Scariest (or most bizzare) moment at a gig

relic245

So what situations have you come across while gigging? 

Probably 30 years ago we played at a venue in Wembley. 

Half way through the first set a very drunk woman marched onto the dance floor and punched another woman full in the face. I would not have wanted to be on the receiving end. 

All hell broke loose and suddenly the whole pub was a massive brawl. It genuinely looked like a scene from the blues brothers. 

We were panicking and packing away breakables and at the same time scared we were going to be in the middle of it. 

When it had all calmed down the landlord came over and apologized and said it was fine to start playing again.  Then as he walked away, and half to himself he said : I hate it when the wife starts fights like that, it's so unprofessional!

thecolourbox

Not a gig in the sense you mean, but I was playing piano in a concert at my parent's church but was also left to be "on the door" as everybody else there is too old to use their fingers to take tickets etc in the cold. Just as the first item in the concert started, ie my cue to lock the doors and head on in, a drunk bloke comes in from outside demanding to be allowed in, got very angry when I said it was ticket only and please can you leave us alone, said he wanted to hear "the beautiful voices"  (it was a string ensemble playing at the time). I tried all the defensive body language i could to try and calm him down and move him back outside but he wasn't having it, then made a very sudden movement to his jacket pocket and I swear blind it was a little knife I saw him pulling out so something just clicked in my reflexes and I just kind grabbed him on both arms in a sort of human straight jacket position and managed to shoulder him out the door quickly and lock it. 

Then I went inside and had to play Liszt's Liebestraum No.2 with nobody in the room any the wiser

Danny1969

Christ in 40 years of gig'ing there's been a few rough gigs .. 

Southampton afternoon in the early nineties .. biker glasses a bloke while we were playing. Bloke comes back later with a shotgun and shoots him. Luckily we had just left. 

South London in 99 a bloke glasses another bloke. Landord tells him if you do that again you will be barred!

Portsmouth in 2014 ish , bloke attacks door staff with baseball bat ... caught on camera 

That's a few that spring to mind but there's been a lot more 

MikkiMcMurderer

I got the punched in the face by a drunk punter while at the urinals at a posh wedding before we had even started playing! He then got into more fights with the grooms men before the fuzz showed up. He got arrested, I pressed charges and he has a nice criminal record for ever more.
We played the gig cos the bridge and groom were very nice and he was not known to them, a +1 of a friend. It shook me up though, I had to do some heavy drinking for a few weeks afterwards!

thecolourbox

MikkiMcMurderer said:

 He then got into more fights with the grooms men before the fuzz showed up. 

A bit risky getting a pedal delivered on the day of a gig to be fair

Roland

Our last gig at a pub in Mansfield was interrupted by three fights. Two of them were the same husband vs wife domestic. Then there was the pub in Derby where two girls had a knife fight on the steps outside. Most of the blood was washed off by the time we left.

prowla

Playing a song in a working mens club, singer puts his arm around me, flash/bang and the lights went out.

I had a mains protector, but the building circuit tripped first.

I spent the next rehearsal going over all of the PA & lighting wiring; lots of loose connections and I found one extension cable with a mains plug at each end (which plugged into another with a trailing socket at each end)!

My routing after that was always to touch the instrument strings to a microphone.

EricTheWeary

My gigging history wasn't long but it was almost entirely skanky pubs. I remember someone being glassed in the face whilst we played and the people in the pub just seemed to accept the violence, ambulance and police as the norm. We had one female member of the band and she was too frightened to go into the toilets there and had to run off to find a McDonald's for a wee after the gig. There was so much cocaine being done as well, I've never seen anything like it. 

Bizarre was probably our singer knocking himself unconscious. This was a biggish gig for us, one of the pubs Status Quo had played on their pub tour and later described in their documentary as a shit hole. There was a raised stage but not raised ceiling. Our singer jumped off the stage, whacked his head on the ceiling and spent a little while unconscious in the middle of the pub floor. 

blobb

Watching a band in a pub in Portsmouth, the drummer is good and is well on top of some tricky Stuart Copeland syncopation.

A guy walks up to the drum kit, correction, a drunk bloke walks up to the drum kit - "Love your playing mate, mate, did you hear me, I said I love your playing."

Drummer looks up smiles and keeps going.

" Mate, don't ignore me, I said I love your drumming"

etc...Obviously, this guy is not helping the drummer out and starts reaching out for the hi-hat's.

Cue a beautifully timed off beat head butt from the drummer. Didn't miss a single beat. Drunk guy keels over to big applause from the crowd and remains flat on his back for the rest of the song.

It was poetry in motion - bum de bum, thwack, crash, cheers, bum de bum you don't have to put on the red liiiggghht.

Supportact

Some biker pulled a knife on our other guitarist from my old band, after a festival gig in the Midlands.  Fortunately the situation was diffused by someone from the festival stepping in who knew the bikers.  Scary moments though. 

That was an outlier though, in general I've not experienced much more scary than just the odd annoying drunk. 

Oh I forgot,  someone did once swipe my pint from the stage while I was playing.  I saw them pinch it but was mid song and therefore helpless.  Not a scary experience at all but a bit of a shocker. 

snowblind

Bay City Rollers gig at LSE back in the 80s. Blood everywhere, people getting stretchered out of the venue. Never seen so much violence at one event.

ICBM

prowla said:

Playing a song in a working mens club, singer puts his arm around me, flash/bang and the lights went out.

I had a mains protector, but the building circuit tripped first.

I spent the next rehearsal going over all of the PA & lighting wiring; lots of loose connections and I found one extension cable with a mains plug at each end (which plugged into another with a trailing socket at each end)!

My routing after that was always to touch the instrument strings to a microphone.

I had one a bit like that when the bass player asked me to hold his bass while he tinkered with his amp, which was buzzing a lot while we were soundchecking in a dodgy old venue - I still had my hand on my own guitar strings to keep them muted, and as soon as I touched his bass I got a huge electric shock.

That's why I have a safety capacitor fitted in the string ground connection of every instrument I've ever used live since then. It's not completely foolproof since it doesn't prevent a shock from a jack, metal control knobs or pickup covers, but it does from the strings which is likely to be the most dangerous with your hand wrapped around the neck.

You should be aware that an RCD on your own amp will do nothing if the fault is on the other system - the RCD does not disconnect the earth, hence they aren't an infallible safety backup, contrary to what's usually believed.


About the only ones I can think of apart from that were a punter who did a sort-of karate kick on the tremolo arm of my Strat while I was playing - unfortunately I was looking across at the keyboard player for an end-of-song cue so I didn't see it, I was just aware of being pushed and the guitar going massively out of tune - otherwise I would have been tempted to grab his ankle and heave him over backwards... and a drugged-up woman who got completely out of hand and started getting violent after flashing the band and not getting the reaction she wanted (she wasn't remotely attractive, sadly), and eventually got carried out of the building by security - four of them, horizontally, one on each corner. Afterwards we found out from a friend she had come with who came to apologise to us, that she was a primary school teacher!

I was once chased along the street after a gig by three of four yobs who I think had objected to me asking them politely to move when I was carrying some gear, although I'm not completely sure... luckily I was younger and fitter in those days, and there was a very long flight of stairs from the street up to another one where I'd parked my car (those familiar with the Cowgate in Edinburgh will know where that is), so I ran up the steps all in one go at a full sprint - had a quick look over my shoulder at the top to see how close they were behind, and they were all doubled over wheezing and coughing halfway up . Got in the car and drove off before any of them had even got to the top. Of course I had to go back to the venue to pick up the gear, but I drove round by a different route and they presumably didn't realise that, since they didn't reappear.

MikkiMcMurderer

@ICBM does having a guitar wireless protect you from shocks like you described?

ICBM

MikkiMcMurderer said:

@ICBM does having a guitar wireless protect you from shocks like you described?

Yes, completely - unless you then touch something like your amp or pedalboard which is still connected to the mains.

fretmeister

EMGs help too - strings / bridge etc aren't grounded.

ICBM

fretmeister said:

EMGs help too - strings / bridge etc aren't grounded.

*Shouldn't* be - but often are, especially if the pickups are an aftermarket fit and the owner/tech doesn't know that it can be disconnected.

The irony is that most people assume that the strings being grounded/earthed is for safety - it's not, in fact it's exactly what creates the risk of an electric shock, either (less likely) because there's a fault with your amp or its supply so the earth becomes live, or (more likely) because it provides a perfect path to earth from anything else with a fault upstream, via you when you touch both things. An RCD and properly checked equipment will only protect against the first scenario. No amount of protection, PAT testing etc will help you with the second - you just have to hope that the building has a modern enough electrical system that the main trip will save you, or make sure that your guitar strings aren't earthed in the first place.

matt_sefton

The most bizarre thing that happened to me on a gig? In the 80’s the band I was in was booked as support at Newcastle City Hall for an extremely famous 70’s rock star who did a Christmas tour every year.
We were in our dressing room about to go on stage and said rock star’s manager came in and said “I know this sounds a bit weird but would it be ok if the band used your dressing room while you’re on stage? The band are all buddhists and they like to have a chant for half an hour somewhere quiet before they play”. 

Can’t really say no to that can you?!
The scariest thing that happened to me on a gig?
Meeting that 70’s rock star. Ever since I was a kid learning guitar I wanted to play at the City Hall so that was great. Telling people who I supported back then these days? Not so great.
No prizes for guessing who it was.

bloodandtears

Many moons ago, the bass player of a band I was in had wired up a lighting t-bar rig with a disconnecting mains lead, that two prong lawn mower type affair...  however it was the "unsafe" way round..   I once separated the lead whilst still connected to the mains and must have have caught the prongs..  I received quite a shock and needed some fresh air afterwards.. not sure how I'm still alive to be honest...

Our bass player was an industrial electrician!!!!

Jimbro66

I think I might have related this on the forum before but there was a bizarre incident that happened when I was in my early 20s (a few years ago  ). We were playing at a venue somewhere around Epsom way IIRC. It became clear that the promoters had hired bouncers who were not known to each other. A fight broke out on the packed dance floor and a bouncer jumped in to push the fighters apart. Straight away another bouncer waded in and grabbed the first bouncer, thinking he was one of the troublemakers, and dragged him away. Then the two of them started fighting and crashed out through the fire escape doors onto the pavement, which was alongside a busy road. They fought like cat and dog and we had a clear view of this from the stage, where we continued playing. It was only when the promoter and a couple of other guys went out to separate them that they learned they were both bouncers.

Stratavarious

Couple of nasty fights.. drunks on stage feeling up the girls in the band… grrr.  

Entertaining though when a pair of drunk girls go all loud and start pulling each others hair right at the front.  Quite the spectacle.

We did have some big fans keeping us cool at a very very hot gig in a small venue, a bunch of women on a hen night discovered they could blow their dresses up over the heads in front of us.. quite distracting.. esp. the one with no knickers on! 

We also finished a theatre run with a mountain of spare pyro pots.  We emptied them all into a metal bin and set it off.. fucking hell it was loud.. the police turned up and the dust from the grid was still everywhere.

Constraining explosives in a metal container… yep.. lesson learned.

borntohang

We did a wedding at a rather rough WMC in Middlesbrough where our dressing room was a boxing ring above the ballroom. One of our singers was in the WC doing her makeup and overheard several of the bridal part talking about cutting up one of the others due to some slight or other which set the tone for the evening - no bridesmaid blood was shed in the end, but the happy couple did have a rolling-on-the-floor scrap in the middle of the dancefloor when a singer chucked her hat out and they both wanted it. Weird show.

More amusing than scary, but a couple of years back we did a show at a famous active military garrison in Hereford for the unit's big summer ball. Phones had to be surrendered at the gate and we were confined to dressing room or bussed off base between sets, the full shilling.

Halfway through our set a young lady jumped onstage and ran past the singers to collar our DJ and inform her that we were, quote, "playing a bunch of shit". Scathing review delivered, our bandleader escorted her off stage left and let the crew deal with it. Afterwards he asked why I had let her past me as I had previously handled a few stage divers at earlier shows. My justification was that there could only be three reasons she was allowed on base that evening:

1. She was somebody's girlfriend or wife.
2. She was somebody's daughter.
3. She was a member of the unit herself. 

Given that all three reasons had potential for poor outcomes, I was disinclined to flatten her onstage in front of 600 extremely merry squaddies and figured letting her shout for a bit before being politely ushered off was the diplomatic route.