inflatable guys didn't turn back on, show rocked to a VERY drunken crowd. :D

-Mark
 
#156
invader3k said:
That's awesome.

BTW, I've heard multiple people in this thread mention "band houses" that venues keep. Is this common practice in a lot of areas?
Click to expand...

I've played several venues that have a "band house" It seems they are mostly in places that cater to traveling bands and are located in areas with a large tourist population, resorts ect. It's cheaper a lot of times just to have a crappy house, well small basic housing for the band to stay in, rather thansetting them up in a hotel. Some are actually a part of the club. I still play several places where the band house is above the club.

Andy
 
#157
basswave said:
Mesa Boogie B400 died at a gig in Boston.

I'll never forget it even it being a long time ago at this big Boston club no longer there called the Channel.
Click to expand...


I remember the Channel. Caught a lot of good acts there like Ron Wood, John Mayall with I think the remnants of Canned Heat backing him, Girls Night Out. That and Jonathan Swifts are the 2 clubs that I miss the most.
 
#158
I was putting this as it's own thread, but then I remembered about this one. Not so much a disaster as just an annoying pain in the ass. When there wasn't bitching or outages, it was a fun gig.

This past Saturday I played an outdoor gig with an old band I'm in. Good guys, not great musicians, but they're fun to play with and hang out with, plus they usually bring a herd of people with them wherever we play so we could trainwreck all day and the crowd would still go nuts. The place setting the whole thing up needed a sound guy, so I put them in contact with one of my drummers from another band since he does sound. They booked him to handle everything, and got the ball rolling (for reference, I'm gonna call him the sound guy the rest of this post).

Come day of the event, I notice that they're only setting up part of the light rig and not the whole thing. I figured they just hadn't gotten around to it but later as I was chatting with the sound guy he told me the coordinator of the event promised him 4 20 amp circuits, but only provided 2, so he was worried about overloading the system, and he had a large system.

The first band was bass (cab and run direct), drums (mic'd), electric (mic'd amp) and acoustic/vocals (direct) so they didn't seem to push the system that hard. My band is lead guitar (mic'd amp and a pod live), myself (direct amp, bass pod live, X2 wireless), rhythm (mic'd amp), drums (mic'd) and vocals/acoustic/some lead (direct on the acoustic, Podx3 for the electric no amp), so needless to say we needed some juice.

As we're setting up, I'm plugging everything in and I notice right away that there's not enough juice to keep the wireless up (and like an idiot I forgot it can run on 9 volts which I had in droves since my bass is active). No biggie, I'll just use the cable. We plug up, and as the drummer is sound checking I notice the display on my pedal dimming, great. As long as it stays on, that's fine. After I yell at the guitarists about noodling while the sound guy is trying to check everyone, we finally get all set and get ready to start. Only the monitors aren't working... After a few minutes of coaxing (we've played the songs soooo many times...), we finally get going.

Then the whining starts. The lead must've tapped me and pointed at his pod and the lights 5-6 times, and complained about the power constantly between the songs. I know the power sucks, you think my pedal isn't dimming? I have a 220 watt combo behind me, your amp is 70 watts, who do you think has a greater effect on the lights when they play? :scowl: They finally get the monitors up, only there's a bad cable so there's a crazy ground hum. It's not audible when we play, but of course when we're not both guitarists are complaining about the sound. Me: Just play through it.

Between the first and second sets they get all the sound issues sorted, no buzzing, but still crap power. More complaining, "everytime I hit a note my tone just gets sucked away." Who cares? Play through it, I can promise you the crowd doesn't care. "I can't hear myself, do we sound ok out there?" I have no idea, there's a sound guy out there for a reason, just play through it and trust he knows what he's doing. I mean hell, I played a gig with a different band a few weeks ago with no monitors the whole night so I couldn't hear vocals or keys, we managed and hearing the clips later, we managed pretty damn well.

Eventually near the end of the second set, I'm guessing because the guitarists kept turning up and drawing more power, my Pod started shutting off and back on. Did it twice quickly, then seemed stable, did it again so I just shut it off and plugged straight to the amp before the song ended. Same thing happened to the lead later on, he just kinda stared at it strumming randomly on his guitar. Also, I'm not sure if the battery in his guitar died, or if it was also related to power, but he started getting some hideous distorted racket when he was playing near the end of the night, so more complaining. Toss in some light failures and it was a fantastic pain in my ass.

I must've heard people say it, and read it here tons of times, you will ALWAYS have a problem on a gig, guaranteed. If you don't, play the lottery. After a few situations where I was helpless to fix a problem, I quickly learned to just play as if everything were perfect even if it's not. I told them that countless times between songs, and during breaks. "I played an entire gig with NO monitors, just play through the problems and don't worry about it." "The sound guy has no control over the issues with power, he was promised 4 outlets, got half that, there's nothing we can do."

My favorite quote came from the rhythm:
"I was worried we didn't sound good up there, but everyone in the crowd said we sounded great!"

No kidding? That's why there's a f@!#ing sound guy I trust out there. :spit:

Other than that, it was generally a fun gig. :)
 
#160
Way back in the late 70's when I was a bit of a bad boy I was dating 5 girls at the same time, and at one gig by some extreme quirk of fate to my horror discovered they were all there in the room at the same time! :eek:

Luckily the venue was quite full and they were all standing at different places around the room and I managed to get through the gig without raising any suspicion from any of them - I think?
 

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