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

[Blazer]

I guess we all know about it, you're playing an important gig and everything goes well until something happens.

- A string snaps
- Your amp dies
- (Fill in whatever disaster can happen)

So let's show youtube clips where that happens and see how the guitarists cope with the disaster that cought them by surprise.

This guy has one disaster after another happen to him...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO1PyREvl5U

The Dutch Ska band Doe Maar performing "Smoorverliefd" (Madly in love) and their guitarist' Les Paul suddenly dies, at the 1:35 mark you can hear the trouble start and you can see him turning towards his amp, you can also see his roadie standing nearby, ready to hand him his back up, he quickly changes guitar, Note also the bassplayer at the 2:19 mark going "Hey, guitar!" as he suddenly hears the staccato rythm return but not for long, because the back up isn't properly tuned up, so they give him his les Paul back but that one still won't work properly. They quickly have the saxophone player to play a solo where the guitar solo should have been.

You can tell from his desperate facial expressions that he is NOT enjoying this.

[Ben...]

Wow, that would seriously suck. He looked so mad when he got his Les Paul back, strums it, turns around and just gives up. I would hate to be in his shoes.

[clifffclaven]

This one:

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

whoa. check out the vid at 3:00.

[Bengal]

I was at Download 2006 and just hanging out backstage in the morning when someone came running up to me and asked if I was a guitar tech. I said that I was and he asked if I could help the band about to go on, they couldn't get any signal out of the guitar. Having had issues with my own rig I was a bit skeptical but decided to see if I could handle what was going on.

The band was Arch Enemy and the guitarist was Michael Amott, maybe Chris, I guess I'm not sure. He was standing by a Krank (I think it was Krank) Full Stack with a Gibson Les Paul Custom in black. He was hitting the strings but nothing was coming out. I took out the cord and touched it and heard the noise that it makes so I know it's with the guitar. I tell him to take it off so I can look at it and he does and I see that the imput jack is very loose and needs to be tightened. So I take it backstage, with Michael following very close behind me and go to my tech box and get out a ratchet and tighten up the imput jack. We walk back to the stage, where all the rest of the band are onstage looking at us, and he takes the Les Paul and plugs it in and we hear that familiar "POP" and he strums one cord and walks onstage and they start the show 5 seconds after that, with me still onstage! So I walk off and that is that.

He never thanked me or anything. Not that I really needed that but I did save his ass since his tech had no idea what the problem was. A "thanks man" would have been cool. A free T-Shirt would have been cooler. But nope, all I got was a shitty glare as he walked to the front of the stage to start the song.

Whatever. I was never a fan of Arch Enemy anyway.

There's one of my stories. Don't know if there is a youtube clip or not.

EDIT: I was checking for a youtube clip, they didn't start the show with me onstage, they started the stupid keyboard intro. Maybe you guys can tell me if it was Chris or Michael. It's the dude with the Les Paul.

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=li2OS8HKmHc

[nhspike]

Cool story Bengal!

[sevser]

Cool story indeed...

That would have been the temp guitarist filling in for Chris...Fredrik Åkesson...He is now in Opeth...

[Bengal]

Cool. Now I have a name to put with the face. Thanks man!

[mab8485]

This one:

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

whoa. check out the vid at 3:00.

What exactly was going on with that solo?

[savage]

He does not look like the type that thanks anyone! i think michael would have said thanks he is a real cool guy!
bengal, if you would have saved my ass like that i would have not only said "hey thanks for savin my ass" but i would have bought you a beer or two!

[khabibissell]

What exactly was going on with that solo?

Yeah, what's the deal there? It looks like that guy didn't know what key to play in or something.

[clifffclaven]

My band played on the second stage that day, our sound guy was at the side of the stage when this happened, said the guys 5150 got stuck on the clean channel or something, after that he was back punching it.

[Racerx2k]

I don't have any vids of it, but back in the 90s, when I used to run rack gear, I had this intermittent problem that just couldn't seem to be located, where my signal would start crackling. I had my rack to my amp guy, several times, when I got burnt out, trying to find it, and he would open things up, maybe find a few cold solder joints in my effects unit, and put it all back together, but it always ended up doing it, again, usually while I was onstage. Being as I came from the "Kick it until it works" school, it usually could be seen, giving my entire rig a good healthy side kick or two, without missing a beat during a song. I don't know how, but I never managed to topple over the friggin thing (much to the amazement of our crew and audience).
When I ultimately decided to get out of music for a while, and sold off all my gear, that's when I stumbled upon the problem: A faulty manual mute button on the front face of my rackmount tuner. After all that, it was so simple, that I had a good chuckle over it.

[Newc]

I saw Stryper on the In God We Trust tour and the opening act was Rocket Boy (never heard of them before or since).

Every time the 2nd guitarist went into a solo, his signal would cut in and out. So there he is, on stage, playing a solo that I'm sure was spectacular, but all that's coming out is every other note. He was hitting the guitar trying to make it work

I was pretty close to the stage, and at first I felt bad for the guy, but then it hit me that if you cannot afford a decent guitar, get off the damn stage. I don't know what kind of guitar it was - Strat-shaped with stickers on it. I think it was a Charvel Model model, but it's been 20 years

Anyway, the other guitarist wasn't having quite the same trouble, but he was busting strings on his Gretsch like they grew on trees. He swapped guitars at least twice for each song.

As for my own gig troubles, the band I was in actually had a rotating gear gremlin. Sometimes it was the singer, sometimes it was the drummer, sometimes it was me. One night my guitar goes completely silent in the middle of a song. Knowing that my Peavey amp was a few years old and was experiencing some sort of issue where the volume would fade out for no reason, I brought along a spare head (Fender RocPro1000) I had just bought the day before the gig.

Sure enough, I had to swap out the Peavey for the Fender, and the band STOPS! I'm yelling "KEEP PLAYING!" since the singer could do the guitar work while I was down.
It still kept going in and out for the rest of the night, so I figured it was a bad cable, but I had a dozen of them, so finding which one was the problem woulda took all night.

I ran the guitar through a volume pedal, then a wah, then into my ADA MP-1, then into a Digitech Legend for effects, then into the amp, so checking those connections and cables on stage was not possible.

We finish the gig and when I get everything home I'm checking the amp, cables, guitar, rack, and finally found a loose wire inside my volume pedal

Another time, we were going along fine and dandy when I don't hear the snare anymore. I turn and look and the drummer's snare stand had collapsed, and he was drumming with one hand and trying to fix the stand with the other AND hold the snare up.
The whole time he's yelling "I got it, I got it! Keep going!".
He worked with it for the rest of the song, then fixed it properly right after.

Then we're at yet another gig when the singer's mic starts dropping volume. So he's singing louder just as it cuts back in, and then as soon as he goes back to normal it cuts out. Turned out to be a short in the mic cable.

And still another time we were doing a show and this friend of the singer had agreed to be our soundguy. Nevermind the fact he knew nothing about it, he was willing to do it for free, which is why the singer agreed to let him do it (the rest of us found out when we got to the gig). So he's helping the drummer unload the mixer, even though the drummer's telling him "I've got it".

Sure enough, dude breaks off a mic gain knob, which happened to be my mic for backup vocals.

At the second chorus of a song whose backing vocals are whisper-quiet, I hear my mic channel click and get very loud. The folks dancing right in front of the monitors hear my mic click and get very loud. The rest of the band hears my mic click and get very loud. Everyone in a 3 mile radius hears my mic click and get very loud, except for "soundguy" whose 30 feet away from the mixer shmooching his wife!

Thankfully I had the good sense to buy a mic with an On/Off switch.

Needless to say, singer got his ass chewed for bringing in a moron for a soundguy. Soundguy got a free lesson is why it's vitally important to (1) never leave the mixer when the band's on the stage and (2) never be afraid to tell someone "uhh, I'm interested in learning how to do it, but I really don't think it' a good idea for me to get my feet wet during a show - maybe at a rehearsal when no one is around..."

We never kept a bassist long enough for them to have gear trouble
We thought this one guy was having farty-cab syndrome, but it turned out to be his playing style, or lack thereof

[robfromthedeep]

We thought this one guy was having farty-cab syndrome, but it turned out to be his playing style, or lack thereof

We've all been there... :P

[MartinBarre]

Cool story indeed...

That would have been the temp guitarist filling in for Chris...Fredrik Åkesson...He is now in Opeth...

That's a cool story Bengal, the guy's clearly an asshat. And what the hell has he done to that guitar? It's a travesty doing that with the black pickups on a Black Beauty.
That singer looks damn fine from that angle though!