Rev.D. - 29 September 2010 03:34 PM

even though I never actually met a “mean” biker

I have!!!  @ one gig for the local biker gang,  I saw 2 bikers holding down a 3rd.  He wanted to cut the band,  just for something to do.  They were trying real hard to talk him out of it.  These were all BIG dudes. 

Never played for the Hells Angels, but I did a few shows for the Outlaws a while back and they were pretty stone-faced as well.  I didn’t see this, but the owner dragged out guy out of the bar while holding a knife behind his back…  and was driving the dudes bike the next day :o   Good times.

I showed up to a wedding gig about a hundred miles away from home and reached in the back seat to find that I had left my stick bag at home. Fortunately, I found one ragged 5B in the bag of percussion stuff. The soundman took off across the 9th fairway into the woods and came back with an old, cured and hardened tree branch and asked if I could play with it. I said something to the effect of, “Does the Pope wear a funny hat?” and did all three sets with that motley pair.
The moral of that story: ALWAYS have sticks stashed away in trap cases, under car seats, in the trunk, etc.

Not quite an equipment failure…much worse…

Was touring Europe with a musical and caught the flu. Passed out ONSTAGE during the performance. (The band was on a moving band car that would travel downstage and upstage.) Woke up in the emergency room and ended up having missed two shows.

Felt horrible about what happened because the band had a huge rock number in which we all took pre-set 16 bar solos. Because I passed out in the middle of the act, 10 minutes before we were to play this number,  the band had to improvise at that moment. To this day I never found out who took over my 16 bars or if they just frantically sent panicked eye signals to each other to cover, as the music was non stop thru out the performance.

Hard lesson learned; take better care of yourself and have a contingency plan for such emergencies. None of us prepared for something like this and we should have known better because the cast had gotten colds since first setting foot in Germany and the understudies were overworked the first two weeks we were there. Yikes!