Telepathik 3

5 Ways I Died On Stage part 1
- I was in a band called Morphic Resonance, an industrial metal outfit in my 20s. We were fairly out of hand when we played and it made for an amazingly chaotic situation most of the time.
We had just played a festival show called Woodshock in rural Ohio. It was outside on a big stage with a real sound system and actual big named bands. The complete opposite of all the show we had played up to that point. The promoter of the show liked our set enough to ask us to come and play at his club, The Blue Cat. It sounds like a good gig and we took it.
So we took off to Bellefontaine, Ohio to play. I was pretty hyped about the show since the Woodshock show went so well. We pulled up to the place and it looked ok. The front of the place looked like a bank. The inside looked like some venues we played: awkwardly setup, small stage, focus on the bar. Normal stuff. The place had an upstairs as well as a wooden barricade at the front of the stage. It made sense for when big bands played to a packed house, but for local bands playing to significantly less people, it was just pointless. The PA in the place was pretty cool and the staff was cool as well. People that work and clubs and bars aren’t always the most pleasant cats to be around, but everyone was cool.
We loaded in and set up. We opened for a band called Pitch Black, who also played at Woodshock. They were nice enough if I remember correctly. We soundchecked and started the set. Not a lot of people, but more than I expected. Walking around the small town before the show, it didn’t seem like a lot of people were going to be out for the gig. But there actually were some people there. We’re playing and having a grand old time. We finished the first song. We’re rocking out and it’s all good and everything is fine. I swing my guitar, step down and lose my balance. I fall my left, running into our singer, Belial. He loses his balance and flies over the stage, given at the time I was at least twice his size. He moves with the energy of the set and shoves me, stepping on my guitar cord in the process. We get it back together and finished the song. I looked down and the input jack had been totally torn out. I knelt down in front of my amp and tried to figure out what to do. Our keyboard player, Josh and Belial looked over to see what we were going to do. During shows, I ended up being the ground general. When something goes wrong, everyone looks to me to either cheerlead and keep morale up and push through whatever the problem is. My guitar was really broken and I didn’t have a second guitar. This was a decent gig and we hadn’t really started yet. What do you do?
I looked up from my wrecked instrument and told them to start the next song and I’d figure something out. The show had to go on. Nothing goes wrong on stage. The band lurched forward with the next song, a slow burner called “If Red”. Outside, I looked to be making slight adjustments to my guitar, but inside, I was freaking out about what I was going to do. I got to about the first third of the song and made a call. I tossed my guitar and grabbed my mic and started ad libbing, following Belial’s vocal cues. The song ended and everyone in the band looked over at me and I just shrugged. The rest of the show was just me becoming the second vocalist, at one point lunging over the barricade and grabbing people in the front and yelling in their faces. It was cool.
We made it through the set. People dug it. The staff and promoter guy was super into it. The Pitch Black guys liked it. A few people in the crown told one of the band girlfriends that they liked “the black singer” better. We drove home late and I had to go to work really early the next morning.
The moral is that nothing can go wrong on stage.