Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

What's the worst that's happened to you?
I've played a show with a really bad cold, where I was swilling cough syrup out of the bottle between songs. I don't remember the last half of the set, but people kept telling me how good we were.
I also played a show about a week after breaking my right hand. I taped a pick to my thumb & used the 'whole arm' strumming technique. Solos were a little off that night, though. another show, our singer cut her head open on an overhead pipe backstage & went to the hospital for stitches. I sang lead (despite not knowing most of the lyrics) and we took down everybody's name and gave them free admission to our next gig!

Played an outdoor charity gig in a restaurant parking lot with pallet based stage. Covered with a tarp flown from a tree and the second story of the restaurant. A week before the gig I broke my ankle and had to play sitting on a bar stool with a polymer "space boot" cast. During the second set, we had a thunderstorm hit that was so violent it shut down the airport. We dropped the tarp out of the tree, shut the outdoor breakers and hung on tight around all the gear. Fortunately nothing got wet.

As soon as the weather broke, we packed and ran, or in my case hobbled quickly. Charity is one thing, but...

...Dean

Before a job I was bike riding on the Pennypack bike trail. I was going about 30MPH, (down a large hill), when I went down on my side and then skidded 20 feet until I stopped.

I then had to ride about 10 miles, to get to a hospital.

With broken ribs and major road rash, the sound man picked me up from the ER and drove me to the job. FUN FUN FUN.

I had a van full of gear and was involved in a 10 vehicle pile up in some nasty weather. Thankfully the tow truck was able to swing the van by the hall we were playing before heading to the body shop. Good times...

Right before we started this gig at a local dive my guts started rumbling. You have to see this place to believe it. When you go to the men's room you see things moving around in the urinal. You can smell this place from five miles away. I would normally go outside to pee instead of using that men's room. So...my guts are rumbling up a storm and I'm feeling the urge. I grab a bunch of napkins and proceed to the dark parking lot where there are no cars and let it fly all over. I repeated this about five or six times during the night. After we got packed up and the end I turned the cars lights on from across the road and all you could see was hundreds of poo stained napkins all over the parking lot!

EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

Too funny..... Great stories.

Chris, that reminds me of another. We played this little tiny basement club called The Slither Club early in our career. A seven piece band with horns playing through a 4 channel PA. Partway through our set, the toilets overflowed and we watched as the water & sewage slowly crept towards the 'stage', which was just a roped off area at the front. We kept playing, the smell kept getting worse and our fans kept dancing. Luckily the flood stopped a couple of feet short of the stage. After that, the club was referred to as the Sewer Club by the band. Our previous show at the club had the toilets back up, but only the bathrooms were flooded. We never played there again.

I once played a gig after putting a big kitchen knife right thru the palm of my left hand trying to pry apart some frozen hamburgers during the day. It almost came out the other side. I showed up at the gig with a big white bandage around my hand and fresh stitches in it, but played the show anyway.

I had the misfortune of getting punched fairly and squarely in the face by a drunk punter as I crossed the dancefloor to the stage, right before our opening number.

I played the first set with my face swelling up and blood spattering here and there. The local police station was just up the road from the gig, so between sets I was giving the cops my statement and pressing assault charges. The venue's security guards were 'taking care' of the punter out in the car park.

But, the show must go on and I'm proud that I was able to play on despite the evening's unpleasantness.

holy **** Chris

I once had to play the day after nearly slicing off a large chunk of my right index finger. I had to play the whole show with a pick & the stitches kept getting caught in the strings of my 4001. I had to change the strings immediately afterward due to the blood all over them & had to get the finger re-stiched.

Wow, nothing so serious here. I had returned from a trip to China and Vietnam in the morning, and we had a gig that night.
I don't remember much of it, except my bandmates said I did an exceptional job of singing!
On the plus side, once, in the middle of a gig, a police officer walked up to us, returning our guitarists' genuine "No-Caster" that had been stolen a few days earlier. The cop got a standing ovation!

Chris...I can relate, although defecation played a role in my story for but a brief moment...but that moment held great significance for the remainder of the evening. I'll explain:

It was New Year's Eve, 1992, in McMurdo...and, as I had eight New Year's Eves before, I found myself (after chow and a little precursor mind adjustments) heading down the hill to the Gym next to the helicopter hangar at the edge of town. It was the only building safe for the 'big' annual parties, being a featureless metal quonset hut enclosing a basketball court. Easily hosed down the next day, among it's other superlative features...so, I'm hanging out in the wind with Murphy, the bass player, smoking last cigarettes before taking the stage, when my taxpayer-subsidized Navy chow kicks in. There are no facilities at the Gym, save for a 55 gallon 'u' barrel with step-up platform, funnel and modesty curtain, so I tell Murphy I gotta go up the hill, like now, and I'll be right back. He knew just what I was going through. I made it up to the nearest building with a 'head', the ancient warren of goofy portable buildings stuck together to make up the Biolab, and I got into their little one-person crapper just inside the weather vestibule. I'd spare you the details, but there are none...everything went 'without a hitch', like they say in the space program...except, immediately following a successful evacuation procedure, I was siezed by an intense headache, like what I imagine people are describing when they use the term 'migraine'...it was brutal. I made it back to the gym, and the band was onstage tuning. I climbed up onto the stage and sat behind the drums, and it just kept getting worse. Halfway through the first set, I told Murphy I was dyin', and could he see if anybody had some aspirin. Someone ran and got some, and I took it at the first break...we played for four hours, and it wouldn't go away, like an ice pick through my skull. I can't believe I lived through Zep's 'Rock-n-Roll'...

The gig in question, documented by official U. S. Navy photography:



Ahh...the things we do for "the love o' th' game"...