Back in the mid-70's, I was playing with a 6-piece rock band that did a lot of funk tunes. We had a great first and second set, and went back to start off third set with Average White Band's "Cut The Cake", which, if you don't remember it, was a big sax instrumental tune. The drummer kicked it off, and we launched into it - the rest of the band was smokin', and the alto sax player was blowing himself purple in the face, but no sound was coming out.

He checked the mike first, then the cable, before he got this awful look on his face when he reached in the bell of the horn and pulled out an upside down dripping beer can. He had such a God-awful look on his face that the rest of the band stopped within 3 seconds in shock. For some reason, the crowd fell totally silent also, except for this ONE guy in the middle of the dance floor laughing hysterically.

Being pros, we, of course, regrouped and moved on to the second tune of the set quickly, then at the end of the set, proceeded en masse to the dance floor to address this miscreant about his faux pas. Upon our exiting the stage, we were met by two or three guys who said this guy was a friend of theirs and that they'd already taken care of him.

We listened politely, then pushed past them to discuss the matter with this gentleman personally. We couldn't find him, and fourth set proceeded without incident. After the gig was over, we loaded the truck to move on to the next gig, and spotted the missing beer-dumper sitting in the parking lot on the ground leaning up against a post - bruised, bleeding, and out cold. His so-called friends had apparently taken him outside and beaten the crap out of him. Saved us a lot of trouble!

In the mid-70s I played the hotel lounge circuit in California as a drummer in a trio, backing a female singer whose stage persona was kind of like a Barbie doll, only not as bright. The pianist had studied classical Indian music and practiced his sarangi (a bowed string instrument with added sympathetic strings) in the closet of our shared hotel room every morning, for privacy. The sound, to the uninitiated ear, could be compared to a constipated, yet amorous cat.
One morning a young hotel maid came into the room to clean, and was both confused and a little frightened by the sounds emanating from the closet. The bass player & I stayed mum; she opened the door to find a 6'4" man, naked but for his droopy white briefs, sawing away at his sarangi.

She screamed, fled, and never made up the room again.

For a few years, we did a house gig at a club in Scottsdale backing up a dance show as a trio. The clientele was generally comparable to the cast of Jersey Shore. 15 minute shows, 3 or 4 times a night, which led to a lot of down time on the gig. We found a lot of creative ways to amuse ourselves during those long breaks.

Generally, we could be found hanging out near the stage door, which opened to the sidewalk about 30 feet west of the club's entrance. One night, somebody held the stage door open with a rock, and when they were done just kicked it out of the way, into the middle of the sidewalk. Later that night, while we were hanging out talking, someone tripped on it.

We thought that this was so funny in such a juvenile way, that we started 'placing' the rock in a very strategic location. Right in the middle of the walkway, clearly visible for 30 yards in every direction, yet they would still come by and trip over it, one after another. Sometimes 2 or 3 people in the same group would trip over it, and then stumble into the club. Eventually someone even turned to us and apologized after tripping, as if they had done something wrong by kicking it. We all had a hard time keeping a straight face.

One night, the drummer's wife came to the gig. She hated this gig, because the dancers were all pretty and skinny and made her feel bad about herself. She also didn't like the idea of the rock because she thought it was really mean.

The 4 of us (the band and the drummer's wife) were all hanging out next to the stage door between shows, and he's telling her "it's all in good fun. Nobody ever gets hurt." Literally as these words are coming out of his mouth, a 90 pound girl in a little slinky black dress comes walking along, trips over the rock, and falls flat on her face, like it was cued in a Mel Brooks movie.

We all fell out laughing, and I'm sure the drummer was sleeping on the couch for a couple days after that one. His wife never showed her face at the club again for the next 2 years until the gig ended.

I'm a pianist and I used to do a Saturday evening jazz duo gig with a saxophone player who enjoyed drinking a lot during a gig. After spending most of the three hour gig listening to him wailing late Coltrane and his complaints about my left hand, I decided to get my revenge. In the final tune, I turned on the pitch bend, which was controlled by a foot pedal. I shifted the pitch a quarter tone up and watched him drunkenly wrestle with the tuning on his tenor, cursing his instrument all the time.

As soon as he re-tuned his horn to match my newly-tuned piano, I shifted the pitch back down to the original, only for him to mutter some drunken incoherent ramblings about the horn as he attempted, badly, to re-tune it.

After about six whiskeys with Guinness chasers, he was none the wiser about what had happened.

Our harmonica player liked to play jokes on the band members, so one night for payback we took his harps and put (tooth numbing gel) on them. He couldn't feel his lips, and could barely talk by the end of the night!

I was playing drums in a four-piece country band at the time. One night, we began playing Merle Haggard's Sing Me Back Home, the opening line of which is: "The warden lead a prisoner down the hallway to his doom." For some reason, our guitarist/singer sang, "The warden THREW a prisoner down the hallway..." causing the rest of us to bust up laughing!
To our credit, the laughter didn't drastically affect our playing, but from that moment on, the singer would often substitute words like "kicked" or "forced" in that opening line, always with a mischievous smile back at me. The band isn't together anymore, but on almost every occasion the singer and I see each other, we always mention that song!

Mid 1980's. While playing in an original band in an L.A. club, in mid song, my guitar rig suddenly went silent and somehow ended the song gracefully. Here I was desperately trying to find the cause of my sonic blackout, while my VERY quick-witted bandmates launched into a hilarious a cappella rendition of the Oompa-Loompa Song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I found the cause just in the nick of time as the song was ending (a patch cord in my effects loop vibrated loose) and was able to carry on with the show.

At one particular show, one of my friends decided to mess with some techs.. He was asking people if they were his father, by chance. Most of the knew it was all in fun, but this one audio guy took it so badly. Upon the posing of the inquiry, "Are you my daddy?" in a whiny, near tears voice, the guy spiked an arm-load of cable and exclaimed loudly that he quit. He was VERY serious, and had disappeared by load out.