The big "The-show-must-go-on" thread

[zeegler]

I've not had any major catastrophes. My wireless took a shit onstage once, but I calmly unplugged it, and plugged in a cable instead.

I've never even had a string break onstage.

[Sjusovaren]

Okay, so my first time playing live. It was at my school, the annual pre-Christmas talentshow. I had gotten this idea of playing Joe Satriani song called Love Thing , ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqIRlas2s6A ) the live version which has an extra lead during the intro. And since I wanted to test myself a bit and was and dedicating it to a chick I liked, I decided to do it on my own to a MIDI backingtrack. The only rehearsal I got to do onstage was the night before, and I was about to start my second attempt when the fucking curtain went ablaze. :ROTF: So yeah, after they pulled the plug on the rehearsal that night, they told us to come back at 8 a clock in the morning after, about an hour before we were supposed to originally.

So yeah, big day. Did a decent rehearsal. Now I'm waiting to go on, I'm the second act and really nervous, to the point of feeling sick. Apparently, the band before me not only turned up the gain to max (I had a decent , no feedback tone before that) but somehow broke the amp, because it feedbacked like fuuuuuuuck.

So yeah, I come on stage, plug in my guitar and wah. Give the guy at the controlboard a "go" sign. So nervous I miss the countdown and come in a tad late for the clean chords. So, I wait those out and come in on the second set. I had asked a guy to switch the amp channel from clean to dirty on my signal, using the panel control. The second he does, I go "oooh fuck". The feedback was horrible and I just wanted to cringe. But yeah, I do the intro lead, and then turn on my wah for the mainsong.. And the volume died. :ROTF: So yeah, I stood for a second, then turned off the wah and continued. The feedback continued.... All the other acts that used that amp had feedback, but since I was the loudest audiosource by far, you can imagine how much more obvious compared to other acts.

At the end, I just walked off, didn't even take a bow.

Since I had the amp feedback on my mind, I fucked up the playing. Since I fucked up the playing, I kept my eyes pretty much fixated on the guitar neck, so it probably was a snoozefest watching me.

[DocNrock]

Some great (or not so great) stories above.

My only story is breaking the B string in the middle of a solo. Luckily, my backup was in tune, and the band kept playing while I quickly swapped out guitars. Came back just in time to finish the last run of the solo.

[Blazer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQUXzK0Rwk4

The great Stevie Ray Vaughan. His high E string snaps during the solo and without even missing a beat his crew hands him another guitar.

That's professionalism at work here.

[dirtyroadie]

This thread brings up too many painful memories. The last guy I worked for sweat profusely and would short out jacks,pots, pickups, you name it. His inclination at the first sign of trouble was to pull the guitar off and hurl it over his shoulder at the backline.
To combat the sweat problem, I pulled the pick-up selector wired the pickups to the volume pot, pulled the tone pot and replace the jacks. Then I put a Voodoo Lab Pedal Switcher on his board and was able to get him comfortable with that and pull the loops one at a time at the first sign of trouble to figure out the bad pedal. 9 times out of 10 it was the Line 6 DL-4.
The worst show was when the DL-4 went down (pre-Pedal Switcher), he hurled the guitar into the amp, hitting the off switch perfectly and snapping the headstock, all the while screaming and kicking his pedal board apart.

[Learn Guitars]

This one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLV5Qdyh8rM&feature=related

whoa. check out the vid at 3:00.

My God....I hope that guitarist lost his job after that performance...HEHEHEHE Hilarious. Thanks for sharing. I am going to feel so much better jamming tonight.

[jgcable]

When we toured with Twisted Sister one night a nightmare happened while the crowd was booing us and yelling Twisted Twisted Twisted and You Suck, You Suck, You Suck. I was the lead singer/guitarist in our 3pc power trio and I had my trusty 1968 Gibson SG around my neck. We were playing We Become One by Fastway when my guitar strap decided to pop off at the neck and the guitar fell straight down face first onto the stage splitting the headstock down the middle. Everybody was laughing and while I was backing up I banged into my bass player who proceeded to push me. Because we were all high on cocaine and speed (they called it Salsa back then), I pushed him back. He fell backwards into his bass stack and it fell over. So... there we were, my guitar was split down the middle and the bass stack fell over and was feeding back like crazy. We started fighting on stage and after a few shoves and punches I grabbed my other guitar, he cooled off and we finished the set. It was a real good time.

[SteveFireland]

First night with a new drummer... get right through the set no probs, right to the big harmonised guitar solo in the last song, and the drummer suddenly stops. Turns out the beater from his kick pedal had come off and he didn't have a drum key to put it back on - even though I'd told him loads of times to buy a pile of them and put them everywhere - pockets, taped to drums, on a lanyard round his neck, etc. His kit was constantly disintegrating at practice...

So anyways, he says he can go and grab one and he'll be right back and we'll do the song over, so against my better judegment, our singer starts telling the audience duff jokes while we wait, but after a few minutes of us standing on stage looking retarded, we decide to call it a day and just walk off stage.

We found the drummer just sitting have a beer with his wife, at the back of the hall. Couldn't find a key so just went and got himself a drink at the bar and sat down - and watched us standing on the stage waiting for him.

He got fired, and seemed genuinely surprised about it. That wasn't even his only crime, either....

Steve.

[markD]

on feb 13, of this month, my band played a show opening for the smithereens. we were 3 songs in and i am rocking balls.....suddenly, my sound vanishes!!!! i am playing, but NOTHING is coming out. i turn around and walk to my amps - they are all on, the rack is on, and the power conditioner shows adequate power....

as i am walking back toward the front of the stage (still playing), i notice my cord is unplugged from my pedals. my singer had it wrapped around the heel of her boot. i plugged it real quick, and made it time to play my lead!!!! another second or two and it would have thrown off everything!!!!

the show went on and was a killer!!!!

[jgcable]

on feb 13, of this month, my band played a show opening for the smithereens. we were 3 songs in and i am rocking balls.....suddenly, my sound vanishes!!!! i am playing, but NOTHING is coming out. i turn around and walk to my amps - they are all on, the rack is on, and the power conditioner shows adequate power....

as i am walking back toward the front of the stage (still playing), i notice my cord is unplugged from my pedals. my singer had it wrapped around the heel of her boot. i plugged it real quick, and made it time to play my lead!!!! another second or two and it would have thrown off everything!!!!

the show went on and was a killer!!!!

C'mon Mark... you can do better than that!! A cord came out and you plugged it back in? Jeez.. you must live a charmed live show life!!!

[Dred]

Oh, I know one... Kirk Hammet left his Wah in the bus...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFJOYjnQu3Y

So instead of a Wah solo-thingy, he did an UBER stylish guitar mastery, fret wanker thinga-mah-jizzz

Poor attempt, I know, but man does kirk need to learn a few good licks.

[markD]

C'mon Mark... you can do better than that!! A cord came out and you plugged it back in? Jeez.. you must live a charmed live show life!!!

hmmmm, okay, the week before we headlined a show and my drop D guitar was buzzing real bad when i plugged it in, so i had to retune my soloist to drop D while the bass player and drummer improvised a jam...

i had to take the tremolo bar and lay it under the bridge to keep it from collapsing and then i loosened the lock nuts and retuned the guitar to drop D. it was VERY nerve-wracking...but i KNEW i could do it.

figures it was the show my drop D back-up wasn't packed!!!

but, other than these two instances, i do live a pretty charmed gig life....

[guitarsjb]

My God....I hope that guitarist lost his job after that performance...HEHEHEHE Hilarious. Thanks for sharing. I am going to feel so much better jamming tonight.

Makes me look pretty good too:ROTF:

[Blazer]

My own worst ever gig happened when I was still applying basslines with my in the prog metal band " Format Brain" which featured a guy who's with me in my current band Slavantas: Jack T Ripper.

Format Brain had a gig at a local pop festival and we were third on the list, prior to us there was a blues Trio called "The fat belly bluesband" and that guitarplayer took after Stevie Ray Vaughan a little too much, as he slammed his Stratocaster into the floor holding it by the whammy bar doing so.

Anyway, their performance ended and we were up next, I pushed my Stack up on the stage plugged it into the board and Plugged in my Rick to try the sound, it was okay, good, loud and well audible over the entire stage. I gave the sound man the "Don't change it" signal while walking around the stage making sure that everybody in the band could be heard over the monitors.

That moron behind the board then suddenly shuts off my bass, I grab a live mic and ask him what's going on, he goes: "Dude It's feedbacking all over the place." I walk over and see him fondling the shutter of the BassDRUM to prove his point. I go "Get out of here, the sound was perfect, don't meddle with it!"

He's still going "No it's not man, here listen for yourself." and he puts the bassdrum channel fully open resulting into holwling feedback. Our drummer comes from behind his kit complaining about how his bassdrum is feedbacking and that he cannot hear the rest of the band.

Anyway, he reluctantly gives us what we want (note to all soundmen: KNOW YOUR PLACE!) and we begin but after only two songs our singer goes up to him complaining that he cannot hear himself. "Nonsense." Comes the reply "The mics are open and are clearly heard through the monitor."

And what we feared what would happen happened, our singer loses his voice leaving me and our guitarist to do the vocals for the rest of the gig, finally at the final two songs, members of the band scheduled to play after us seize the guy and adjust the sound the way it should have been.

And to add insult to injury, both our band and the nice guys who saved us from falling flat on our faces got banned from the festival because we misbehaved so much.

[ManInTheBox6]

Thanks for all your post, I enjoined read all of them. I have some to post to but don't want to post until I have the video to share. Can someone tell me the best way to get VHS video to my computer?