That is one funny story!

I guess I always never used to eat spicy foods or anything that might

"cramp" my style.

Toilet

I used to worry about that since I played mainly polynesian gigs and party's. Spam and Roasted Pig!

David

I used to play in a new wave band. We did a dance number called Banana Rock. It was sort of a camp on Tarzan and Jane. We played jungle animal sounds over the PA as part of the intro. I put on a rubber gorilla mask for effect. During the tune one night the mask got mispositioned over my face and I began to be unable to breath. Trying to keep the beat, I feverishly tried shaking the mask off my face. The keyboard player said I looked like an insane monkey having convulsions. I could see through an ear hole or a nostril hole or something that his mouth was hanging open in total disbelief as I wailed and flailed, somehow not letting the tune fall to pieces as I got free of the asphixiant.

I'm sorry - is there not a picture of the monkey incident (or at least of the get-up)? That definitely needs to be posted......

This sounds hysterical...if there is any film of this you need to post it..thats Great...

Drums are definately not the instrument to be playing when you have "cramps" !!! ....

No films. That was twenty five years ago. If only.

To not be playing regularly and making conections musically with other people...I'm living that scenario these days and it's scary.

Play quarters instead of eighths and make a really cool face while you do it.

First off, the monkey mask story is awesome. I was laughing out loud for a long time (not at Sabshga's discomfort, but at the image of a "convulsing monkey" behind the drums going nuts).

My worst fears have already happened:

(1) Launching a stick out into the crowd. My stick got locked under my crash cymbal while I was doing a fill and it went flipping into the air and landed in the audience at our show -- IN A RESTAURANT. (Fortunately, it didn't hit anyone, but instead came crashing down on the floor under someone's table). Still, that was a lawsuit just waiting to happen.

(2) Playing out of synch with the band. We were swingin' -- REALLY swingin' during a tenor solo. I accidentally overextended a fill and came in on the "two" instead of the "one" and was out of sync with everyone in the band. The bass player locked in, but the horns and guitar player didn't. Everyone's face went pale and my band started staring at me like, "how are we going to fix this?" The vocalist looked scared out of her mind because she didn't know when to come in. When she did, it was a mess. Fortunately, the verse quickly came to a part where the whole band stops. It was just what we needed to get back on-track. To add to the horror, this was at someone's wedding.

...Ironically no one in the crowd "seemed" to notice. People kept on dancing and having fun, but that 10 seconds seemed like 100 years. Thank goodness they serve alcohol at weddings.