Originally Posted By: MarioD
Wouldn't you know it, the drummer never showed!


I had that happen once in a country band. It was the Friday night, the first of a 2 night stay in a place we had never been before. We started an hour late and played straight through because I had to sit down and quickly program a dozen or so drum patterns on a drum machine so we could play at all. Nightmare. 2 waltz tempos, a couple of shuffles, swings, straight 4/4 beats..... dialing in the tempo for songs where I never even thought about how many BPM the song was... I was picking up headphones between songs, starting a pattern and singing in my head to dial in the right BPM. The owner came over later and said that he was very impressed that we were able to pull that off. I went out the next day and bought a memory cartridge so I could back those patterns up just in case. We found another drummer during the day Saturday for that night but I backed that Roland 707 up and might even STILL have those patterns, and this was like 1985!! I still have that 707, too!! Man I have old gear. I still have the Ensoniq ESQ-1 that I bought in 1989.... AND play it every year at the reunion shows!