the band were supporting Hawkwind on one of their Christmas bashes at the London Astoria, two (or three) people appeared on stage and announced one of their members was rushed to Hospital that morning but they would carry on without him, then they proceeded to play but the guitar amp broke down.....so they carried on but then the girl singer's mike broke down....the "performance" ended in a shambles, but i really felt sorry for them

 

 

In the late 80's I played a gig and while on stage, this large crowd was shifting from left to right. A sea of people went into a rage war. Many cops arrived and still could not get things under control until almost every police officer on duty was called to the scene. We hid under the stage.

There was a guy who, while phil was down front singing, climbed onto Phil's vacant drumset and started playing. The Roadies jerked him off the set and threw him to the ground and started kicking him hard just as a security dude closed  the curtains for privacy. That was COOL

 

Great lesson on A) Never try to show another musician up. and B) Bad tuning is the fastest way to suck it up no matter how well you're prepared. (I'm addicted to headstock tuners now)

For a while I played a place called Alexandra's. Nektar and Happy the Man played there too. We were scared to leave the club because biker gangs would battle it out in the parking lot.  State troopers always raided the place when we were on stage. We would be in the middle of Watcher of the Skies or some Tull tune when the cops pulled the plug. It was always a big disappointment to perform there.

 

A) That sounds like fun. Did King Arthur mate with his sister while you played?

 

B) That sucks. Anyone who interrupts Watcher of the Skies has no soul.

 

In the late 80's, I was broke and joined a top 40 cover band. They offered between 5 to 6 hundred a week. to perform la-de-da 80's top 40 songs. The lead vocalist and keyboardist hired me, the bass player and drummer all in the same day, on the spot, at the audition. They played the Atlantic City Casino for 2 years. I wore a penguin suit and drove home with the sun in my face every morning. It was brought to my attention a few months down the road from band members that our 2 band leaders were gay. I really thought nothing of it in particular. I had already been in the entertainment business for 12 years at that time and understood that it was their preference. Many entertainers and musicians on the road just happened to be gay. I never entered into it. Various performers that I worked with had a preference to be gay and all of the musicians (for the most part), in those bands that were straight excepted it and kept a steady professional friendship going. After we left the casino gigs, we were booked at a rock club. Club owners were hiring DJ'S for the weekends instead of bands so money was tight. Our singer had a wide vocal range and covered many a difficult feat. The drummer, bass player and me were leaving the club that night and walking to our cars when we were approached by at least 20 guys yelling at us and saying that they were going to kick our ass because we were gay. I turned to the leader and said, we just finished our job here and we are now going home to our wives and children. He then screamed at me, But your singers are gay! I just couldn't reach this guy and so my bass player jumped in and handled the situation well. He somehow talked them out of it. I couldn't believe they wanted to harm us over such an issue. Talk about having your butt in a sling. We were lucky to get out of that mess. They had baseball bats and were ready to crack our teeth and bust our heads  I should have quit then. I was in a terrible car accident on the way to a gig and suffered from extreme head injury. I asked them to cancel for a week so that I could recover and they threatened to fire me. I sat on a stool with a bad head injury playing 80's garbage rock just to make a fast buck and pay the bills. .  .

 

 

 

nothing like a bit of publicity Andy - but that was going a little too far

 

I've never played a bad gig.

 

I've never played a good gig...

 

I've never played a gig at all

 

 

Somebody had the bright idea to play an evening gig on the roof of a local supermarket.

The gig was going fine until it was chucking out time at the local pub over the road. Brett Fester the vocallist decided it would be funny to launch a beer bottle at the crowd whilst repeatedly singing "wan*ers at them.

 

Needless to say the gig ended in a riot ,in which the supermarket windows were smashed and the shop was "relieved " of all its cigarettes and booze.

 

Someone phoned the police and we were arrested.

Good news is we were released without charge as the drummers dad owned the shop.

 

We made the local paper and the publicity doubled our fanbase..............................HAPPY DAYS

Punk was smothering prog to death. Happy the Man were breaking up and everything in that world for me, was falling apart. The business was rapidly changing. That's when I started to lose money and the worthwhile cause of playing original prog to art rock audiences seemed a difficult  task to endure. The record companies wanted to mold us into this new generation which was the 80's. All the great guitar players I knew were pissed. Why do we have to play this crap? Many of them took the studio session route instead. I basically did the same and recorded guitar parts in N.Y. recording studios. But anyway, enough of that, It was strange to see this change happening and to be in the middle of it all. Even though playing prog and making a decent living became obsolete in reality, it was simply a fun experience for me.

 

Me and a group of friends performed at this thing at my school, a pageant of sorts where you give out all those "high school yearbook awards". There was a good deal of lame entertainment before us, so we decided to end the show with a bang: Boston's Foreplay/Long Time, complete with a few girls on backing vocals, matching on-stage attire that made us look like Trans-Siberian Orchestra, 150 pounds of dry ice, strobe lights, lasers....the whole shebang. And I was in charge.

 

So, over the course of about 3 weeks, I assembled a hodgepodge tech crew and gave them all specific instructions as to what to do. We rehearsed to the point that we sounded fantastic, if I do say so myself. I had cleared all our plans with the school employee who would be working sound and lights, and he knew what was going on. All is good in the world.

 

 The night of the performance comes. We get onstage and set up our equipment. We try to turn on the keyboard and turn on our amps, and they do not turn on. We can't figure out for the life of us what's going on, and the audience is getting restless. Thank goodness, one of the people that was onstage after receiving an award is a real big equipment geek, and he simply pressed the reset button on our power strip. Felt like fools, we did. But we had power, so we were happy.

 

Curtain rises. The crowd is ecstatic to see a band onstage, as we predicted they would be (the name of our band was All Out Of Bubblegum, if there are any They Live fans that happen to read this ). However, the lights do not dim, as they were supposed to. We are startled for a second, and I'm thinking of ways I can hurt the light/sound guy, but I cue the keyboard player, and he starts the song. Badly. Now I'm not knocking this guy, he's a fantastic musician, but the thing is that I had heard him play it flawlessly a number of times. Oh well, this stuff is bound to happen at a show, as I've learned, so I let it go. Then, however, we notice that the dry ice is....less than impressive. We had bought enough to cover the stage, and then some. I couldn't figure out why the only smoke we got was an embarrassing little white puff that crept from stage right. Would have been better to have no smoke at all. Oh well. But wait a second....where's the strobe? Well, the person operating the strobe decided (probably correctly) that it was not needed, due to the auditorium being nearly fully lit and the lack of dry ice (dry ice, dark rooms, and strobe lights are peas in a pod). Ok. Fine, I tell myself, let's just make up for it with a good musical show, even if the special effects are faulty.

 

So we play Foreplay, and it goes swimmingly. We get to Long Time, the girls come out, I'm ready to go with the intro solo, everything's all good.....Oh come on, man!  He missed the laser cue. Then, when they were turned on, they looked....pretty bad. They were of the variety that cover the walls and ceiling of the room, you know. But the room was still pretty well lit. I guess we didn't want anyone to hurt themselves because it was dark?

 

So the music itself had its own problems. The mix was terrible (that's because the aforementioned school employee, who works the sound at all school functions, is practically deaf. Believe me, it's the source of much ironic bliss). The vocal mics were WAY too low, and none of our singers could be heard a real shame, when you consider the practice we had done to pick out the harmonies and reproduce them. My guitar was far too loud, although one could argue that a guitar is never too loud . The playing was pretty good, until we got to the big solo in the middle of the song, and I stunk it up. Missing strings with my pick? What am I, an 11-year-old Smoke on the Water Youtube cover-er? Thinking that the show needed some salvaging, and quick, I ended the show with a Townsend-esque leap into the air on the final downbeat in a disgustingly generic rock'n'roll move.

 

I unplugged the guitar angrily, acknowledged the surprisingly enthusiastic audience, and walked backstage, where I threw my pick to the ground in anger. The thing about my dissatisfaction with the performance is no big deal by any means, but the annoying part was....after the show, numerous people came up and congratulated us on a fantastic show. I thanked them, but all of you know it....there's nothing more annoying than being told you were great when you know that it could have been SO much better. That's me, the little perfectionist.

 

So that's my novella.

 

(Oh, and on one final side note....I completely hate that song. It's just one of those crowd-pleasing things. Next time, I'm playing what I want on an acoustic guitar, alone, with one mic. No mix to screw up, no other people to forget their assignments, no special effects to go wrong...)