STILL NEED COMMUNITY CONTENT FOR NOV GP

[Editor Boy]

Still need a GIG NIGHTMARE or EPIPHANY or DIG MY RIG for November GP. Send it all to mmolenda@musicplayer.com. For GIG NIGHTMARE and EPIPHANY, I need a hi-res photo of YOU. (Epiphany is all about a moment when you had a creativity epiphany that changed your approach to music.) For DIG MY RIG, I need shot of you and your guitar, plus text on WHY you love your gear. Thanks tons!

[A String]

Gig nightmare stories? Man, after seven years of being on the road, full time, I have a million of them. I swear, we've been through just about everything a band can be through. From having a dog get up on stage with us, while we were playing, to someone spilling a beer into our light controller box in the middle of a show. From having our drummer leave us stranded 17,400 miles from home because he was "home sick and had to get back" to guys breaking into our band room while we were on stage. Of course, nothing tops the truck fire that destroyed all of our gear and personal belongings.

 

However, I've already made an appearance in the magazine. I know a lot of you guys have played on the road and it certainly never seems to take long before something goes awry. Post your stories guys! I can't wait to hear some of them!

[G. A. Donis]

Dang, my missing chunk-o-pinky pictures are very low res.

[A String]

Bump! Come on folks! Let's hear them!

[gettarman]

My gig nightmare/epiphany happened in 1974 when I was sixteen at a battle of the bands. The competition was at an old school built back when the arts were part of the curriculum and they actually had an auditorium with a raised stage and curtains. There was a packed house and we, the local favorites, were slated to go on last. For this show I had the brilliant idea to include a fog machine, which my friends and I designed ourselves. We cut a six inch hole out of the side of a small metal trash can near the top. We then attached a large hose of the sort used for cleaning pools. Our intent was to fill the trash can with water, place it over a portable gas barbecue, and when the water began to boil, drop in some dry ice.

 

Show night rolls around, it's our turn to play and we hit the stage to a screaming audience. We tear into the first song, I'm playing my newly purchased Ampeg Dan Armstrong and feeling way cool. As we start into the chorus I look down at my fret board to see where to play and I see absolutely no neck dots! The dots on the Armstrong are very small and when the stage lights hit the neck they just disappear. Yikes! I switch to my strat and get on with playing. Things are going smoothly now. As we reach the middle of Echos by Pink Floyd (mostly eerie sound effects), it's time for the fog! I look over to the side of the stage and see my buddies toss a small piece of dry ice into the can and slam the lid down. A few seconds later a small puff comes out...that's it! I yell "MORE ICE" and they throw in a couple of pieces. Another small puff. I lean over and yell "dump the whole bag in, NOW!" So they do. All of the sudden the can starts shaking (while one guy is holding the lid on) and it blows the lid completely off. Thinking quickly, two of my buds shut off the barbecue, slammed the lid back on the trash can and sat on it. Okay, now something is going to happen! And boy does it. Suddenly the fog comes barreling out of the hose like water pouring from a broken water main! People in the front rows freak out and start running from the approaching wall of fog. After a few seconds people realize it's safe and find their way back to their seats as we start to pick up the beat. I decide to walk towards the front of the stage through the fog and wham! I'm on my back on the floor in a huge pool of water and covered by the fog. We didn't think about condensation from the fog. I get up trying to make it look like part of the show and my entire back is soaked! I keep playing but am unable to turn my back to the audience because I don't want them to see I'm dripping wet. Finally, we launch into our last song and it's our show stopper. The crowd has been going wild and I just want it to be over. The end is in sight. I'm looking down at my neck and concentrating on my playing when the crowd starts going absolutely bananas!! I'm stunned and start looking around and see huge bellows of smoke crossing the stage above us. I think, "Wow, great effect. I didn't know we had a smoke machine. Wait--we don't have a smoke machine!" I look over to stage right and see that the lighting board (the old kind that's mounted in a wall to the side of the stage with big levers) is totally in flames! The friend in charge of running the lights is freaking out and screaming for a fire extinguisher, and smoke is billowing up to the ceiling and across the stage. I look back at the audience and they are just eating all this up and screaming so loud I can barely hear my amp. Someone, I don't know who, located a fire extinguisher and lets it rip, as we continued to play through the chaos. Ultimately, we ended up winning the battle of the bands, and the performance achieved legendary status in local circles. For me it was a nightmare, though I did reach an epiphany: never underestimate the power of a well-produced show (even if not intended...). We ended up adding our own lighting and flash pods (which took a little perfecting, but that's another story) a ten foot high sign with our name in lights and lots more. I will never forget that night, it was truly a night in rock n roll boot camp!

[RetroRocket]

GIG NIGHTMARE

Back in the 80's the top 40 cover band I was in had been hired to play for a high school reunion at a big hotel.

The gig started out like any other. Loaded out from the studio and drove to the gig, unloaded and set up.

All was well until I reached into my gig bag to get my slide & picks with "it" happened...

A sudden, unexpected excruciating pain shot up my left hand and arm. Apparently my gig bag had been crushed during transit and my glass slide had shattered. A single shard had punctured the tip of my middle finger.

Living by the creed "the show must go on" I was able to secure a half dozen bandages from the hotel staff and proceeded to play (limped through) the gig, but stopped about every 20 minutes or so to wipe the blood off my neck & strings and change bandages.

 

DIG MY RIG

I currently play in two bands that cover everything from early 60's classic rock covers to original country music to jazz to Brittany Spears & the Bee Gees. With gigs like these I needed a guitar, effect & amp setup that was more versatile than most.

Several years ago I bought a Roland Ready Strat and proceeded to personalize it from there.

I've customized the entire guitar from the tuners to the paint to the electronics. Along with my pedal board and Roland GR20 synth I've got well over 500 different tones and instruments to choose from.

I generally run two amps, one for the guitar and one for the synth.

[picker]

My gig nightmare happened 40 or so years ago, at my very first public appearance with a guitar. I was 15 or 16 at the time. My family was living in the small town of Beebe, Arkansas then, and I got roped into providing a musical interlude for the women's club my mother belonged to. This wasn't exactly the debut I had imagined for myself; 15 or 20 politely bored-looking rural matrons, sipping coffee and eating crumb cake, are not a throng of young girls jumping up and down, screaming my name and throwing underwear (hey, at 15 or 16, who doesn't have a vivid imagination and high hopes?). But, my father made it plain that I was the show, like it or not, and the show MUST go on.

 

My rig then was a Teisco Del Rey copy of a Vox Phantom VI, and a 40 watt 1x12 solid state Heathkit amp my father and I built from a kit. The amp never did really work right, even though it been gone over a few times by the closest thing to an electronics tech there was in the little Southern town; the TV repairman at the local appliance store. He said he couldn't find anything wrong with it every time I took it to him, but it kept acting weird anyway. I had just gotten it back from him again on the day of the gig, once again with his somewhat impatient assurances that the amp was ready to go. If you can image Foghorn Leghorn saying "Go 'way kid, ya bother me!", you have the picture.

 

After all the other items on the meeting's agenda, it was time to throw down. I, my sister Pam, and her friend Janet got up to perform "House Of the Rising Sun". Everything went okay for a minute or so. But then, the amp started making these weird explosion noises every few seconds, "ba-BOOM! ba-BOOM!".

 

Every time the amp went "ba-BOOM! ba-BOOM!", Pam and Janet looked over at me as if to say "What's wrong?" and I was ready to crawl under a chair and die of embarrassment. My hands shook so badly I was barely able to form chords with my fingers. To this day I'm not sure how or why, but I managed to keep on playing. After what seemed like an eternity, the song ended, and I turned that stinking amp off, sat down, and tried to melt into my metal folding chair.

 

Such was my debut as a guitarist.

 

Two good things came out of that fiasco;

A. Because his wife was a member of that same club, the TV repairman who worked on the amp was there, and he didn't look quite as embarrassed as I felt, but close. He never actually fixed it, but at least he couldn't say there wasn't anything wrong with it anymore.

 

B. Looking back, I realize I must have a genuine calling and deep-rooted desire to play music in public, because despite my disastrous debut, I kept playing.

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t274/picker_album/DSC00400.jpg

[skipclone 1]

Okay, gig nightmare-

In 1991 I was living in Taipei. There was a group I got involved with called Jazz Is... that revolved around an acoustic pianist and bass player from Philly. Both these guys were fluent sight readers, technically way above my level at the time. However they were really nice guys and supportive of my being in the group, partly because I was big into fusion and when they had songs that needed a guitar presence, usually I would know enough to be able to contribute. Well they worked out a format where they would play standards for the first part of the gig, often without drums, and then for the second part I would come in and they would do more uptempo tunes. One evening I came in early and they said, `we were going to feature a sax player but he had to cancel at the last minute-how would you like to take his place`? I said, hesitantly without thinking through the meaning of FEATURE, `okay, sure`.

Well we got up and I thought, um...what exactly are we going to play? I also didn`t realize that they were still in the part of the show where they were doing standards. I started to say something but the pianist was already announcing tho the crowd, `This evening we are featuring Skip, our guitar player`. They started up the chords for George Benson`s

`Breezin`, which I had been working on but it was nowhere near ready.

After about halfway through I kind of whispered to the pianist, through now clenched teeth, `Let`s freaking finish it!`. Then the pianist started to play `Green Dolphin Street`. A standard. I didn`t know it at all, this is one of those tunes which has a chord change every measure.

He went through it once and nodded to me. Take a solo. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING? I whispered `I don`t know this one`. He dropped a copy of the lead sheet in front of me. Yeah, if I had a few days I could do it, but

at the time it may as well have been in Aramaic. I figured the only thing to to was turn the volume all the way down, strum the strings and nod my head. Then after a few bars of that some fellow with an Ah-nold accent leaned over and whispered, `turn up your power, I can`t hear anything`.

GOOD. Finally something went right.

Then the pianist must have thought, okay we need to save this. He said to the crowd, `Okay this is one of those rockin` things in G` but it was too late, I was already in PTSD zombie land. after the gig-if that`s the right word-it was agreed that we didn`t prepare well and it was really nobody`s fault but I doubt the crowd saw it that way. If nothing else

it motivated me to get better.

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok, i'll skip the gig nightmares for now, lol...too many, where to start? the time a box of lights fell on my black beauty 5 minutes before showtime? that cold bead of sweat that runs down between the crack in your cheeks when your marshall goes up in a spectacular explosion of blue electric flame? or what happened to my bro (name withheld to protect his arse) at cbgb's when the "hottest babe in the place" picked him up, only for him to discover while enjoying some...ummm..." personal attention" in the van that the girl had the same armament he packed at birth?

ouch...not going there (and no, it was NOT me!!) lol...

 

so...gig rig...

 

okeedokee.

 

in my current project, the boneyard buddies

( http://boneyardbuddies.com ), i've gotta cover a lot of territory...yet, i am primarily a blues-rock kinda cat. so what i use is the following, and it rarely lets me down, and is versatile enough to cover all the stuff we do...from motown to blues to led zeppelin...

for guitars, tho i am primarily a strat-o-holic, i use a pair of epiphone firebirds...a black one with gold hardware i got from greg avenge (from the seminal punk band "the avengers") and a beautiful burst i bought brand new at daddy's junky about 4 years ago for 499....gotta love trading. now...some may balk at the epiphone thang, but for me, they work well...a worthy cross betwixt a strat and a les paul both in sound and playability, and there's literally nothing i can do with either of the aforementioned i can't do on my 'birds...they both have the maestro style vibrolas, and once set up properly, are at least as reliable as the trems on my strats...i can pull up til the strings snap, and dump it over an octave...works for me.

i run these into a small powered pedalboard, which contains the following:

a small mosfet "clean boost" pedal, who's pcb cost me .99cents on ebay...it's sick, about a 6db boost as soon as ya turn it on...great for solo's.

( http://cgi.ebay.com/DIY-Guitar-Effect-BS170-Clean-Booster-Pedal-PCB-/170528200002?pt=UK_Guitar_Accessories )

this runs into my modified crybaby, then a boss super overdrive into a boss turbo distortion (that i almost never use), into a

danelectro hash browns flanger (a pos, possibly, but still a good flanger for my uses)and then an akai headrush, one of the original ones that's kinda hissy...i use it only in tape echo mode, and it beats beating the hell outta my echoplex. to the side, is the controller for my marshall 9001 all-tube preamp, and an a/b switcher to switch between my speaker cab and talkbox.

anywho, the output of the akai runs back to my rack, which houses the aforementioned marshall 9001 preamp, which has an old boss se-50 in the loop, set usually to a plate reverb sim. i use one side of a rack hush unit before it to nuke the noise from the preamp before it hits the digital gizmo, and the output of the marshall then feeds the line input of my ps systems power tool...check out old gp's from the early 90's or google it if ya don't know what it is...it's a swiss army knife for guitarists, a reactive load box that can simultaneously run the speaker output of any amp up to 100 watts and a preamp signal, mix them, has a post-amp 4 band eq, and effects loop (which has the other side of the hush in it to nuke any other noise if i need it), switchable cab sims, lo and hi z outs, and a 50 watt power amp in it to drive your choice of cabinets...kinda a hen's tooth, but well worth searching for imho...mine cost me 150 bux at daddy's junky music... the output of the power tool goes to the a/b box near my pedalboard and drives either my talkbox (a homebrew thang with a 16 ohm driver) or a 1x12 dean marklet cabinet the drummer in my other band gave me, which is loaded with a 12" jensen or something i pulled out of an old standell 2x12 bass amp. it's a simple rig that gives me just about everything i need, plenty of power for the majority of the gigs i do, and one of the favs i've ever used over the last 40 years or so...it's easy on my old-guy ears and back, too..so..that's my current rig, usually.

 

my rack:

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs395.snc4/45846_1467679544877_1620235552_1088596_3506994_n.jpg

 

my pedalboard:

 

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs367.snc4/45060_1467680704906_1620235552_1088598_304587_n.jpg

 

my burst bird, moira

 

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs306.snc4/40619_1467682864960_1620235552_1088600_7801767_n.jpg

 

my black bird, steph

 

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs134.ash2/40033_1467681944937_1620235552_1088599_3424333_n.jpg

 

me live (with a strat)

 

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs089.snc4/35821_1412576807343_1620235552_951207_1346137_n.jpg

 

 

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok...gig nitemare...

we're playing at a benefit show for a young woman who's son was speared thru the ear with an umbrella while swordfighting at a day care with another kid...unfortunately the little tyke didn't make it, so my power trio, the jimjamms were playing to raise his mom some money, as the medical and funeral expenses had devastated her.

this was up at a club on the beach in westerly rhode island...let me give you the set up for what happened....it's an october night, and a full moon...a cold breeze is blowing in from the atlantic ocean, and hard, and the tide is coming in. the club is grounded to the sand, being on the beach, and between the wind and the high tide, there's apparently lots of free electrons floating around....and the ocean is full of (duh) sea water, which is an electrolyte...which i think had something to do with what was to come.

me and john had to be careful not to touch each other, or our mics, cuz no matter how we flipped the polarity, one or the other of us kept getting "bit".

the staging's electricity was a little dodgy i think...i was playing thru an old fender super reverb, and my bassist was using some kinda old peavey head thru a 1x15 cab, and between us was our long suffering drummer, stumpy al pelegrino...right between the amps, with us at the front, dig?

well, at some point, i guess we must have had a lot of energy built up, cuz it appears that it discharged...in the form of a blast of ball lightning...from one amp to the other, RIGHT THRU STUMPY AL.

me and big john saw it, kinda, even tho our backs were turned..

and some of the folks in the club saw it and described it to us later.

al, bless his pointed head, emerged unscathed...what we THINK happened was that the wind blowing, and the high tide, combined with the ground actually being into the sand on the beach itself, formed a giant capacitor...and, once it built up enough of a charge, discharged to ground...from my super to big john's peavey, and RIGHT THRU AL...

weirdest, weirdest thing that ever happened to me on a gig!!