Here's a few to get the ball rolling:

1) I was playing on a small stage where the drum riser was pretty high but very small. The kick drum on the house kit went right to the edge of it. A couple songs in, I hit the kick pedal and the whole thing went over the edge. A guy from the crowd dove and saved it from hitting the ground. oops

2) Rented kit, in front of a little over a thousand people. Out of nowhere, the floor tom leg lets go, and the tom slowly slides down until it's laying sideways like a kick drum. Naturally the next part coming up is played w/ the right hand on the floor tom, so I just bend over and start whacking the bastard anyway. There were huge video monitors that caught it, and the crowd loved it! (I have a pic of the kit falling apart on my myspace page: myspace.com/dustyschaller)

3) In a hardcore band a few years ago, we had two singers. they'd met in anger management. On stage, sometimes they would just start beating the shit out of each other during songs. Full on brawling. It was pretty amusing to watch, from my safety behind the kit








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Desire cannot be forced.

Wow. The worst that happened to me was our singer/rythm guitarest's mike slid down, and he had to follow it

Last summer I played a gig at a French restaurant here in Los Angeles with a great singer/songwriter/pianist I was always hoping I'd play with. She's always been one of my favorite local artists here in L.A.

Well, this was my very first gig with her so I was VERY excited. I wasn't really nervous since I know her songs inside out. Well, dumb me bought a Ludwig kick pedal at Guitar Center the day before because my old one was worrying me. This gig was the first show I'd used the pedal at.

The set is going GREAT and the pedal is doing good. The very last song we played was "Interstellar Overdrive" by Pink Floyd. Keep in mind this was maybe just a few weeks after Syd Barret's death so this was to be a tribute for him.

Well, not too long after the drums kick in I hit the kick and feel NOTHING. The damn pedal had broken! I'm playing the song and I'm actually kicking the bass drum with my toes to get at least a tiny sound out of it. It was a bummer because the song really grooves so I felt I wasn't able to give it justice without a functioning pedal.

After the show I looked at the pedal and saw that the footboard where my foot rests on the pedal snapped in half! That pedal was such garbage. When I went to Guitar Center to get my money back the sales associate asked me if I wanted to exhcange it with the same brand and make pedal. I told him "HELL NO".

Luckily nobody had noticed the kick pedal malfunction during the song. And I STILL got compliments for the drumming on that song. And to this day I'm still playing for that same band. It could have been alot worse but during the moment I sure was sweating bullets on the inside.








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DW/PDP CX Series Drums
Zildjian K Custom Cymbals, Remo Coated Ambassador Heads,
Pro Mark Sticks

I've had kits collapse around me onstage so many times I lost count.

I was playing a show in a bar, and it was my bands last show... we were opening for Mercury Radio Theater (if anyone knows who that is) and I only brought two pairs of brand new vic firth sticks but they were pretty beefy. Somehow I ended up breaking three of the sticks... you do the math--that left me with one solid stick halfway through our set. I finished out the song using the butt end of one of the broken sticks, and i got one of the other band's drummers to loan me a stick. luckily it held up through the rest of the set, but that meant that I played half a set with mismatched sticks, meh.








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Mapex M Birch drums

Meinl Amun cymbals

Evans G2/G1 coated heads

one time wew played a gig where my drums were set up on 8 foot scaffolding on an incline, with the "brakes" on so it wouldn't fall. every time i hit the bass drum the thing wobbled and eventually it just collapsed. oddly enough, everything but my snare survived.








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Speak the rhythm with your hands.

http://www.myspace.com/yjamband



Pearls, Zildjians, Vics, Evans.

Well, I've got some things to tell...

Mostly of the time, my problems came from a "walking bass"... I always ended up with my right foot extended and in a very uncomfortable playing... one song after another.

When I bought the carpet and make sure that it was not going to walk... there was a show I was playing with proper feel and groove... Then, suddendly I feel a hard (very hard I mean) hit on my head... it was one of the overheads that had fallen into me... If I remember it was way high and it was a KSM from shure... I ended with a headache and a big laugh from everybody who congratulated me for not loosing time. I supose I was concentrated

I brought my daughter to see a band she really likes recently. The bass player kept spinning around like a ballarena and jumping off the bass drum. Towards the end of the song, during one of his twirling fits, he knocked over the hihat stand and one of the crash stands. Three roadies flew out instantly to set things back up.The drummer never stopped playing. Apparently this happens to him all the time.

Got my finger smashed between the stick and rim on a rimshot. Looked pretty cool when I brought my hand back up, as blood went spraying everywhere. Couldn't move my finger for the next 3 days.








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vgarate wrote:

Well, I've got some things to tell...
suddendly I feel a hard (very hard I mean) hit on my head... it was one of the overheads that had fallen into me... If I remember it was way high and it was a KSM from shure... I ended with a headache and a big laugh from everybody who congratulated me for not loosing time. I supose I was concentrated

ouch! Hate to find humor in your misfortune, but that's a good one!

Back many years ago, playing at a state fair, the bassist and I switched out for several songs. He was much younger than the rest of us and I think this was his first time on a real stage (which happened to be VERY springy plywood)
he played drums the first few songs, then we traded and when he started playing bass he got really excited and started pogo'ing up and down, and the stage kind of trampolined him to great heights. High enough that his cable popped out of his jack, but he kept playing for several minutes before I could get his attention and point it out to him. I laughed pretty hard and almost lost the beat. There he was, bouncing around like Flea, producing no sound whatsoever. At least he wasn't wearing only a sock~

With my present band, back when I was using V-drums more often, I had the cable come loose from my bass drum pad, right in the beginning of 'YYZ.' As it turns out, just about anyone can notice the bass drum missing from that song, so that kind of hurt. Tried to substitute a floor tom for the bass hits, but wasn't very successful adapting it on the fly like that.

Also had an unpleasant night in New Orleans when there was no soundcheck and the soundguy deafened me with a monitor mix that had ONLY me in it (what good is that?!) and it was SO loud it drowned out any hope of picking up signal from anyone else. They also left the spotlights and load-in lights on me, and I ended up with heatstroke by the end of the show. Plus, our crew got FLEAS from the place. Really bad experience and that joint, not looking forward to going back!

and I get to relive all these whenever I want, because most are on video.
reminds me to stay prepared, I guess...








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analog missionary
M=yspace

I don't know if this counts, but a few years back, I had a gig and had the flu. I threw up between every set.

My drunk ass guitarist fell backward into my kit. Litteraly destroying the whole right side of it (from my view) everything including the bass was F#**ed up.. I continued playing with my left hand and left foot while I was standing up and fixing everything with my right hand...


I'm not in the band anymore








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It's not how good you are, just how good your equipment is Um... NOT

m wrote:

I also had an unpleasant night in New Orleans when there was no soundcheck and the soundguy deafened me with a monitor mix that had ONLY me in it (what good is that?!) and it was SO loud it drowned out any hope of picking up signal from anyone else. They also left the spotlights and load-in lights on me, and I ended up with heatstroke by the end of the show. Plus, our crew got FLEAS from the place. Really bad experience and that joint, not looking forward to going back!

I played some dump in New Orleans once and when I was packing my drums I realized my drum cases had adopted a family of cockroaches the size of large mice... It REALLY gave me the creeps and it felt like something was crawling on me for days.








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I don't know if this counts exactly, since it wasn't while we were actually playing...but I had set up my drums on a 1 1/2 foot drum riser on a 2 1/2 foot stage and went to get some water from the bar before soundchecking. On my way back up I had to take an awkward step over a badly placed monitor speaker and tried to lean up against the back wall.

Except the back wall was just a curtain so I fell off the back of the stage and hit everything possible on the way down. haha

So I just kind of lay on my back in a pool of water that i spilled while the sound guy and all my band mates huddle around me asking if I was ok, haha. It was more embarassing than painful, having to walk back up onstage with a crowd looking at me =p

iminaband wrote:

My drunk ass guitarist fell backward into my kit. Litteraly destroying the whole right side of it (from my view) everything including the bass was F#**ed up.. I continued playing with my left hand and left foot while I was standing up and fixing everything with my right hand...


I'm not in the band anymore

I'd have continued playing with my left hand and left foot while I was beating him over the head with my right arm








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Desire cannot be forced.