Another in the occasional series…. This evening’s events have to do with the way a gig can turn from fun into a disaster in a matter of seconds.

Last Saturday we (the cover band I play with on weekends) were playing a club in Leavanworth for only the second time. Despite the fact it’s in Leavenworth (sorry, fans of NE Kansas miltiary towns—I have an unhappy history with clubs there), it’s a pretty fun gig and the owners seem determined to make it a good venue for live music. Our bass player, who sings about a third of the songs, had a bad cold and could barely talk, let alone sing. He joked about sounding like Satchmo, and I tried to give him a white hanky (okay, it was really a kleenex) to hold while he sang. But overall it was going pretty well. The crowd was on the small side, probably because of the snow and ice, but we had a pretty good momentum going.

We only had another 20 minutes to play, and invited a woman singer who’s a friend of the band to come up and sit in, and give our singer and the bass player a break. We were figuring out what song to do when suddenly one of the guitarists suddenly put down his instrument and left the stage. It turns out he had that stomach bug that is going around and suddenly felt so bad he had to go. Right then. Then he found couldn’t throw up and had to lie down in a booth until the situation could resolve itself. Those of us left decided we could get through Led Zeppelin’s “Rock’n’Roll” as a three-piece with singer.

I slogged through that impossible drum intro* as best I could, and as I did the final eighth notes to cue the rest of the band’s entrance, I managed to hit my glasses with one of my sticks. In the course of nearly 40 years playing the drums while wearing glasses, I have occasionally caught the temple piece with a stick and sent them flying, but I had a bad feeling about this one. Just the same, there didn’t seem any reason to stop and I played the song without glasses. As soon as we were done, I start feeling around on the floor. Bad news: I found the right temple piece and part of the lens frame, but nothing else. Of course they’re black glasses on a dark carpet on a darkish stage covered with equipment (and a Christmas tree behind the drums). I was crawling around , getting the band to look around because of course I was terrified someone would step on what was left of them. No luck. I ran out to my car (through the snow in a sweat-soaked t-shirt) to get my old glasses out of the glove compartment. I can literally only focus six inches in front of my face without glasses, so there was no possibility of doing without them. By that time there was only time to play one more song, and it was pretty flat, like someone had let the air out of the club.

Sometimes, it just feels like a chaos bomb has landed on the stage. Without warning we lost a guitar player and I was pretty freaked out, and the bass player had been struggling all night. It’s a little bizarre how an entire evening can turn in no time at all.

Incidentally, they eventually found the other part of my glasses behind one of the PA stacks, about 15 feet away. I actually lost money on that gig, because it’s going to take three weeks and cost over $100 to get them repaired.