Over time, you learn new ways of doing things. It helps keep things more interesting and makes your brain sharper.
In a band, you mix up your set list so that you don't develop a monotony about your music, not only for you, but for the people that you perform for. In the band that I'm presently in first took a job as a house band, we learned just enough material to do a full night. We didn't pick up much material after that and it wasn't long before we were being criticized for not learning any new material. The result seems to have been an increase in the number of original songs we perform. We don't get together to learn new material that is on the charts, we just put together our own songs and people seem to like it. It's the only place people can hear our brand new songs. (We are working on a CD if anyone is interested.)
Sometimes, you even learn to play a song differently. We do a very old song called Boney Maroney with a reggae beat. I apply steel guitar to songs that would never have included such an instrument. It makes musical life interesting and fun.
One of the things that most musicians learn to do, especially from my younger era when non-polarized plugs were the norm on a guitar amplifier, is to grab your guitar strings and walk up to the microphone and slap it. If you got a bit of a shock, you'd flip your ground switch. Most of today's amps don't even have a ground switch because power has become so standardized and the amps use a three-prong, grounded plug.
In the late '70s, all the amps I owned had ground switches and two-prong plugs, making the microphone slap a necessity. I never minded the slight shock, and often would do it for other members of the band by grabbing their guitar and slapping the mic. It was something I just did, probably because I understood electricity early on.
One night, I forgot.
The Midnight Special had booked a job at the Tooele Army Depot Officers' Club in Tooele, Utah. It was about an hour's drive from my house, but we had a lot of packing up to do before we left. We ended up running short on time for one reason or another, and our setup time would be cut very short if we were to start on time. We had just put this band together and wanted some regular places to fall back on and so we wanted to make a very good impression on this club. We had regular setup positions. As you looked at the stage, Bill was on the left, the drums were behind and to his left, I was to the right, and the bass was to my right. If that sounds confusing, it was guitar, drums, bass and me on pedal steel and guitar.
When we first arrived, I noticed how well the stage was equipped. It was recessed into one of the walls in front of a dance floor and had electrical sockets on all three walls. I was thankful that I would not have to run extension cords for power. I plugged my amp in one of the side wall sockets, the bass was plugged into one of the rear wall sockets, and Bill and the PA were plugged into sockets on the other side of the back wall.
Setup went very quickly and we were tuned and set to start playing on time. I tested my microphone and got the level right, but I never slapped it.
The first three songs were Bill Bailey's. He sang the lion's share of songs in Midnight Special. After all, it was really his band. I only had to sing some light harmony and never touched the microphone during Bill's songs.
The fourth song came around and it was mine, Third Rate Romance. The drummer, and I don't remember if it was Richard or Gary, counted if off and we began playing the 16 bars before the singing began. As I played the intro lead work, I eased up to the mic to begin singing. Just as I sang the first word, and I was almost touching the microphone with my lips, a bright and seemingly large blue arc jumped from the mic to my lips! It blew me all the way back to my Fender Super Reverb Amp—with the ungrounded plug—which was about six feet behind me. I hit it and knocked it backwards against the wall behind it. The reverb tank made its boingy crashing sound and all the music stopped because the guys wanted to find out if I was dead or not.
The blue light, according to Bill, lit up the entire inside area of the stage. I was incredibly dazed and we had to take a couple of minutes for me to regain my composure. I also had to pull out an extension cord and run my power back to the same place where the PA was plugged in. Once done and the slap test performed, very tentatively I might add, we resumed. The rest of the night was uneventful with the exception that my lips were numb for most of it.
As a trained electrician, I now know that the sockets in which I was plugged were miswired and I basically got a 117-volt jolt when I got near the mic.
As we were packing up at the end of the night, one of the people in the crowd came up to me and complemented us on our music. "I especially liked the light show," he said with an evil smile.
"We were saving it for the finale," I came back, "but it went off prematurely."
Always slap your mic.