Conference napalm::guitar

    Oh yeah, it's not just an apocryphal tale, it's true, a friend of mine
    saw it live on TV.
    
    Will

    Trust me, if ya break a string on a guitar equipped with a Floyd
    Rose whammy, you have to do the same thing, if you don't have a
    spare ax handy.  Makes for some intersting barre chords .... 8^)
    
    
    				Scary

    true testimony
    
    Our drummer breaks a stick while playing, throws the busted stick down,
    behind him.. stick hits, (SQUARE ON THE MONEY) the on/off switch for the
    power bar *ALL* of his midi drums, _and_ the bass amp were plugged
    into, immediatley shutting down all of the above!
    
    
    You can imagine the fiasco which ensued from there....  all left *on*
    was guitars, and guitar synth...   which kept playing until power
    bar could be turned on..  problem was finding what happened....
    While  the rest of us had NO idea at all what was goin on..  Ric goes
    into advanced state of shock...
    
    	latter that evening...
    
    Ric, while aiming/trying, throws stick at said power bar numerous
    times,   never coming close to hitting the switch...
    
    pretty hysterical in retrospect.

    Speaking of Itzak Perlman, I once saw him on TV doing an interview
    where he was playing a classical solo.  Then, out of the clear blue
    sky, he goes right into a Tennessee hoedown.
    
    Man, that guy can play ANYthing!
    
    cheers/mike

    Perlman did the fiddle part on Billy Joel's "The Downeaster Alexa".
    
    Edd

     I saw Roy Clark on 'Live' TV, Carson or some such, playing a serious 
    pickin' tune and he looked relaxed and well rehearsed, until he broke 
    a string. He was all over the fret board after that and actually worked
    up a sweat keeping it together, but he didn't miss a beat. If you
    were just listening and hadn't seen it, you wouldn't have known.
    
    Dave

    I remember seeing a tricky thing that Roy Clark did on "Hee-Haw" one
    time:
    
    It was a pre-recorded thing where they split up the TV screen in four
    separate segments.  In one corner of the screen, Roy played acoustic
    guitar, while in another corner he played fiddle,  In the remaining
    two corners of the TV screen, he was playing banjo and harmonica!
    
    It was really quite an interesting mix.
    
    Talk about being a jack-of-all-trades virtuoso, whew!
    
    cheers/mike

    No too many people pickup on Roy Clark till it's thrown at them.
    
    He comes off so light and zany that many miss the guys talent.
    
    Jerry Reed is another unsung guitar madman that gets very little
    recognition.  I saw him on Austin City Limits a few years ago,
    he was on fire.
    
    

    
    Maybe not exactly in the same light, but....
    
    Back in '70 I saw Rod Stewart and the Small Faces at the Fillmore
    East. The band was great, but pretty blasted. During "Around the
    Plynth", Ron Wood (who seemed to be the most inebreated of them
    all) stepped back, tripped backwards over his guitar chord, went
    flat on his keister (and back) really hard, and didn't miss a lick, 
    or blow a note. To a Fillmore audience who was, in itself, generally in
    a similar frame of mind, this was a pinnacle of achievement.
    
    Not exactly an Itzak Perlman-level of accomplishment, but I'm sure
    Ron must have thought so....
    
    Peter
    

    
    
    I was playing in a bar (the Black Sheep?) one night when our bass
    player fell off the stage in the middle of a song.  He was just bopping
    around to the song and didn't notice that he was close to the edge. The
    stage was only about 4 feet high, and he more-or-less landed on his
    feet.  
    
    Never missed a note when he fell off the stage, but he missed some
    trying to climb back on. 8-)
    
    Kevin
      

    Ahh,,
    
    
    last reply reminded me of something that happended in what feels
    another life ago..
    
    Bass player with Gin and Tonic one hand, fender bass in the other,
    heading to the stge for second set...
    
    LEAPING up on a three or soo foot high stage, lands directly on
    the set list,,,   ''' Wisssssk '''
    
    Feet go up, butt goes down,, KABOOM,, 
    
    	Never spilling a drop..
    
    
    laughed till it hurt.

I used to keep some cherry throat lozenges in my raod gear for those nights
where my voice was strained..one evening I tripped on my guitar cord, inhaled 
sharply, sucking lozenge into throat, choked and the thing shot out of my mouth
like a bullet, skidding accross the dance floor....I laughed until the tears
ran....

dbii

    In high school, playing at a basketball game half-time, in the
    beginning of La Grange by ZZ Top, drummer dropped his stick right in the
    middle of the step in when the song gets heavier.
    
    Laughed so hard I could barely play the rest of the song.  Boy, did he
    look lost... (could barely play it at the time anyway, it's been a
    while)

    
    OK, one more...a personal one....
    
    Around '72 played a frat rugby mixer at Seton Hall University. The
    trombonist/2nd keyboard did a LITTLE too much boo during the course
    of the show, enjoying it with about a half pint of Southern Comfort.
                                        
    He lost it during the third set and projectiled onto the bass pedals
    of the Hammond, during his solo in an Edgar Winter tune. He did
    manage most of the notes, and I have the tape to attest. Unfortunately,
    he tried to get off the bench to go offstage and lose some more,
    and slipped on his fresh puddle, which had coated the pedals slick.
    He dropped like a shot. I never heard 'Save the Planet' with what
    must have been a fourteen note cluster in the bass, before that.
    That's on the tape, also, as well as the crowd reaction.
    
    They wanted more.
    
    Peter
    

    
    
    another personal one....
    
    Back around 84, played the Place in Manchester NH opening
    for Madame X (that's another story in itself).  We had to set
    up our gear in front of theirs, and with their upteen-piece
    drum kit, walls of Marshalls and SVT's left very little room
    for us on stage.  There was a short runway at the front of the
    stage that projected into the dancefloor where I had to stand,
    but because our drummer was set up right behind me, one of
    the headliners crew put a VERY large road case at the front of
    the stage, allowing me to get to my mike on the runway.
    
    Well, I started the set at the side of the stage, come running
    out front, stepped on the road case (the thing was about 4
    feet high and about 3x5 feet in area) only to discover the
    thing was on wheels!!  Neeless to say, I ended up about 10 feet
    out onto the dance floor stuck up on this thing with no way
    to get back to the stage!!  The rest of the band could hardly
    keep playing they were laughing so hard!  Thankfully, a couple
    of people on the dance floor carefully pushed me back to the
    stage area.
    
    And it was a good thing I didn't have a wireless at the time....
    I mighta kept on rolling!!!!  :^)
    
    Ralph
    
    

    re -1,-2:
    
    You guys are killin' me!

    
    Another personal experiences this time from the classical realm....
    
    I was with the College-Community Orchestra of Jersey City from '72-75,
    playing third stand in the bass section. During a performance of
    Rossini's Overture to "The Barber of Seville", I had a beautiful,
    yea, enlightening experience. 
    
    The last several bars of the piece consist of some pretty active 
    sawing for the basses, at fortissimo, of a broken A-maj. chord.
    As we entered this section and began hammering away, my standmate
    lost the grip on his bow, and it flew like a spent arrow, skittering 
    and clattering across the boards all the way to the back of the stage.
    
    I am still concentrating on trying not to laugh and finish the piece
    at the same time. My mate starts playing the last few bars pizzicato.
    He had tears in his eyes from trying not to laugh. We glanced at
    the section principal, an excellent player from the New York Met
    Orchestra. He was trying not to burst out laughing. We looked at
    the conductor, who wasn't that hot anyway. He was too involved in
    the score to notice.
    
    The piece ends to applause. The conductor turns to the crowd and
    accepts the response. He motions to the soloists to stand. I hold my 
    mate's bass while he goes to the back of the stage to fetch his
    missile. He comes back to the stand, but before he does, stands for a 
    second facing the audience, clicks his heels and touches his forehead 
    with the tip of his bow, acknowledging that at least some of the
    response was for him.                                     
    
    Peter

    Another Itzhak Perlman story (not razzle-dazzle however):
    
    He was giving a master-class at Julliard and demonstrating step
    by step how to do this one particular Pagannini trick:
    
    	IP: "You do this..."
    
    	Student: "Yeah..."
    
    	IP: "then this...
    
    	Student: "Got it"
    
    	IP: "then this..."
    
    	Student: Then what?
    
    	IP (Shrugs): "Hope for the best"
    
    That's my approach to the guitar: practice as much as you can, than
    hope for the best when it comes time to play it.
    
    	db

    Obviously, I've collected a few of these about Steve Morse.
    
    During clinics he's fond of telling you how you can practice scales
    while your doing anything (even giving a clinic).
    
    The typical thing for him is to start ripping through some scales
    at a speed that you would think requires a lot of concentration
    and then just starts talking as if he wasn't playing at all - that
    is,  non-chalently, not "in time" with what he's playing and with
    obvious full attention to what he's saying and what other folks
    are saying.
    
    I once saw him plug his (MIDI'd) guitar into a sampler he had never used 
    before and just start playing through the samples that were loaded.
    For almost every one, he played a note-for-note interpretation of
    some famous KEYBOARD part that was done using the kind of sound
    the sampler was playing.
    
    Like for a very heavy/breathy organ he played the organ intro to
    "Whiter Shade of Pale", but note for note using some fingerings so
    contorted that even Al Holdsworth would shake his head.
    
    Maybe you had to be there, but it was so appropriate and so
    note-for-note that it really blew me away.
    
    	db

    OK, I just remembered one more than I'll shut up:
    
    This is BY FAR the most amazing display of guitar showmanship I have
    ever seen and it was by one of the most unlikely  people:
    
    You ready for this:
    
    
    
    
    			Barbara Mandrell !!!
    
    
    She did a solo segment on her HBO special that killed me.
    
    She started out by playing 8 bar bits on each of about 8 different
    instruments (guitar, violin, sax, harmonica, stand-up bass, etc.)
    Everything single bit on each instrument demonstrated incredible
    virtuosity.
    
    She finally ended up on a double necked guitar.  A guitar player from
    her band walked up and started playing the other neck of her guitar.
    
    Then she started picking the neck he was fretting, and fretting the
    neck he was picking (they were playing incredibly fast licks too!).
    
    As if that wasn't enough, ANOTHER guitar player walks up with a guitar
    and sort gestures like "mind if I join you"?
    
    He leans in so that his guitar is accessible and to make a long story
    short, they go through I guess ALL the combinations of picking and
    fretting for each other, switching every bar or so at one point.
    
    It was definitely the most amazing display of guitar showmanship I've
    ever seen.
    
    	db
    

    
    There's a clip that was shown on the OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST over hre in
    the U.K. of Jan Akkerman (ex Focus) playing a piece on a classical
    guitar.....suddenly the top string breaks, & of course he covers BUT
    he replaces the broken string while still playing & finishes on a full
    set!  Great trick....must have practised for hours to get that one
    good.
    
    	Cheers
    		Pete.

    re: .21
    
    You gotta be KIDDING?  How is that physically possible?  Did someone
    help him?
    
    Greg

    
    	Well....he had the replacement string ready in his breast pocket
    which he pulled out with his teeth & it sort of untangled itself with a
    few shakes.....a switch to some hammer/pulloff stuff to free the right
    hand so he could tie the bridge off.   Basically he used any gap he
    could (rests, cut sustain to nothing) to thread & twist the peg.
    
    	It really was contrived & the piece was obviously well chosen to
    allow the time needed but even so it was very impressive!
    
    Start practising my man.
    
    	Cheers
    		Pete.
    
    p.s. my teacher often gets me to pretend I've broken a string & to play
    on whats left (YUK!) but my teacher is like that, a right B*****d. 
    Good teacher though.

    I wanna see someone do it with a Floyd...

    re .-1
    
    ...happening to have a bare left foot so that he could reach over and
    grab the allen wrench protruding from the top of his left sock; ...

    Went to see Victor Bailey last night, with Randy Brecker's
    band.  Steve Smith (from Journey) was on drums, and did a
    great job imo.

    But anyway, to the point.  Victor started talking about
    his days with Weather Report, how it felt to replace someone
    of Jaco Pastorius' stature, and said he'd been "fooling
    around" with a sort of tribute to Jaco.  In one of the more
    memorable pieces of bass flash I've seen, Victor then performed
    a "solo" version of Weather Report's Birdland on 4-string
    electric bass.  Using taps, chords (real ones, not just double
    stops), false harmonics, and a few tricks I haven't figured out
    yet, he kept two and sometimes three parts going simultaneously.
    He played the WHOLE TUNE, start to finish, synth solos and all.
    And it swung.  Absolutely amazing.

    Anyone want to buy a bass :-)