Entertainment For Lively Minds
Famous "technical problems"
You know the scenario - at the local pub the singer announces they've got a "technical problem" and the guitarist's mate, who borrowed the PA from his girlfriend's brother scurries to tweak a lead or replace the mic or whatever.
I may have posted a version of this story before but it's still a good 'un...
In 1972 I was a pimply but excited adolescent crowding into Western Springs stadium in Auckland to see Led Zeppelin. The limos drove on to the ground and as the sun began to set they came on, the stage lights revealing the gods themselves thundering into Immigrant Song. After the first wail or two from Percy the stage lights suddenly went out. Collective gasp. The band kept playing and a couple of minutes later the lights miraculously came on again. Collective sigh.
I found out many years later that they had blown the entire South Auckland power grid but had the foresight to carry their own generator.
Any other tales of technical disasters??
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Los Lobos at The International 2 in about 1988
David Hidalgo's amp goes tits-up mid-song. Roadie kicks it a bit. No joy.
Band goes into impromptu rock 'n' roll jam for a couple of minutes whilst a new Twin Reverb is carried on, plugged in and miked up.
The jam was rather splendid and got a huge round of applause.
Van the Man at Glasters, sometime in the 80s.
It's a glorious sunny afternoon, and Van and band are chugging nicely through some bluesy number from one of his 80s albums, when the air is shaken by the unmistakable throb of helicopter blades at close quarters. The aircraft swerves in and hovers over the huge crowd, and drowns out the PA for those directly beneath it. Is it the Pigs, trying to freak us out, or bust some unlucky brother selling reefers?. Er, maybe not, as paramedics appear on the ground and clear a swathe of crowd to allow the thing to gingerly touch down, mid audience, blades still thrumming at battlefield levels of intensity. While all of this is happening, Van's band are gamely choogling along, Georgie Fame's vamping furiously, and yer Man himself is uttering transcendental grunts and squeaks while parping his gobiron like there's no tomorrow. Someone (it transpires it's an unfortunate girl who is very poorly) is loaded into the chopper, the paramedics scatter, the blades spin up to an even higher crescendo of thrash, and it lifts off and away over the Somerset hills. Without so much as an acknowledging grunt, Van and the band spin on the end of a verse and jauntily find their way to the climactic chords of the blues jam few of us have heard through the din.
I can't remember anything else about what they played, just the calm insouciance of their professionalism while an episode of Whirlybirds unfolded only 100 yards in front of the stage. Brilliant.
Singer malfunction
Manchester Apollo, around 1982 - Altered Images suppoted by Vic Godard and the Subway Sect. Or rather
'Hi, we're the Subway Sect. Vic's not xxxxx here.'
Indeed he was absent/indisposed/awol/unwell.
So they played an entire instrumental set looking well pissed off.