AlanRatcliffe
...and the topic for the day is "Embarrassing Stage Moments", If you've gigged, you've got 'em. ...'fess up now.
I'll start off easy by telling the tale of a bassist I had the pleasure to know in my early gig years. Quite a character. He was a real rocker and hated that we had to play "Top 20" covers to get gigs (mid '80s JHB), so he would be manic on stage to try and keep himself interested. One time he started doing a Chuck Berry duckwalk across the stage and some young nubiles at the front screamed in appreciation. Ever one for the young ladies, he turned his head to give them an "Yes, it's true -I'm sexy" grin... and duckwalked off the end of the stage!
Same guy, different gig. He'd had an all night drinking session the night before and hadn't slept. While playing Berlin's Take my Breath Away (which is a slow number with a long, drawn out fretless bass part that he truly hated playing), the bass dropped out in the middle of a verse. I look over and see he is fast asleep on his feet and am just in time to see him slowly topple face forwards on top of his bass, only waking up when it was too late to stop falling. Impressive noises from the bass amp, BTW.
OK. I'll let someone else take the mic now...
Spyke
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! ?
Coffee -> Nose -> Keyboard
oh geez... tears.
AlanRatcliffe
Thank you. I'm here all week...
On a more personal note:
During the end of the '80s the nice gentlemen of the SA Defense department invited me to one of their resorts in Kimberly for two years of macho-oriented rest, relaxation and male bonding at the taxpayer's expense (actually, they had a somewhat different idea about all this, but we won't go there).
Having come back from my first leave with guitar in tow, I discovered that there were half a dozen other guys who had done the same. We also found that one of the officers had a room FULL of amps, PA, speakers and keyboards (Rhodes, Farfisa, Hammond), so we did what all musicians do in similar situations, and formed a Rockin' ComboTM.
Now, as you might imagine, gigs were rather scarce in the somewhat... er... confined situation we were in, but somehow, someone managed to persuade the beer garden that a band would be just the ticket to get the party started of an evening and get the beer sales up (this was no mean feat if you consider the punters weren't allowed to buy more than two a night). This same person, in his position of "Band Manager" arranged the deal that all young band's managers seem to think is an excellent one - no money, free beer.
The evening started well, the band of disparate individuals somehow gelled. The bassist (a mean Jazz guitarist - now a judge in Franschoek) was raging (I specifically remember him absolutely nailing the walking bassline for Crazy Little Thing Called Love), the vocalist did a version of Let it be Me that literally made the hair on my arms stand up. I managed to fake being able to play by closely scrutinizing the other guitarist and trying to follow what he was doing.
Unfortunately, I took it on myself to ensure that the band took it's money's worth for all this "hard work" we were doing, visiting the bar between every single song to take payment on behalf of the rest of the band. Never much of a drinker, this soon started taking it's toll and by the middle of the first set I was - as my mother would say - "pie eyed and knock-kneed". I staggered from the stage to the toilets and proceeded to donate the band's "added value" to the porcelain receptacle of legend. Then I passed out in a stall.
I woke up at 2 AM. Now, this wouldn't be a problem in most clubs or pubs ...but our pub closed at 9PM and I was locked in. Furthermore, the barracks I had to be in were locked. Now... if you were found roaming the camp at night you could count on at least being arrested or possibly even shot by a guard all fired-up with tales of "die rooi gevaar", but on the other hand, if you weren't in the barracks at roll call you could count on being arrested and charged with being AWOL (absent without leave). Somehow in my state I figured the latter was the worst option (one doesn't like to disappoint one's corporal by not being at roll call, trust me).
To this day, I don't know how I did it. I can't remember anything about it - but I managed to break out of the pub, elude the guards, break into the barracks and get into bed in time to be up at 4AM to prepare for inspection. Something that makes this more of an accomplishment is that I took my guitar with me instead of leaving it there and collecting it the next day. Not only that, but it had a home-made rectangular wooden guitar case which was bright white (PVA paint) and had psychedelic paintings all over it in fluorescent paint (all the rage at the time) - basically not quite the best camouflage for skulking around at night while guys with searchlights and guns are busy keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.
The embarrassing part was, when my bandmates asked me where I'd disappeared to the night before, I couldn't say: "You know that blonde at the front of the stage last night? Well...". Actually, come to think of it, I suppose I could have, but that would have gotten me a speedy transfer to the catering corps (where all the beds were pushed together to form doubles ?).
FatBoy
HAHAHA! Excellent stories man!
I haven't really gigged myself yet, but I remember one night I was in a pub where this oke was playing, he played real well but his vocals were kinda kak (well in my drunken view anyway). Anywhoo, I was a local at the pub and I knew my fellow local drunks weren't really feeling the vibe, so I decided "screw this" and jumped on stage, took the mic and said in my loudest boer-like afrikaans big mofo voice, "JY speel, EK sing" and he somehow agreed. We had a whole lot of fun and people started dancing, He was mostly doing covers so I knew most of the words, or I just sang the same verse twice! What a night
Riaan
Great story Alan! Our young and wild days... I also never really played a gig, except for a year ago when three of us at work did a comedy song at a work function. None of us had ever played live before, none could play very good - I still had blisters on my fingers from not playing much and suddenly practicing like mad days before the time. We were under the impression that there would be about 20 people only. We did not see the audience before we went on stage (we were part of a programme which included a choir and some really good classical musicians). Upon taking the stage, we realised that there were at least 300 people there! Instant terror... Our lead singer, whose idea the whole thing was muttered "sorry dat ek julle boys in hierdie kak laat beland het"...I suspect that a mike may have picked that up while we looked like animals caught in a hunters spotlight!
We started our song, and a few bars in our lead singer's mouth became audibly dry...it could be heard the way he was licking his lips, etc... and then the lyrics fizzled out. Fortunately, we kept going and our singer muttered "let's start again". Fortunately, things went well from there, and the lyrics he'd written were really very funny in the context of our work and the audience went mad afterwards.
But the lesson there was clear...practice long and hard before doing a live song!
Mr-M
I used to play in a church youth band about 5 years back. We played at another youth group one Friday night on the last Friday of the school year before everyone goes away on holiday, so it was pretty packed - around 300 teens. Near the end of our set, because the crowd was so excited - jumping, dancing, shouting etc. - I started getting a bit too excited myself. In my jumping up and down while playing I managed to cut my index and middle finger open on the strings (hey - I was really going for it!). I only realised that fact just before the last song and by then my guitar was covered in blood splatters and my hand was red up to my wrist! To make it worse, blood was still gushing from my fingers at quite a rate. I was upset 'cos it was my first gig with my new guitar, so I knew I had to stop it from landing on my guitar or my clothes. During the last song I kept lifting my picking hand high ever few chords (like in School of Rock where Jack Black tells the kid to lift his pick high like a goblet of rock!) and shaking it vigorously to get rid of some of the blood as it was running! That got the crowd even more excited because they though I was being a bit of a rockstar. For a church it was wild! Afterwards I had a few upset crowd members on my hands - some at the front got splattered with blood, so they were obviously not too happy about that and some of the guys from the back thought I was throwing them a zap (this was a church after all)! Thankfully after some apologies they saw the humour when I showed them my hand and the blood splatter marks on the guitar (explain that one CSI). I managed to clean the guitar up nicely before it all dried, but the pickups still bear some scars (never told the new owner ?). It's still a running joke with my old band mates!
Riaan
@ Mr M
Wow...that is wild for a church show! At least the blood was not from biting a bat's head off...
Garth-S
Great stories guys ?
I once played for a band called Malachi, and I was the youngest in the band by 20 odd years. Our band leader was 60 at the time, and played drums and sang. Anyway we played this gig in Ashburton in December '06 called JJS. Basically it's a christian music festival thats happens every year. We were big into the 80's rock and blues vibe, and in the one song our keyboard player had nothing to do, so he decided to hit a cowbell while dancing around the stage. You can picture the scene, a middle aged, not so fit man with a rockstar black wig and cap, dancing around the stage hitting a cowbell. Anyway we signalled each other from across the stage and both made our way to the centre as it was almost leadbreak time, and while he was caught up in his dancing he dropped the cowbell... I almost pack up laughing on stage and had to turn away. The worst part is they were filming the whole thing to make dvds... :-[
Mr-M
@ Riaan - It was wild! I've thought about doing the bat thing in church, but somehow I don't think it will go down too well. Just a feeling I have... ?
But yeah, love the stories guys and keep 'em coming!
@ Alan - your great escape from the pub is an epic tale worthy of a blockbuster movie! Maybe you should think about selling the film rights to it!
ConradP
I was doing an acoustic instrumental gig at the Blue Crane in Pta and it was my turn to solo. I was sitting on a barstool. So I get into it and lose a bit of touch with reality whilst slowly and gracefully topling forward thus removing myself from the stool and almost the stage.
No, no, no I don't even drink or do drugs. I did this all on my own ?.
Conrad
arjunmenon
Lmao ? Great posts guys. I've had two incidents one scary and the other not so funny.
The first one was a gig at a varsity festival back in India and this was back in 99 and i was playing and absolute POS (piece of S$%t) guitar and i realised that there was nothing coming out of the monitor. To make a long story short, i fished out my swiss knife keychain and opened the guitar right on stage and pulled a piece of tape of power supply connection to the effect processor and got it sorted...unfortunately, it was probably during one the trickiest songs (at that time) this happened...alcatrazz's god bless video.. ?
The second was at a friend's wedding when i proceeded to get drunk and fell off the back of the stage taking the guitar (an 80's ibanez RG he got from his older brother) and a beautiful marshall stack.. in the middle whitesnake's "fool for your loving"...
I tell u vai is bad luck for me ?
Curmic
Legendary and entertaining stories. Thnks for sharing.
AlanRatcliffe
These are great!
@Mr. M - Love the bleeding one. Good name for a band - Bloodfinger.
@Arjun - LOL. Someone's telling you something...
As for the guys who fall down on stage - the question is: did you keep on playing? In Zappa's Does Humour belong in Music? DVD, the bassist jumps over a monitor, lands badly and falls on his backside, hurting himself - he's obviously in pain, but he doesn't miss a note. Kudos to anyone who can do that.
I remembered two more:
I used to play a trick on the vocalist for the last band I was in (drumming). He was a big believer in how he presented himself to an audience (and a very big guy - about 150KG) and loved for everyone to take him as a serious "artiste". Now I was the new guy in the band, replacing a boring but reliable sequencer and the setlist was all these grunge songs that were new to an old rocker like me. So what I would do is: after he announced a song that started with drums, I'd call him over and say "How does that one start again?", pretending to panic. He'd get all flustered and start trying to show me how it started by singing the intro drum fill and miming his (bad) interpretation of how I played it, while the band and audience cracked up behind him. That must have worked at least a dozen times before he stopped taking the bait.
Many moons ago, when trousers and T-Shirts were tight, "man makeup" was fashionable and Cher was ...well, Cher was pretty much the same as she's been since the mid-60's, I used curly cables, thinking they were "just bitchin'". One night, running around the stage with a Strat, trying to put on an impressive show for the dainties in the audience (as we guitarists are ever wont to do), I did one of those solos that build up to a climax (you know the type where you screw your face up near the end to show how awesomely difficult this all is) and had just got my face into the required orgasmic rictus for the big finale ...when the stretched curly cable reached critical tension, pulled out of the socket, shot across the stage past the bassist (who almost broke his neck from whipping his head around to watch it go by) and hit my amp, making the spring reverb crash. Crowd thought this was great, but I've never used a curly cable since.
NorioDS
Alan I just love your stories! Delivery is particularly spectacular ?
AlanRatcliffe
Thanks Norio.
This kind of writing's fairly natural for me. In my technical writing, I usually have to tone down the language to make it understandable to a wide market and rewrite many times. Left to my own devices, the s**t just flows, and I tend to throw in way too many obscure and wide-ranging cultural/musical/pop/science references that make it difficult for anyone who isn't me to follow.
NorioDS
LOL, yeah Tanya gets a bit lost when I read her your stories. Ah well, we have a clique ?
AlanRatcliffe
Riaan wrote:
Wow...that is wild for a church show! At least the blood was not from biting a bat's head off...
In a church, wouldn't you get in more trouble for biting off a
dove's head than a bat's? ?
ConradP
Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
Thanks Norio.
This kind of writing's fairly natural for me. In my technical writing, I usually have to tone down the language to make it understandable to a wide market and rewrite many times. Left to my own devices, the s**t just flows, and I tend to throw in way too many obscure and wide-ranging cultural/musical/pop/science references that make it difficult for anyone who isn't me to follow.
Alan I'd rather have the language and references uninhibited some people actually appreciate it.
Conrad
AlanRatcliffe
Thanks for the support Conrad, but I don't think you quite know what you are letting yourself in for. ?
I'll let a few things slip in while telling stories (as I do above), but if I do so in technical explanations, it ends up that someone always misunderstands or misses the joke, then it takes more posts to set them on the right path.
Garth-S
LOL.. awesome stories Alan. I particulary enjoyed the springy cable one.. I could picture the bassist doing a matrix style dodge to get out of the way of the jack ?
