Who kicked the cord?

Not your rig’s cord, but during live performance and how did the performers react?

The funniest incident for me was years ago during a George Benson concert in LA. George is one of my heros. Roughly a third of the way into the set, some silly goose backstage apparently hit a circuit breaker or … kicked a plug … cutting power to the entire band. After around 5 minutes of the sound crew having no clue how to restore power, George pulled the plug on his guitar. He launched into an over the top ad lib jam that brought the house down. Not what I anticipated when I bought my ticket. It was way better. A crazy live performance moment I’ll never forget. This was in an intimate venue btw where everyone could hear him do his thing.

Similar story. 2015. A local radio station used to get all kinds of bands, singers to play at different venues around town even out on the San Diego bay dinner boat. Tickets gratis for the asking but limited for obvious reasons. Typically only 1 to 3 hundred in attendance.

The Temperance Movement from England was this random week’s show at Balboa Park in San Diego. The park was built for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition though the land was set aside in 1868. Anyway, there are several nice venues on the property. One is the Grand Ballroom.

Having no idea what to expect we were outside the venue on the 2nd floor. At one point the ballroom was also a moving picture theater. The old holes the projector shown through were still there. The band lit like a firecracker from the get go. The image in my mind of looking through the projector portal at this band I’d never heard of let alone seen and for free just elevated the level of energy from hmm, hope this is good to oh my WTF! We went straight down to the floor.

Great sound, ~200 people. One could move wherever even right up to the stage.

About 20 mins. into their set mid-song, the front amps blew a breaker, or was flipped inadvertently. Silence for less than a second.

The band barely even paused switching to acoustic for 90 seconds before the power was restored and the song finished with power. True touring musicians going with the flow.

I haven’t been to be more than 100 shows in 53 years but this is with no doubt my favorite of all.

Short video https://vimeo.com/127786814 - Wish I had kept recording beyond where I stopped…

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1981 Steve Hackett Liverpool Empire theatre. Around 2000 seater.
Two thirds of the way through, excellent sound, drums very clear, but loud, drum solo and he got a bit carried away, PA blew the stage supplies. Total darkness and only emergency lights. Took about two minutes to fix, so SH started telling jokes at the top of his voice :slight_smile:
Memorable!

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In '86 I was touring the UK with a singer. In Edinburgh, I had a rented SVT, and it suddenly went silent towards the end of the set. I spun around, saw it had no power, and, knowing one of the keyboard players didn’t use a particular keyboard that she had on the tune we were playing, grabbed the plug going into that synth’s DI and plugged it into my bass.

Later I was told one of our road crew had tripped over the bass amp’s AC cable. Swift.

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Many years ago, probably in the early '80s, I attended a concert by the David Bromberg Band in a small theater. A great concert, but about 15 minutes from the end, they lost all power. Since the band was playing acoustic instruments anyway, they all stepped up to the very edge of the stage and finished the show under their own steam, and it was fantastic. AFAIK, no one ever figured out what had caused the outage.

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