PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic "OMG!" Gig Moments

Present and past performers; what "Oh My Gosh" moments have you seen, or been part of, during a performance? Maybe it was the location, or crowd reaction or something totally unexpected. Whatever, share it with everyone. You're among friends, right?

Here's two events I remember from my days as a drummer.

I'm the drummer with a country band playing for Marine Corp basic military drill instructors at the Parris Island NCO (non commissioned officer) club. A guitar amplifier tube starts going bad and the amplifier starts replacing the guitar sound with a Spanish language radio station. Here's a bunch of tough marines preparing recruits to "fight communism" in Vietnam hearing "in my mind at least" Fidel Castro cussing out the good ol' USA. Needless to say, the band took a quick break, remained on stage throughout the break and replaced all the tubes in the amplifier.

Another time I'm playing at a beach pavilion. Someone walks across the rear of the stage to tell me something and trips over the cord supplying AC power to ALL the band equipment. Everyone in the band is going through the motions but the only thing the audience can hear is ... the drums. Does the person realize the mistake and plug the cable back in? No.

Anybody else got a story to tell?

I have an eerily similar recollection of a gig event at a beach pavilion. The difference being I recall the "tripper" did not feel he he had time to plug the cable back in before running for his life. ;=)

"For your love, for your love, for your Lo...(Silence )..........CHARLIE!!!!"

You guys should stay away from beach pavilions!

Plenty.

One night, back in the 1960s we were gigging at the "Parkway Tropics A-go-go" in Grand Rapids Michigan.

In the middle of the night Eric Burdon and the then drummer for the Animals walked in, and Eric asks to sit in. He sat in for the rest of the night. After the gig we went to the Black club (forget the name) and sat in until that closed down, and one of the guys there turned us on to a 'bottle club' that was open almost till dawn. So we went there, found out it was a gay bar, sat in with that band until it closed down, and drove home to the rising sun.

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I've been a pro musician all my life, and there are literally hundreds more, I may come back and add a couple, but right now I have to limit my Internet time because I have a new song to learn today.

Notes

I was playing bass in a dance band called the (name omitted to protect the innocent). One night after an especially long gig, we were playing the "home waltz". For some reason, the drummer kept getting slower and slower. We all turned around to see him sound asleep (still playing).

He tipped backwards off his stool on the stage. Luckily there was a heavy drape there that caught him before he fell, and of course woke him with a startled look on his face and the rest of us laughing our heads off.

30 years ago ? ( ish ) New years eve gig, was on stage all ready to perform. Moved my chair back a bit too far and ended up like a stranded whale. Picture the scene, yours truely, accordion strapped on chair toppled against ( fortunately ) very heavy curtains. They saved me from going through the damned window. Sad thing is I hadn't even had a drink then.

ALMOST the same as my own story LOL LOL LOL

We had a similar incident to yours, Jim, except our valve amp was picking up the taxi cab two way radios.

One we played a couple of years ago in South Carolina. “Grand Opening” for a recycling company. Mountains of stone, gravel, dirt and metal everywhere. The event planner who hired us had an elaborate tent set up with wines and cheeses, servers in uniform, the whole nouveau riche pretense. Kinda funny in what was basically a dump. (We've played a lot of dumps, but this was a real one)


Problem was that the tent had been pitched on top of what was probably an old manure pile; manure odor and the attendant flies. 90 degree summer heat. Flies everywhere. Lovely.


Fortunately, we had our trusty Stanley floor fans, which move a lot of air. They kept the flies off of us while we played. Ended up only having to play 1 ½ sets, got paid (very well), went home laughing.

This is a glamorous business all right.

'We've played a lot of dumps, but this was a real one.'

Bust a gut:) Omg. Still laughing.

Was just talking about this with friends last Sat:) Religious millennial service, at the downtown civic center, don't know how many people, hundreds I guess, 'professional sound crew', fairly big deal. I'm in the choir and have a solo on our second number, a gospel.

First of all, as we enter to sing our first song, the center is dark, completely. Lights don't come on until after that song. They forgot to mention that at rehearsal. Guitar players were freaking out trying to plug in and get their amps powered on in the dark.

So, second tune, lights are on, solo time. I belt it out, after which the 'professional' sound guy runs over and turns the mics on. 'Sorry,' he whispered.

The biggest venue I ever sang in was the Pontiac Silverdome - where the Detroit Lions used to play. We had a connection to the promotions director for the Detroit Pistons, who used to play at the Silverdome, where they basically curtained off a corner of the football field, brought in some temporary seating (nice and cushioned, unlike the rest of the seats) and laid down the floor there. Pistons played there at least 10 years. Here's what it looked like: http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/multimedia/photo_gallery/0901/history.jan29/images/detroit-pistons.jpg

Anyhow, we had a halftime song and post-game concert. In the image above, you can see the curtain as the large black squares in the left side of the image. We set up behind that.

We brought our own gear which was sized for church sanctuaries that held maybe a max of 300 people, and here we were in a stadium that seats 80,000. Let's just say we were underpowered. Our mains consisted of two sets of Bose 80x speakers, one set with the wood cases and another with the injection molded cases. Good ol Peavey amps - can't remember the models.

To get the sound off of the floor and up perhaps 10 rows so scaffolding had been erected and folks from the Silverdome placed those 801/802 (not sure about the model numbers) on top of the scaffolding resting on the pole mounts, so the speakers angled up a little farther.

We were kids in high school. We are on the floor of the Silverdome where the Lions played. Do you think someone brought a football to that gig? Of course.

Someone goes long, catches a pass, and bumps into the scaffolding.

Now, the 801 is way front heavy because of it being loaded with 8 very heavy 4" diameter speakers on it's face - kind of a small line array in a box. http://www.musicmagic.biz/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Bose-801-after.jpg

It starts rocking - nobody sees this of course. A few seconds later, it plummets to the stadium floor and explodes into about a million pieces. This was the injection molded case version. I can tell you that the magnets in the speakers remained intact and we had 8 really strong magnets to mess around with after that.

Why the stadium guys didn't strap those down, I'll never know. But someone could have easily gotten killed by that. Those 801s weighed probably 40-50lb each.

We never sang there again. Promotions guy went on to be the TV production guy for the Pistons at the Palace, a purpose built arena with a killer built-in drop from the ceiling stage. We never sang there either (the choir is STILL going after all these years).

"So, second tune, lights are on, solo time. I belt it out, after which the 'professional' sound guy runs over and turns the mics on. 'Sorry,' he whispered."


Now that's funny.


I can remember seeing summer stock plays in huge tents before amplification. Those stage actors could really project! You could hear every word, even back in the cheap seats. (Our seats were really cheap - we snuck under the tent)

Many stories, but one of my favorites was in Michigan, but nowhere near "that school up north". I was at a Holiday Inn and we just set up grabbing power from wherever we could. I plugged my keyboards into an outlet just off stage right and set everything up. Now sound check was like at 4pm and the place was not busy at all to the point where there were 2 customers in there, both drinking bottled beer. We got everything set up and headed out for dinner and to relax before the 9pm start time.

So comes gig time, we head downstairs. The first song called for me to play sax. The second song started a short medley of the old Motown greatest hits. Playing along on my ESQ-1 on an organ sound. Suddenly I am playing flute. I dug back to the organ patch, internal bank one, sound 3. Played another 45 seconds, suddenly I am playing brass. This went on for about 5 songs. Then between songs, the room was fairly quiet as we talked some smack to the crowd, and I noticed that my board changed again, this time as I was watching the display. I also heard a sound like an electric relay from the bar area exactly at the same time.

I figured out that my keyboards were plugged in on the same circuit as the ice maker. Every time the compressor on the ice machine kicked in it caused a very brief voltage dropout, which my keyboard for some reason was seeing as me pressing a button to change sounds. I relocated my rig to another outlet on another circuit and everything was fine after that. I would have had another clue from the sampler (EPS 16+), but the sample disc in the sampler had only the horn section sound on it. The voltage drop WAS rebooting my sampler but the same sound loaded back in every time so I never noticed.

Well OK, as a brass band (UK type) player, the band was out on the street heading some sort of religious parade, big guy right by my side with the bass drum strapped in front of him beating time while we played the usual cheesy brass band march tunes, I say cheesy 'cos they are easy, meant and written, to be played on the march with not many rehearsals required.
I am playing second cornet with not much more to play than repetitive off beat notes as part of the background, easy peasy stuff so I can to some extent look round while playing, when I noticed this hole in the tarmac, too late to do anything though as big guy with drum put one foot in the hole, over he went, rolled right over the drum poor guy. The whole parade had to stop while he got back on his feet and checked the drum was still OK. He had plenty of hair and I reckon it was only his hair stopped an injury as his head hit the ground after rolling over the drum.

That's a really funny mental picture.

When I first started in marching band as a 5th grader, I had a high school senior on bass drum directly in back of me. Needless to say, I made the right moves, or else!

It was in the winter of 1962-63. A big-time Milwaukee promoter had booked Brian Hyland (Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, Sealed With a Kiss, Gypsy Woman) to play a gig at the Y.W.C.A. in Rockford, Illinois.

The same promoter was handling my band, the Tremolos (no, not the English Tremoloes with Brian Poole). Since Hyland needed a backup band for the gig, we got the call – which came several months in advance of the gig.

We went out and purchased all three of his albums released up until that time, and spent the next 10 or 12 of our weekly rehearsals learning every tune on those albums, anticipating that those songs would form the meat and potatoes of his show.

When the big night came, he arrived shortly after we did (we’d never met or even spoken to him before), and he handed us a song list. Not a single one of his own songs was on the list… just a variety of recent pop tunes by other performers (mostly Elvis’ material). The band knew all the stuff, and everyone got through the night sounding as though we’d rehearsed with him for months. But it was a tremendous waste of time and effort on our part.

Moral of the story: Had we made the effort to obtain his song list when we first got the call, we could have avoided a lot of needless work. Or, put simply, “What we have here is a failure to communicate”.

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On another occasion in the winter of 1965-66, I was playing with a different jazz quartet at Sardino’s Surf Lounge (go figure) in Milwaukee. The sub-zero temperature and high winds created grim conditions that forced most folks to stay hunkered down indoors. But, as musicians, we had to be there.

We were playing to an almost-empty house that night (maybe six couples who lacked the common sense to stay home). Sometime during the second set, the bartender came up to the bandstand and whispered “We’re dyin’ in here – we gotta pick this crowd up! Why don’t you hold a dance contest, and I’ll give a bottle of Jack to the winners!”

Well, we made the announcement and every couple immediately got up from their tables and headed for the dance floor. Just about that time, we broke into the intro of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’. Two of the couples were hip to what was about to happen, and instantly returned to their tables (musicians, perhaps?)

The remaining unsuspecting couples came onto the dance floor and began to dance – or at least attempted. About a minute into the song, two of the couples sensed that something wasn’t quite right (they weren’t sure exactly what), and returned to their tables. The two surviving couples – oblivious to their situation – continued dancing through the tune, and the winning couple was declared… not as a testament to their fine dancing, but rather as a tribute to their perseverance when confronted by a problem that has no solution – and they didn’t even know it.

Jon

Great story - Take Five - smart alecks! BTW, where are you in CO?

I've told this before but...

We were a 5-piece (Two Hunkavars (Squeeze Boxes); Lead Guitar; Rhythm Guitar; and Drums) Standards Band and we had a New Years Eve gig at a nice venue, a very popular lounge in Virginia, Minnesota.

We were booked to play from 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM to usher in the new year, but by 11:00 PM the crowd was already well-oiled and trying to pour drinks down the band's members throats and, in the process, all over our instruments.

We had already been paid so we announced a short break, packed up our gear, stuffed the jukebox, and made a hasty exit.