Embarrassing gigging moments: whats yours? :)

[Greg.Bassman]

Was watching spinal tap for the 100th time and the scene when derek smalls gets trapped in the pod still cracks me up 🤣

 

I do not play anymore but it reminded me of some of the more embarrassing moments that occurred when I did 😂

 

Anybody else? Or is it just me and derek on this one? 🤔

 

 

 

UPDATE: thanks for all your comments guys. I am really enjoying this topic. There has been so many funny stories. I am just glad that me and derek weren’t the only ones! lol.

 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Greg.Bassman

[NHM]

The 'A' string snapping at the beginning of a new year's eve function and not having a spare.

Smacking my headstock into a conga player's forehead leaving him with a nasty cut.

[Greg.Bassman]

Just now, NHM said:

The 'A' string snapping at the beginning of a new year's eve function and not having a spare.

Smacking my headstock into a conga player's forehead leaving him with a nasty cut.

Man, thats tough. I snapped my G string [oooh matron!] once, without a spare bass, but I had a spare set of strings. The guitarist took an extended solo while I changed it behind my amp. The quickest I have ever changed a string! 😆

 

I have never smacked someone with my headstock, but the singer walked into it once! Singers eh! 🙄

[Cat Burrito]

Saturday 10th December 1994 (I still have the tour poster) at the Angel in Nottingham, my Bath based sleaze rock band (the last bastions of the old days that had been otherwise killed off by grunge) hit the town. We didn't know what to expect and showed up to what initially looked like an old man's pub. We were backstage still nursing hangovers from the previous night(s) and our roadie came in to say the audience all looked like us. Thinking it was a wind up we initially ignored him but he said they were asking for me personally (I used to run the mailing list). I went out front and he was right - we'd pulled our biggest crowd. People started buying me drinks and I spent the first part of the evening ligging at the bar. 

 

We came to go on and made an entrance walking through the crowd as our intro music played. It was a highpoint of my musical career at that time. I was definitely feeling the effects of a few too many beers. We walked onstage and I noticed my BV mic was considerably lower than my skinny 6ft3 frame. I staggered up to adjust it and promptly fell off stage before the first note! Low slung bass thankfully unharmed. It got the biggest cheer of the night! Against all odds, we actually went down well but I don't think I recovered from my muppet moment. 

[Woodinblack]

51 minutes ago, Greg.Bassman said:

I have never smacked someone with my headstock, but the singer walked into it once! Singers eh! 🙄

 

I regularly do it, I guess you just need to try harder.

[Doctor J]

I've already covered a couple of good ones in the thread below. Another highlight includes:

 

Slipping in liquid spilled on stage by the support band and falling backwards into the amps, in this case a hefty Trace 4x10 combo perched on top of a tea chest, then the agonising wait as it rocked back and forwards above me, wondering if it was going to come down on top of me. When it stopped I got up, the rest of the band were still playing, and continued but noticed I had knocked the mic off the stand and it was now sitting in the spillage. Having narrowly avoided injury already, there was no way I was going to touch it while holding a plugged-in bass so I shouted at a mate in the audience to pick it up and put it back in the stand instead.

 

 

 

[Buddster]

Thankfully not me, but recently our lead singers dress strap broke half way through the gig, leaving her to tactfully hold it together to save a very embarrassing wardrobe malfunction. 

She did it very well. 

Needless to say a new dress was not one of my backup items! 

[ubit]

Many years ago I had a string break on me. First song, big intro, launch into song and G string breaks. No spare. Had to stop the gig, jump in a car and run up the road grab another, fit it, tune up and carried on. Altogether the least professional I could be.

I always carry spare strings or guitars now.

[Lozz196]

Being rather well fuelled of the amber nectar I fell over on stage once whilst performing like a rock star.

Taught me a valuable lesson that, which was stand still then you can drink bucketloads.

[Franticsmurf]

Last minute gig via an agent (phone call at 4pm, on stage around 8.30 with a 90 minute drive). No info other than it was a pub gig. No problems, we were doing them regularly at the time but we were all working so it was a bit of race to finish, gather kit and head off. We turned up a little later than ideal and set up in a rush. Only after we'd got everything ready did we really notice the crowd - the usual suspects for the kind of pub we were in, but they were very well dressed. We started with the pub set (I don't remember most of the set but it would have been pub rock/blues standards). After the first three or four songs, there was no response from the audience - none. We weren't that bad so in true professional style, we carried on, trying different styles, slow, fast, medium, quiet, loud. Eventually we were getting a little half hearted and polite applause. At the end of the first set, we decided to do our rocky version of 'Knocking On Heaven's Door' (starts off like Clapton, ends like GnR but fast with a really nice guitar solo). In the past it had never failed to get an audience reacting and usually positively.

 

Except when you play it at a wake.

 

The landlord told us during the break - our agent had forgotten to mention it. We took a longer than usual break and the second set went down much better as the beer had been flowing for a while and the ties had come off. By the end of the night it was like regular gig and we managed several encores.

[Greg.Bassman]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

 

I regularly do it, I guess you just need to try harder.

Sounds like a good excuse to abuse the singer to me 😜

 

[Intentional smack]

Bassist: ‘Why did you walk into my bass?!’

Singer: ‘I didn’t!’

Edited May 30, 2022 by Greg.Bassman

[Greg.Bassman]

1 hour ago, Doctor J said:

I've already covered a couple of good ones in the thread below. Another highlight includes:

 

Slipping in liquid spilled on stage by the support band and falling backwards into the amps, in this case a hefty Trace 4x10 combo perched on top of a tea chest, then the agonising wait as it rocked back and forwards above me, wondering if it was going to come down on top of me. When it stopped I got up, the rest of the band were still playing, and continued but noticed I had knocked the mic off the stand and it was now sitting in the spillage. Having narrowly avoided injury already, there was no way I was going to touch it while holding a plugged-in bass so I shouted at a mate in the audience to pick it up and put it back in the stand instead.

 

 

 

Don’t get me started about spillages. I was in one band once, where we banned liquids on stage. Only bottled water with the cap on when not in use. Not very rock and roll, but I like to think that we saved lives! 😁

[Greg.Bassman]

46 minutes ago, Buddster said:

Thankfully not me, but recently our lead singers dress strap broke half way through the gig, leaving her to tactfully hold it together to save a very embarrassing wardrobe malfunction. 

She did it very well. 

Needless to say a new dress was not one of my backup items! 

Oh my goodness! 😅 Thats a skilled singer right there. I had a similar situation [not a dress!], when the top button of my jeans broke off and I was not wearing a belt. As the show went on, I was beginning to wonder why my trousers were getting incrementally lower down my backside. Fortunately we had an interval and I was able to use a safety pin to keep them together. Good job as well… one more song and everyone might have seen my pants. Thank goodness I was wearing pants! 😆

Edited May 30, 2022 by Greg.Bassman

[Greg.Bassman]

39 minutes ago, ubit said:

Many years ago I had a string break on me. First song, big intro, launch into song and G string breaks. No spare. Had to stop the gig, jump in a car and run up the road grab another, fit it, tune up and carried on. Altogether the least professional I could be.

I always carry spare strings or guitars now.

I bet that was awkward! 😉

[Greg.Bassman]

38 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Being rather well fuelled of the amber nectar I fell over on stage once whilst performing like a rock star.

Taught me a valuable lesson that, which was stand still then you can drink bucketloads.

The bigger they are the harder they fall… probably literally in your case, right? 😜

 

‘Amber nectar’ lol 😆

[theplumber]

Back ''in the day'' when I was starting out I did not drive so was able to partake in a few drinkies before,during and after gigs! I managed one time to fall off a stage in to a christmas tree,knock a full try of drinks out of a waitresses hand and was sick all over the side of our van on the way home from a gig. Happy days!!

[ubit]

We were booked to do a Christmas dance once. The set up was, we were to play a set, then this other band (keyboard/singer and drummer) would do a set and then us, then them and finally we would join together and finish the night. About four hours of entertainment altogether. We did our first set and then the drummer of the other band came and told us that the keyboard player/singer of their band was so drunk he couldn't perform. Would we carry on and do the rest of the night? We didn't have enough material for that length of set. We had to start dragging up slow numbers or long since dropped numbers and then the dreaded repeating songs when it's the same audience. I wanted the ground to open up and was just willing the night to end.

The worst of it was the drummer of the other band who also organised the gig only paid us our going rate which we would have got anyway. He was a crooked little bugger.

[Lozz196]

26 minutes ago, Greg.Bassman said:

The bigger they are the harder they fall… probably literally in your case, right? 😜

 

‘Amber nectar’ lol 😆

Yeah I had to play the rest of the song lying flat on my back - I raised a leg so the audience could see I was still there though

[nilorius]

Long, long time ago I had a big gig at some festival on half open stage, and the wind was there. My place on stage was right besides the most popular piano player of our country, 90 years old man, called Maestro. I was playing from the notes and suddenly wind got hard and took a few lists away, i was shocked and run for them to prevent the situation and continue to play. It took about 4 seconds without me and then Maestro turned to me and said - "how can it happen ???". I was in bad mood that day.

[Leonard Smalls]

In the early 90s we were going to play a gig at (iirc) the King's Head in Fulham...

We were told that a number of record company scouts were specifically coming to see us as we'd somehow built a bit of a following.

So we rehearsed like crazy, tight as a gnat's etc, and on the night someone had the bright idea that we should have a few beers so we might be just that little bit more stage-showey.

About 6 pints later someone sparked up some serious grass reefs, after which we were all a touch spacey and drunk. So in order to alleviate this, some other bright spark brought out the coke, which we imbibed freely before going on.

Needless to say, the whole band was completely Merded - falling about, out of time, unable to see properly and so playing everything wrong. But what was worse, being full of Executive Powder, we thought we were playing brilliantly. 

We weren't signed, and no record company scouts came to see us again!

A valuable lesson was learned...

[Cat Burrito]

7 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

In the early 90s we were going to play a gig at (iirc) the King's Head in Fulham...We weren't signed, and no record company scouts came to see us again

I'm reading that thinking of my experience with record companies in the early 90s, had they shown up, you would have probably gotten signed! 😺

[Rich]

Not me personally, but it was embarrassing for the band as a whole and the drummer especially. It was my first really good band back in the 80s, at our very first gig... we were a rocky-synth-pop band, sort of Duran with more guitars I suppose, and we had an intro tape... an ethereal synth piece with a bass drone, which gradually rose to a crescendo and then four clicks as our cue into the big opening of our first song. Unfortunately the bass on the intro tape used to cause a massive sympathetic rattle from the snares on the drummer's, errm, snare drum, so to avoid this he disengaged the snare strainer to drop them away from the head. And then forgot. Yes, you can see what's coming can't you... the intro rises to its crescendo, four clicks and BLAM the big dramatic intro, drummer hits his snare and instead of a gunshot "crack!" it goes "BOING!" like a timbale. Drummer realises what he's done, fumbles to re-engage the strainer and thankfully we are only treated to a couple of BOINGs before normal service is resumed. Alas the damage is done, and our big intro sounds more like "what if A-Ha played samba?". Thankfully the rest of the gig was an absolute belter, but it took a while for the drummer to live that intro down.

[Burns-bass]

The jack socket on my Warwick broke in front of a packed Royal Albert Hall audience. Swapped to a Geddy Lee jazz in seconds and all was ok. Never played a Warwick (or the Albert hall!) ever again.

[Greg.Bassman]

9 hours ago, theplumber said:

Back ''in the day'' when I was starting out I did not drive so was able to partake in a few drinkies before,during and after gigs! I managed one time to fall off a stage in to a christmas tree,knock a full try of drinks out of a waitresses hand and was sick all over the side of our van on the way home from a gig. Happy days!!

Wasn’t your night was it… still… ‘happy days!’ lol 😆.

[Greg.Bassman]

9 hours ago, ubit said:

I wanted the ground to open up and was just willing the night to end.

I can relate to this feeling! 😉

9 hours ago, ubit said:

He was a crooked little bugger.

Tut-tut. Crooked indeed. We have all encountered those types of people! 🙁