• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Murphy's Law strikes again!

MattyH

MattyH

Jul 20, 2010
1,314
349
Long Island
#1
So I'm cruising up I95 out of Long Island into Connecticut to play a wedding. I had just nailed a job interview, and I was feeling good! I didn't want to waste gas driving all over Long Island so I decided to head up to the wedding venue early, and wait for a few hours for the other guys to get there. I cross the Whitestone Bridge, and I feel a little bit of coasting from my car. Then a rumble. Tire blow out! This thing was destroyed you'd think I ran over a box full of running chain saws. Thank god for AAA. an hour and a half later I was back on the road with a new tire, and I replaced another tire that was also a little old. I wont have to worry about going to todays wedding, because I'm stocked up on 4 brand new tires.

I still beat the guys there, but I also carry half of the equipment in my Jeep (All of my gear, half of the PA, all the cables, karts, stands etc.). I knew I probably still had plenty of time but boy oh boy does your stress level shoot through the roof! I know there are threads on this already, but has anybody had any Murphy's law stories recently?
 
#2
Doesn't sound like Murphy's law to me where everything goes wrong that could go wrong. You just had an unfortunate breakdown. I bet you told your band about it but if you hadn't, they wouldn't have even noticed. I'm glad for you!

When something like that happens to me I always think back of a pretty serious issue we had at a gig. The guy who did the sound for us then said someting like: "This will be a great story someday". An awesome attitude.
 
#3
baskruit said:
Doesn't sound like Murphy's law to me... You just had an unfortunate breakdown.
Click to expand...
This. If it was a Murphy's Law story:

AAA wouldn't have answered the phone...
You would have tried taking the tire off yourself and cut your hand badly...
Gotten pissed and slammed your phone into the ground...
Tried hitching a ride and gotten kidnapped...
And on and on and on... :cool:
 
#4
Actually if it was a tragic type story, you'd have tried to change that yourself, and gotten hit. Happens all the time. One of the most terrifying moments of my life was changing a tire on the side next to the I, with semis roaring by at 75 less than 5 feet away. You find out if you've got a pair when that happens. I couldn't recommend finding out, too dangerous. So good thing you had AAA to help you out. If I had it to do over again, I would no way get out into that and do it myself, I had roadside assistance, I just didn't wanna wait, but you know, what's a little time compared to getting run over?

As a side note on that I can't tell you how grateful I was to be done with that job. I got back in the car and got ready to pull back out when I got a chance, and some dude in an SUV comes roaring up the shoulder of the road right at me. I'm like *** I finished doing that and now this clown is gonna get me. He got back over in time, have no idea if he was doing something nuts he thought was funny, if he was daydreaming, or what, but damn, was I glad to get out of there!
 
#6
I may get flammed for this but to a large extent "luck" is something you make for yourself.
Maybe you don't check your tires like a mechanic but you were smart enough to get an early start instead of waiting around, so you came out on top of a bad situation.

Congrats. Good move.
 
#7
I've played gigs where our drummer arrived literally minutes before we started playing. We played in Allentown, PA at a venue filled with a**hole security who had no respect for the musicians playing. They got aggressive with us when we told them we were waiting on our drummer, who was living a couple hours away at the time. Terrible experience, luckily he arrived in the nick(sp?) of time :D
 
#9
Here's something a little more Murphyish:

I have a sub gig at a little club about five miles from my house. I have to fly back from L.A. the day of the gig, but I have a 1:00PM flight that would get me home around 6:00pm - plenty of time to go home, load my gear, and go to the gig, right?

Wrong. The flight gets delayed two hours and I finally get to my car at the airport at 8:30pm (the gig starts at 9:00pm) - only to find I have a flat tire. Another 20 minutes to change the tire. Go home, load gear. and get to the gig just as the band finishes the first set (with the singer playing bass).
 
#10
busmandan said:
Here's something a little more Murphyish:

I have a sub gig at a little club about five miles from my house. I have to fly back from L.A. the day of the gig, but I have a 1:00PM flight that would get me home around 6:00pm - plenty of time to go home, load my gear, and go to the gig, right?

Wrong. The flight gets delayed two hours and I finally get to my car at the airport at 8:30pm (the gig starts at 9:00pm) - only to find I have a flat tire. Another 20 minutes to change the tire. Go home, load gear. and get to the gig just as the band finishes the first set (with the singer playing bass).
Click to expand...

Now that's more like a 'Murphy'. Man, I'd be soooo stressed out if that would happen to me. I'd probably be carpet f-bombing.
 
#11
We haven't been getting a load of bookings lately, but all bookings look for nights on which we're already booked. Sure - you couldn't argue that there are only so many Friday nights in a month - nonetheless it is a bit uncanny.

Similarly, 2 of the 3 of us were out of the country during the summer (very rare) and got 4 calls for gigs - daytime and evening - at a music festival in a town about 30 miles away. Last couple of years we were all present, no calls.
 
#12
LilloEsquilo said:
Actually if it was a tragic type story, you'd have tried to change that yourself, and gotten hit. Happens all the time. One of the most terrifying moments of my life was changing a tire on the side next to the I, with semis roaring by at 75 less than 5 feet away.
Click to expand...
THIS!!!!!!
I walk just about everywhere, and often alongside a major highway that runs through the middle of my town. Until you've reached out and touched the side of the trailer on the 18 wheeler, you don't know just how dangerous it is.
 
#13
I'll play. We had a gig about 2 hours north a few Saturdays back at a festival. I have a camper van so we were all going to pile in and head up Friday night for the opening bands, play Saturday and stay through til Sunday to catch the last acts. The battery died on the camper between Thursday morning and Friday morning (doing road checks, making sure everything was ready to go, and someone had turned on the refrigerator and left it running.)

Friday I ended up working a 12 or 13 hour day til 10PM, so I woke up bright and early Saturday morning to take the van off the charger and get it running. Got everything loaded into the van, disconnected the charger and went to start it up and it wouldn't turn over, the starter went bad over those two days.

There we were at 11AM Saturday with a two hour drive ahead of us, scheduled to start playing at 5:30PM, and an entire van's worth of equipment loaded into a camper van that won't start. We unloaded the van and carried our equipment up the hill to my car and the drummer's station wagon to caravan up, got ready to get on the road and I ran out of gas 2 blocks from the house. We got on the road around 1PM and made it by 3:30, played our set and then went to hang out, talk to people and mingle. Saturday night rolled around and there was an issue with the campground that we might have had to leave early, so I ended up not drinking much at all.

I went back to set up camp only to find out that my tent was still back in the van at home, along with the guitarist and his wife's tent. I slept in the passenger seat of the car and the guitarist and his wife laid a sleeping bag out on the ground to get some rest, until the skies opened up and it started pouring. She climbed into the back seat and went to sleep and he just sort of slept through it in a drunken haze.

Five AM rolled around and he started to sober up, realized he'd been sleeping, bundled up nice and cozy in his sleeping bag and pillow, in the middle of a torrential downpour. He woke up yelling, confused and still a little bit drunk so I sort of herded him into the car and just decided to make my way back home. Our drummer and his girlfriend were in their tent about 15 feet away and apparently heard all the commotion but just laughed it off.

To top things off, I had apparently been sleeping, shirtless in the driver's seat of my car, on a bee. I had about a dozen stings on my back, was soaked to the bone, my car was filthy, there was still a camper van broken down in front of the house, but we had a blast and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back