GarrettTheDrummer
Junior Member
Last night I had the most ridiculous stage disaster I've ever experienced as a drummer.
In the past I've dealt with a lot of stuff going wrong on stage. I've had the typical cymbal stand collapse, broken drumsticks during solos, bands that get off sync with clicks and backtracks, power outages stopping performances, broken drum heads, even snare wire ties snapping on stage. Last night still took the prize.
We had a great show opening for Aaron Watson, and played to probably 600 or 700 people who were actually pretty engaged. The whole set was going really smooth until our second to last song. About 4 measures into playing, my bass drum beater came loose and flew off of the pedal. After a brief moment of panic I managed to start using my left hand to imitate the bass drum by playing my floor tom, and moved my right hand to the ride to get it out of the way. It worked, but it wasn't pretty. My left hand was doing both the bass drum and snare work and the song was fairly uptempo. My bassist was the first to notice what was going on and started laughing hysterically. My lead guitarist realized somewhere around the first chorus and almost died laughing. The sound guy caught on and managed to get the bass drum beater back on the pedal while I was playing, but that was only a couple measures from the end of the song. My bassist and guitarist said I pulled the whole thing off pretty well, and our front man apparently had no idea anything was even wrong until we all talked about it later. While I'm glad it wasn't obvious to everyone it was still probably the most stressful 3 or 4 minuets I've ever had playing live. I will be triple checking the tightness on the beater every show for the rest of my life before playing. At least it was something fun to laugh about.
Does anyone else have any good musical stage disasters?
In the past I've dealt with a lot of stuff going wrong on stage. I've had the typical cymbal stand collapse, broken drumsticks during solos, bands that get off sync with clicks and backtracks, power outages stopping performances, broken drum heads, even snare wire ties snapping on stage. Last night still took the prize.
We had a great show opening for Aaron Watson, and played to probably 600 or 700 people who were actually pretty engaged. The whole set was going really smooth until our second to last song. About 4 measures into playing, my bass drum beater came loose and flew off of the pedal. After a brief moment of panic I managed to start using my left hand to imitate the bass drum by playing my floor tom, and moved my right hand to the ride to get it out of the way. It worked, but it wasn't pretty. My left hand was doing both the bass drum and snare work and the song was fairly uptempo. My bassist was the first to notice what was going on and started laughing hysterically. My lead guitarist realized somewhere around the first chorus and almost died laughing. The sound guy caught on and managed to get the bass drum beater back on the pedal while I was playing, but that was only a couple measures from the end of the song. My bassist and guitarist said I pulled the whole thing off pretty well, and our front man apparently had no idea anything was even wrong until we all talked about it later. While I'm glad it wasn't obvious to everyone it was still probably the most stressful 3 or 4 minuets I've ever had playing live. I will be triple checking the tightness on the beater every show for the rest of my life before playing. At least it was something fun to laugh about.
Does anyone else have any good musical stage disasters?