General Music Chat

Anubis,

I would have some sort of backup, even another distortion pedal in the gig bag. Years ago I ran a tube screamer straight in the board for a gig where my amp messed up.

Bassist can get away with plugging straight in a sound board, but most rock guitarist need something in between to get the distortion and breakup we need. Ive had pedals go out or messed up power supplies. If I was you I would find some sort of backup to have in the gig bag. Cause if you play long enough sooner or later OLD TRUSTY will mess up and you will have to improvise. Im not throwing you a line of bullshit ask any of the guys on here who gig a lot. I dont really gig that much anymore and still have issues so it can happen and ruin your night if you arent prepared. Crazy Train sounds like crap without some distortion, trust me on this!

Great advice JW. We discussed that very thing I think, and I've always posted the same thing on here as well as practiced it. The only exception has been my Peavey MX, didn't have another amp for years and used it without a backup, it only let me down once and that was in the middle of a gig. Fortunately the rhythm guitar player ran his acoustic through a keyboard amp, I just plugged my pedalboard into another channel and was up and running again in seconds. Occasionally had a broked string to deal with but that's it. I gave up batteries in favor of a good wall wart years ago.

These days I have 5 amps and 9 guitars, and always have spare everything. I even have an extra mic cable in case it flakes out and also carry my trusty soldering kit for all gigs. I've had to use it before when someone else stepped on a cable or something similar, 10 minutes to start and I'm soldering a cable back together...I've been lucky though, never started more than about 10 minutes late so far...

Man I feel for you crip, it really sucks to get burned on the money like that especially when you have to fight treacherous weather. I've been shorted on the pay before but not often, not much you can do about it but remember not to book that venue again and spread the word...I hope things go better in the future...

Hey, it could be worse. Bluegrass bands play outdoors all of the time. Take it from me, that is hell on expensive, 100 year-old acoustic instruments.
By the way, if you ask me "pretty please", I'll tell you about my "gig from hell" in 1977 that nobody will be able to top!

please do tell...

Sorry you had a bad one, our last gig I had the flu you know the kind that just destroys your voice and I sing lead on about 60% of the songs and back up and harmonies on the other 40% oh and the p.a. craped out on us the compressor wasn't coming on. I turned it off and then back on then everything came back on that is always stressful before you start.

An old friend (very experienced) once gave me some words of wisdom he said what separates the men from the boys is when you have a night like that and you still can kick the audience's arse. What he meant was you may not have played up to your own expectations but you still managed to pull it off and do it consistently

One thing I always try to keep in mind with gear is redundancy extra speaker cables, mike cables, midi cables, strings, batteries, wireless receiver, anything you can think of that if something goes wrong with that one piece of gear you can't do your show without (backup plan).

Here I am talking all experienced I hope nothing goes wrong at tomorrows gig

I had to spray chloraseptic down my throat every 5 minutes at 1 gig just to scratch out a noise or two (I had a bad cold) . One girl sitting closest to the stage was just looking at me strangely as if to say- 'wtf is this guy doing singing? -lol - heh-

please do tell...

Well buddy, I just spent fifteen minutes describing my "Gig From Hell", and when I tried to post this epic, it didn't "take" for some reason.
Screw it. I won't try again. Sorry!
Too bad, because it was a good'un!

Aww, Dude, try it again! I'm sure we'd all like to hear it-- y'know "misery loves company"

Aww, Dude, try it again! I'm sure we'd all like to hear it-- y'know "misery loves company"

I'd love to accomodate you, but every time I try to post something, Bandmix makes me log in all over again.
That must have something to do with how I lost all that work I put into my "Gig From Hell" post.
I really don't want to take a chance on writing it all down again, just to have it lost in the ozone when I hit the "submit" button.
That's what happened last time.

Sometimes (if I remember) I highlight everything that I've written and right click copy so if it's lost I can still "paste" it somewhere, but I forgot to do that once tonite so it all went out the window... I can relate bro...
Well, maybe you can give us a condensed version of it one day..

Gigs from Hell

Once after a gig the tailgate of our singers truck flew open and our old Peavey 16 channel board hit the highway at about 75 MPH. This was the old peavey made in a roadcase, we picked it up and it continued to work til we traded it a year later.

One place we played had this huge rolling ladder thing like you used to board airplanes with. In the middle of a gig this thing fell over on our soundboard, nothing quit working and we never checked up just kept on rocking.

We used to play these outdoor kegger partys. Everytime we played Outshined by Soundgarden the police came and shut us down. This happened for a whole summer. They always showed up during that song.

One outdoor party the kids were pouring beer in our Peavey Monitors the ole 1545. We had the kick in the monitors so hot it just bounced the beer out in a spray. I still have those monitors in the garage and to the best of my knowledge they have the same speakers. If your rough on pa stuff older Peavey gear is built like tanks. Trust me on this!

We had a sub drummer one night who got so drunk he fell off the drumstand midsong and pissed himself and passed out cold. We asked if there was a drummer in the house and this guy came up, we maved the passed out guy out of the way and kept on rocking.

I ran sound for another band once in this Moose Lodge type building. All of these had little band stands with a fence around them, and these exposed low ceiling beams. The guitarist in this band was crazy always jumping around. He jumped into the beam and knocked himself out. He fell to the ground and I couldnt see him but his guitar was feeding back. Joe the other guitarist walked over midsong cut his amp off and they kept playing til Greg woke up 20 minutes or so later.

Same band we are staying a t a hotel, a bunch of us in one room. Greg the knockout artist always liked to walk around naked in the room and shake his little bitty weiner at everyone. So we threw him out of the room naked, he kept beating and hollering, of course we were laughing our butts off. It got quiet for a couple of hours, all the sudden theres this knocking at the door. Its the police with Greg, They said does this guy belong to you all. Im glad that room didnt get searched.

Another sound gig years ago. I worked with a lot of Heavy Metal bands in Memphis in the early mid 80s. We had this double bill and the 2 bands flipped a coin to see who went first. Of course the one that lost got mad. So when the headliner went on the singer of the first band hit on the singer with the second bands girlfreind fight in front of him. Next thing I know the whole place is fighting. The owner came out pulled the plug on everyone and chewed me out like it was my fault. I never got to run sound there again after that. Iwas scheduled to run sound for Uriah Heep and Kansas after that and missed those gigs, so thats probably the worst sound gig I ever did.

As far as guitar gigs, Ive blown a lot of amps, Ive seen a lot of fights. Ive been jilted out of money so many times Ive lost count. Recently we had a merch gal that was pocketing most of the money, so I fired her. This weekend we are playing close to her house so last night I check ahead about this weekend and the club owner says I understand you are running the door. Everytime weve been there they provide a door person. I said I thought you guys would do the same thing as usual. She said well your merch lady called and said she was handling it this weekend. Talking about a pissed off person. I see what I have to deal with this weekend. I told the club lady get your normal person in for the gig. Im just glad I checked ahead.

Its Always Something

I have the greatest band mates a person could have, absolutely no drama about anything. But then you have support staff issues like this!

Word Of Caution Watch Who You Surround Yourself With, If They are Bogus, Drop Them Like A Hot Potato!


Man makes me wonder why I keep doing this?

i just remembered one gig that my dad did. he didn't have a soundman on him at the time, so i was helpin him out. so, we go to this place, it's raining, and the guy shows us the wet patio where my pa and his boys were suppsosed 2 play and he had nothin over it to keep it dry, not even a tarp on a stick! so they didnt play that night, the guy wouldn't pay us, and we left the party without so much as gas money for our troubles.

Thats what he gets for goin' around shakin his weenie at everybody ROFL You-all wouldnt have had any substances in that room, would ya? Tha bands I was in never would have dreamed of doing anything like that. That's some funny sh*t JW!! Hey, when you type in the word 'sh*t' the forum automatically converts the i to a little asterisk. Cute.

That's cause Soundgarden was badass, JW.

Yea, Andragon is probably my favorite band next to Zep. They really didnt fit a category in music. Of course they got lumped in with grunge. They came thru Memphis one time backing up Skid Row. I had tickets given to me and gave them to some chicks who just loved Sebastion Bach. Thought it would get me some brownie points. Now I wish I had gone to see Soundgarden. That was the ole North Hall in Memphis. I saw AC/DC with Sammy Hagar at that venue. And at that show I thought the red rocker blew AC/DC out. He was doing Trans Am and he did Bad Motor Scooter, I had never seen him before he was awesome that night.