SEHpicker Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 Got any fun stories related to guitars, bands, gigs, or anything at all for that matter? This one's kinda funny. My cousin Kelly has been singing and playing his whole life. Excellent musician and person. Years ago he sang back-up and played guitar for Johnny Paycheck. Remember him?? Anyway Kelly looked a bit like Johnny with scruffy beard and all and could sing all his songs and he even sounded like Johnny. Toward the end of Johnny's touring days he was drinking a lot. No big secret. On a number of occasions Johnny would be too drunk to perform, so Kelly would don the hat & oversized RayBans and do the concert as Johnny Paycheck. Nobody in the audience ever knew the difference. Any other fun stories out there? SEHpicker The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it." George Orwell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEHpicker Posted July 10, 2013 Author Share Posted July 10, 2013 Hmmmm... guess nobody is having any fun out there... :idk SEHpicker The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it." George Orwell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larryz Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 Can't top the Paycheck imitation story LOL... Take care, Larryz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
02R96 Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 Well the Johnny Paycheck story reminded me of one my neighbor told me... He is a retired brakeman (worked for Union Pacific). They stopped for a crew change (in some cow town) in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma. The engineer showed up drunk; too drunk to drive the train. Not wanting to be stuck in BFE, and also not wanting to come off as rats by turning him in, they came up with a plan... In a scene right out of "Weekend at Bernie's", they propped up the sloshed engineer in the drivers seat, my neighbor got on his knees and operated the throttle while someone else called out the signals. Once they were clear of the yardmaster's watchful eyes, they put him on the floor and someone else drove until the real engineer sobered up. This was back in the late 70's before they had black boxes that recorded everything. Dan "I hate what I've become, trying to escape who I am..." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dannyalcatraz Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 Hard Corp, one of the early rap-metal fusion bands, had a funny thing happen at one of their first shows. They were just tearin' it up, and one of the crowd got WAAAY into their performance- he climbed up on stage in order to do a stage dive or some such. Most of the band was hip to this- they had seen it before at other shows. But their rapper frontman had not. So when the fan got to his feet and rushed towards the stage center (where the rapper was) to launch himself, the rapper dropped him with a hook to the jaw. (He thought he was being attacked.) Sturgeon's 2nd Law, a.k.a. Sturgeon's Revelation: âNinety percent of everything is crapâ My FLMS- Murphy's Music in Irving, Tx http://murphysmusictx.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skipclone 1 Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 Well most of the funny stuff is funnier if it happened to someone else... I was in a band in Taipei where the other guitarist and I were talking-half jokingly-about how to have some fun with the whole image thing, kind of related to the `band fashion` thread. At the gig the next weekend I figured, heck with it why not-I wore a wide collared glitter shirt under my regular shirt. At some point during the gig I made some verbal segue into my mic and whipped off my outer shirt-to total silence from the audience. It would have been a REALLY good time for me to be at home instead... Same old surprises, brand new cliches- Skipsounds on Soundclick: www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandid=602491 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strategery Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 Reminds me of the movie, "Pure Country" with George Straight. Dusty, George Straight, disagrees with all the crazy lights and pyrotechnics, and wants to get back to basics. One night, he stops singing and the crowd doesn't even notice...so he hits the road hitch hiking to get back in touch with his roots. In the mean time, one of his roadies is asked to sit in without telling any fans, and he dresses just like him with the shades and hat and no one notices. In the end...the crap hits the fan and Straight tells him to "Git yer ass outta here." Pretty good movie. Randy [video:youtube] "Just play!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitefang Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 Never having been in a "professional" band, I was, back in the day, in a couple of "basement" bands that did play at a few houseparties. At one, Joe, the OTHER sometimes lead, sometimes rhythm guitarist, decided to do the "play with the teeth Jimi thing". The most notable difference between a high-end, huge star, big money making band and the "scratch for survival" basement band is equipment. The big star has the state-of-the-art amps and axes that are professionally set up, hooked up and wired by experts. The basement band has the bargain brand amps, sometimes bought used and abused, with Tiesco del Rey's or "on sale" Sears Silvertones plugged into them. And most homes and basements had no three wire cable running through them that adequately grounds anything, and damp, uncarpeted concrete floors in the basements. NONE of these factors were remotely considered by Joe, as he raised his Airline to his dental work. Next thing we saw was a softball sized spark between the guitar and Joe's face, just before he plowed backwards into the drummer's kit as if punched by Ali! After the girl who's party it was got her Dad to replace the fuse and restore power( it WAS 1968, and many people were several years away from replacing fuseboxes with circuit breakers), her Mother, who was a nurse, applied some salve on Joe's quarter sized lip burn. The aftermath was all a blur to me, as my eyes were filled with tears from laughing. Whitefang I started out with NOTHING...and I still have most of it left! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strategery Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 Whitefang....BWAHHAhahahahahahha....that is hilarious! Back in the 70's and 80's, I had a friend that had a damn nice old Fender Twin, back when they had the phase switch. After getting zapped a time or two when he turned his PA and amp on, he's always hold his guitar neck with one hand....then tap the mic head real quick to make sure he had them on the same page. This was when we'd jam in his basement and one of us would always distract him after he checked everything, then the other would go and flip his phase switch on the back of his Twin. We'd crank up the first song and ....POWWWW.....a big blue spark between his mouth and mic would lite up and we'd haul ass outta there till he calmed down. We just couldn't help ourselves. Randy "Just play!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dannyalcatraz Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 Whitefang, that is hilarious! Strategery, that's a dick move...but funny! Note to self: give up electric guitars... Sturgeon's 2nd Law, a.k.a. Sturgeon's Revelation: âNinety percent of everything is crapâ My FLMS- Murphy's Music in Irving, Tx http://murphysmusictx.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitefang Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 Yeah. Years later, I discovered that me and Joe worked at the same General Motors plant. I'd run into him from time to time, and by then, he was able to laugh about it, too. Whitefang I started out with NOTHING...and I still have most of it left! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strategery Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 Eh....he had it comin'. Besides....that stuff is half the fun of playing music. Randy "Just play!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larryz Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 I'm not too hip on messing with another guys polarity switch. It's as fun as lighting farts until things take a wrong turn. Have a bass buddy that still uses the old two prong Fender Red Bass amp and I have to test his bass and mic for him as he's still scared to step up to the mic, from getting zapped 30 years ago...LOL. Take care, Larryz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PBBPaul Posted July 16, 2013 Share Posted July 16, 2013 That's one of the reasons I went wireless years ago. Our new and improved website Today's sample tune: Lonesome One Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dannyalcatraz Posted July 16, 2013 Share Posted July 16, 2013 Wireless presents its own problems. A small Catholic church I used to attend when I was in college had a partly wireless setup for their choir...well...band. And apparently, somewhere in the system, it was improperly shielded or some such. Because, every once in a while, it would pick up the radio...and it was always the same station: Z-Rock. If you don't know, Z-Rock was a station that only played hard rock and heavy metal. There is NOTHING quite like the amusement of going to receive communion when the PA system is playing Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like A Lady" or Black Sabbath's "N.I.B." instead of "I Am The Vine". Sturgeon's 2nd Law, a.k.a. Sturgeon's Revelation: âNinety percent of everything is crapâ My FLMS- Murphy's Music in Irving, Tx http://murphysmusictx.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitefang Posted July 17, 2013 Share Posted July 17, 2013 When I was a wedding photographer, one of the rare weddings I did that had a band instead of a DJ, they used wireless for the guitars. I don't know if the wireless gear was responsible or not, but in the middle of the ballad they were playing for the "Father-Daughter" dance, a loud, ugly Zeppelin sounding chord rang out on a long sustain that the guitarist had a lot of trouble stopping. It lasted about a minute and a half. Whitefang I started out with NOTHING...and I still have most of it left! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
5 string Mike Posted July 19, 2013 Share Posted July 19, 2013 Wireless is great- During a P&W team practice I had, one of our singers had to go to the bathroom- she was wearing a wireless head set with the clip-on belt transmitter. She forgot to turn off the mic when she went to the bathroom. At this time I knew nothing about mixers and no one there knew how to mute her channel... :idk (the sound guy had to go do something else) One of the ladies was on a mission to the bathroom to tell her but it was a good hike to the bathroom from where we were practicing. It was too late by the time she got there. So we got to hear a whole lot more than we wanted to... thankfully it was just the team there. And she had a good sense of humor. It was the running joke for quite a while. Yeah, wireless can be an adventure... "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind"- George Orwell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitefang Posted July 19, 2013 Share Posted July 19, 2013 HOO-WHEEE! Had that happened at a gig, it would have been PRICELESS!! Whitefang I started out with NOTHING...and I still have most of it left! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dannyalcatraz Posted July 19, 2013 Share Posted July 19, 2013 And yet, I know some people think nothing of taking or making a phone call from the john. (Sometimes, when I see that happening, I make loud fart sounds.) Sturgeon's 2nd Law, a.k.a. Sturgeon's Revelation: âNinety percent of everything is crapâ My FLMS- Murphy's Music in Irving, Tx http://murphysmusictx.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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