Funniest thing that happened on a gig?

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 1:07 pm

When I first moved back to Ma. from Verrrrmont during the late 90's, I bumped into a guy I used to play with years earlier and I needed a gig, now he was a talented guitarist and singer, good with the crowd, etc, but was neglectful to put it mildly with his equipment. He would never bring extra strings for example and if he broke one he had a 5 string for the rest of the night, stuff like that, intonation? What's that?
But anyway he had an Ibanez Strat style guitar and the input jack was completely gone and if he didn't loop it it would fall out right in the middle of a song which was the source of endless merriment for the rest of the band of course, and he constantly forgot to loop it. I got a new drummer for him once and during the 2nd song in the middle of a very pretty quiet song it fell out. silence.... just bass and drums at that point, I turned and looked at the drummer who was trying to keep a straight face, I smiled and he let out and almost fell off his drums, I don't know how we finished the song. Another time he was playing behind his back and.. silence... and we would roar. It got so this was the high point of the night for me, the keyboard player and the drummer (4 piece band). One night I told him I'd bring it home and fix it for him, the drummer overheard me and later when we were alone said: "whatever you do, don't fix that guitar! hahah! I mean he would actually do this twice in some nights. His nick name was "The Legend"

dean712 · Post by **dean712** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:11 pm

Here's a couple...

One night a couple of years ago we were preparing to be play a show in the bar area of a bowling alley here in Springfield, IL. There was a charity bowling tournament out in the bowling lanes area underway. As I was silently (to us, anyway) tuning up my bass using a tuner, some guy came running in from the bowling lanes yelling for us to quit playing. Seems my wireless signal was being picked up by the DJ's unit and broadcast over the bowling lanes, unbeknownst to us!

The other story - we were playing the top level of a two-level club about 10 years ago. Really smoky, and the ceiling was low, too, over the stage. At the end of the first set, I took my 4003 off to put it in the stand, and as I did so, I put the headstock completely thru an overhead light can, raining glass on myself and putting the light out. Totally Spinal Tappish.

atomic_punk · Post by **atomic_punk** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 7:04 pm

We were playing in a little club, and at the time in the "glam" era, everyone was doing this move that Cinderella did, with Straplocks, of course, where you flung the guitar over your right shoulder and it swung back under your left arm and back into playing position. However, I was playing an Explorer, and didn't realize the height of our light rig was going to be a problem.

Needless to say, the maneuver was executed, the headstock hit the light rig and the neck snapped in half! I took off the Explorer and slammed it to the ground with a mighty explosion of noise. I then finished the set on my backup, looking at this wrecked guitar on the ground.

jwr2 · Post by **jwr2** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 7:14 pm

I did a Pete Townsend smash my bass routine at a gig back in the 70's ... I smashed a Beatle bass in the middle of playing a Grand Funk song ... "Into the Sun" I think ... I never smashed a Ric bass ...

roadrunners · Post by **roadrunners** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 3:18 am

We were working with this guy a while back who was going to be producing our Promo video for our website.....We had a big big show in fairmount park, and this guy asked if a friend of his could come and sing one song with the band (it was some sort of "life dream") "she sings just like janis joplin..." he said.....well....we dont usually like to do this sort of thing but we thought, alright, maybe he will knock a bit off the bill for us if we do it. So we did it.....and she was the most horrific singer ever. she didnt even know the words to the songs "He was just seventeen, and we know what I mean....." "we danced through the light and I really saw the light..." "Well my hearrrt swooned as we walked that room....".....and Ive got it all on video

oreca · Post by **oreca** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 3:27 am

Alex that video sounds like it would bring tears of laughter to my eyes.

You should put it up on the Internet, hehe.

roadrunners · Post by **roadrunners** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 6:29 am

yea, I might just do that someday lol

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 6:40 am

I saw Yes at the Long Beach (Ca.) Arena in early '74 (the Topographic Oceans tour)...during the "Roundabout" encore, three streakers, two male and one female, ran across the stage dodging players and props. One of the guys picked the wrong direction and tried to run behind Squire, who was standing up front at his mic...the guy ran right into and became tangled up in not one but two 25 ft. coiled signal cables...ahh, Rick-o-Sound...Squire, who didn't know exactly what was going on, started yanking his bass like he was trying to land a marlin...the guy wound up with a lot more stage time than he had planned on...I sure wish some roadie could come up with some 'stills' of that action...

dannyboy · Post by **dannyboy** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 4:54 pm

We were playing in a bar with some bikers in the back but I didn't realise who they were since it was dark, as usual in bars, except on stage. I was introducing the next few songs as 50's oldies and looking at one of the guys at the back table, told him that he should remember the songs well since he looked as old as them!!!
That's when I saw a 6foot7", 300lb,old son-of-a-gun (wearing a toupee) get up and come straight at me, furious!
I was stunned as he grabbed me by the throat about calling him an old guy! Luckily enough, the bouncer was not far behind and gladly helped me get rid of my big problem! Since that evening, I've never made another comment about somebody's age... but to my knowledge, he really was an old fart, a big huge one, mind you!!!

ozover50 · Post by **ozover50** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 4:59 pm

So they've installed Weldmesh at the front of the stage since then, Dan?

dannyboy · Post by **dannyboy** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 5:15 pm

No, they hired nude dancers instead!

ozover50 · Post by **ozover50** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 5:41 pm

Hope they're not wearing toupees! Or worse still - merkins!!

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 7:54 pm

I remembered another one from when I was 19. I was playing in some bar and we were doing a song (forgot what it was) where the whole band would stop and the drummer would hit the bell of the cymbal, ding, and we'd go back in. We stopped and he reached out to hit he cymbal and the stick fell out of his hand and in the stone silence it must have hit every drum on the way down to the floor, toms, snare, cymbals and floor tom and bounced off each one. We started laughing so hard we couldn't go on.
It happened tonight to a lesser degree that's why I remembered it, was pretty funny tonight also as it was at the end of a song and was noticeable.

aceonbass · Post by **aceonbass** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 7:57 am

Last Friday night my new band, Moneyshot, is making it's debut performance. The first two songs went off perfect and we got a pretty good reaction. That was all to change as we started the third song. Almost imediately my wireless cuts out. I look down at the trasmitter(the kind that clips on the strap)and see that the cable has fallen out(!?!)so I plugged it back in. A couple measures later it happens again I reach down and plug it in again. This goes on for the rest of the song until I finally reach into my gig bag and pull out a guitar cable, bypass the transmitter and plug it in just as the song is finishing. I'll have to hand it to my band mates for not stopping once and even incorporating this fiasco into the lyrics of a Sublime song but I felt like I was in a scene out of "This Is Spinal Tap". It turned out that since I had let my strap out recently to hang my bass a little lower, I hadn't moved the transmitter and the cable was now too short.

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:03 am

I was playing one night again in my early 20's close to closing time (2pm) in some fine establishment and a bunch of Hell's angels came in. They made the bartender set everyone up for free, groped every girl in sight and one of them asked if he could play drums. We said of course sir, sit right down here's your sticks, haha! He went bang, bang, bang, on the snare only, couldn't play anything at all, alternately going fast then slow, this went on for 20 minutes (felt like an hour) and we just kind of followed him. Finally they got sick of playing games with the place and left about an hour later. This was around 1973.