Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

[davewerden]

Please share any bizzare stories that have happened during or around a gig. (Keep it clean please!)

[snause]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

When I was in a drum corps two Summers ago, we went to a gig in Kalamazoo. It was just a normal day. Wake up and go to drill practice, you know the sort.

Anyway on the way to drill practice, me and some corps mates came across a dead cat. It's sad, but the way it was lying was almost comical.

It was flattened out in X fashion. It kind of looked like a cartoon or something.

[Smitty]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

I played trumpet in my high school Jazz Band. Each year, we would go to the Jazz Invitational sponsored by the University of Nevada- Reno. My first year there, some of the older players thought they would "initiate" me. I woke up from a sound sleep to find a couple guys pinning my arms down while another spread Jalapeno pepper sauce all over my lips!!! I was pretty mad about it, and it certainly didnt help my playing any. (BTW, I cannot type apostrophes. It opens up the search feature-- is this normal???)

FWIW,

Smitty

[Euphyoungvituoso89]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

There was a perfessional Tuba quartet that came to the convention center that was cancelled because someone left their tuba on the bus!

[Francisl]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

At Secondary School our windband participated in the annual eistedfod. This is a yearly event where bands and musicians have the opportunity to show what they are made of.

We were setup on stage with limited space. Well we were playing colonel bogey march and of course I had to do play the euph counter melody. We completed the intro. As I was about to launch into this magnificent counter melody, my chair some how slipped of the edge and I fell backwards off the stage.

My now wife at that point was playing euph for about 9 months. She never really mastered the counter melody up until that point! With me being out for the count she played that counter melody like it was an old pro.

Regards

[bearphonium]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

High School marching band, with the football team at the state playoffs. My squad mate forgot his horn (sad to admit, a euphonium). He marched at the pregame with a piccollo (looked funny in our squad) and at halftime with cymbals (even funnier) only because one gal carried the cymbals in pre-game and played her piccollo at halftime!

[davewerden]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

Oh, yeah - that high school marching band story reminded me of a little disaster I caused. At Davenport Central High School we had a pretty good music program and marching band. We were doing an elaborate routine that we had memorized (well, mostly memorized in my case). At one point I was leading a line of 8 players and did a perfect right turn, which should have been a left turn. All the other players in the line followed me, which was fine until we ran head-long into another line of players who had turned the correct way and were not supposed to encounter anyone. It was a really fine head-on collision, and both lines did an accordian-like collapse into each other. Hard to forget that one! Too bad that was before the days of consumer-owned video cameras.

[blueeuph]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

In Minot, for the NorthWest Music Festival in the university ensembles concert, the tuba player (who's one of the librarians) didn't show at the downbeat of the concert band. The first piece we played was October by Eric Whitacre (cool piece btw). One of the trombone players had the tuba parts to cover this spot. Seeing we had 3 euph players. , I had the trombone player give me the tuba part and I played it as written, sight reading the tuba part. That went well for me actually. The tuba player showed up in his tux, right after we finished October, ready to play. He liked how I covered the tuba part. The band director did announce that the tuba player is here.

[carbogast]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig


In 1970 I was a freshman at FSU and a member of the FSU Marching Chiefs. One of our entrances onto the field was from the sidelines, a column every 10 yards, coming on at a flat out sprint. We would come out about 20 yards and make a 90 degree turn so that the band would end up facing the home side in rows. On this occasion the field was a little muddy and when making my 90 degree I slipped. Attempting to keep my balance, I flung my horn (school owned!) out towards the middle of the field! As it happens, this game was nationally televised and the alert cameraman picked up my mishap! My 15 seconds of fame! Alas! I performed the whole halftime show without my instrument because breaking ranks was unthinkable. When I got back to the stands someone brought me the horn and mouthpiece, the mp and leadpipe filled with mud, so I didn't play the entire game. I heard that for the next few years the band leaders used my experience as the *right* way to handle the situation but my non band friends who saw the game on TV got a kick for a long time telling the story.

- Carroll

[Euphzilla]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

I was doing Endearing Young Charms with a community band and OH BOY let me tell you this was my nightmare come true...luckily the slip i made due to my nerves was easily covered as a humerous tribute to the old Bugs Bunny cartoons where they hit the wrong note while playing this song...so after straigtening it out and a cymball crash by a close friend in the percussion(simulating an explosion i guess) it was on with the piece...it went well the theme and variation one went really well...minus the flute players music flying off the stand and forgetting the melody...so it was just the variation...then variation 2 came about and durring one of the runs a friendly little bee decided to sting me in the hand which caught me by complete surprise and caused me to drop a few notes...by this point I was thiking what else could possibly go wrong...which was my mistake..durring variation 3 some how the band got lost and stoped playing and i was like well ok they must think I'm doing a cadenza? So I motioned with my horn to the director that I wasnt at the cadenza well when I reached the cadenza something quite off happend they all came in and then stoped and I finished the cadenza with all of them playing the last oh 12bars of the piece and pauseing for my cadenza even though I was already done. What gets me it never went bad durring the rehersals...I guess it was just the day

[JayC]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

We similarly had memorized our high school marching band routines as to when to turn, etc. At one actual game/performance, three VFW members were carrying flags (including the American Flag) and walking down the center of the field between two long facing lines of stationary bandmembers. Unfortunately, these flag bearers were never part of any practice. When it came up to our planned time for our eupher and trombone section to be the initial group to turn and march down the field, I noticed that the flag bearers hadn't passed us yet and that there definitely would be a crash of these VFW flag bearers and ourselves if we started our joining turn. So our section delayed our marching for an 8 count until they passed us. I was hoping that everyone else would key off this difference and would also delay...but they didn't. This created an accordian-like routine of lines bumping into each other...a real mess. Our band director was very upset. I guess that we high-schoolers should have just trampled over the elder VFW flag bearers and kept our routine in synch...
Don't Tread On Me!

[Kjetil]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

This happend when I did my milltary service with The Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces. We were at a millitary base one friday way out in the woods playing for newly educated officers. After the gig me and two others also doing their services, loaded the truck with instruments, musicstands etc. This was a part of our duty, then we went to have lunch with the other musicians and later went back to Oslo for the weekend.
On the following monday when rehearsals started, the solo trombonist capt. Halvorsen and solo french hornist capt. Martinsen couldn't find their instruments! After searching around for a while we called the base if they had seen any of the instruments. Thoroughly investigations revealed that we had forgotten the two instruments beside the truck and after lunch we drove away leaving them by coincidence next to a couple of garbagecans. The genitor wouldn't have any garbage lying around so he just threw them into the incinerator!
Capt. Halvorsens reaction was that he could understand that someone wanted to burn a french horn, but to burn a trombone was totally unacceptable;-)

[jackofalltrades]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

My dad was a band master in the Navy during WWII. He played trombone and was in the front line of the assembly. He got the flu and was out for several days. He came back in time for the grand parade (or what ever it is called) in front of all the brass. No one told him that the marching course had been changed, and in front of the grandstand the whole band turned left while my father kept going straight.

[RobertD]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

I'm laughing out loud at some of these incidents. Mine is nowhere near as funny but here goes.

Our high school marching band was marching in the Crispus Attucks Day Parade, which, in New Jersey, falls on the fifth day of March. Well, I believe that March fifth was the coldest March fifth in New Jersey history. We wore our long johns under our heavy marching band uniforms but they didn't help much. Nothing would have helped much.

The parade began on Broad Street in Newark at Lincoln Park, continued past the City Hall reviewing stand, and concluded at Washington Park -- a distance of approximately two miles. During our final march, when Washington Park came into sight, the entire marching band broke formation and ran at full speed to the warmth of our waiting bus. Our marching band director was not happy but by that time we had only survival in mind. And we did survive, without frost-bitten fingers, or having our lips stuck to our mouthpieces like Flick's tongue on the flag pole in "A Christmas Story".

[ProgHouseDJ]

Odd or Funny Things that Happened During a Gig

The lips freezing to the mouthpiece story reminded me of this-

The USMC Drum and Bugle Corps was brought in to play the daily opening ceremonies for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. The first day there we were nowhere near prepared for playing in that sort of weather. Day one came in at a nice -8 degrees.

Well I guess thats how cold it needs to be to freeze valve oil, as when we started to play, noone could move their valves. The drummers were a huge mess too since none of them could feel their hands. We sounded absolutely horrible.

The following days our valves were moving non-stop as soon as we stepped out into the cold to prevent the freezing. It worked a little better then. Heres a picture of one of our small brass features from that- I'm on the right.