Most musicians (and martial artists) in my experience it seems are pacifists, or prefere to be non violent. Regardless, we work in a business that involves a lot of time entertaining drunks. With drunks come drunk idiots. I think we can all see where that paragraph is going, and I should get right to the point.

We must defend the stage.

Now bouncers are supposed to do that for us, but sometimes they can't see what's going on, or if it's a small place their is no bouncer, so the defense of the stage falls to the band. This is an uncomfortable thing for most of us, but the fact is we can't just let people run all over our shows. Talking is a good place to start, hopefully things can be reasoned out (the words "cut you off" placed after the words "I'll have the bartender" can be effective here). But sometimes somebody still insists on messing with your stuff. What happens at this point is up to you. I know a guy who swatted a woman in the face with the peg head of his 12 string Ovation mid verse. He pretended he never saw her and she never requested another song (much less climbed on stage to confront him) again.

Usually things can be talked out, but the fact remains that equipment is expensive and people shouldn't get the idea that they can just climb on up on stage and screw with the band/ their stuff. People must realize that "no" indeed means "no."