Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    I bleeves I've shared this before but it stands out...
    
    I'd noticed during the course of the night that my MKS-30 MIDI
    light was often lit up even when I wasn't playing it. Sometimes
    the mod wheel on my Mirage doesn't quite close down so I didn't
    worry about it...
    
    We start "The Flame" by Cheap Trick. The guitarist wasn't ready
    but nodded to me to start without him. No problem, I launch into
    the opening Asus2. He comes in and stops playing as if something
    just bit him. The singer is looking at my like I have two heads
    and there's alot of commotion around the tuner on the other side
    of the stage.
    
    Seems the MKS had been receiving pitch bend messages and was
    consequently about 1.73 semitones flat. Dig it, I'm the only
    one playing so I can't stop and no-one can jump in to save me.
    
    Much to Foxx Pass's credit, they *retune* all the guitars on the
    fly and join me just as I figure out what's happening and whack
    the PB wheel to bring myself back to A440. Now THEY are all flat.
    
    To make matters worse, while I was flying solo I had a brain cramp
    and forgot a chord...
    
    Horrible, simply horrible...
    
    Edd

	So far, I can think of 3 instances that were nasty:

	1) The Hot Plate: Up at the 'Paradise Ranch' (Woodland Park, Colorado)
	   we were playing in the lounge. There is a room adjacent to the 
	   stage area & they were having a wedding reception in it. The whole 
	   place went dark when they turned on a hot plate. This was
	   quite a surprize for everyone in the lounge & the wedding party.
	   Thru the use of 200 feet of extension cords, we were able to
	   plug into the kitchens power supply & eliminate the problem
	   (the kitchen had seperate circuits, while the rest of the building
	   appears to share the same 20 amp breaker).

	2) We used to travel with a Hammond M3 (We still use it occasionally
	   but not all of the time). One day at the 'Tavern On the Green'
	   (Colorado Springs, Colorado), The Hammond went horribly out of 
	   tune, then corrected itself. It seemed to do this quite randomly.
	   For those who don't know how one of these beasts works, it has
	   a motor that drives 'tone' wheels. These are metal disks with
	   notches in them. When spun near a pickup (like those found on
	   a guitar), they generate a sound/signal. Turned out that the
	   popcorn machine brought the voltage on the 'Band' power circuit
	   down to around 90 volts (I checked this with a meter), for about
	   5 minutes, while it was making another batch. The MIDI gear seemed
	   not to care.

	3) There is a hotel in Cucharas Valley (Cucharas, Colorado) called
	   the 'Timbers'. It's quite rustic & miles from anything (about
	   15 miles from the ski resort that we have played at). It's either
	   haunted & doesn't like our music, or it has the worst power I've
	   ever encountered. Everytime we've played there, I've had gear
	   malfunction. My Yamaha MIDI DISK FILER died there, The P.A. system
	   lost it's power transistors, My CZ-101 seemed to randomly re-tune
	   itself, and the keyboard players Yamaha SHS-10 malfunctioned.
	   I'd say 20% of my cables had some sort of problem & the keyboard
	   players portable T.V. wouldn't work right. The first time we
	   played there, I had a hardware malfunction with my Teac Porta-
	   Studio. The more that I think of it, I'd say it was haunted. The
	   owner tells me that things are always breaking there. I repaired
	   thier P.A. system while I was there - somehow the speaker
	   wires were dead shorted (Thru someones overexcitement with staples
	   to hold the wires in place). Luckily, 2N3055 transistors were
	   available thru the Radio Shack in Walsenburg. Yeah, I think its
	   haunted.

								Jens

	I found out the hard way just how sensitive the EPS is to current
	fluctuations recently.

	Due to the wierdness of the stage electric setup, I ended up on
	the same circuit as the bass amp and the guitar. 

	We never got a full sound check because the (*&^*% club owner 
	scheduled someone else in during the time we were supposed to
	be sound-checking (then got upset because we started late, but
	that's another story). So we play the first chord, and my EPS
	makes a wierd noise and goes into dreamland. Instant scramble.

	I went through a whole set playing piano parts on the Polysix
	as an organ part. 

	It occurred to me that I should try to get the EPS off the circuit
	so during the break after the first set I ran another extension cord
	to another wall outlet on the ceiling behind me. Looked funny but it
	worked.

	Then there was the time my old tube amp exploded on stage because my
	synthesizer was putting and exceptionally low frequency (.1HZ) at about
	1V. That was about ten years ago, synths have gotten more advanced since
	then...

	/pjh

    Since we are into power stories...
    
    I remember one gig we did where there was a separate lighting system,
    and some guy to run it. We set up as usual and checked everything
    out.
    	Doug, the lead guitar and lead singer tried to do his sound
    check. As soon as his lips brushed the mike he snapped his head
    back as if someone had smacked him. "Whoa! wicked ground loop!"
    he said through clenched teeth.
    	No problem, we switched the polarity and the problem was solved...
    we thought.
    	We started our set, everything was going fine. Doug did a nice
    lead then returned to the mike to sing the next verse. As soon as
    his lips touched the mike his eyelids started fluttering like
    lampshades! Damn! polarity switched again somehow. What followed
    next was some crazy dashing between the PA to switch the polarity
    and the mike to check it. 
    	Finally, we were able to locate the problem when we realized
    that the polarity was switching whenever the guy with the lighting
    system switched the lights. Relocating that to a different circuit
    solved our problem.
    
    	One nice thing about keybards, I've never gotten zapped by a
    mike!
    
    
    			Mark

        About a year ago, I bought an SQ-80. One of its features is it has
    an on board disk drive to hold patches/sequences. I had only the
    original disk with the keyboard since I had just gotten it. I had 
    all my patches saved on it. During set up, I moved a few things around
    in internal memory to make changing from patch to patch easier in
    relation to how the set list was ordered. I wanted to save this new
    internal memory bank to disk. Being an ESQ-1 veteran, I could go
    through menus/etc in record time, not even looking at what I was
    doing. Well, I ended up NOT hitting the button for 'SAVE INERNALS'
    but instead hit 'FORMAT DISKETTE'. It DID come back and ask me
    if I really wanted to do this, but I hit YES before even reading
    the message. I lost EVERYTHING I had saved on the SQ-80, except for 
    the internals (still resident in the machine). I could not survive
    on the internals (which were patches to set 1 only). I spent the next two
    hours driving up to Daddy's Nashua, copying thier disk, looking
    up the guy I sold my ESQ-1 to, getting my old patches
    back.,,etc,etc,etc. I made it back, in a lather of sweat, to start
    about a half hour late. The club owner was bull$#!t. We haven't played
    there since!!!
    
     --I now have 3 copies of all my patches/samples on hand!!!
    
    Frank (who learned the HARD way!!)
    

      I remember  while playing a club called the Half Time last 
    winter I had my guitar amp pop its fuse just as we were starting
    a song, Bus Rider by the Guess Who. It starts instrumentally
    so I tried a new fuse <POP> no fix the easy way. Five minutes
    it was time to get the spare amp. It was a small club so I had
    left my back-up amp in the car. This never would have happened when
    I have the spare on stage, which I do 98% of the time. The band
    is still intro-ing away, throwing in keyboard accents and extended
    bass runs. Ten minutes later I'm back online and finish Bus Rider
    with no further problems.