Worst Moments
1) When I was the lighting director for the Aerosmith reunion tour in 1984, Steve Tylor was still getting loaded. During his first song at our gig in Rockford Il he put his harmonica in his pants pocket. The pocket had a hole in it and the harmonica slid down his leg and lodged in the top of his sock. He was too loaded to figure out what was going on, missed his vocal cues and then, while still searching for the harmonica in his sock, tumbled over the front of the stage knocking himself out and ending the show.
2) When I was the lighting designer for Alice Cooper we played a year of gigs. Alice was back to his old habits during the entire tour. I won't get more specific than that. Anyway, our last gig of the tour was at the huge outdoor stadium at CNE in Toronto Canada. The opening act went on. Then we waited. Apparently Alice was too ill to go on so his show canceled. 20,000 fans then rioted. A drunk fan decided that he could jump off the top deck onto an awning and slide down to the bottom deck, like in the movies, and then run out to the field and trash the stage with the others crazies. Unfortunately he plunged through the awning and died.
BEST MOMENT:
When I was the production manager for INXS we played Shea's Theater in Buffalo New York. The band was really rocking that night and the crowd was totally into it too. By the end of the show, the fans in the balcony were dancing so hard that the balcony was bouncing up and down at least 6 inches either way from center and plaster was falling down on the orchestra seats. The crowd thought it was cool too and started dancing so that the balcony not only bounced up and down but side to side too in a wave.
Thankfully no premanent structural damage that I know of but one of the most wonderful shows where the crowd was feeding off of the band and the band fed off the crowd. A magical night