What was your most embarrassing moment at a gig?

[thisnameistaken]

[quote name='Gust0o' timestamp='1319794671' post='1418596']

Brilliant. This is showmanship people.
[/quote]

Apparently he was playing with us because he'd been fired from every show on Broadway. True story.

[duncbassgit]

Just rememberd another. Not really embarassing just stupidity....
Around 1988 we were playing a gig in a Leominster hotel back ballroom. Our lead singer was a bit of a good looker and he liked giving the girls the come on. We had an old pyro flash unit set up on the front line. This was the cartridge primer type with the old ignition and press button box. At the end of the last sets song the singer invites up a bird to step over the front line to join us in the last chorus of the night. She was wearing an indecently short mini skirt.
Martin our mate/roadie/hanger on, decides to fire it off in time with the last crescendo finishing power chord. Unfortunately the girl was stepping right over the pyro at the same time and it went off between her legs and skirt. Fortunately she was ok but very pissed off with all of us.
Oh and we also once had a dry ice smoke machine that wouldn't stop. Even after pulling out the wall plug it kept belching smoke out. Again Martin to the rescue who had to carry the still pumping machine out into the car park.
Dunc

[Doddy]

A lot of these don't seem particularly embarrassing,to be honest.
Forgetting to un-mute the amp....Done-fixed within seconds.
Not bringing a rig.....seems pretty commonplace for some bands.
String breakages.....happened lots-just get on with it and adjust on the fly.
Getting tangled up in cables.....Done.
Forgetting Bass......Nearly done-got halfway to a local gig and realised I'd left
my bass at home.

I've done loads of stuff that may seem embarrassing-I once stepped forward for a solo and
stepped on my lead,pulling it out of the jack. I've twatted microphones with my face when I've
stepped to close.I've knocked over my spare bass.I've forgotten my strap and had to play sitting
down.I've started songs in the wrong key-usually gets rectified within a bar or two though (one of the problems
of playing different arrangements of same songs with various bands). I've been reading charts and turned
over two pages at once,or lost the DS and/or Coda.
None of it is a big deal....laugh,shrug,and apologise if it's particularly bad. Just get used to stuff happening
and don't worry about it.Ultimately it's no big deal.

[brensabre79]

Yes done that too! Spent the whole first set thinking I must be playing to a bunch of Musos because a few people were staring and pointing at my bass playing! I felt the pressure not to make a mistake.

Only later did I realise the flies on my trousers had bust, had to use gaffer tape! These days i wear the bass a little lower

[Twigman]

I have 3 that I can think of:

1987 in Valencia - my first 'big' gig - there were probably around 2000 people there. I walk onstage at the start of the set. I am soooo nervous. There's a drum riser at the back of the stage and the opening song starts with the hihat so I thought I'd get as close to the hihat as possible to be sure I could hear it so I wouldn't miss my cue...I wasn't looking where I was walking and my foot went into a spot light which was pointing up to the riser to light the drums from below. My foot got stuck and the hihat started...my foot was getting hotter and the shoe was starting to melt and I was waiting for my cue...eventually sometime during the first verse I managed to extricate my by now seriously overheated foot from the spot light casing and luckily I hadn't missed my cue.


1987 in Sneek in Holland playing some local community hall on a stage about 7ft high. There were stacks of those blue plastic chairs at the side of the stage. At one point in the set all the lights went out. It was a total blackout on stage and I walked backwards off the side of the stage, falling into these piles of plastic chairs ...I sort of bounced up again and walked back onto the stage from the top of an untoppled pile.



2009 in Rome - I had a total memory wipe when the guitarist started one of our songs. I had no clue what song he was playing or how the song went although I think I remembered where to come in and vaguely how the first bit went but it soon fell to bits ...I felt like a total lemon as I tried to fumble my way through this song...what makes this worse is that somebody was filming it and posted it on youtube....and no I'm not going to post it here.

[Kiwi]

I have[quote name='Twigman' timestamp='1319822788' post='1419075']
what makes this worse is that somebody was filming it and posted it on youtube....and no I'm not going to post it here.
[/quote]
I had a look but too many youtube videos of that gig to go through and the sound quality isn't the best...I think you're safe.

[Merton]

There are at least two videos of me falling over onstage at various stages of my life, if not three of four. Best was two consecutive gigs on consecutive nights, the same song, ironically called "The Fall"..... First of these gigs I actually broke my bass and my lead with the way I landed, so needed to do a quick bass&lead swap whilst the guitarist played awful nonsense for a minute or two. Thing was, I'd left my lead backstage so had to run down the stairs and corridor to get to our dressing room

Also had the audacity to get so pissed once at a Christmas party (loooong ago now) that I told each and every band member to f*** off and called them all c***s at least twice each. No surprise we were never asked back.

[Merton]

[quote name='paul h' timestamp='1319794946' post='1418602']I jumped off a stage for a bit of audience fun only to discover that it was too high to climb back onto while playing. I sheepishly finished the song at the foot of the stage waiting for a lift up before the next song started.[/quote]
Yep, done that one

Last week I thought I'd mingle in the very attractive wedding crowd we had during Don't Stop Believin, only there were so many people on the dance floor I got offstage and couldn't go anywhere, and my route back "home" very rapidly was filled with luscious ladies

[Owen]

I forgot to put my feet back down. If you look carefully at the audience, you can imagine that they were even more bemused after that.

[leschirons]

Played a gig (on drums) supporting prog rock trio T2 back in the 18th century at Cloud 9 in Peterborough. During my big solo the bass drum kept creeping until it finally dropped off the front of the stage, giving a young lady a fairly serious head injury. While she was being stretchered out by St John's ambulance, we were asked to leave and had to get our stuff out through the crowd.

[RhysP]

First gig I ever played was an all dayer in West Sussex. We were on immediately before China Crisis who were headlining so we had a pretty decent sized crowd.
All day there had been this crazy drunk woman wandering round the site making a pain in the arse of herself - at one point she walked over to me & kicked me in the back for no reason whatsoever while I was sat on the floor. She quickly became known as "Cider Woman".
We were a couple of numbers into our set when I noticed she was standing right in front of my monitor, so when it came to an instrumental bit I went to the front of the stage & struck my best Phil Lynott pose with my bass neck pointing out over her head. Quick as a flash her hands shot upwards & grabbed the neck of my bass & tried to pull me off the stage. I tried to pull the bass away from her but she had a grip like a f***ing tyre fitter!
The only thing I could think to do, and I'm very ashamed to admit this, was kick her in the face. Luckily she must have read my mind & relaxed her grip leaving me to go stumbling back across the stage just in time to start singing the next verse of the song.

[PURPOLARIS]

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1319925545' post='1420282']
First gig I ever played was an all dayer in West Sussex. We were on immediately before China Crisis who were headlining so we had a pretty decent sized crowd.
All day there had been this crazy drunk woman wandering round the site making a pain in the arse of herself - at one point she walked over to me & kicked me in the back for no reason whatsoever while I was sat on the floor. She quickly became known as "Cider Woman".
We were a couple of numbers into our set when I noticed she was standing right in front of my monitor, so when it came to an instrumental bit I went to the front of the stage & struck my best Phil Lynott pose with my bass neck pointing out over her head. Quick as a flash her hands shot upwards & grabbed the neck of my bass & tried to pull me off the stage. I tried to pull the bass away from her but she had a grip like a f***ing tyre fitter!
The only thing I could think to do, and I'm very ashamed to admit this, was kick her in the face. Luckily she must have read my mind & relaxed her grip leaving me to go stumbling back across the stage just in time to start singing the next verse of the song.
[/quote]


PMSL at this. I've kicked a few people that got too close to us on stage. Our singer got a fat lip a few weeks ago when a punter hit his mic stand and sent his mic crashing into his face. He should have kicked out before it happened. We're an acoustic band as well

[BassTractor]

The guy at the mixer getting drunk during the break, and the band asking a friend to step in, giving him the simple instruction to listen carefully and keep things balanced so he could hear every instrument. Simple, right?

Slight detail: when all he heard were the background singers, he thought "we meant it to be that way" and moved zero sliders for the whole set.

[LowdownRumble]

Couple of years ago i played a single song in a christmas concert. All i had to do was walk on stage plug in and play. As soon as i plugged in I noticed there was no sound coming from the amp. This had happened before at a practice with the same amp, and it had been repaired. Luckily there was a double bass player on stage as well, so the lack of me playing went unnoticed. after the song i walked off quite pissed off and gave the techie a good bollocking. After the gig i went to check the amp and realised there were two leads next to the amp. One plugged into the amp and one not connected to anything. Guess which one I plugged in to my bass?

[jayblaze]

Just before my solo spot in a song the back of my Warwick came off ( it was gaffa taped shut) and all the electronics and batteries fell out over the floor. When I should have been playing I was crawling around looking for batteries. I was 16 hahah

[charic]

[quote name='jayblaze' timestamp='1319981202' post='1420743']
Just before my solo spot in a song the back of my Warwick came off ( it was gaffa taped shut) and all the electronics and batteries fell out over the floor. When I should have been playing I was crawling around looking for batteries. I was 16 hahah
[/quote]

That could be interesting to see!

[Spike Vincent]

[quote name='sixdegrees' timestamp='1319756904' post='1418412']
All of a sudden I had chorus, overdrive and wah engaged, with a pair of knockers looking up at me.
...
[/quote]


And this is a bad thing?

[Spike Vincent]

[quote name='kevin_lindsay' timestamp='1319763803' post='1418445']
Not a gug, however......... Was depping in a wedding band at a venue with a number if halls. Arrived and introduced myself to the drummer who was already setting up. Got my rig going and was tuning up for soundcheck when I got a text asking where I was.

Turned out I was in the wrong hall with the wrong band! Oops!
[/quote]



You are my new Hero.

[sixdegrees]

Spike - the only bad thing was the other punters being so quick in helping the young lady in question with her modesty.

Update; Just depped tonight. All the songs learnt and practised (by myself, no rehearsal) apart from one. And which song did I learn in the original key, while the guitarist had transposed it? But as the singer said to me 'that's the beauty of live music. Once it's done it's behind you and you move on and forget about it'.

[bobbass4k]

My first band did a couple of maiden covers, in wicker man the guitarist and I thought it would be cool if we put a leg up on anmonitor maiden stylee. First chorus comes and we trot over to a monitor, they were suprisingly light and the floor was very shiny, so the second we touched them we both slipped backwards and collided in the floor, according to the other guitarist neither of us missed a note so we were pretty proud. We always checked the monitors were properly secured after that.

[kevin_lindsay]

Oh dear, I just remembered another "oops!" gig.

I was a guest at David Coulthard's 21st birthday party, and everyone was in fancy dress. I'd only found I was going a few days before, and as it was a fancy dress affair, I decided to go as a surfer.

Stupid me thought it would be a good idea to wear my full wetsuit and take my surfboard ( not too cumbersome on the minibus going, but a nightmare in the taxi heading back to DC's folks' afterwards!

Anyhow..... 10 minutes into the party and I'm roasting because of the wetsuit. My head was bright read. The band playing were a fantastic outfit. Halfway through the night DC's dad Duncan gets on stage and announces, "we've a special guest here who's going to play with the band. Kevin, come on up here". I was shouting and clapping for the guest to go up, when SC leans over and says "that's you he's talking about, you arse!"

So I go up to the stage and borrow the bassists White P-bass. The band ask if I'm singing? "nope, I just play". Okay then, the guitarist says, were in B flat and it's a blues shuffle feel. I then hit a note to check the bass - and nothing comes out! I check the led's connection to the bass and amp. Nothing! The lead is changed while a load of celebs at the party watch me. Try again.... Still nothing.

The usual bassist then walks onto the stage and simply turns up the volume knob on the bass. Aaaaagh!!!

[seashell]

[quote name='duncbassgit' timestamp='1319815269' post='1418939']

Oh and we also once had a dry ice smoke machine that wouldn't stop. Even after pulling out the wall plug it kept belching smoke out. Again Martin to the rescue who had to carry the still pumping machine out into the car park.
Dunc
[/quote]

Great thread, am really chuckling at some of these.
Not being a proper muso I don't have any gig stories to share.
But as a some time dancer in various musicals, I can only add that dry ice is the work of the devil!!

[Norris]

I've a few:

Jumped off stage while playing in a pub with a very low ceiling and felt quite dazed for the next couple of songs
Sitting down to a family meal in a restaurant then getting a phone call saying " Where the f*** are you?"
Turning up without bass and/or rig - on several occasions
Breaking a string in the first set & realising I'd forgotten to bring any spares
Sneezing on stage and ending up with a huge glob on snot on the back of my plucking hand in the middle of a song
And only last Friday - accidentally stepping back onto my pedal board & muting my bass - twice!

[MacDaddy]

nothing embarrasing as such, but once at a gig I held aloft my bass in mighty rock pose, and was then covered in polysterene from the roof tiles in the low ceiling I had just put the bass through.

[charic]

[quote name='MacDaddy' timestamp='1320076903' post='1421987']
nothing embarrasing as such, but once at a gig I held aloft my bass in mighty rock pose, and was then covered in polysterene from the roof tiles in the low ceiling I had just put the bass through.
[/quote]

I done similar at a bowling alley once...